Is internet marketing really about the numbers or is it about people? In reality it is about both. Many internet marketers though get so caught up in the numbers that they forget the people aspect. If you come right down to it though, internet marketing is about making sales. If there are no people, there are no sales! Those numbers ARE people, and it pays to keep that in mind.
Once we get going in internet marketing those numbers really start to matter. Our first big number we come across of course is number of sales, and that number one always feels so sweet (send out a kind thought to the person who was number one).
From then on our world seems full of numbers: numbers of keywords, numbers of ad campaigns, ctr percentages, number of landing pages, number of visitors, number of e-mails sent, and on and on it goes, not forgetting of course everyone's favorite - dollars in profit. Yes, we spend a good deal of our internet marketing time in number tracking.
What people really mean by a numbers game is that the more traffic you get to your site or product the more sales you are going to make. Very simple, very straightforward, and that is what we build our internet marketing business around, whatever the methods we use to drive that traffic. When it comes to getting traffic though, that is where we need to start thinking about people.
Good sales copy writers know people; they know how to push their buttons. Sales copy stems in turn from years of research in psychology, (usually not personal research from the writers though), to find out just what people do respond to. Are we conning these people?
That depends how you want to look at it, and some would say yes, we are deliberately, if only temporarily, brain-washing them, but then that is what sales and advertising are all about. For those who have trouble with this simple fact it is probably important to feel you are at least selling a product that you believe really does have a benefit for the buyer - let your conscience be your guide.
Understanding people though becomes particularly important when using e-mails and social marketing. Here you are dealing more directly with individuals and I suggest, (without preaching), that for your own credibility you treat them as such.
It just comes down to the old golden rule of "Treat others as you would like to be treated".(Pin that up where you can see it - next to your internet marketing "My goal" post is a good place).
If you go charging into people's threads on forums, groups and blogs waving your little sales banner around you are not going to win any popularity polls - have a little respect and appreciate what their forum, group or blog is really for, believe it or not it's not for you to make a sale.
I sincerely believe that if you remember the people first, and treat them well, the numbers you want so much will follow and your internet marketing business will thrive.
12/06/2009
Be Thankful, And Look Good Doing It
The Christmas season is well under way. Any store you enter is full of the magic of potential Christmas expenditure, with all the tinkly music and garish color schemes that accompany the birth of the Baby Jesus.
Now, when I was a kid, there were several holidays that came in between the Fourth of July and Christmas. Thanks to the power of the All American Dollar and the advent of neighborly and not-so-neighborly contests to determine the best Martha Stewart wannabe in the neighborhood, one can also buy a flotsam of plastic corpses, skeletons, ghosts, and headstones with which to spookily adorn one's yard for the invasion of Trick or Treaters on October 31.
However, for one of the nation's most beloved holidays, department stores dedicate almost no floor space. Really, what would be the point? How many orange and brown crepe paper turkeys and straw cornucopias can one really buy from one year to the next? After all, turkey day décor really only works for one day, since you know you have to tear it all down on Leftover Friday and start unraveling 47 miles of Christmas lights that may or may nor work - or more likely will work just fine until you hang it on the tree.
It's important to remember, though, that Thanksgiving is a truly important holiday. It is indicative of the wealth of riches we all have in this country. It is reminiscent of the first gourmet club on American soil. Moreover, Thanksgiving is a symbol of our gratitude - or alleged gratitude - for what we've been given in this country: opportunity, freedom, large supermarkets with more food on the pet aisle than many towns in third world countries have between every single last resident.
Thanksgiving has been held on our soil since Sept. 8, 1565, when Spaniards landed at what is now San Augustine, Florida, and held a Mass to thank God for getting them safely to the New World. Similar random celebrations were held until the first traditionally recognized Thanksgivings, which were held at Virginia Colony in 1619 and at Plymouth Colony in 1621. The latter is the much-acclaimed Thanksgiving of American legend, with the Indian Squanto helping to plan the harvest feast and its bi-lingual guest list.
During the Revolutionary War, various Thanksgiving celebrations were held following victory after battle, and in 1789, President George Washington declared the first official November Thanksgiving holiday. Several presidents called for Thanksgivings at various times up until the Civil War, and the holiday was commemorated mostly in New England.
It was President Abraham Lincoln, however, who created the national Thanksgiving holiday we know today. The event became the most important holiday for the Victorian hostess, because it gave her the opportunity to pull out all the stops and show off her recipes and entertaining skills to her neighbors. In fact, the meal we all know today - turkey, which was readily available to most Americans, cranberry sauce, potatoes, fall vegetables, and pies made from fall fruits such as apples and pumpkins - is a testament to the ingenuity of the American cook.
College and professional football became a staple of the long holiday weekend as early as the 1920s, because people could take time off to travel to faraway games. Hence, you'll see a lot of college rivalry games held over the turkey weekend. When television began making inroads in American living rooms in the 1950s, professional football was a natural - it gave the men something to do while the women tied on their aprons and pounded the heck out of a bag of taters and debated whether in-the-bird stuffing was teeming bacteria or just plain yummy.
I don't know when Thanksgiving became the slobfest that it is today. To me, when someone goes to the effort to make mountains of food and set out the good china, it's just downright rude to show up in your college sweatshirt and your stretchiest pants. Thanksgiving is about giving thanks for our gifts - our material ones and our spiritual ones. Why not make it an occasion?
Surprise your loved ones by showing up in a suit - or for Pete's sake, at least a jacket and tie. Make the tie festive with seasonal colors. By this, by the way, I do not mean a tie covered with little turkeys or a big one or a blown-up photo of George W. pardoning this year's White House bird. Pick something autumnal and rich, and you can work it into your Christmas party wardrobe for this year.
Add some interest to your cuffs - and take the pressure off your table manners - by wearing a pair of beautifully crafted cufflinks. For Thanksgiving, you could choose pumpkin cufflinks or a pair of pewter cuff links emblazoned with grapes - a perfect nod to the harvest traditions of American Thanksgiving. You could go the other way and pay homage to the sport weekend with a pair of sterling silver footballs or a pair of sports team cuff links.
Any way you go - remember to kiss the cook.
Lassco Wizer CR50P Cornerounder Review
Positioned as a heavy-use, floor-standing corner cutter, the Lassco Wizer CR50P is geared toward commercial printers and other industrial users. In the following article, we investigate the Lassco Wizer CR50P and give you a list of what we consider to be the machine's strengths and weaknesses.
Strengths:
1. By anyone's estimation, considering the fact that the CR50P can accept any size of corner rounding unit, this machine would have to be considered one of the more versatile corner rounders out there. In our testing, we were able to add radii as small as an eighth of an inch or as large as an inch and a half. All the user needs to do is to insert the correct rounding die, and you are ready to go. The process of changing dies couldn't be more simple. Just loosen the thumbscrews, pop out the old die, and pop the new one in.
2. We really like that the CR50P includes a mechanism that will hold the stack of sheets in place while they are being cut. This really helps to ensure a uniform and accurate cut. It also helps that the CR50P comes with a foot pedal with which you can engage the cutter, meaning that you can use both hands to hold the stack while it is being cut.
3. We thought the CR50P's hardwood top was a nice touch, as it made the handling of large format stacks and documents a lot easier. This solid and well-built top also made lining up the stack during cutting a simple process.
4. As we stated above, the CR50P is pretty darn versatile. It is also easy to use and fast - much faster than the manual CR50. To find a rounder that is any faster than the CR50P, you'd have to step up to the pneumatic CR50PX or to the Akiles Diamond 5 electric corner cutter.
Weaknesses:
1. We ran into a small problem when rounding the corners on larger stacks of documents, and that was that the table seemed to bow or flex just a little bit. Unfortunately, this meant that the documents shifted slightly and the stack ended up being rounded unevenly. The individual pages looked fine, but when put in a stack, it was obvious that the stack was not uniform. We found two fixes to this: either process smaller stacks, or do larger stacks twice: doing one side once, then flipping the stack over to do the other side. The first method is probably the best and easiest, however.
2. The CR50P's specialized system to hold stacks in place while cutting works pretty well, but unfortunately it can leave unwanted marks on the top pages of the stack. This is easily remedies by placing either a piece of heavy stock or chipboard on top of the stack when cutting, thus protecting the document.
3. There is a special chute that is designed to guide the paper chips down to a wastebasket or other receptacle the user places under the machine. This works well enough, but you will need to be aware that the chips sometimes back up and will need to be cleaned out for the dies to work properly. Doing so is a pretty easy process, but if you forget it can affect the performance of your machine.
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