Colorado River Needs Your Help

Hey guy there is a big deal going on with river access in Colorado.  A rich Texan landowner is trying to shut down a stretch of river that would set a precedent for all rivers in Colorado. If you hadn’t heard, there is another big lawsuit over river access going down on the Taylor River by Gunnison.  This one looks more devastating to boaters than the past access lawsuits and has huge ramifications if this bill on Monday doesn’t pass.  If you ever want to go boating again down a river other than the Arkansas, copy and paste this email to the Colorado House Judiciary Committee (or make your own).  The Committee reviews the bill this Monday February 8th, 2010.  Please email your support of Bill 1188 today.

Copy and past the email addresses below into the TO: section and send it.  Pass this on to your friends. Only two days left to take action.
For more info >>>

http://m.denverpost.com/denverpost/db_21623/contentdetail.htm;jsessionid=F31A9D500518C1BB3BF2EB5160B59EB6?contentguid=TOTq6cGT&detailindex=0&pn=0&ps=4&full=true

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To:

kathleen.curry.house@state.co.us
claire.levy.house@state.co.us
beth.mccann.house@state.co.us
lois.court.house@state.co.us
bob.gardner.house@state.co.us
repkagan@gmail.com steve.king.house@state.co.us joe@joemiklosi.com; rep.nikkel@gmail.com; sal.pace.house@state.co.us; su.ryden.house@state.co.us;mark.waller.house@state.co.us
Subject Line: Colorado River Needs Your Help Today

Body of Email:

Dear Honorable Member of the Colorado House Judiciary Committee:

I am writing to state my support for House Bill 1188 that Rep. Kathleen Curry will be presenting to you on Monday February 8, 2010.  I ask for your support on this critical issue.  A defeat of HB 1188 could have long-lasting, negative effects on the citizens and visitors of our fine state.  A defeat of HB 1188 would begin a snowballing effect that could potentially end rafting and kayaking, commercially and privately, on dozens of creeks and rivers across Colorado.  Allowing such action to take place would compromise a way of life in Colorado and eliminate millions of tax dollars to state and local governments for decades.  Please consider my support for HB 1188 when you make your decision on this important issue and thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

(Your Name Goes Here)

30 Products you won’t see in 2010

It’s always sad to see products or organizations bite the dust.

AOL tells us about 30 products that you won’t see in 2010.

C’est la vie

CRM for NonProfit 501c3 Organizations

I just learned that Salesforce.com will donate up to 10 licenses for their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool to Certified 501c3 NonProfit Organizations.

This is an amazing opportunity for non profit organizations. Think about how investors will open their wallets to organizations that can show them solid numbers and pipeline progression. Not to mention the project management piece. Investors give funding to companies who can prove results. Right? Salesforce.com is a great way to set that in motion.

In addition to Certified 501c3 Non Profit’s, Salesforce.com will also donate their web based product to the following types of organizations:

• Higher Education Institutions
• K-12 Schools
• Fiscally Sponsored Organizations
• Religious Organizations
• B Corporations
• Canadian Charities
• 501c3 Organizations

Here’s the application for the SalesForce.com Foundation. Please let me know if you earn the donation!

Good luck!

Surfing the Waves of Entrepreneurship

As an aspiring entrepreneur I’m sure you are familiar with the frustrations associated to making your mark on the NICHE you choose to dominate.  It’s tough to start from scratch. It’s even tougher to get it right the very first time.  So many ideas and possible paths… so little direction.

It’s likely you are proficient at some things and terrible at others…

It’s kinda like being in the middle of the ocean… There are endless possibilities of where you can go… Some days the weather is clear and the ocean is calm. Some days the weather is frightening and the waves are overwhelming…. As an entrepreneur you can either embrace what you are given, create a surfboard and ride the waves of mother nature or…  you can choose to give up, get swallowed up by chaos and uncertainty and sink.

Personally… I’d rather go surfing.

The big question is how do entrepreneurs become so successful?  What’s their secret? How do they embrace mother nature? How do they build their surfboard?

I’m not claiming to have the exact answer… but, below are the characteristics I believe can help an entrepreneur become/remain successful:

-Focus

-Commitment

-Organization

-Courage

-Patience

As our President once said:

“Making your mark on the world is hard. If it were easy, everybody would do it. But it’s not. It takes patience, it takes commitment, and it comes with plenty of failure along the way. The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won’t. it’s whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere.” -Barack Obama

When there are waves… go surfing! -Moriya

6 Tips to Staying Focused during an Online Project

As a professional doing business on the internet, it’s so easy to get distracted. (I speak from experience.) Below are 6 tips to staying focused when trying to complete a project that requires a great deal of internet exploration.

1. Logout of all social media platforms.

2. Identify your goals and write them down. Create a master project plan.

3. Focus on 1 task/project at a time.

4. Create a deadline for each project- no matter how small

5. When doing research do not follow Alice down the rabbit hole. Sure, that link may go to an interesting article but does it contribute to the end goal?

6. Remind yourself of your deadlines and ultimate goal often.

Miley Cyrus and the Microsoft SideKick. Come’on NPR!

While listening to NPR- National Public Radio, I learned that Miley Cyrus had quit Twitter and created a rap song about it. Really? Did I really have to hear that on NPR?

How in the world did that make it into a radio broadcast that was mostly about how Microsoft’s phone made by Danger had a server outage which may cause millions of customers to lose all of the information associated to their cell phone such as photos, contacts, videos etc?

Check out this Article from Computer World to learn more about this severe server outage. Oh and… I guess you should watch this Miley Cyrus video too… Obviously somebody thought those topics complimented eachother! Really?

Teach a Process. Create a Video Tutorial!

I recently created my very first video tutorial using a tool called Camtasia. The tutorial walks the viewer through the how to set up an ad code while using an ad tracking tool from Adminder.com.

Unfortunately, I used the Adminder affiliate program in the example which probably makes the tutorial confusing. It needs to be remade using a different example. Regardless, I’m fairly excited and so I posted it on Youtube anyway- the remake will just have to wait. Maybe this will encourage me to go ahead and create version 2.0 of the tutorial.

Anyway… here is my video. Check out Adminder if you ever need to track an online promotion. It’s a super easy tool to use!

Sales and Prospecting

When you’re down in the dumps because customers or prospects just will not buy your product or idea… Remember… it only takes 1 prospect to turn the whole situation around. Just One. So when sales and marketing efforts seem hopeless… just push yourself. One more call… you can do it…

It only takes one…

Project Management is Key to Survival in Business World

“No amount of cool software will replace good sound fundamentals when it comes to creating repeatable processes that can be taken to the masses in an organization and help take it to the next level.”

I completely agree with Brad Egeland in his blog post titled, “Process Trumps Technology“. It’s actually something I’ve personally been dealing with for a while now… staying focused on the end goal and building bomb proof processes. It’s so easy to get swallowed up in the thoughts that in order to do a project better that one must use an awesome software tool. Honestly that’s just not the case. Excel and Word, coupled with a decent file management system… ie… creating folders and grouping project together… is really all you need.

Project Management is not really about word and excel though. It’s more about just creating repeatable processes that can be applied to multiple projects… As the author stated… putting the same face on every project so that the whole organization can work cohesively in solving the problem.

It is my opinion that others who read Brad Egeland’s may find a different meaning and focus to his words. Take what you can when you can… apply it to what you know and then research what you don’t know or understand… eventually you will find the answer you were looking for.

Rant Over- AffiliateGeek Out!

Prospecting Affiliates- The Advertiser’s Role

If you have a product and your main source of revenue comes from affiliate’s promoting your product on their website then how should you go about identifying the best placement for your product on their site? This also goes along with prospecting because essentially you are prospecting affiliate’s to promote your product. You can’t just expect that the affiliate will be willing to spend time to think about where the best place to promote your product is? They’re busy! As an advertiser, the affiliate expects you to approach them with an idea of how and where to promote your product.

Things you might want to look at:

As an advertiser you have to think about the best possible places to promote your product on the affiliate’s website. There are many areas in which a product or service can be promoted on a website. The easiest way for an affiliate to promote your product is through a banner or link on their webpage that links back to your site or landing page. Another very easy way for a publisher to promote your product is through email marketing. Some publishers prefer to promote products via pay-per-click marketing. The latter can be fairly expensive if the affiliate is not experienced in this practice of marekting.

One of the best and most effective means of promoting a product or service is through a customer path… especially if the customer has already made a purchase or completed a desired action such as signing up for a newsletter .

Good touch points for the new advertiser could be :

• Confirmation/Thank you Page
• Member’s Area
• Exit pop
• Co-reg

Creating your project. Things to identify when approaching potential affiliates to promote your product/service.

1. Customer path- what is the exact path that each customer goes through when visiting the affiliate’s page? You should go through this just like a customer. Remember to write down every URL that you visit through your customer experience. Take a screen shot of each page so that it can be evaluated later and so that you can make recommendations to the affiliate. Mozilla Firefox has a free screen capture service AddOn. However, I personally like to use Snagit because it allows me to send to PowerPoint. From that point you can document the exact path and then create machups right from PP.

When evaluating the customer path, be sure to answer these questions: could your product/service benefit or compliment the customer who signed up for the initial product? If yes, then, how?  If you decide that your product or service is a good fit then you need to next identify the “where” piece of the equation. Where would be the best more relevent placement for your product within the affiliate’s website?

How much information is already on the confirmation page? How can you pitch the product or service so that it 1) Fits with the current product or service 2) Offers a benefit to the consumer 3)Teaches the customer something they don’t already know

There are so many ways to promote an affiliate product. It’s overwhelming, but if you get it right then rinse, repeat, rinse repeat. Affiliates do it all the time! It’s time that the advertiser steps with suggestions!

-Rant Over. AffiliateGeek Out!