Episode #50 – “I Never Get Tired of Judging People ”

Before I get to the show notes, I just wanted to let you know that in view of the success and popularity of Twitter, all future episodes will be shortened from the current 10 minutes to just 12 seconds long. A recent survey showed that 93.873% of you suffer from Attention Deficit Disorder, so I’m confident that this new format will be much more helpful to you. The new format will be available from today, April 1st.

I’m excited…and I just can’t hide it. For the last 6 months I’ve been working on a new project for YOUR benefit (well sure, I benefit too).

With the success of this show combined with my background in the world of TV production, I’m creating a new WebTV network for entrepreneurs called GotBiz.tv. The theme of the network is ‘business doesn’t have to be boring’ and there’ll be lots of 10 minute, weekly shows on all kinds of subjects that relate to helping you in your business, whatever that might be.

In this episode I’ll give you a tour of the new home of GotBiz.tv, our custom built production studio in Salt Lake City, Utah. We’ve started production on some of the new shows and we plan to launch the network within the next couple of months, so look out for more news on that. Oh, and I’d love to hear about your suggestions for topics for shows. It can be anything you like, just post a comment on the blog and I’ll follow up with you.

The viewer question this time relates to someone who has plenty of visitors to their website, but those visits aren’t translating into sales. This is a problem with conversion, and I explain more about that as well as provide some suggestions on how to improve conversion.

Have you ever had to arrange a meeting for a bunch of people who live in different areas? It’s a pain. I recently discovered a service that makes the process simple and efficient, and I share that with you in this week’s video.

Ah, the ups and downs of eBay. It’s getting to be quite a saga, isn’t it? There’s been more changes in the company in the last year than in the previous 5 years combined, and most of those changes are not good. But eBay is still doing some things right, and the big marketing lesson I feature this time is something that YOU can adapt and benefit from in your business. It relates to how you make customers FEEL about you and your business. Let me know what you think.

Websites and resources mentioned in the show:

EZS3 Service (It’s THE Service I personally use for storing and playing videos on the NiftyClicks.com website)

When Is Good? (Great, free online tool for arranging a mutually agreeable meeting time)

NiftyClicks (discover the very latest web tools and resources)

Get a Private Telephone Consultation with me (to Help YOUR Business)

Microwave Marketing (Your Monthly Business Training System – special low price offer for you)

T-Shirts for the show are supplied by National Media Services (check out their excellent service)

Regards,

Having trouble viewing this video? Try the QuickTime version.

The Twitter Contest for the Acer Aspire One netbook is nearing a close – but there’s still time to enter.

The contest officially ends at midnight on March 31 – which means (ironically) that the winners will be announced on April 1 (April Fool’s Day).

For full details on the Twitter contest, a look at the prizes and rules, click here.

But if you know you want in, here’s how to enter:

1. Follow @MichelleM (that’s me) on Twitter

2. Tweet this to your friends: I just entered to win an Acer netbook – follow @MichelleM & retweet to enter too! http://is.gd/oD1E

CLICK HERE to send the Tweet out to your Twitter friends automatically.

I look forward to sending you a DM letting you know you won!

Related posts:

1. Twitter Giveaway – Acer Aspire Netbook (and more)
2. Best posts on Social Marketing from Mar 2009
3. Win a CrowdMountain.com Lifetime Membership

• Ed_Dale: I know I'm in the minority but Twitters spam issues go away the moment you only follow people you know…

March 28, 2009 – So true… There is no spam when you’re opting in. Some folks don’t opt-in and just willy-nilly follow everyone – then complain about the tweets they receive from those people?!?

All of these items are published as I find them to my Twitter feed. For real time notification of trends and resources, follow me on Twitter!

Related posts:

1. Best in Social Media – April 25, 2009
2. Best in Social Media – May 25, 2009
3. Best in Social Media – April 18, 2009

Webmaster Level: Intermediate to Advanced
Since launching Google Chrome last September, we received a number of questions from webmasters and web developers about how to make their sites look great in Google Chrome. The questions were very insightful and illuminating for the Chrome team, and I want to respond with a few helpful tips for making your site look stellar in Google Chrome.

Detecting Google Chrome

Most sites will render the same in both Safari and Google Chrome, because they’re both WebKit-based browsers. If your site looks right in Safari, then it should look right in Google Chrome, too.

Since Chrome is relatively new, many sites have confused Google Chrome with another browser. If your site doesn’t look quite right in Chrome but works fine in Safari, it’s possible your site may just not recognize Chrome’s user-agent string.

As platforms and browsers adopt WebKit as their rendering engine, your site can detect and support them automatically with the right JavaScript checks. Commonly, sites use JavaScript to ’sniff’ the navigator.userAgent property for “Chrome” or “Safari”, but you should use proper object detection if possible. In fact, Gmail has been detecting WebKit properly in Chrome since day one!

If you must detect the user-agent type, you can use this simple JavaScript to detect WebKit:

var isWebkit =
  navigator.userAgent.indexOf(”AppleWebKit”) > -1;

Or, if you want to check that the version of WebKit is at least a certain version—say, if you want to use a spiffy new WebKit feature:

var webkitVersion =
  parseFloat(navigator.userAgent.split(”AppleWebKit/”)[1]) ||
  undefined;
if (webkitVersion && webkitVersion > 500 ) {
  // use spiffy WebKit feature here
}

For reference, here are a few browser releases and the version of WebKit they shipped:

We do not recommend adding “Google” or “Apple” to your navigator.vendor checks to detect WebKit or Google Chrome, because this will not detect other WebKit or Chromium-based browsers!

You can find more information about detecting WebKit at webkit.org.

Other helpful tips

• Google Chrome doesn’t support ActiveX plug-ins, but does support NPAPI plug-ins. This means you can show plug-in content like Flash and Java in Google Chrome the same way you do with Firefox and Safari.
• If text on your site looks a bit off, make sure you provide the proper content type and character encoding information in the HTTP response headers, or at the beginning of your pages, preferably near the top of the <head> section.
• Don’t put block elements inside inline elements.

Wrong:   <a><div>This will look wrong.</div></a>

Right:     <div><a>This will look right!</a></div>

• If your JavaScript isn’t working in Google Chrome, you can debug using Chrome’s built-in JavaScript debugger, under the “page” menu -> ‘Developer’ -> ‘Debug JavaScript’ menu option.

To help webmasters and web developers find more answers, we created a support center and forum specifically to answer your questions. Of course, if you find something you think is really a bug in Chrome, please report it to us!

Help us improve Google Chrome!

If you’d like to help even more, we’re looking for sites that may be interested in allowing Google to use their site as a benchmark for our internal compatibility and performance measurements. If you’re interested in having Google Chrome development optimized against a cached version of your site, please contact us about details at chrome-webmasters@google.com.

Please keep the feedback coming, and we’ll keep working to improve Google Chrome!

Written by Glenn Wilson, Product Manager, Google Chrome

In this episode of Internet Business Mastery, we discuss The Online Business Blueprint, Part 3.  Plus, we have a resource for easily uploading files to your Amazon S3 account.

CLICK HERE to get immediate access to Internet Business Mastery Academy, where you will get full access to ALL of our courses, tools, and resources for creating your own internet business and escaping the 9-to-5.

Each month we add at least one new internet business course, a Grill the Guru interview, and new video tutorials in the Million Dollar Rolodex.

Items mentioned in the episode:

• Sunday Shields at admins4admins.com
• Jon Cunningham at draftingnation.com
• Curt from undercoverlawyer.com
• s3fox.net/

Join us on Twitter!

• Twitter

Transcripts

• Transcripts of IBM 61 | The Online Business Blueprint, Part 3

Download the MP3

Last July, we launched our Webmaster Tools Access Provider Program and it’s been a huge hit. Hundreds of providers have signed up, and thousands of users now access Webmaster Tools via their provider’s control panel.

Episode #49 – “10 Out of 8 People Have Trouble With Fractions”

I stayed at a resort in Phoenix, AZ recently while I was attending a seminar, and the ‘welcome’ I received at this luxury resort was rather unusual. See if you can relate…

I realize that a lot of people aren’t tech minded when it comes to creating and selling information products online. This week’s question is all about that situation – what to do if you’re not the most technical person, how to get your first product up and for sale, making money as fast as possible.

This site you’re reading now is a WordPress blog, the industry standard for blogs. Did you know that there are thousands of themes (template designs) available for WordPress to customize the look and feel of your blog? I’ll tell you about my very favorite collection of WordPress themes.

Dell are one of the most well known computer manufacturers in the world, and they didn’t get that way without having a good understanding of marketing. The simple technique I reveal in the BIG marketing lesson is something that every online business should be doing, but you rarely see it. It revolves around what happens after they notice ’shopping cart abandonment’ from a customer.

Websites and resources mentioned in the show:

Amazon Kindle (The NEW Kindle Wireless Reading Device is must have for serious entrepreneurs)

Revolution WordPress Themes (The best of the best of WordPress themes)

Info Product Dashboard (Great training program that guides you through the process of creating your first product to sell online.)

NiftyClicks (discover the very latest web tools and resources)

Private Consultation for YOUR Business (with me)

Microwave Marketing Training System (special offer for you)

T-Shirts for the show are supplied by National Media Services – check out their excellent service

Regards,

Having trouble viewing this video? Try the QuickTime version.

To celebrate the successful launch of Crowd Mountain, I’m announcing a new Twitter contest with some great prizes anyone can use and enjoy!  It’s super easy to enter:

HOW TO ENTER

1. Follow @MichelleM (that’s me) on Twitter

2. Tweet this to your friends: I just entered to win an Acer netbook – follow @MichelleM & retweet to enter too! http://is.gd/oD1E

CLICK HERE to send the Tweet out to your Twitter friends automatically.

The giveaway ends March 31, 2009 at midnight PST. Three winners will be picked at random (one for each prize) and notified via Twitter DM. If notified, you will have 24 hours to respond and claim your prize, at which point it will be given to another contestant.

PRIZES

For prizes, I’ve chosen a few of my “favorite things” (queue Oprah theme music).  These are handpicked, items that I own, adore, love, learn from and use.

Acer Aspire One 8.9-Inch Netbook: This Model comes with Windows XP, a 160 gig harddrive (unlike some of the netbooks out there – hello Dell? – you can actually store a few files or programs on it) and the 6-cell battery, so it’ll run for about 5.5 hours (what a netbook is for – being able to work with it on-the-go and not charge it up all the time).  Of course it’s got wireless and USB ports and whatnot, and has consistently been among the top performing netbooks by review sites.

Snowball USB Microphone: I replaced my old, $14 mic with this model about 2 months ago and love the sound quality.  Plus it looks cool – and there’s something to be said about cool looking equipment!  It definitely gets comments from anyone who visits the office.  Installs like a dream, has switches on the back to adjust the way it picks up sound – good for group vs. individual recording and adjusting for the sound qualities of the room you’re in.

Ready, Fire, Aim: Zero to $100 Million in No Time Flat: This book (that I originally was referred to by Rich Schefren) has given me a kick in the arse – really!  A must-read for ANYONE with their own business (internet marketing or not).

Related posts:

1. Twitter Contest: Acer Aspire One Netbook
2. Best posts on Social Marketing from Mar 2009
3. Win a CrowdMountain.com Lifetime Membership

Well, it looks like there has been a bit of activity from the site built it scam review that Lis wrote about the other day over at here blog. Now I think her post was kind of helpful, and was a review of site build it, at the very least she was trying to clarify to newbies who want to start to make money online and build a website that will bring them passive income to make their lifestyle that little bit easier.

For people starting to blog or even build a website for their business or hobby, site build it could be an option that they see all over page one of the search results as they are looking to make money on the internet. But, quite rightly, Lis pointed out that most of the reviews that people will see are going to be people who are actually using the site build it software, are noobs and aren’t generally making any money and probably aren’t giving a good site build it review.

I for one haven’t used site build it, and why should I? It costs $300 per site and WOW you get tools – NOT! There are a number of tools that do help you I am sure, yet you can get all of these for free or even a fixed price no matter what kind of site building software you are using – you have the choice to use these tools on other sites too, and you wouldn’t need to pay out $300 for each site! You will really want to take a look at site build it don’t buy it from Grizz – who actually makes great money!

I went over the the main review of site built it and reviewed the video presentation, it was funny and so noobish as the person presenting said that you can simply get your own content and then put it on to the site and people will come – the age old mentality that many boob wensite builders and bloggers do – build fresh content and people will come to you and it must entertain your readers and be engaging – come on! I may have been taught this by a few people, but I truly understand many people really don’t give a crap about what you have written, poeple have a need and giving them really good fresh content with site build it website won’t mnen people will want to say and buy form you; nor will they want to click on any affiliate ads – they’d probably sign up and

The Bashing

well, if you take a trip over to Lis’s post, you will see that the trolls were unleashed by the almightly ones at the SBI forum, many were sternly defending the SBI price and package. Clearly they have spent $300 per site, and whilst it opnly seems that the people who were there had one or two sites, they were very content on defending their position. Afterall, wouldn’t you be? If I’d been ripped off through buying after a review of site build it to be great I would be annoyed and nearly everyone wants to make sure they aren’t being told they have been ripped off don’t they?

Back last year if I had been told that I had been ripped off then I would have bee a little pissed as I’d spent a lot of money, yet I got out of the memberships programs I was in because I realised something – if they can get away with it people will scam you and will rip you off and probably won’;t be any better off from it, especially with site build it scam. SBI or Site Build It newbies need to understand that you can do this without the stuff that SBI gives you for free and it doesn’t take that long to learn, a matter of days.

To be honest I really am not interested in SBI, site build it and a review of site build it as I’m busy with my own sites and my ecommerce business sites – oh and I don’t use Site Build it either for them. Personally, when I read a review that is so one sided I get annoyed and click out and I’d rather see something like Lis’s site build it scam review as a good review of site build it and the SBI stuff that you are paying for, rather than getting one side, clicking an affiliate link and then getting suckered into a deal that lasts for a year and will mean that you have to stay with a company for the whole year. Read the different review of site build it software and then you decide.

Check out the Article Marketing Domination Ebook

ShareThis

Episode #48 – Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few months, you’ll know that Circuit City, the nationwide U.S. electronics chain has finally bitten the dust. I thought it was funny listening to all the financial analysts thrown in their 2 cents about the reasons for Circuit City’s demise. I’ll share my thoughts on the subject – let me know if you agree or disagree.

PayPal has grown from being an upstart startup to a goliath like company. Should you accept PayPal payments, or should you stick with regular credit card merchant accounts? That’s the topic of the question this week. Share your experiences with PayPal – good or bad.

Marlon Sanders has a knack for creating genuinely useful and practical training products. A lot of people ask me for help creating their first information based product (’how to…’) to sell online, and while I’ve created some material in that realm, there’s an even better resource, and that’s the one that I talk about in the video this week, from Marlon.

The BIG marketing lesson comes from Old Navy, a popular clothing store in the U.S. They sent a package to my wife, Luci, that was innovative and caught her attention, and that’s what marketing is all about, isn’t it?!

Websites and resources mentioned in the show:

Amazon Kindle (The NEW Kindle Wireless Reading Device is must have for serious entrepreneurs)

Info Product Dashboard (Great training program that guides you through the process of creating your first product to sell online.)

NiftyClicks (discover the very latest web tools and resources)

Private Consultation for YOUR Business (with me)

Microwave Marketing Training System (special offer for you)

T-Shirts for the show are supplied by National Media Services – check out their excellent service

Regards,

Having trouble viewing this video? Try the QuickTime version.