Why Can’t Microsoft Make “Soft” Packaging?
Why is it that Microsoft wants you to buy its product but does not want you to open the plastic case that is welded around the cardboard box? I believe that such packaging along with cockroaches will survive atomic disasters!
Good luck finding any clue as to an easy way to open this fused bit of skin-tearing packaging. I split my scissors trying to pry open the ends. I ripped a fingernail attempting to wiggle into a miniscule space. I wedged in a letter opener to see if I could leverage any kind of muscle and rip that sucker open. I seriously thought of using a chain saw.
Finally, in a fit of anger akin to the Hulk, I seized one small, dagger-like split in the plastic, held the plastic casing with the other hand and yanked with all my might. I cut my hand extricating the box from the opening I’d created.
And what does this hidebound, 81/2″ x 11″ x 2″ box contain: a CD! I trembled thinking it too would be wrapped in that plastic that yields to neither man nor woman.
Thankfully, the innocuous little CD was without wrapper. Good thing. My scream would have reverberated in the hallowed halls of Bill Gate’s Washington mansion. It’s pain enough to upgrade software without going through the physical machinations of opening a #$%^& box.
Moral of the story: The customer’s experience is everything. Don’t let packaging ruin their day.
(c) 2003 by Eileen McDargh. All rights reserved
Reprint rights granted to all venues so long as the article and by-line are used intact.
About The Author
Eileen McDargh is an author, radio commentator, organizational development consultant, professional speaker and retreat facilitator. Author of four books including Work for a Living & Still be Free to Live and The Resilient Spirit and a frequent contributor to numerous business journals. Visit her web site http://www.eileenmcdargh.com or contact her toll free at 877-477-4718.
Who Are Your Ideal Clients? And What Do They Want?
Professional businesses come in all shapes, sizes, colors, and textures as do their intended clients. However, the best way to get your new business off to a great start is to create a service that supports a clearly defined and reachable client base. And before you decide what your services are, you must decide who your clients are. You can create the world’s best thing-a-ma-bob, but if nobody buys it you have a hobby, not a business.
“Profits both
the result and reward
of doing things right and doing the right things.”
- David McNally
So, now is the time for some research before you open your doors for business. You’re going to write a client profile. (”Eeesh Rose I’m a designer, I don’t want to write this!”) Stay with me because this is easy to do just answer the following questions and you’ll have a profile of your ideal client:
- What kinds of people do you relate best with? Are they calm people? Are they driven people? Are they right-brained people? Are they left-brained people? And what about your relationships with these people works for you? For example, my ideal client doesn’t struggle about paying money for services they receive because they know that the business of business is to make a profit and that goes for my services too. Also, my ideal client is an avid learner who is open to the possibility and magic of life. Who’s your ideal client? Go for the challenge of a list of at least 100 qualities!
- What kinds of people would you really rather *not* have in your life? Be specific here. Look at your past and current relationships for what really did not work for either of you. For example, my ideal client never says “yes, but…” and doesn’t go into an intellectual analysis of every word or phrase, but instead is aware of the bigger issues and patterns. My ideal client doesn’t have to be right all the time. Who’s your ideal client? Go for a list of at least 50 qualities!
- What industry, technology, service, association or corporate department makes your heart sing? Yes - really! Are you passionate about saving the environment, yet performing your services for a petroleum company? How long do you believe that will work for either of you? So, reflect on who you are and identify the industry, technology, service, association, or corporate department that is aligned with your internal compass. For example, my ideal clients are self-employed, or want to become self-employed, and primarily work serving the high-technology or communications and publishing industries. Be careful here, you don’t want a long list.
- What conditions must be present in order to do your best work? For example, my ideal client must open to learning from me as a mentor and coach. And the client must have a compelling reason to change and a willingness to do the work necessary to implement the change. What are the conditions that will allow you to do your best work for those you identified in question 3?
- What services are needed by your ideal clients? By now you have a clear enough picture of your clients that you can begin to do the traditional “market research.” What you want to do here is to begin to match your skills, talents, and desires for creating services with the needs and resources of your ideal clients. Vehicles for obtaining this data might include a client survey, third-party customer surveys, the US Census data, small business administration data, and other traditional information-collection devices. Take your time and be thorough don’t guess! You’re looking for external, third-party confirmation of your ideas but stay open to the idea that what you want to create might not want to be purchased by your identified ideal clients.
- What will your clients pay for your services? You have two primary sources of information for this question your prospective clients and your competitors. Ask your intended clients what they would pay. Then ask your perceived competitors what they are charging. The truth is usually somewhere between the two.
- Can you make a business on the fees you can charge for your intended services? If not, go back to question 3 and pick another industry, technology, service, association or corporate department. Don’t let go of your dream as you adjust your selections!
Copyright 2004, Rose Hill
Rose Hill, Founder and Owner,of Biz Whiz Expert (http://www.SoloBizVille.com) and Team Member of Solo-E.Com (http://www.Solo-E.Com) has been self-employed since 1990. Knowing how to run corporate departments and how to market corporate entities, products, and services did nothing to prepare her for successfully running and marketing a one-person business. That is why Rose created the SoloBizVille and SoloBizU community to specifically to help solo entrepreneurs jumpstart their business success without all the trial-and-error learning.
Find more articles like this at http://www.Solo-E.com, the lifestyle-inspired online learning and connection community. Visit now to receive a free copy of our special report, The Four Secrets of Solo Entrepreneur Success, plus a complimentary 30-day membership.
8 Reasons To Be An Affiliate Marketer
When I began affiliate marketing I knew only half of these things but, in hindsight, if I had have known these things then it would have made the decisions I made so much easier. Such is the intention of this article, to contribute towards the success of affiliate marketing newcomers. Here are 8 reasons to be an affiliate marketer.
In fact the only reason I wrote 8, is because there isn’t enough space to write the 100 that there really are. I hope you find them informative and helpful.
1. No product to produce.
Often creators of products (usually info) pay large fees to make or have their products made. With affiliate marketing forget about it.
2. No products to deliver.
If your promoting information products it’s a download page or if your selling physical product its shipping, handling and distribution. With Affiliate marketing you needn’t worry
3. Copy the same method.
Once you discover a method of affiliate marketing that works you can reproduce it for any product. Then continue to do it until you have more money than you know what to do with.
4. High income potential.
The amount of money you make increases in proportion to the amount of time you put into your site. Once you have developed a format that you know converts your visitors to customers, all that you need to do is get as much traffic to the site as humanly possible. You can get into search engine optimisation or simply work on your Pay Per Click strategies, but either way the harder you work the more you get paid.
5. Make passive income.
The king of them all: Money while you sleep. There’s nothing like waking up in the morning, checking your clickbank account and finding sums of money that have accumulated while you’ve been lost in peaceful dreams. Enough said!
6. No customers to deal with.
Forget complaints, nasty people, changes in customer preference, forget it all. The merchant takes the responsibility and changes their site accordingly.
7. Low start up costs.
The only cost in setting up an affiliate website is that of registering your domain and host, then getting some traffic through. If you’re making your own products the costs can be significantly higher in amount and number.
8. No payment processing.
Forget refunds, taking details, names, addresses, emails, credit card numbers. Your merchant handles it all. All you do is sit back while the money gets put into your account. That simple!
Andrew Hansen is an experienced affiliate marketer and entrepreneur who specializes not only in online business but in other forms of investment also. He runs a website on revolutionizing your personal finances through affiliate marketing that provides best FREE information from across the web on affiliate marketing and contains steps to ensure success for the new affiliate marketer. Check it out at http://www.revolutionizeyourlife.net/affiliatemarketing.htm
Why a Newbie Online Marketer Should Start As an Affiliate
Navigating the intricate often tangled network of the worldwide web is an onerous task for the hardiest soul. Like a spiders web the www is a very complex and often a confusing maze. No wonder the terms web, spider, crawl etc. are commonly used terminology on the internet.
You need guidance from seasoned veterans who could mentor you through the rough and the tumble and teach the complexities of online marketing. The best way to learn and find a mentor, remote though he may be is to start with an affiliate program. Joining an affiliate program helps you to find a good mentor as every online marketing guru has a system of taking their affiliates through the various complex system of internet marketing through their online courses and f*r*ee reports and tutorials.
However please do a bit of research into the affiliate programs and the gurus before you rush to join the program. There are many affiliate marketing forums and websites where you can get a lot insight into the right programs and products.
The major benefits of an affiliate program for a newbie are:
Guidance from seasoned veterans who mentor you through the rough and tumble and teach the complexities of online marketing
Programs are f*r*ee to join and only takes a few minute to set up. You can be in business immediately.
It is the best introduction to e-commerce through online coaching and tutorials provided by most affiliate programs.
Ready to use quality products which have been tried and tested.
No investments till you start making money. Some of the affiliate programs even provide your own website or web pages to promote the program.
A commission structure of generally 25% going up to even 60% and multi tiered so that you can also have one or two tiers of down lines to help you generate a passive income.
You get introduced to tools of marketing provided by the programs which familiarizes you to effective promotion techniques of online marketing.
Above all safety and reliability of payments. Most of the affiliate programs use third party merchants like clickbank to set up their payment and delivery system. So your payments are sent in by the merchants once every fortnight or on a minimum specified payment by you.
Start with one or two affiliate programs which suit your interests and background and graduate to few more with time. Joining too many programs may not help as you will be distracted and lacking in focus.
So if you have dreams of making it big in online marketing, get started with a couple of good affiliate programs. Soon enough you will learn enough to launch your own program.
R.G. Srinivasan is a Certified Trainer, Writer and author of eBooks with more than two decades of managerial experience. You can view his home-business resources blog at http://www.home-businessresources.blogspot.com for online marketing tips, resources, opportunities and online promotional strategies.
Landing Page Xpress PRO
Landing Page Xpress PRO - Beat Google’s policy change against
URL sharing and profit now more than ever with AdWords &
AdSense! Instantly beat Google’s policy change of January 6,
2005 against URL sharing, profit even bigger and better than
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Landing Page Xpress PRO allows you to instantly beat Google’s
policy change of January 6, 2005 against URL sharing. Till then,
anyone could have just joined almost any affiliate program and
set up an AdWords account with Google and profit (and as
outlined in Chris Carpenter’s ebook “Google Cash”) But all that
changed when on January 6, 2005, Google announced its new policy
change against URL sharing by parent companies and their
affiliates.
What this meant was something literally earth-shaking (rather
“Web-shaking” - more accurately!)
This meant the elimination of about 98% of all affiliate
programs using Google AdWords that were not prepared for this.
The ONLY way to beat Google’s new policy is to first create a
landing page (or splash page as it’s often called also) - and
then redirect from that same landing page to whatever affiliate
sites you are enrolled in as an affiliate.
We at My Net-Marketing Center quickly got on the ball and
developed Landing Page Xpress PRO soon after this announcement,
and where you can get an instant complete web site business in
just hours - completely set up with multiple income streams
already in place.
Plus, each Landing Page comes complete with its very own
Electronic Sales Manager (ESM) so that arriving visitors can
sign up FREE for our newsletter, yet inside each issue, all your
visitors are directed to return back to your Landing Page ( not
to our sites!)
Additional income stream features include:
Ability to sell advertising space with a rotator on your Landing
Page Google AdSense Google Search Box (so that those clicking
from your site will still earn you credit properly if later
using AdSense elsewhe
Landing Page Xpress PRO in highlights:
Allows you to instantly beat Google’s policy change of January
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few clicks of your mouse Allows you to instantly put into place
up to 30+ income streams on a single Landing Page Allows you to
make sales 24/7/365 automatically all year round Provides you
your very own Electronic Sales Manager (ESM) to go to work for
you round the clock making you sales Allows you to enjoy
additional income from BOTH Google AdWords as well as AdSense
Allows you to earn additional moneys by selling space on your
Landing Page to others wanting to buy into your traffic What
Landing Page Xpress PRO will do for you?
Provides you an all-in-one multiple income stream web presence
Allows you to forever beat Google’s policy change against URL
sharing Allows you to earn more money and establish greater
economic leverage from a single web presence online