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1: Community Care Facilities - Average Pretax Margin: -7.2%

2: “Other Support” Services - Average Pretax Margin: -2.6%

3: Beverage Manufacturing - Average Pretax Margin: -2.2%

4: Real Estate Related Services - Average Pretax Profit: -2.1%

5: Bakeries And Tortilla Manufacturing - Average Pretax Profit: -0.9%

6: Amusement and Recreation Services - Average Pretax Profit: -0.9 %

7: Motor Vehicle Parts Manufacturing - Average Pretax Profit: -0.7 %

8: Specialty Retailers - Average Pretax Profit: -0.5%

9: Beer, Wine And Liquor Retailers - Average Pretax Profit: -0.18%

10: Travelers’ Accommodations - Average Pretax Profit: 0.26%

* Forbes 

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If it’s not money or brilliant programming (see below) what will characterize the success of tomorrow’s Net?

1. Relentless execution. This is far and away the winner. Persistence and focus and consistency. We saw how this worked for Amazon and we saw how getting distracted hurt AOL and others. It’s far more important today, because markets at rest tend to stay at rest. Changing the market is hard.

2. Resistance to compromise. Because you can do so much, so fast using tools, and because it’s easy for non-experts to chime in, the temptation is to go for the middle, to compromise, to be all things. It’s the  Purple Cow thing again…

3. What you don’t do. This is a little bit like #2. Go take a look at an Amazon page. Now you can do a web search, search inside the book, order it new, order it used, on and on and on. The temptation is to do everything you can do (it might work for Amazon, but it’s not going to work for you!) The very best new Net companies understand in their heart and soul what they WON’T do.

4. Desire to be three steps ahead. One step is easy. One step isn’t enough. If you’re only one step ahead, you’ll get creamed before you launch. Two steps is tempting. Two steps means that everyone understands what you’re up to when you pitch them. Two steps means that you can get funded in no time. Two steps is a problem. It’s a problem because the smart guys are three steps ahead. They’re the groundbreakers and the pathfinders. They’re the ones inventing the next generation. It’s harder to sell, harder to build and harder to get your mother-in-law to understand, but that’s what’s worth building.

5. Doing something worth doing. Hey, nobody is going to switch to your service because you worked hard on it. Being a little better is worthless.

6. Connecting people to people. Over and over again, that’s what lasts online. Folks thought it was about technology and it’s not.

7. Monetizing from the first moment. Google without Adwords is worthless. So Adwords are built in to the experience. Not, “hey, we have to do this because otherwise we’ll go out of business” but “this actually makes the service better.” Given how cheap most online services are to build and run, you can’t charge money if the only reason you’re charging is to make a profit. Charging adds friction and selectivity. If those two elements are a drag on your service, you will fail. Hotmail’s founders missed this point. Banner ads made hotmail worse, not better, and because they didn’t build useful ads into the service from the start, they never could.

8. Not depending on a big, hairy partner. Sure it would be great if you could be on Yahoo’s home page every day, or built into blogger or featured on Fox every night. But it would be great if you won the lottery, too. That’s a wish, not a plan.

9. Ignoring the pundits. Including me. If I’m so smart, why don’t I go build your business?

10. Keeping promises. Even though the Net is here and it’s real, that doesn’t mean that the laws of business have been suspended forever. And those two words capture the best of what we’ve learned for four hundred years. Do what you say you’re going to do and the rest is a lot easier.

Source: Seth Godin

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The One Minute Manager (HarperCollins, 1981) by Kenneth H. Blanchard and Spencer Johnson
Why it mattered:The One-Minute Manager was the first mega-best-selling business book and still is popular today. Myriad businesses have issued copies to all managers, and the concept has spawned an array of audio versions, videotapes, seminars and other tools applying the one-minute approach to all kinds of activities.

This slim, 111-page instruction manual is presented in the form of a parable. The narrative follows a puzzled young manager who learns from the wise old One-Minute Manager how to handle the people under his supervision. The brief, easy-reading fable format has been mimicked by countless titles since, but none of the imitators has offered such an easily understood and broadly applicable set of management principles.

Why it still matters: One-Minute Management relies on three foundations: goal setting, praise and reprimands. Each interaction aimed at these objectives should be clear and, importantly, take just 60 seconds to impart. This simple, straightforward approach worked then, and people haven’t changed all that much, so it still works now.

What to ignore: Blanchard and Johnson recommend physically touching employees when praising them. They do warn you should only touch employees you know well, but this advice still seems riskier today than in 1981. It’s best to respect everyone’s space and keep your hands to yourself.

* Enterpreneur.com

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Monetizing your Blog

The best way to avoid it is to not monetize your blog. A new site with monetization all over it screams “spam”. If a site is not monetized it’s likely legit - why else would someone start a blog and not monetize it unless they truly just wanted to impart their knowledge to the masses. Google loves fresh unique content and has no reason to sandbox a site that isn’t monetized. The exception to this is starting a blog aimed at the taboo niches like “law”, “online drugs”, “loans”, “adult” and the rest of the spammers favorite targets. With or without monetization these type of blogs are sandboxed.

How long do you have to wait before you can monetize the site?

This answer sucks but “It depends”. I have found that waiting until you develop keyword authority is the best route. The faster you develop it the faster you can monetize and this depends on how many keyword anchored backlinks you can produce over a reasonable amount of time - say a month or two - and how much original content you can produce over the same period. I didn’t say how fast you could produce the backlinks as this is a mistake. You have to appear natural and getting 100 links the first week to a new blog is not natural and this will get you sent to the sandbox as quickly as monetizing your blog will. Take your time and build up your backlinks slowly but efficiently - get proper anchor text for your main keywords - not just one keyword but several different variations of it. Again this is how a natural site would grow. If every backlink uses the same term - sandbox. Be smart.

How do you know when you have enough keyword authority?

You know when you start writing new posts optimized for your keywords and they are immediately indexed and you see a movement up the serps from one post to the next. I am not talking about PR - I mean keyword authority. You can have a PR0 and rank well on the serp’s if all your backlinks tell Google that you are an authority for your keywords.

To understand this use this blog as an example. In the recent PR update I lost a point - I went from a PR5 blog to a PR4 and yet most of you know I just climbed onto page 1 of the serp’s for “Make Money Online”. I lost PR but gained serp rankings - this is because of my keyword authority.

Once you see that you have authority then you can introduce monetization on your site and usually this will keep you out of the sandbox - not always but most of the time.

More ideas an tips on: Makemoneyforbeginners

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Do you ever feel there’s a greater being inside of you just bursting to get out?  You can feel its presence sometimes, can’t you? Here is a part of an article, written by Steve Pavlina. He wrote an article on motivation awhile ago criticizing this technique of using physiology and locking in emotions as being a poor substitute for actually taking responsibility for your emotional state. Here is part one - Emotional motivation.

Emotional motivation

Tony Robbins says the key to motivation is state management.  This means conditioning yourself to feel a certain way via techniques like anchoring (connecting an emotion to a physical trigger).  When Tony pounds his chest while speaking, he’s firing off anchors he previously conditioned.  The downside is that you need to keep firing off these anchors as well as periodically reconditioning them to keep your motivation up.  That means lots and lots of chest pounding.

As another motivational method, Tony suggests writing down the pleasure you associate to a task as well as the pain of not doing it.  Again the idea here is to stir up your emotions, so you’ll be motivated to take action.  This type of motivation is usually short-lived, even when the emotions involved are very intense.

I studied and practiced these kinds of emotional motivation techniques extensively during my 20s.  In the long run, I didn’t find them particularly effective.  My intellect saw right through all the chest pounding.  The logical part of my mind was ultimately dissatisfied with attempts to induce motivation through emotional manipulation.

Have you ever seen one of those rah-rah motivational speakers?  If the speaker is good, s/he will have an emotional effect on you and get you to feel motivated.  But within a day or two, that emotional boost fades away, and you’re back to normal.  You can listen to hundreds of motivational speakers and experience an emotional yo-yo effect, but it doesn’t last.  I think this is especially common with technically minded people.  We’re accustomed to thinking with our heads.  We’re still emotional creatures on some level, but our emotional B.S. detectors periodically scrub our minds free of anything that doesn’t satisfy our logic.

Source: Steve Pavlina 

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• Give up TV. Tape all your favorite shows and save them until the end of the trial. My whole family did this once, and it was very enlightening.
• Give up online forums, especially if you feel you’re becoming forum addicted. This will help break the addiction and give you a clearer sense of how participation actually benefits you (if at all). You can always catch up at the end of 30 days.
• Shower/bathe/shave every day. I know YOU don’t need this one, so please pass it along to someone who does.
• Meet someone new every day. Start up a conversation with a stranger.
• Go out every evening. Go somewhere different each time, and do something fun — this will be a memorable month.
• Spend 30 minutes cleaning up and organizing your home or office every day. That’s 15 hours total
• Ask someone new out on a date every day. Unless your success rate is below 3%, you’ll get at least one new date, maybe even meet your future spouse.

Try them and you will see the progress - you won`t even believe the results!!! You`ll be astonished!

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Growing companies trying to figure out how to make a splash in the marketplace sometimes pay consultants thousands of dollars for advice on the subject. And they get suggestions that will cost them even more.But if you’re clever and ambitious, there are plenty of ways to get noticed without spending a bundle. If you haven’t tried these seven “guerrilla marketing” ideas, you’re not really trying:

1. Press Releases. Write and distribute press releases that are newsworthy, and send them to newspapers, magazines, and television and radio stations. If only one media outlet airs the story, you’ll have free access to thousands of people. Design the headline to grab readers’ attention in as few words as possible. Use active verbs. Get to the point quickly, with a lead sentence that will draw the reader into a convincing piece.
2. Trade Shows. Renting space at a trade show can be expensive, but the best shows are a great way to build your business. Have plenty of promotional materials ready to hand out to interested people. When the show’s over, follow up. Call your leads in order of importance, but get in touch with all of them within seven days. Above all, keep every promise made at the booth.
3. The Internet. Establishing a home page for your business is relatively inexpensive and can reach many people. Use newsgroups that focus on areas similar to your line of business to draw attention to the site. Always include a phone number or email address so that interested visitors can contact you. If you are a retailer, consider putting photographs of your products online, even if you’re not ready to let people to order your wares over the Internet.

Advertising on Google and other search engines can be an easy and surprisingly inexpensive way to drive a lot of potential buyers to your ecommerce Web site. Read the AllBusiness.com Buyer’s Guide The Scoop on Search Engine Marketing to learn how it works and follow a step-by-step guide to getting started.

4. Direct Mail. Direct mail results depend largely upon how much you’re willing to spend on finding your target market and delivering quality materials to them. The per-customer cost is much higher than you’ll pay for print ads, but if you create a finely tuned list of recipients, you will reach more highly qualified prospects. Few small firms are qualified to do their own direct mailings, so find a reliable specialist to do the work for you. Interview at least three or four mailing list vendors before you commit your money to a direct mail campaign.
5. Yellow Pages. Most ads get turned into fishwrap within days, but consumers hang onto the yellow pages all year. Remember to cross-reference your listing. If you do yard work, for instance, list your business under landscaping, maintenance, and home improvements. You want your ad to stand out, so consider springing for a larger ad or perhaps even hiring someone to design it.
6. Public Service. This is a great chance to do well by doing good. Sponsor the Special Olympics or participate in the annual Rotary Club Christmas Tree sale in your area. Donate your product to local charities or speak to students at area schools about your business. All of these are terrific ways to position your company in a positive light in your community.
7. Games and Premiums. Periodic prize drawings can help create interest in a retail store or other business. Promotional materials like T-shirts, coffee mugs, or pens emblazoned with your logo also help spread the word.

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“Practical eCommerce recently asked 50 industry insiders to share a great, innovative idea that could potentially help an ecommerce firm. Here’s what ten of them had to say.”

* Get a toll-free number and use it in your Google AdWords. It’s one of the last search engines to let you show your contact information in the ad — you’ll get calls from people just looking to order over the phone because they are busy or they don’t trust the web. (Chris Finken)

* Start creating short videos on a regular basis that solve a problem for your target audience. Keep the videos at two minutes or so, include B-roll, upload to multiple sites via TubeMogul.com, and archive uncompressed, high quality versions of the videos for future use. Create a Magnify.net channel, too. (Shawn Collins)

* Websites, emails and forums are great for getting out your message, but talking with your customers about their needs and how you can provide solutions or products is the best way to build a long-term relationship and customer satisfaction. Remember your customers are not just another row in your database. (Tom Langel)

* Before spending your limited online marketing and web development dollars on rich media merchandising, get to know your customers. Uncover their critical decision-making needs, and align your online brand and user experience strategies with them for increased purchase conversion. (Kevin Lane)

- for six more ideas - go to Practical eCommerce - click

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• Make more money. Let’s face it, business is more enjoyable if you’re making money.
• Increase your Web presence. If you don’t have a Web site, get one.
• Be a better boss. Being a good boss brings you many benefits. Your employees are more productive, the workplace is more enjoyable, and you get the very real satisfaction of knowing that you’ve created good jobs for your community.
• Lower your debt. This can be challenging, especially for a growing business.
• Secure your data. We’ve learned how vulnerable businesses can be after Hurricane Katrina, the bombing of the World Trade Center, and floods, fires and earthquakes.
• Write up contracts, agreements and a will.
• Attend or exhibit at a trade show.
• Do something for the environment. Reduce energy consumption, including as part of your production and operation.

Good Luck

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1. Selling is hard. Harder than you may ever realize. So, if I seem stressed, cut me some slack.
2. Selling is personal. When I make a promise, I have to keep it. If you force me to break that promise (by changing processes, features or a rollout schedule) I will never forgive you.
3. Selling is interpersonal. I am not moving bits, I’m trying to change people’s minds, one person at a time. So, no, I can’t tell you when the sale will close. No one knows, especially the prospect.
4. I love selling. I particularly love selling great stuff, well marketed. Don’t let me down. Don’t ask me to sell lousy stuff.
5. I’m extremely focused on the reward half of the equation. Salespeople love to keep score, and that’s how I keep score. So don’t change the rules in the middle, please.
6. I have no earthly idea what really works. I don’t know if it’s lunch or that powerpoint or the Christmas card I sent last year. But you know what? You have no clue what works either. I’ll keep experimenting if you will.
7. There is no comparison, NONE, between an inbound call (one that you created with marketing) and a cold call (one that you instructed me to create with a phone book.) Your job is to make it so I never need to make a cold call.
8. Usually, customers lie when they turn me down. They make up reasons. But every once in a while, I actually learn something in the field. Ask!
9. I know you’d like to get rid of me and just take orders on the web. But that’s always going to be the low-hanging fruit. The game-changing sales, at least for now, come from real people interacting with real people.
10. (a bonus, switching points of view for a moment): I know that selling is hard and unpredictable. But if you’re going to be in sales, you’ve got to be prepared to measure and predict and plan. You need to give me sales reports and call lists and summaries. It does neither of us any good to keep your day a secret. If you don’t plan and organize, I can’t do my job of marketing.
11. (and bonus number two): The two worst pieces of feedback you can give me (because neither is really actionable or especially effective): a. lower the price and b. make our product just like our competitors.

Tags: Marketing, Permission Marketing, Seth Godin // 1 Comment »