Here’s a couple of lessons I learned last night from the class I was suppose to teach on blogging:

1) Always confirm that you will be teaching at least a week in advance. Life has been rather crazy these last few weeks, and I didn’t even think of calling up the place to confirm that Janet and I would be attending.

Internet Marketing, Strategy and Services

internet_marketing_focus.jpg Helping You Discover What Really Works

Are you frustrated and looking for the right strategy or services to increase your website’s exposure? There seems to be a lot of hype when it comes to Internet Marketing. So much hype, that often times it is hard to know what really works and what is smoke and mirrors.

Hey, for all of those who are interested I am teaching a blogging class tonight with my partner in business and crime, Janet Meiners. Even if you are an old blog dog Janet and I are lauching something quite new and it is going to be a lot of fun. Below are the details. Hopefully I will see you there.

Wednesday, March 14, 2007
7pm-8pm
LDS Employment Center next to Deseret Industries
437 South 500 East
American Fork, Utah

An interesting fight is about to take place in our own web backyard. Wikipedia’s founder, Jimmy Wales, announced at a news conference in Tokyo that Wikia—the commercial arm of the popular Wikipedia—is going to aggressively pursue the search engine market.

What makes this fight even more interesting is that Wikia has received a “very large investment” from the popular bookselling company Amazon.com, according to Reuters. This unique partnership should make the powerhouse search engines, like Google and Yahoo, a bit concerned.

In Wales news conference he particularly pointed out that Yahoo’s and Google’s techniques “may be a little antiquated now.” His statement was to show how a community collaborated effort is going to revolutionize the Internet as we know it.

Okay, I go back and forth on this style of marketing. Last night I found a website called www.youtvpc.com. This was a free site that had just about every movie and tv series for one to watch. I showed it to some friends and we were all trying to figure out how this was legal if it was in the United States. I was so fascinated by the website that I shared it with a lot of friends and family.

Well, I just got a call from my brother asking what happened to the site I had showed him last night. Now when you go to www.youtvpc.com it’s a paid subscription. I am all about subscription websites, but I have to say I am bugged when they don’t give you a sense of urgency or call to action. It’s one thing to state that this site is free for a limited time, and it’s a whole different enchilada to mimic a free site so to get people addicted and then to switch. That’s too much like being a drug dealer, give your addict a free taste and once he or she is hooked charge them for everything they’ve got.

In my last post I talked about being a blogging evangelist. One person who was an easy convert was my own mother. I have spent the last few days walking her through the basic elements of setting up her blog and blogging. It didn’t take her long to figure it out and run with it. Actually, she has two blogs, one for the fiction book she wrote and one for her business. I still need to setup her business blog, but I have no doubts that it will be good.

We came up with the name MamaWebMarketing.com for her business blog. I am curious from the readers I have here of what you think of this name. Don’t be shy, if you don’t like it I want to hear about it. I actually am a fan of the name, it has character and a story. To convince my mom of this I told her about the company FatBottomLine.com. Here you have a name that plays off of “Fat Bottom” and “Bottom Line.” Now that’s definitely not a name you’re going to forget (nor will you forget their simple but to the point logo)!

However, what I am really excited about is my Mom’s book blog. My mom is bar-none one of the best story tellers you will ever meet. As a kid she would lay down with us at nap time and tell stories about our adventures on the Dream Train. The Dream Train took trips to magical places and my siblings and I would run into adventures that required our ingenuity and courage. I still remember the story about my little sister, Katie, putting on magical shoes that wouldn’t let her stop dancing. My brother, Steve, and I had to save Katie from a fate of eternal dancing. Oh, if all children could have a mother like mine, than life would truly be an experience.

Did a free blogging class tonight with Janet. It was a small group in a woman’s home but it was a lot of fun. It always amazes me how the older generation really tries to learn this new technology. I struggle at times trying to understand the avalanche of information we get through cyber space and I grew up with it! Kudos to those that never give up improving themselves.

A thought which came to me tonight while teaching was why blogging has become so popular and important to the web. Content for the Internet is as important as water for the body, without either of these elements both entities will shrivel up and die. The more content we have the healthier our Internet is. That is why I have become a blogging evangelist. In the short time I’ve been blogging I have gotten my Mom, cousin, missionary friend, roommate, and several friends to either setup blogs or think about doing it (I’m still working on the thinking crowd).

I also recognize the importance of blogging offline. This is done by creating friend networks where we get together to learn from each other or to gain insight into someone’s expertise. This idea was given to me by Rob Merrill, who I met the other day. His idea was much more elaborate (which I won’t blog about), but basically his concept was offline blogging. I don’t think we do this enough. In the old days, before the teli, people would sit on their porches watching the sun set and blogged with their friends and family. They just never called it blogging, they called it enjoying life!

Tonight you are going to be blessed with several posts. I have wanted to blog all day and now the flood gates are opening up. First, I want to write about an amazing gift my good friend Scott has—imagination.

I usually only give Scott a topic and he will come back with some of the most unique and amazing things. Case in point, I told Scott that I needed a slogan for my new consulting company www.IntelligentStar.com. Now, I consider myself very good in this department, it’s what people pay me for. However, within the hour Scott came back with: “Vision Beyond the Horizons.” Such creativity for me takes more than 60 minutes, yet, for Mr. Scott this is a gift that comes quite natural to him.

Another great gift Scott has is coming up with great domain names. In a world where most of us believe that the good Internet URLs no longer exist Scott is able to find not just one good name but many. For some unknown reason I recently received an email from Scott giving me a list of great domain names for cell phones. I think that he was just bored and wanted to let me know that I wasn’t utilizing his talents. At the end of this post are the domain names he came up with, all of which at the time of this writing are available for you to register and own.

I just stumbled across a blog by Dina Giolitto on some basic tips concerning Permission Marketing. However, what I really liked was the comparison between Constant Contact and Kick Start Cart. She offers the pro’s and neg’s for both services, very helpful!

As many of my friends and clients can attest to I am extremely pro Constant Contact. As Dina points out there are some draw backs to this service but I absolutely love the ease-of-use of Constant Contact’s system. It’s so easy that I have my parent’s herbal shop website on Constant Contact and they use it every month to send out to their little email list.

I know that I have blogged a lot about NewsPaperGrl (hey, she got me started, I have to show my thanks somehow), but she has a great post entitled, “Your Internet Marketing Plan,” with a section particularly on Email Marketing. This is a good read and Janet offers some questions that I wish more people would ask themselves before beginning.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21188425-7582,00.html

The above article was written last month. It amazes me how it has taken the Australian market so long to jump on affiliate marketing. It makes me wonder what other English speaking markets that we could capitalize on with our super knowledge of affiliate power!