What are the key elements that you factor in to establish an admission price for a live event?
Question for James Brausch
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Category Archives: Other Blog Stuff
Comments Are Back On
I've decided to re-activate the comments portion of my blog.
To cut down and prevent spam headaches I originally turned off commenting back when the blog was quite new.
I decided to turn comments back on to make the blog more interactive. With the combo of the Askimet and Captcha plug-ins, I think it's worth another shot.
Question for James Brausch
A Useful Firefox Tool
Every once in a while I come across a neat little gem while surfing the net. I like to share these with my readers, especially the free stuff! After all, you can't get a better price than that, right? I am a [tag]Firefox[/tag] user and rarely use Internet Explorer unless I'm testing a [tag]webpage[/tag] that I'm [tag]designing[/tag] or if I need to get on some backwards website that was designed for IE users only. One of the cool things you can do with firefox is that you can add many nice extensions to your browser. Some of my personal favorites are "Forcastfox", "Download Them All", and "[tag]StumbleUpon[/tag]". The newest member of my collection is "SEOpen", which has many useful tools for checking your page rank with [tag]Google[/tag], Yahoo, MSN, [tag]Alexa[/tag], etc. With the top 3 search engines, you can also check your [tag]backlinks[/tag], cache, indexed pages, pages that are related, and even translate too! On the Alexa button you can check your alexa rating, [tag]traffic[/tag], related sites, and backlinks. If that wasn't already cool enough, you also get an "Other Tools" button which allows you to Check DMOZ, analyze your links, check your [tag]keyword density[/tag], server headers, page size, robots.txt, archives, and whois info! Whew! that's quite a list and I didn't cover them all! If you value the importance of keeping your webpages optimized for the search engines, you might want to get this tool. It's free and you can also use it to check out your fellow marketers to see how you rank in comparison to them. [tags]SEO[/tags]
Design Your Own Web Site
Creating your first website can seem like a pretty daunting task if you've never done it before. Sure, you can outsource the job to a web designer, but then you are giving up the freedom of having complete control over tweaking and changing things as you see fit. You are completly at the mercy of someone else's time table. Ok, you might be thinking, "yeah right, I can't even spell HTML, let alone learn it!" You may also have seen various [tag]web editors[/tag] out there that seem intimidating and are usually expensive too. Did you know that there are some great open source stuff out there? For example, Nvu (pronounced 'N-View') is a fantastic open source web editor that is FREE. I love that word. There are so many things out there available as open source, that you could literally build your [tag]internet business[/tag] using free tools. You can even create your graphics and logo with an open source (free) program called "Gimp". There's tons of documentation for this software and it has quite the following. I have to admit that I use [tag]Photoshop[/tag] myself for creating my logos and other graphics, but if I would have been more up on open source in the past, I probably could have saved some serious cash. Back to Nvu, if you can use a basic word processor or MS Word, you can build a web page. Nvu is very intuitive and easy to use. I also like the fact that even when working in WYSIWYG (Visual) mode, the generated code is very clean. Most [tag]WYSIWYG[/tag] editors are relatively easy to work with but generate messy and over bloated source code. I originally coded the AmazingCloaker website using CoffeeCup Visual HTML Editor. I thought it was a pretty decent product for 49 bucks, but the HTML code that is generated isn't nearly as clean as Nvu in my opinion. Sure purists will tell you to just do the whole site in HTML and forget about visually designing the site. There's a heck of a lot of advantages to knowing HTML, but saving time is my big thing, and I can knock off a basic webpage in less than 15 minutes with a visual editor. If I want to fine tune, or customize a table, I usually jump into the code editor and hand code it. You'd be surprised how easy it is to learn HTML. Anyway, I completely re-designed the [tag]AmazingCloaker[/tag] website using Nvu! I'm currently working on a new product which is a video course on how to design a web page from the ground up. This is geared for the [tag]internet marketing[/tag] beginner or intermediate level who wants to design a decent page, optimize it for the search engines and get pointers on writing good sales copy. I'll also round off the course by showing you how to set up a blog for your website using wordpress. Everything I will be using in the course will be open source software, so if you've ever wanted to get serious about internet marketing, but building that web page was too intimidating or expensive, then keep checking back. I'll be announcing on this blog when it will be available. The website where you can check out the course will be designed in my tutorial, so you will actually see the end result as the website itself! How cool is that?!
The Magic Of Video Marketing
Have you ever come across an interesting e-book, software, or other product, got pretty convinced by the sales copy, but still knew nothing about the person who's selling it? I think that often times the deciding factor in a purchase is how trustworthy or even visible the author is. How willing are you to spend $47, $67, $97 or even $300 on that product that you just can't live without, but you've never heard of the author before? Is there contact info on the website? A blog? Whois Info? No? Hmmm. Visitor expectations are rising all the time and one of those expectations are that they want to know more about the person that they are buying from. Blogging is in my opinion, one of the best ways to let your visitors get to know you. Wouldn't you be more inclined to purchase from someone who has a presence on the internet and cares enough to share useful information with you? Of course! As an internet business person, this should be a vital component in your marketing system. Show people that there is more to you than some pitch man pushing your latest product. So how could you take blogging to the next level? I recently read a post on James Braush's blog where he's giving away a wireless camera to a trackback of his choice. When reading this it occurred to me that adding video to your blog IS that next level! James has probably "arrived" in the internet business world to that initial desired level. I still have some ways to go, and what better way to share this journey than by making this blog a video blog! By showing you directly through video the results of taking action on your business, I may inspire some of you out there to come out of your comfortable "sleep" and realize that this can be your reality too! Making a visual connection can allow people to understand that being successful is something tangible that you can attain, and not just something that randomly befalls a lucky few by random chance. Stick around this blog and tag along on this journey with an average guy as he transforms himself into a "2%er". Maybe you should try this on your blog. Do you sell products? Are you more likely to buy from a friend as opposed to a digital billboard? James Brausch posted a pic from a cruise that he was on a couple of weeks ago, and for me, that one pic posted on his blog created a connection between James the man, and the integrity of his products. If a single picture can speak a thousand words, just imagine what 15 frames per second can do!
Everybody Likes A Comode-ian!
James Brausch is giving away a free CD from one of the funny comedians who were performing on the cruise that he took over the weekend. Why was he on a cruise? Did his buisness survive without him? Check out his blog and find out for yourself.
Recommended Book
The Irresistible offer by Mark Joyner is recommended reading by James Brausch. It's available from Amazon.com at a very reasonable price. Check it out!
Attractor Factor
James Brausch has just recommended a book by Joe Vitale called "Attractor Factor" This book may be of interest to you if you liked my post relating to the Law of Attraction a couple weeks ago. I've read some of Joe Vitale's materials before and found them truly inspiring. Joe Vitale is one of the Big boys and a great source of inspiration and guidance. My own copywriting is inspired by Joe's material. I'm no Joe Vitale obviously, but that's the level I aspire to reach or exceed. 
If James Brausch finds merit in his work, then what else can I say? Check it out.
Fascinating
I just read the WOW posting on James Brausch's business blog and its interesting to see out of 2500 readers a day there has been only one response to the offer of having a cruise paid in full by him just for responding. It sounds like his 2% theroy has a lot of merit. Ok, with that said, I don't plan to be in the 98% chump category, so if I interpereted James' blog correctly, it applies to anyone with a blog, so here goes. Why should you pay my way? My answer is that there is no reason what so ever that I can think of, but my wife Tingting is new to the U.S. (just arrived from China in August) and paying her way would be a wonderful treat as she experiences the unique and wonderful culture that the west has to offer. I of course would foot my own bill to accompany, should Tingting be the lucky choice. We are both relatively new to internet business (just over a year) and come to view James as our role model. Just having the opportunity to have a causal conversation with James is an opportunity of a lifetime. Shop talk however should be initiated by the master himself. Being an "info moocher" is not very cool in my book. Anybody reading this blog should jump over to your own blog and respond to his offer. You just may find yourself on a cruise with James Brausch & his wife having a great time in the sun!