John Dilbeck Musings

In late December 2007, I created a new social networking site for Murphy NC 28906 on Ning.com.

If you live in, visit, or want to know more about Murphy, NC, come join us at the Murphy NC 28906 social networking site.

You can customize your profile, write a blog, discuss topics related to Murphy, NC in our forum, meet and get to know fellow residents, upload photos, and much more — all for free!

Anyone living in, visiting, or wanting to know more about Murphy, NC is welcome. Come join us today.

There are several ways you can promote your business on Merchant Circle: the contents of your basic listing, any items you post to your blog, coupons you create, photos you upload, and the bulletins posted on your directory listing page.

I just learned about Merchant Circle a few days ago and I’ve jumped all over using their system. You can see the profile I’ve created for Dilbeck Marketing on Merchant Circle. I’ve taken the time to use most of the tools and love their system.

(Your business is listed at Merchant Circle, right? If not, you can create a professional looking online listing for your business with our easy to use tools. Free! - MerchantCircle.com.)

There are probably other things you can do at Merchant Circle that I haven’t discovered in the less-than-a-week that I’ve been a member of the site.

What you may, or may not, already know is that every time you blog, create a coupon, upload a photo, or post a newsletter, these things are added to a newsfeed for you, automatically.

At the top-right of your listing, you’ll see “Subscribe to blog and coupon feed” followed by an orange chicklet that says “RSS/XML.” This is a standard news feed that can be syndicated on many services and can be read by anyone using a news feed aggregator or a news reader. Even without sending emails you are broadcasting to the world - potentially.

I’ll write a post later to explain more about making use of this. For now, suffice it to say that you can blog in one place and have it automatically republished in multiple places. This makes it very powerful for getting your news out.

If you don’t know anything about RSS, let me suggest that you read What is RSS?.

One place you may want to syndicate your feed is at Squidoo.com.

To do this, you’ll need to be a member.

Are you an expert on something? Build your own Squidoo lens and tell the world. It’s free, and you may even earn some money from it.

Of course, you’re an expert on your business, so join Squidoo and create a lens about it. It’s worth the effort to learn how to build free lenses on Squidoo, and it’s a perfect place to syndicate your Merchant Circle news feed.

For example, I’ve created a Squidoo lens about Merchant Circle and I’ve syndicated (re-published) my news feed and Merchant Circle’s news feed on that lens.

Also, as part of that lens, I’ve created a list where you can add a link to the Merchant Center listing for your business. I will be syndicating that list on some of my other websites, so you’ll get free advertising just by adding your link to the list. If you don’t understand, just comment on this topic and I’ll see what I can do to help you.

Act on your dream!

JD

First, if you’re not listing your business on MerchantCircle, why not?

Create a professional looking online listing for your business with our easy to use tools. Free! - MerchantCircle.com

Truly, even if you are not a highly skilled web designer or webmaster, you can use the tools provided by MerchantCircle to promote your business and the products and services you offer. It won’t take days, weeks, or months, either! You can get started in a few hours and can continue promoting your business as long as you want through posting to your blog, creating coupons, and publishing newsletters.

This is the kind of business promotion that every owner or manager of a small business should jump onto. It’s free, effective, and easy to use. What’s the downside?

Act on your dream!

JD

For the last few months, I’ve been looking at quite a few social networking sites. Some are friendly to business and others are not. Each has its place.

I really don’t have a lot of time for just socializing, but when I do, I tend to go to MySpace.

I like to combine my socializing with work, so I’m continuing to look for business social networking sites that offer a variety of features for meeting new people, talking to friends, advertising my products and services, blogging, and joining groups of like-minded people.

There are a couple I’m almost ready to recommend, but not quite yet. I want to spend more time on them before I make up my mind.

I’m not going to recommend something to you that I’m not going to use myself.

Today, I ran across a business social networking site I’d never seen, and I found it while surfing one of my favorite traffic exchanges.

Take a look at APSense.com and see what you think.

You can join for free and have almost full access to all the features of the site.

Here’s part of how they present their service:

Apsense in a Nutshell…

Apsense is a social network where people come together to share their business. We enable users to share their business through networking, discovering and creating quality business content. The development of new networks and constant exchange of information is happening everyday at Apsense. We are changing the way people build their businesses online.

Meet other business individuals…

In its purest nature Apsense is a web 2.0 enabled social network. We promote the exchange of business networks by providing tools for users to easily communicate, create interest groups and even build their own private social network. Ultimately our goal is to make it simple for you to connect with other business individuals.

Find valuable business contents…

All contents on Apsense, from business blogs to business discussions to product and service listings are collectively rated by the users (that would be you). Top rated contents are pushed to the top of our content listings so you can find the most popular and trusted business information quickly. So if you are looking for valuable business information online to help you build your business, don’t waste time searching for it anywhere else!

Create your own business contents…

While all types of contents on Apsense are being viewed and rated by the users, these same type of contents can also be created by you. Why create your own contents? Everyday millions of people are searching for contents related to your business by using search engines and web 2.0 enabled websites like Apsense. So by creating your contents on Apsense, you are enabling millions of people to find contents about your business. For us, content is your business interests, your products & services, your business experiences, and anything else you would like to share about you and your business.

I’ve only had a couple of hours to look over the site, and I’m impressed with it.

I’ve joined a couple of groups, started one of my own, started building my business website on Apsense, and will be creating a new blog there in the next day or so.

Of course, my group is about Site Build It and I urge you to come join APSense.com, add me as your contact, and we can help each other present our businesses and offers.

Now, if you’re a relative beginner to this sort of thing, I want to ask you, please, do not spam everyone with your advertising. There are places where advertising is appropriate, and places where it isn’t.

Get to know people. Participate in the discussions. Learn something new. Teach someone something you’ve learned.

Don’t just start posting ads everywhere! That’s not what social networking (business or not) is all about.

Have some class, don’t be crass!

Come on over and join APSense.com. It’s free, and you can take your time to decide if you like it or not.

There are a couple of upgrade options, but frankly, I haven’t even looked at them or the affiliate program, yet.

I’m too interested in the system they’ve set up, and too involved in learning how to use it, to even think of any of the ways to spend or earn money there.

If you do join and add me as a contact, please don’t spam me. I want you as a friend, and not someone I would rather hide from, or block.

Let me know what you think about Apsense and other social networking sites. Are they effective and a good way to spend your time? Or, do you think they are a big time and energy drain?

Act on your dream!

JD

The more I participate at Squidoo.com by building lenses and adding those lenses to groups, the more I see pages on Squidoo referenced in my traffic stats on various sites I have.

What?

I mean that Squidoo is sending an ever-increasing stream of traffic to my sites, blogs, and forums.

Thinking about that, I took a little time this morning to create a new Get A Free Marketing Site lens on Squidoo.

Then, I found several related groups and submitted my new lens to them.

This morning, my lens is ranked at over 180,000. I’m guessing it will jump to about 30,000 or less in the next 24 hours. Then, who knows where it will end up.

To make it a bit more interesting, I added a Plexo module where you can vote for your favorite marketing book on the lens, and I added an RSS feed for marketing articles from 21st Century Articles, my article directory specializing in business, communications, technology, and self-improvement articles.

If you don’t see your favorite marketing book on the list, please feel free to add it.

I have been getting tens of thousands of page views to my Get A Free Marketing Site suite of marketing tools at LinkScout, and I know it has been worth the time and effort - and money - I’ve invested in it.

Therefore, I feel confident in recommending it to you, too.

Act on your dream!

JD

PS. I also recommend that you start building as many Squidoo lenses as you need to promote your business, talk about your hobby, or write about anything in which you are interested. It’s free, and you may well get paid by Squidoo. I earn a small check from them every month, and that’s a lot better than buying advertising, in my opinion.

If you have a blog on just about any topic, you should create a related lens at Squidoo, and don’t forget to use the RSS module to syndicate your blog feed.

It brings me more visitors, and I’m sure it will work for you, too.

I recently realized that I’ve neglected an important part of my marketing efforts and I know I’m losing business as a result.

I bet you are, too.

Are you trying to sell your products and services to visitors who may visit your site just one time? If so, how much business are you losing when your visitor doesn’t buy right then?

You can do one simple thing to increase your conversion ratio: entice your visitor to subscribe to your newsletter and/or an email series that describes the benefits of the product or service you are trying to sell.

If the visitor subscribes to either of these email follow-up series, then she has shown at least some interest in what you have to offer.

Now, instead of one chance to make the sale, you have multiple opportunities to educate your prospect about the subject, to elaborate on the benefits provided by the product, and to build more of a relationship with your subscribers.

Even if you don’t make the sale eventually, you will have built some measure of goodwill if you provide quality information in your follow-up messages.

I’ve just started an Autoresponder marketing and building your lists series on JohnDilbeckAndFriends.com. I would welcome your thoughts and comments there.

Act on your dream!

JD

On Memorial Day, the monitor on my faithful Macintosh 8500 died.

I’ve been using that computer and monitor for about 14 years and even after all that time, I was surprised when the monitor went from a full screen to a thin horizontal line and then turned itself off.

I’ve been thinking for some time that it’s about time to get a new - or newer - Mac. After all, the 8500 is a dinosaur in terms of computers, and sometimes I’m surprised that I can still use it for real work.

On the other hand, I have many thousands of dollars worth of software that will not run on the newest Macs and I don’t plan to upgrade all of that perfectly usable software unless I absolutely have to.

So, I went rumaging through my old computer parts and found an old multisync VGA monitor that I used on the last PC I owned - or ever plan to own. When I turned it on, it looked like it would work, so I turned my attention to finding a VGA adapter so I could use it with my Mac.

But, I couldn’t search online with a headless computer.

So, since I’ve been working 7 days a week for months, I decided to take a few days off and consider the best path for moving from my ancient computer to a much faster system running the latest version of OS X.

The trouble is, some of my software will only work in Mac OS 9, so I need to be sure to buy a computer that will dual boot into OS 9 or OS X. Even classic mode in OS X won’t be sufficient for some of my software - including some I developed for myself. One of the reasons I haven’t wanted to move from that computer to a new one is because I’ve spent over a decade customizing and programming that system to work exactly how I want. If I started over with a new computer, I’d lose lots of functionality and I’d have to either recreate what I’ve been using or do things totally differently.

So, taking time off and musing about it seemed like a good idea.

I caught up on my sleep and watched about a dozen episodes of Stargate Atlantis from Netflix.

Yesterday, I decided I would go to the library the next day (today) and do some searching for companies that sell refurbished Macs so I could order a custom system with exactly what I want.

I was talking to Mom and noticed her even-more-ancient Mac LC 580 system sitting in the corner. She had used that computer for years for genealogy research and email and it hadn’t been turned on in months. She hasn’t been able to use it for several years and the last time it was turned on was so I could play Tetris on it - a game I won’t put on my working system if I want to get any real work done.

I fired it up, dialed into the Internet, and started the Netscape version 4 browser.

I was totally surprised that not only could I search on Google and find several refurbished Mac dealers, but I could even look through their websites. It was slow, yes, but it worked. I don’t even know how old that computer is, but it worked!

So, I browsed MacOfAllTrades.com in Tampa, Florida and found some interesting systems and software for sale.

Later, I went to PreOwnedMac.com (resale.headgap.com) in Memphis, Tennessee and looked at what they had to offer. This was the company I was looking for. They build custom systems using old Macs and new optical and hard drives. I can configure just what I want and purchase from them and maybe not lose all the functionality I have with my current Mac 8500. Plus, the newer system would be much faster and have much more storage.

So, I spent much of the day looking over what they offer and comparing it to brand-new systems.

I still haven’t made up my mind about what I want to do; I make these decisions slowly and deliberately because I intend to use any system I buy for years.

I found a universal Mac to VGA adapter that I’ll be ordering in a few minutes and that will solve my immediate problem. It feels strange not to check my email or work on any of my blogs or websites for a whole week, but it has been a restful week and I look forward to getting back to work.

This morning, just to see if it would work, I went to JohnDilbeckAndFriends.com on Mom’s old LC 580. I could read the blog, but could not log in and post any updates.

Then, I tried some of my WordPress blogs at JohnDilbeck.com/musings/ , blog.cherokeecountync.com , and MurphyNC28906.com .

I was completely surprised to find that I could post new items to all of those blogs.

I couldn’t see the blogs with the theme I expected, but I could read all the entries and click all the links.

So, I spent a few hours this morning posting some updates.

I tried logging in to Localendar.com , but that didn’t work, so I’ll have to wait to update my calendar there.

The point I guess I’m trying to make is that these Macintosh systems from back in the 20th century are still useful and can do real work in the early 21st century. Yes, they are slow, have outdated browsers, not enough memory, and don’t support current software and hardware, but they still work for much of what I want.

I move forward slowly and no longer adopt anything on the bleeding edge of technology or even the leading edge of technology. I did way to much of that over the 30 years I worked as a computer consultant. Now, I want a system that works - all the time. I don’t want to constantly update the software or the hardware. I still use software that I bought or developed over 15 years ago and it works just fine.

Yes, it’s about time to move to OS X and I may even buy some new software one of these days, and then again, maybe I won’t.

Time will tell.

Think different(ly).

Act on your dream!

JD

Have you been thinking about trying Site Build It?

If you have, Ken is offering his annual holiday special. Until midnight, December 25, 2006, you can buy one and get one free.

That is a real bargain.

You have several options.

You can buy one for yourself and get a second one free. If you choose to do this, you can start building one and wait up to nine months to start the second site.

Or…

Buy one for yourself and give the second one to your husband, wife, son, daughter, mom, dad, friend, business associate, or anyone else to whom you want to offer the gift of learning how to build a part-time (or full-time) online business using the proven tools and techniques that Ken will teach you and your friend.

Or, team up with someone else and buy two sites. Split the cost and Sitesell Support will help you transfer the second site to whomever it should belong.

You don’t have to take advantage of the special pricing, but now is the time to do it if you want to save money. You could even buy now, and find someone next week or next month to sell the second site to.

Just don’t miss this special if you have been on the fence about getting Site Build It for yourself.

I can tell you that finding Ken Evoy a few years ago has made a big difference in my life.

I have been Mom’s full-time caretaker for about five and a half years now. When I decided to bring her back home instead of putting her in a nursing home, I knew I would have to find a way to work inside the house near her and still earn a living. I closed my metalsmithing business and concentrated on helping her.

After I’d quickly blown through my savings, I had to get serious about earning an income while still working at home.

Luckily, amongst all the Internet marketing hype that was calculated to relieve me of my hard-earned money, I found Ken Evoy.

I learned how to start earning money from affiliate marketing by reading his Affiliate Masters Course, and started making sales and earning commission checks when I put what I learned to work on some of my web sites.

Later, I purchased his Make Your Site Sell! ebook. That was the best $30 I ever spent and now I earn it back many times over every month.

I took what I learned and re-built all my sites (and this took about six months). In a matter of weeks, my sites were being found and people started buying what I recommended. It was the real turning point in my home business.

This fall, Ken decided to give away Make Your Site Sell! as a free download. Even though I still believe it is worth much more than the previous price, it is now free. If you have a website and you want to earn more from it, download this book and read it. Then put to work what you learn from it.

Ken explains on the site why he decided to give away Make Your Site Sell! and concentrate on making Site Build It even better.

Eventually, I was able to scrape up enough to purchase my own Site Build It subscription.

For just $300 a year, I got not only a website, but an ever-growing collection of integrated tools (meaning I never have to install and manage scripts), a members-only community of thousands of helpful SBI site owners, regular newsletters with information to help me improve my sites and earn more, and the benefit of Ken Evoy’s wisdom and experience.

In a sea of Internet marketing hype, Ken presents the voice of experience, calm, and making slow progress towards building our businesses.

Ken is not one of the “gurus” who cleverly craft a marketing business to drain us of the money that remains in our wallets and bank accounts. If you go to Ken’s Blog and read his article on “Mooch Marketing,” you’ll know what I’m talking about.

I have never lost money when I follow Ken’s advice. More often than not, I increase the size of my commission checks, and for that I remain grateful to Ken.

I don’t want to mislead you. I am not getting rich and I don’t think I will, but that’s not my goal.

Right now, my main goal is to do what I love doing, and earn enough from it so I can continue to care for Mom and let her live in the house she has lived in for over 30 years.

I have worked hard at this, but I have to share part of the credit with Ken Evoy for being able to make this work.

You will note, I hope, that I don’t mention anyone else when sharing the credit for building my home business. I have learned from others. I have lost hard-earned money to others. Ken helps me keep on course and continue to build my business.

I do maintain quite a few other sites that are not powered by Site Build It, but I’m re-evaluating that decision. I have had problems with hackers destroying several of my sites. I’ve had problems with updating and maintaining scripts on them.

I am seriously considering closing most of my non-SBI sites and putting my efforts into doing more with Site Build It rather than continually bashing my head against the wall with the other sites.

I have learned a lot, and if I had to drop all my sites but one, it would be powered by Site Build It.

I hope you enjoy your holiday season and have a happy, prosperous, and healthy new year!

John L. Dilbeck

AYearFromNow.com - Act On Your Dream!

My primary blog: John Dilbeck And Friends

I am slowly making progress in converting all of my blogs over to WordPress (with the single exception of John Dilbeck And Friends which will continue to be powered by Manilla.)

The more I use WordPress, the better I like it.

One thing I’ve been doing is using categories rather extensively on several of my blogs.

On Syndicate Your Ad, I have a category for every state in the USA, all the provinces in Canada, and other countries as I need to create them. The reason for this is that each category has its own RSS feed and I syndicate those feeds on dozens of Squidoo lenses and other websites.

I’m way behind in blogging these offers, but I decided it was best to take the time I needed to create an infrastructure for promoting the offers. Now that I’ve almost completed that, I’ll get back to updating the blog this month or next. Then, it will be easy to update it every couple of days or so.

I’ve tested several other blogs to see how well they work when generating multiple RSS feeds based on category, and after several months of use, I’m going to convert all of them over to WordPress. As far as I’m concerned, it offers the best value in terms of power, flexibility, extensibility, and ease of use. So, the others will be ditched.

All of this takes time, but by the first of 2007, or so, I’ll have everything working as I want and can spend just a few hours a week keeping them updated.

So, now I have an easy way to generate information that flows from blog to lens, website, and other blog.

Now, I’m thinking about how I can complete the flow back to the originating blogs or if that is even something that needs doing.

I got the idea a few minutes ago when I was looking at my newest lens: Dolly Parton.

On the top right corner of the lens, there is the standard icon for RSS feeds. When I looked at it, the feed showed my description for the lens and it was repeated as a link item with the date of last updating.

As far as information is concerned, it doesn’t look too interesting to me, but it does look interesting in terms of the date of last update. I’m wondering if this is one of the mechanisms Squidoo uses to rank lenses in terms of “freshness” or recentness of update.

How can I use that for myself?

I still don’t know the answer to that question, but I’m going to be musing about it the next few days as I go about my marketing efforts.

Do you have any thoughts about it?

Over the last few days, there have been some big changes at Squidoo.com with the release of the new groups feature.

Now, your Squidoo lens is not a stand-alone page. You can join appropriate groups for cross promotion of similarly-themed lenses.

Don’t find a group you like? Start one of your own. Help all the members of your group find more readers and more success with Squidoo.

New Squidoo lenses

I just created a new Success With Blogging lens and I invite your feedback for resources that can be added to that lens.

New Squidoo groups

I have several lenses, websites, and forums related to North Carolina, so I created a new North Carolina Group and I invite you to add your lenses to this group as long as they relate primarily to a place, event, person, organization, or business that is in North Carolina.