Cathy Fletcher blog

It’s easy to do a domain transfer.

You just make sure that your domain name is past the 2-month holding time, then…

1. unlock it (see the “lock” icon?) at domain name provider (GoDaddy)
2. go to host c-panel, domain manager (BlueHost)
3. get EPP authorization code, from domain manager (GoDaddy) via email
4. paste into the field at the host (BlueHost)
5. get admin contact verification code (GoDaddy) via email
6. change name servers given by the host (from BlueHost to GoDaddy)
7. agree to terms of service at host
8. add transfer to shopping cart and pay ($10)

Basically you have 3 windows open:

• email account that your domain name provider knows
• hosting account
• domain name provider

Read the screen. Relax…it really is easy. Have fun with it. Pretty much it happens instantly, all the email, cutting and pasting of the codes and that.

You’re done.

Audio product interview (Mike Stewart’s Audio Recording For Information Publishers–coming soon)

Debating the professional vs. consumer quality audio files, I really wonder.

I like the idea of informal very much, but toying with the idea of actually hearing what’s being said.

Most podcasts, or audio files are not made into words to read, and who has time to listen more than once or twice? Wouldn’t you rather hear it right the first time?

Anyway, it’s not that hard to set up a recording space: just turn off the fan and phone, close the windows and door. That’s pretty good.

A really good microphone that sounds clear on replay and takes care of the “popping” noise of talking. When I get one, I’ll review that one–research first and let you know. And on how to look after it, too.

My review: Only Deano would do something like this. Gotta love him. Help children in India.

Full-on videos (5-6 minutes with the main points), Personality Marketers and Social Marketers, those with a little character and personality in what they do will be big in 2010.

He’s right about transparency, I think. I mean super-professional “can’t touch me-I’m-a-corporation-now-so-security-will-keep-you-out” are boring me half to death. What about you?

You might just as well sign up for Ustream while you’re there.

Doctor Howard Moscowitz…

That is, Malcolm Gladwell on: What we can learn from spaghetti sauce.

Howard’s gift to the American people. I’ve always said “No one talks about what’s important”.

Malcolm: we cannot always explain what we want deep inside.

You marketers: help us to know what we want!

Your voice is your fortune. High, low…fast, slow…accented or not…male, female: your voice is unique. People’s fascination for individual voices runs deep, hits emotional chords and has the power to inform. Why not use your own voice for online business success?

You may be interested to know that my career in using my own voice started in long-distance switchboard operating and the ability to brand to that voice started back then. Businessmen had account cards that they would use by calling the operator to place business calls. It was then, I was pleasantly surprised to find, that the regulars would instantly know me by the second call placed, even if a week or more later. Such is the unique signature of the voice.

If all voices were the same the world would be plain and flat, so yours is needed to enrich the landscape!

So when I discovered Generator Software, I had to get it. You build audio teaching content clicking buttons to splice it together AND get your own voice in there in certain sections. It’s cool.

This fit perfectly with my interest in autodialers to reach a personal or a self-generated list. For those of you who haven’t yet learned the art of “taking” back your telephone, what I’m about to say may not appeal. Keeping in touch by telephone is a viable option for the list you have built yourself, used in conjunction with other tools, just to mix it up a bit.

Fortunately, you can be on distribution lists that you opt in for (my child’s school, the library, updates from Jerusalem). In fact, I was thinking to do it for my family because it’s better than email…and we live in different time zones. In business you can use super simple software to get your message out without downloading, or upkeep of the expensive equipment click here.

Besides an autodialer, there is online educational audio content. For some, whose background is in education, you will know about learning styles and the fact that students must be exposed to content 7 times before it really goes in. Multiple kinds of information immersion is necessary:

1. audio
2. visual
3. text
4. tactile

…and in combination.

Familiar = relaxed

Humour = relaxed

And a “relaxed” state leads to easy retention. Most people need review, and somehow it’s all so fresh and refreshing to see the tools necessary to online success in repeat sequences. So if you’re looking to add educational marketing material to what you already have see Monthly Products  to create your own. The quality is quite high because of the recommendation to use high end microphone plugged into your computer.

In particular you may find the recommendation for Internet Marketing Explained useful for training purposes click here.

Start with self, add spokes

This is me, as a hub with no spokes…so in the coming weeks lets see what I can do to get connections. Anyway, if you play around with it, it’s freaky and “alive” as you click on each new ball of information. It shows trust and authority. Ciaran Doyle says he uses it to get ideas. Try with any words you’re interested in. Fun!

Make an ordinary search on Google. Look for the words on the page just under the colourful word Google, click “show options”, the left column slides out with a list, about two thirds of the way down, click “Wonder Wheel”.

Lots of Connections!!

this is good, see the legs?

Copywriters are people, too!

Reading Selling Simple Info Online by Bob Bly who says:

“We copywriters are taught to write conversational copy.  Many marketers erroneously think that conversational copy means write like you talk. But what it really means is write like your prospects talk.”

And…

“Our chief engineer insisted that in our copy we replace “dumped” with “gravimetrically conveyed” (now that’s funny)

Let’s hope we don’t start using these terms to refer to what happens when you’re tired of your girlfriend!

Sales copy should be like having coffee: use your reader’s language, using empathy word “our”. It’s an art. Unless “pens” are “writing instruments” and sell starting at $100.

The goal is to buy, whether writing purists agree or not. And write so as not to be misunderstood…like “free*gift” rather than “gift” which surprisingly can beg a question! (Is it really…?)

Bob talks about if there’s a cut-off age to not bother starting fresh, and the short answer is a resounding “No”! (my friend Sandy is 66 and she is the awesomeness person I know and she’s starting over)

Badges earn trust. He also says capture names and emails with a giveaway. And after a long diatribe on autoresponders he says Tuesday is good, and nobody has the answer on handling your names list. That’s because you have your own kind of audience. (people are fickle)

He says use a professional videographer to tape testimonials. (let them eat cake!)

Use bullets in your giveaway page for a downloadable white paper. (People love it)

Make “I want more” headlines. Dead content doesn’t have stories (off with their head!)

Emotion people!…or flog your freething in your headline. Give the solution to your readers problem as only one (click) action. Make it current (don’t be so lazy!)

Money back guarantee…and if product is an ebook it must be 10x better than a book for the price. If generating leads, then say “no strings”. (has the whole world been over-petted?)

Dedicate part of your time to building your elist. Buying a database?…let’s just say CAN/SPAM is there for your own good.

Actually Bob goes on and on about marketing costs. And he claims you’re leaving money on the table by not harassing people with a pop-up when they try to leave without opting in! (gosh, no means no!)

You can make an enewsletter because your Mom told you not to talk to strangers (candy-gram). Btw there’s an insatiable hunger for Hobbies, Business Opportunities and Money Making / Investing. (it’s a bottomless pit)

Make free content your best stuff. And he  says offer something not too expensive right away. 3% will buy, the rest may never buy (can you say “wheel kicker?”)

The Pereto Principle strikes again with the 80/20 ratio on content vs sales pitch. (personally I lean to 90/10)

And finally opt-out rates: I don’t even want to go there :( (because it makes writers sad)

• My review: 52 pages of “What to” not “How to”
• My comment: Doesn’t anybody love writers, or are we just devalued all over the place?…even the Lord knows about this.
• My recommendation: Take click-by-click training: http://cathyfletcher.renegadeprofessional.com, and get yourself accountable to someone!

Goofing around putting in a Favicon which you can make at http://www.favicon.cc/ and looking at the  help at WordPress, found how to upload it to my public html folder. Little bit clumsy, always late at night when doing things. Tried it a few times over some days. Used FileZilla…know did it right!

Then realized how to refresh my browser, like this: tools, options, network–click “clear now” button.

And there’s my bad favicon :) It may be bad, but it’s mine.

btw the favicon is the little thingy left of the “http://”. See? Mine’s a C. Now you make one.

And now for something completely different….

You should read this if you want to learn how you can avoid paying for privacy for your domain names, and lose your refunds, like I did: don’t add the privacy setting because if you buy your domain names at GoDaddy, then transfer hosting over to BlueHost it won’t happen unless you take off the privacy setting.

Now install WordPress at your BlueHost account, that’s good.

The reason being that putting all your eggs in one basket is a bad idea. And if anything goes wrong then you’re better off that 3 sides want you. So to recap:

1. domain names–GoDaddy
2. hosting–BlueHost
   
3. blog–WordPress

WordPress because google loves WordPress. Don’t go crazy with widgets! Now look at the tutorials for WordPress.

You want to look at the tutorial on BlueHost for ftp to set that up. btw the tutorials are slow and quiet, easy. I bought the 2-year package with unlimited hosting, because bots can see that it’s for 2 years and like it better than one year.

Remember you need iContact for your autoresponder. That’s $10 per month. Get a template to make your landing page using KompoZer, and put the code from iContact. Make a little video to:

• tell who you are
• tell what you have
• tell benefits
• tell to fill name and email in opt-in box

Upload then get the “embed” code from YouTube, look at the html of the landing page (a tab in KompoZer) then replace the code.

Do you love bunnies?

Oh, internet, don’t kill my blog…will access my WordPress dashboard tomorrow.

accellerating crazily

Gosh, got to ask myself if I can keep up with this focus group, which is extremely fun.

One of us started crying (it wasn’t me) because well, things are coming up, and it was so cool how our fearless leader dealt with it. I can’t imagine myself being so amazing. Kind of neat how growing (pains) helps us shift around.

Take my SitSmart sessions, for instance…I’ve been giving feedback to my trainer and saying, just observing how I kind of split in half and had an argument with myself about the new “physical upgrade” in my neural patterns and then just noticed the third part which is kind of overseeing everything (basic psychology, I guess) and then I integrated and was back into one piece again. She said it was normal and to be expected, and she that was the awareness part of me!

I’m kind of like the “encourager” um, electrical I-don’t-know-what of the group…getting a mini fan club. Like to share what I find, don’t care if it’s stolen from me (Mark Joyner of Mind Control Marketing, says everybody’s our competitor…but, oh well–he’s scary).

On the call last night, suddenly we realized that we couldn’t do without each other in this, and people are finding their place, finding their voice…trusting, supporting.

So, it comes out we’re all going through spurts of creativity, then nothing…like a rest and letdown, aftermath of overwhelm. Then, BOOM, we’re back at it firing on all cylinders, and it’s amazing. All these communications flying back and forth and we’re all over the world in different time zones!

Anyways, in our new group, stuff is coming up, you know like traumas of school where there was punishment, or lagging behind, dropping out–stuff, the internalized “bad teacher”, and one of us voiced…well maybe I’m not supposed to write this–generally the group dynamics are gelling, like “leave no man behind” and that.

And we are very diverse group, I’m telling ya. We’ve got the “everybody’s amazing ‘cept for me” thing going on, but it’s quickly out in the open and the teacher is going real slow and really hearing us and we’re getting this whole amazing dynamics emerging making us come out, though we’re all “Renegade Marketers” we’re acting as this mini team. It’s cool. We’re on track, so that’s good…finding our voice.

So tonight is the 12th and last session of Renegade Breakthrough Mentoring Program…and our much larger group is all excited and anticipating what’s going to happen now…and no doubt, there will be a review of the last several months and vision for the future

And I’ve been quite enjoying some funny podcasts starting with the first, which is very long but you can listen while surfing, though certainly I was glued to and almost killed myself laughing. Actually, the laughing seemed to help me process the information…and the series is very good.

Found the link when I was poking around BetterNetworker: the first one is called The World’s Most Unprofessional Podcast! They have their other sites, but this is new…Dean Hunt interviews various people, but he and Ciaran Doyle have amazing chemistry, so enjoy. Reminds me a bit of my older brothers, and listening to Fire Sign Theatre which was audio, British humour, back in the day.
http://www.blisteringsuccess.com/

Oh, my little brother offered me project work stuffing a bunch of envelopes for his business Car Heaven…and I responded to his voicemail with my voicemail accepting, but he’ll be zooming around the world a bit this week. My friend and I had good laugh at the corner drinking coffee and she’s going to help me. Knows the tricks and in-and-outs of envelope stuffing, so I’m pretty sure we can do it, I think. That’s how bad things are…

Used MindMeister, set up BlueHost, signed up for iContact.