-•- HomeOfficeDigest.com Newsletter - Issue 258 -•-
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THE HOME OFFICE DIGEST NEWSLETTER
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BE YOUR OWN BOSS
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If you're going to be your own boss you're going to have to learn 
how to say one thing, and you will probably have to say it often,
Shut Up! There will be many people who tell you that you'll never 
make it. You'll hear that your business idea is just plain stupid,
or that there are already too many competitors. Whenever you hear 
that junk, just tell them to shut up. Ok, you might not want to let
those words slip out of your mouth, but you had better be thinking
that, or even worse! If you're going to succeed then you have to 
be bursting at the seems with passion, enthusiasm, and confidence
in your product or idea. When you're overwhelmingly sure that you
have a winner, others will see that and gravitate towards you. I
hate talking to people who are not excited about their new ideas
because what I've basically done is waste my time. I simply can't
spend time working with people who aren't sure that what they're
selling is the best thing out there. Why? Because if they're not 
convinced, how in the heck are they going to convince anyone else?
If your potential clients can't see that you are sure of yourself,
sure of your product, and sure that what you're doing is going to
make a difference, you're sunk! No matter what industry you're in,
no matter what you're trying to sell, you can succeed if you have 
enough confidence. Let yourself get excited, almost to the point of
arrogance, then put your plan into action and just do it.

 
FEATURED GUEST ARTICLE
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LET YOUR MISTAKES IMPROVE YOUR MARKETING AND YOUR PROFITS
By Charlie Cook

Have you ever sent out a sales letter and received little or
no response, or put up a web site and found hardly anyone
visiting it. Have you worked hard on an article only to find
that few people read it and even fewer contacted you as a
result?

Let's be honest; everyone makes mistakes. The difference
between the winners and the losers in business is that
winners recognize their mistakes and avoid making the
same blunder again. Each time you can recognize a
marketing mistake and correct it your marketing will be
that much better.

Marketing experts got that way by working full time at making
more marketing mistakes than you can imagine and then
learning from them. Common marketing missteps include:

* Starting your marketing with a focus on your credentials, 
products and services instead of on client problems.

* Using a label to describe what you do instead of a “meme” 
or value positioning statement that tells prospects which 
problems you solve in a sentence or less.

* Developing a tagline, article title or web page title 
without taking the time to discover which words will attract 
your clients.

* Wasting time on pushing information about yourself out 
to prospects instead of pulling them in with ideas they are 
interested in.

* Not providing prospects with a free offer to get their 
contact information.

* Forgetting to regularly follow up with prospects.

* Building a web site without a clear step-by-step map of 
how you will attract visitors to the site, and what you want 
them do once they visit your site.

* Not having offers and strategies to turn prospects into 
clients and clients into repeat clients and sources of referrals.

If you've made any of the above marketing mistakes, you're not
alone. But if you want to grow your business, don't repeat these
blunders again and again. If you're not getting the results you
want, look for a new strategy, modify your tactics and change
your materials.

Strategy - Base your marketing on a clear set of principles.
Have a clearly defined strategy and marketing plan. Use
approaches that work for independent professionals and
small business.

Tactics - Plan your marketing so its organized and individual
efforts are additive and contribute to building your business.

Materials - Make sure individual marketing pieces resonate
with your target market, get their attention and move them
to the action you want them to take.

Fix your marketing tactics and materials by testing ideas,
keeping the ones that work and throwing out the ones that
don't. If you self published a book, but its not flying off the
shelves, identify the variables that could be affecting sales.

It may be the book's title, the sales letter, or the price and
bonus offers. Pick one of these and make some changes. Test
a different title, rewrite your sales letter, or the price and
bonus offers and see what happens.

Depending on your timeline and goals, you may want to avoid
making all the marketing mistakes on your own, and get expert
advice from someone who has made or seen most of the mistakes
before.

In the process of growing your business you're bound to make
marketing missteps. The more you make, identify and learn from
the faster your marketing will improve and the more clients 
you will attract.

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2003 © In Mind Communications, LLC. All rights reserved. 
The author, Charlie Cook, helps independent professionals 
and small business owners who are struggling to attract 
more clients and grow their businesses. To get the 
free marketing guide, '7 Steps to Get More Clients 
and Grow Your Business' visit 
www.charliecook.net or write ccook@charliecook.net

DOWNLOAD OF INTEREST
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The download of interest this week is w.bloggar. The w.bloggar is 
an application that is an interface between the user and his blog
or blogs, in other words, is a Post and Template editor, with many
features and resources that the browser based blog editors can not
offer. Because it's a software that runs on your own Windows based
system it allows the user to edit his posts without having to be 
connected to the Internet, by saving one or more posts locally to 
and then posting them in the future. It can be minimized to the 
Tray bar as an icon and every time the user wants to publish a new 
post, just a click and the editor is ready to work. When finished
with a new post, just another click and the post will be published
instantly. Another great advantage of w.bloggar is that it works on
a number of weblog systems including Blogger, metaWeblog, the b2
system, and MovableType. This allows an advanced user to have one 
interface to several accounts hosted on several different sites, 
under different publishing systems. Simply edit one post, then it
can be sent to multiple systems, what a cool tool! This software 
is free but I wouldn't be surprised if the publisher charges for 
it in the near future. Software that is this good, and this useful
typically doesn't stay free for long. Anyway, if you're a blogger 
and want to get it, go to http://www.wbloggar.com/. The site and 
software is maintained by someone in Brazil, so try to overlook 
the minor spelling and grammatical errors, it does not reflect the
quality of the software you get.
 
 
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