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When I first had the insane brilliant idea to start a business and get out of the alleged safety of the corporate world, I started by reading everything I could find.

I wish I could remember where the thread started for me. It might have been Dan Kennedy, it might have been Michael Port, it could very well have been the Personal MBA.

Each good resource led to three more. At some point, I found Copyblogger and Problogger and Seth Godin.

Hundreds of books and thousands of dollars in information products later, I’ve given myself an education. Was it expensive? Sure was.

But no more expensive than anyone’s education. Even an education that’s completely free is expensive in time and effort.

And just like a college senior ought to be able to get more out of a class than his freshman counterpart, I’ve gotten very good at efficiently extracting the information I need, leaving aside what I don’t, and avoiding the information that’s just not worth my time.

(Because yes, I still study compulsively, all the time. There’s always more to learn.)

Most of us who run online businesses get an education pretty similar to mine. We get some free stuff from our favorite blogs, we might pay for some information in a home study course or an ebook, and we cobble together a lot from pure observation.

Today I’m going to talk about what I’ve learned, so if you’re a little earlier on the path you can avoid some blind alleys.

It’s always about the fundamentals

Maybe you’ve heard of the Pareto Principle. (It’s also called the 80/20 rule.) It’s the observation that, in an amazing variety of circumstances, 80% of the output comes from 20% of the input.

Which means that 20% of your customers provide 80% of your revenue. 20% of the time you spend behind your computer provides 80% of your best work. And 20% of that great meal you had last night provided 80% of the pleasure. (It was the chocolate mousse cake, wasn’t it?)

Because of the Pareto Principle, there’s always a “20%” you should be spending your time on. And in just about every discipline, it’s known as the fundamentals.

Most people race through the fundamentals so they can get to what they consider the fun stuff — the esoteric, “advanced” weird material that no one knows.

Do you think the fundamentals in your topic are kind of boring? In that case, how do you feel about mastery?

The fact is, real masters of any endeavor get scary good at the fundamentals. Read the biography of any massively successful person you admire, from Michael Jordan to Warren Buffett, and you’ll discover someone who got freakishly good at what the wannabe hot shots look down on as “the boring basics.”

Understand Pareto’s 20% in your field, and work on it over and over again.

Then work on it some more.

Inspiration is great, but execution pays the bills

There’s one guy in particular whose stuff I find wonderfully inspiring.

I always feel energized after reading his paper newsletter or listening to his CDs. I’ve got a renewed sense of enthusiasm for my profession, I’m filled with hope and energy, I’m ready for anything.

And all that is fine. The problem is, it lasts about 20 minutes.

Enjoy the inspiration, but don’t stop there. Instead, use the energy from all that inspiration and translate just one idea into an action (it can be incredibly small) you’re going to take to move your business forward.

Then take that action. Really take it, don’t just intend to.

Which leads to:

Just one thing

If the book, membership site, ebook, or home study program you’ve got is any good, you’ll probably have more to act on than you can actually get done this week, this month, or possibly this year.

It may be helpful to remember a piece of advice given by David Allen. You can’t do a whole project. You can only do your next action on that project.

Whether or not you’re a devotee of Allen’s productivity cult Getting Things Done (I am), the idea of the “next action” is critical if you want to move forward on anything complex.

Writing a rough first draft for your email autoresponder is a next action. Spending 20 minutes brainstorming ideas for cornerstone content (and putting them someplace you can find them again) is a next action.

“Learn how to start an online business” is not.

Don’t neglect little things because you’re looking for big results. Big things are made up of the execution of many, many little things.

Education for its own sake can be inspirational and fun (and I would have happily stayed a college undergraduate forever if that had been an option). But if you have practical goals beyond learning, remember to keep those goals front and center.

Revisit the most valuable stuff

Human beings are a novelty-seeking monkey. We’re so attracted to what’s new and different.

But keep an eye out for those rare resources that are worth visiting again and again.

When I had a commute, I used to listen to the same marketing CDs over and over again. They burned a neural pathway in my brain. The information became second nature, as automatic as changing the channel when Leno comes on.

Reread the classics in your field. For me, it’s Robert Cialdini’s Influence, Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing, Eugene Schwartz’s Breakthrough Advertising, and a handful of decidedly old-school books on copywriting.

When you can get unabridged audio versions, pick them up in addition to the print versions, and listen to them when driving or on the train.

In the digital realm, I keep going back to Gary Bencivenga’s Marketing Bullets, our own Teaching Sells (I was a student before I ever dreamed of being a partner), and Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula.

I’m not looking for radical new insights. I’m looking for one small thing I can add to what I’m doing now.

Be ready to get bigger than you thought you would

When I started out with all of this self education, all I wanted to do was to convince people to hire me for copywriting gigs. I was good at that and I liked it, and I was itching to get out of that corporate job.

But by the time I figured out how to market my freelance writing, I realized that copywriting was a small subset of what I really enjoyed doing, and I wanted a bigger picture.

So if you’re going to expand your thinking, build new skills, take on a new mindset, and start making new neural (and social, and financial) connections, you may find your life shooting off in an amazing new direction that you never really thought was possible.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Ready for some high-quality free information? We’ve got you covered. Check out our newsletter, Internet Marketing for Smart People. It’s a crash course on the fundamentals that will let you build a better online business.

About the Author: Sonia Simone is Senior Editor of Copyblogger and a co-founder of Inside the Third Tribe.

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How to Give Yourself a First-Class Online Business Education

How I used a blog to attract thousands of subscribers my first week.

Why I make six figures and you don’t.

How I quit my day job and now I work all day in my robe and slippers while my wife brings me lattes.

Ever seen headlines like these before? Find them at least a little compelling?

Like every good headline, they exist to attract attention and convince you to keep reading. They’re trying to get you thinking about how to use a tool like blogging to make lots of cash.

But there’s something in those big promises that misses the mark.

Now that I have some experience under my belt as a blogger making an online income, I’d like to talk about the missing ingredient of those pitches.

It’s not about your blog

Lance Armstrong has a great book out called It’s Not about the Bike.

In his case it’s about one of his testicles. To be more specific, the one he no longer has.

The book is about how his bike became a vehicle in a bigger race than the Tour de France or his Nike deal, how his bike is a metaphor for life.

Lance and his tragic disease wouldn’t be famous without his bike. And as an online entrepreneur, you won’t be famous, either, without your blog.

That said, it’s still not about the blog. Not at all. The day you realize that fact is the day you’ll turn an essential corner toward reaching your goal of making a living online.

So what is it about, if not the blog?

It’s about your business.

Your blog and your business are different, yet related, things. The former is a sub-set of the latter. The difference is sometimes subtle, but it’s a critical one.

Your blog is a strategy, a branding and marketing vehicle, a means toward an end.

Your business is the money-making model. A product or service for sale.

Your blog isn’t for sale. It may be of service, but it’s a service you’re giving away for free.

Which means, if giving out free content is all you’re doing, or if your blogging has become the core deliverable of what you believe to be a business, your strategy is upside-down.

There’s nothing magic about a blog

When I started out, blogging not only seemed like a good idea — especially with all the voices that suggested you could get rich doing it — it was also incredibly rewarding right out of the gate.

Not monetarily. It was rewarding because of how it felt.

Connecting with people. Helping them. Sucking up all that nice feedback. Participating in a community, being part of a meaningful dialogue.

Those are, and should remain, part of the reasons you blog.

But if they aren’t your real objective, your end game — if making a living is an element you want to add to that mix — it’s time to take stock. Because it’s so easy to get lost in all that community stuff, the warm and fuzzy elbow rubbing, the sense of doing something helpful and worthwhile.

Which doesn’t pay you a dime until you actually sell something.

There will come a day when it hits you

You’ve been getting up in the middle of the night to perfect a post that will go out via Feedburner at dawn. You’ve sweated the syntax of your opening line and polished those nouns and verbs until you found yourself dreaming of your old high school English teacher.

You really care. You’ve become your blog. Just possibly, at the expense of your business plan.

It hit me recently in a post from David Risley, who is one of those “pro bloggers” who, if you don’t read him closely enough, or if you only hear what you want to hear, could lead you to believe that blogging will be the source of your new income, and sometime soon.

But on this day I did read closely, and what I saw there rocked my blogging world.

David, in essence, said this: blogs don’t make money. Businesses make money.

(You’ve seen that message here on Copyblogger as well.)

Your blog is the face of your business, the voice of your brand, the bait that attracts a following.

And yes, you give away as much as you can with it, selflessly and abundantly.

But until you have a product or service to sell, and until the blog connects to that enterprise in a way that actually begins to generate actual revenue in addition to pumping up your online reputation and ego, your blog is nothing other than you expelling positive energy into the universe.

Or, to put it another way, just so much hot air.

Looking for a free online resource that will teach you to think like a businessperson, not just another struggling blogger? Check out Internet Marketing for Smart People, the Copyblogger email newsletter.

About the Author: Larry Brooks is the creator of Storyfix.com, an instructional resource for novelists and screenwriters. His book, The Six Core Competencies of Successful Storytelling, will be published by Writers Digest Books in early 2011.

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The Critical Mistake that Keeps Bloggers Broke

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I Have 17 ShoeMoney System Spots for John Chow dot Com Readers Only

Do you know this story?

A scorpion needs to cross the river. He asks a friendly-looking frog to carry him across.

“Do you think I’m stupid?” asks the frog. “You’re a scorpion. You’ll sting and kill me.”

“No I won’t,” says the scorpion. “That would be completely against my self interest. If I sting you, I’ll fall in the river and drown.”

The frog sees the sense in this and agrees to carry the scorpion across the river. Halfway across, the scorpion stings him.

“Why did you do that?” asks the dying frog.

“I’m a scorpion,” answers the drowning scorpion. “It’s my nature.”

Who are you asking to take you across the river?

This painful little story illustrates something we’ve all seen, but sometimes forget.

Lie down with dogs and you’ll get fleas. Do business with scorpions, and you’ll get stung.

For some reason, until recently, most practical information about how to succeed in online business has come from scorpions.

People who see prospective customers as prey to be hunted. People who teach unethical shortcuts. People who preach games and systems, not value and relationships.

Some of the scorpions have interesting things to say. Some of them are even brilliant. And many of them can teach you good techniques.

But they’re scorpions. And you don’t want to find yourself at their mercy when you’re halfway across the river.

Things are changing . . . fast

Have you noticed? Something fascinating is happening in the world of Internet marketing.

Maybe it’s the widespread adoption of social media that’s made the difference. When everyone can Facebook, Twitter, and blog, all of a sudden it’s very hard for the scorpions to pretend to be good guys. The shortcuts get revealed. The light gets turned on to show the little (and large) deceptions.

The flip side is, now it’s easier than ever for great stuff to get found. If you’re glorious, people start talking about you. Word of mouth becomes “word of click.” And the good guys start finishing first.

Copyblogger was an outlier from the beginning. Brian taught his readers how to combine direct response marketing (a tool that was too good to leave to the scorpions) with content and social media to deliver amazing value to potential customers.

And there were certainly others. Chris Brogan devoting himself to his audience for 11 years to create his “overnight success,” built on integrity and connection. Darren Rowse, unofficial Nicest Fellow in the Blogosphere, showing up tirelessly to create value for his readers and help them become “probloggers” in their own right.

The ranks started to swell. We’ve been lucky enough to have many of them write for us in the past year or two. Naomi Dunford. Dave Navarro. Chris Garrett. Johnny B. Truant. Laura Roeder. James Chartrand.

These are people who don’t choose to be (or hang out with) scorpions. People who went back to just offering real solutions, developing fantastic relationships with their customers, and building solid businesses around that.

The Third Tribe is coming

Almost a year ago, this “new” (actually old) way of doing business started to be known as the Third Tribe. We had no use for the scorpions, but we didn’t want to be the clueless frog, either. We wanted to make a good living and be decent people. And we rejected (ok, I’ll be honest, mocked) anyone who tried to tell us we couldn’t.

We knew better. We were doing it. And it was working.

Brian and I instantly saw that this intersection was the future of Copyblogger. And, in fact, that it was the future for the smartest online entrepreneurs — the ones who wanted to build the most interesting, most profitable businesses.

So for the past few months, Brian and I, along with some clever co-conspirators, have been building something for you. A place for the Third Tribe to come together. To share ideas and inspiration. To educate ourselves about marketing and business techniques — effective techniques that respect our audiences and preserve our relationships. To grow farther and faster than any of us could alone.

If you’re already subscribed to the free Copyblogger newsletter, Internet Marketing for Smart People, you can relax. You’re going to be getting all of the details in the next few days.

If not, you may want to fix that now. Our newsletter readers will be the very first to hear about the new project, and have a chance to take advantage of a ludicrous sweet offer.

If you’re curious about it (or frankly, if you’d just like to take advantage of a free 20-lesson course on what smart Internet marketers are doing in 2010), click here to sign up for the newsletter. It’s free, it’s got good stuff, and it’s where you’ll be able to find out all about the new Third Tribe project.

About the Author: Sonia Simone is Senior Editor of Copyblogger and a co-founder of Inside the Third Tribe.

Read more from the original source:
Who Do You Trust for Online Business Advice?

Right around a year ago now, I made my first cent online. It was literally a cent — $0.01 — and it showed up in my Google AdSense account after a certain number of people had viewed an ad for dog food or a shiatsu massager or whatever on my old humor blog.

That first cent was exciting, because it proved that you really could make money online in the way it seemed that everyone said you could — by creating sites populated with ads, and then sitting back and letting the earnings pile up. Then, if the gurus were to be believed, it was only a matter of time before I would be living in Hawaii, while bikini girls used the Mona Lisa to wax my Lamborghini.

So I read a ton about how to use AdSense, took a few courses, and built a bunch of little search-engine-optimized niche websites. I worked and worked and built and built, and eventually I amassed a couple dozen of these little moneymakers.

Slowly, visitors began to come to my sites, click on the expensive Google ads for lawyers and insurance, and make me some money. Then, reasonably content with my Google army, I put those sites on “set it and forget it” mode (like a Ronco Rotisserie) and started something new.

A different way to do it

Specifically, in April of last year, I started the Johnny B. Truant biz. The business model basically consisted of trying to write funny blog posts and generally just hanging out online, and then parlaying that good will into its logical succession, which is, of course, technology services.

I worked very hard, but it didn’t feel like work — especially compared to what I had been doing on the niche sites. It felt like being an amiable jackass in the right places, and meeting people, and kind of screwing around. Eventually it also started to feel like building a business, but that happened slowly and by degrees.

Nine months passed, with both venues making me money in their own unique way.

At the end of 2009, I recorded my second five-figure month in the JBT technology biz, after building between eighty and a hundred blogs for clients in December.

And at around the same time, I got my first ever AdSense check from Google. It was for $111.

The best way to “make money online” is probably not what you think.

Spend a few minutes Googling around for ways to make money online. Go ahead; I’ll wait.

If you didn’t do that search just now, it’s probably because you’ve tried it before and already knew what you would find. Almost every site, course, and guru out there will tell you that to make money online, you should sign up for AdSense (or maybe for a large advertiser’s affiliate program), rustle up some long-tail keywords, and start gaming Google traffic.

I’m not going to tell you that doesn’t work . . . but I am going to tell you that it didn’t work for me, and that it’s unlikely to work for you if you’re even one iota like me.

Here’s why I don’t like the AdSense strategy as a business model:

1. It’s not a business model. Any time you can talk about “monetization,” you’re probably not talking about a real business because “monetizing” a business is redundant. “Monetizing” is slapping a moneymaker on top of something that doesn’t naturally produce income. The way that 99.99% of people dive into AdSense, they’re simply putting something out there and waiting for the dollars to roll in. There is no real planning, no accounting forecasts, no intention down the road to improve workflow or expand offerings or enlarge the sales funnel, no exploiting the best abilities of yourself and partners to create benefit for others.
2. It doesn’t add value. Technicalities aside, there is no real product or service in the way most AdSense “make money online” campaigns are run. There is simply arbitrage. You’re not increasing widget sales; you’re trying to make sure more of the existing sales will occur through your ads. I learned my lesson trying to play the stock market (and failing) and then investing in real estate (and failing at an epic level): Sustainable incomes come from using your talents to create value for others, not from gambling and playing the numbers.
3. It contradicts the way the Net is supposed to work. Yes, yes, I know . . . some people blog in a heartfelt manner about cabinetry and run cabinetry ads, and visitors click them to buy cabinets and the site owner makes money. But most AdSense strategies are all about gaming the system. When I was creating insurance niche sites, I couldn’t have cared less about insurance. I was simply trying to draw traffic away from the legit insurance sites so that people would click on my ads instead of finding an insurance company a different way. That’s not the way that the Web is supposed to work . . . which is to efficiently connect the searcher and what she’s searching for.
4. It’s anonymous. Few “make money online” strategies will tell you to blog under your own name, include your own picture, and make a big deal about being the guy or gal who created this site. In fact, I spent a lot of my time trying to obscure who I was. Many courses even tell you to use hosting that will generate random, non-sequential IP addresses for each site, so that even Google won’t know that one person owns them all. Anonymity conflicts directly with what I consider to be the most important reasons for my success, which are honesty, authenticity, trust-building, and transparency.

You can do better, no matter who you are

I worked really, really, really hard on those AdSense sites. I worked 15-hour days; I wrote keyword-laced post after keyword-laced post; I entered them in article directories and put them through social media bulk submitters; I launched site after site, tweaked, customized, and researched.

And by doing that, I made $111 in a year.

Maybe I didn’t work hard enough. Maybe I used the wrong system. Maybe, if someone else had done it, they might have done it twice as well. And maybe that same person would have done it for three times as long as I did, building sites for the whole year instead of only doing it for four months.

So yeah, maybe that super-ambitious person might have made $888.

Now, stop and think about that for a second.

Anyone who doesn’t believe that they could start a business today, being themselves, playing to their own strengths, and creating value for others, and not make more than $888 in a year should . . . well, those people should really just stop reading about business right now.

Am I saying that you can’t use AdSense to make money online? No. Am I saying that every “system” for striking it rich on the Net — like creating anonymous niche sites that use AdWords ads to draw traffic to affiliate products — is an impossible scam? No.

I’m just saying that the average person is probably going to have better luck building a real business. Meaning:

• One that you can stand behind publicly.
• One that’s based on helping others in exchange for pay.
• One that benefits from being a real, authentic person.
• One that matches your best abilities to the needs of others.

This Third Tribe thing? This new internet era of being real and honest and open in business and marketing rather than relying on tricks, games, yellow-highlighted text, and the hard sell? It’s real, folks. And at least for me, using that approach turned my Google earnings into an afterthought.

If the “Third Tribe” style of doing business appeals to you, subscribe to the free Copyblogger newsletter, Internet Marketing for Smart People. We’re within a few days of announcing a brand-new tribe for online entrepreneurs. And our newsletter subscribers will be the very first to learn about it.

About the Author: Johnny B. Truant is an amiable jackass who may or may not have invented Post-It Notes. You can hire him to tell you how to do better than AdSense, or, failing that, you should at least follow him on Twitter because sometimes he tweets about zombies.

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Read the rest here:
How to Do 500 Times Better than AdSense

LIMITED To 500 Students

ShoeMoney System is now live but it’s limited to only 500 students. Shoe is personally committed to the success of each and everyone who signs up. His name and reputation depends on it. To make sure shoe can take the time to work with you, he’s limiting this launch to the first 500 seats. Doors close after the first 500 students.

Inside ShoeMoney System

• More than 100 hours of premium full-length step-by-step training videos, showing you my screen, holding nothing back.
• New video released every 3 days. Progress tracker and video library built-in to the member’s back-office.
• In-depth Interviews with the people at Google, Facebook, SponsoredTweets and all major affiliate networks, where they share their tips for success
• ShoeMoney Tools and third-party tools, all hand-picked by me, to help you grow your online empire.
• Niche Ideas, Top converting Keywords, Banners and ads I’ve used over the years.
• Podcasts and mp3 files of every single talk, presentation and interview I ever gave.

$2,500 in FREE Advertising Money

To kick start your Internet Marketing campaigns, Shoe has secured exclusive deals with Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, SponsoredTweets, Azoogle and a few others, where every single student of the ShoeMoney System, will be awarded a total of $2,500 in advertising coupons!

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Go here to read the rest: 
ShoeMoney System Is Live – Go Sign Up

In its very earliest of days, SEO by the Sea began as an idea to have a gathering of people interested in internet marketing and search engine optimization away from the big cities, the expensive hotels, costly conferences, and crowded conference centers.

The idea of returning to those roots is something I’ve been considering [...]

More:
Virginia SEO and Internet Marketing Meetup for Small Business

If you’ve got something to sell, at some point you’re going to need to present an offer.

In other words, you’ll need to tell your prospective customer what you’ve got, what it’s going to do for them, and what you’re looking for in return.

Sounds simple, and it is. There’s just one problem.

Too often, we get caught up in how much our prospect should want what we’re feeding them. And then we get surprised when they respond like a toddler faced with a bowl full of broccoli ice cream.

When my little boy was a baby, I got a very good piece of advice about feeding kids.

As a parent, it’s your job to put something on the table that’s reasonably nutritious, that tastes good, and that’s appropriate to the context. (Your so-spicy-it-could-strip-paint vindaloo may be the best on the planet, but it might not be realistic to expect your two-year-old to go for it.)

It’s the kid’s job to eat it or not to eat it. They’re in charge of getting a forkful of the stuff in their mouth, chewing, and swallowing.

When you get your job and their job confused, you create a lot of problems.

How to make an appealing offer to your customers

When you’re asking for a sale from a potential customer, you’re working with the same equation.

It’s your job to create an attractive offer. It’s the prospect’s job to say yes or no.

Ever notice the language customers use when they’re feeling pressured to buy? They’ll often mention not wanting an offer “crammed down their throat.”

Sure, you could always try to sell people something they don’t want. But a) it will work miserably or not at all, b) you’ll get the results “barfed up” in the form of complaints and returns, and c) it’s a lot easier for prospects to run away than it is for toddlers.

Make it nutritious

The best offers are nutritious — in other words, beneficial to the customer.

Yes, you can definitely (maybe even easily) sell a product that doesn’t actually do the prospect much good. But you’ll get the most recurring business (and satisfaction) out of selling good stuff, not junk food.

When your customers are truly better off for buying what you offer, they’re a million times more likely to spread the word about how great you are. It’s hard to build a solid business on products that are all seductive promise but don’t really deliver anything of value.

Make it taste good

On the other hand, you try feeding my kid broccoli.

I think it’s fantastic stuff. I eat it every week. My kid considers it the culinary equivalent of waterboarding.

To me, broccoli is delicious. To my kid, it’s not. Different markets want different things.

It’s much easier to sell something people want than it is to sell something they need. We’re grudgingly pushed toward certain behaviors by our needs, but we’re pulled wildly by our wants.

Basically, you have two options. One, you can find a customer who adores broccoli. They’re certainly out there.

Two, you’ll sell something like a smoothie. It has the vitamins, minerals, and fiber of the broccoli, but it tastes more like a milkshake.

When you’re selling it, bring up the delicious taste first, and close the deal by making them feel good about all the logical health benefits.

Offer what they want, when they want it

Strawberries taste good in summer. Hot chocolate tastes good in winter.

Make sure your offer lines up with what your prospect is looking for today, not tomorrow or yesterday. You’ll make selling much, much easier.

My kid thinks popsicles are nirvana, but even he won’t eat them when he’s playing outside in the middle of January.

Make sure it’s fresh

Even the tastiest dinner doesn’t look all that good after a couple of hours go by.

That means you’ve got to set a time when dinner gets pulled off the table. If you keep your offers fresh by limiting them in time (or by setting a limit on how many you’ll sell), you make them infinitely more attractive.

“Buy the blue widget for $47” may be a tasty, nutritious, and well-timed offer. “Buy the blue widget for $47 if you order by midnight this Friday” has all the same qualities, but it also keeps the offer fresh and interesting.

New and fresh is always more appealing than stale and boring.

Keep your roles straight

Remember, it’s your job to cook up fresh, tasty, nutritious offers and get them on the table. Obviously, you’ll use all the copywriting techniques at your disposal to make them as appealing as possible.

(You can consider a resource like Copyblogger as a cookbook that lets you make your offers as delicious as possible.)

Then, you observe. Did the market bite or not? If not, the two most likely culprits are that the timing was off (popsicles in January) or that the offer just didn’t look tasty (broccoli ice cream).

Try adding a spoonful of sugar, in the form of more value or an additional bonus for the same money. Make sure you’re not talking too much about all of the “good for you” aspects, and that you’re instead emphasizing the yummy factor first and foremost.

Either way, it’s not a rejection of you as a human being or a death sentence for your business. It’s just a dinner that didn’t turn out particularly well. Do a little work to figure out where your recipe went wrong, and try again tomorrow.

With practice and observation, you’ll be cooking up consistently delicious offers in no time.

Want learn more about putting together killer offers, and presenting them in the most compelling fashion? Subscribe to Internet Marketing for Smart People, the Copyblogger email newsletter. It’s some of our best stuff, no junk, no fluff, and no charge. Hey, that’s a great offer!

About the Author: Sonia Simone is Senior Editor of Copyblogger and the founder of Remarkable Communication.

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Does Your Customer Want What You’ve Got to Offer?

Happy Friday, everyone! Virginia is on vacation today so yours truly will be doing the Friday recap instead. This means a vastly geekier recap and at least one reminder that the best show on television returns next Wednesday on TNT. (That was the reference. I’ll behave from now on.)

Instead of making this whole thing a love letter to Leverage, I’ll start with some SEO Love Letters.

I can understand where the fine folks over at Prospect MX are coming from. It’s really comments like these that make having a blog worthwhile. Here at BC HQ, we like to print them out and put them on a special board we have reserved for just this kind of deeply heartfelt commenting.

Also giving us warm fuzzies (real ones this time, not tongue-in-cheek ones) is being included among the SEO Geek’s Top Posts of 2009. I’ve been really impressed with the work that Virginia has done over the last year and it’s good to see that other people recognize her awesome.

Being as it’s the start of a new year, there are a lot of Best of 2009 posts flying around, like the Facebook Top Trends of 2009 from Brian Solis and a look back at A Decade of 21st Century SEO with Jill Whalen.

Also a must-read, Tamar Weinberg’s Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2009. Tamar’s post was a present to all of us on her birthday, a tradition well worth upholding.

[11:09:17 AM] BCI-Paula Allen: Top-selling artists for 2009

Everything is going virtual in 2010. Whether it’s digital downloads propelling artists to the top of the charts, e-books selling like hotcakes or entire movies being fabricated out of nothing more than pixels (no, not that movie. This one.), it’s clear that actually producing something you can hold in your hand is totally last decade.

Not that virtual reality can replace actual reality in every case. There’s no substitute for the networking and knowledge transfer you get from conferences for example. Happily, we’re heading into conference season with SES London in February. Here in the states, March will see Virginia going to SMX West and I’ll be heading out to see Avinash Kaushik keynote SES New York. You can get a taste of New York thanks to a webcast with Avinash to be moderated by Mike Grehan. That’s taking place Tuesday, January 12 at 1 pm Eastern.

Photo by mi55er / CC BY 2.0

Next week is going to be a busy week for us. Not only is Leverage premiering (I totally lied about being good) but we’ve got an SEO Newsletter coming up on January 15. We’ll be continuing our SEO Hierarchy series with an article on Linking. And of course, the first newsletter of the year means that we’ll have Bruce Clay’s 2010 Year in Preview. You can sign up for the newsletter over in the sidebar.

The most exciting thing that’s going to happen next week though is that my brother and sister-in-law will be having a baby! I’ll be sure to get good pictures for the blog and Twitter.

SEO babies are the cutest babies of all. It’s a proven fact.

I don’t have a good segue for this so, quick, look over there, the Universe!

[1/6/2010 2:57:53 PM] BCI-Susan Esparza: Crazy awesome http://gawker.com/5441491/look-its-the-universe

I can’t look at pictures of the universe without thinking of this song from the Animaniacs. Let’s go back to last century for a minute, okay, when there were still 9 planets.

Sigh. The good old days. You know, it’s pilot season in Hollywood, so in honor of all those series that won’t make it past their first sweeps week, let’s take a look at some failed pilots from days gone by. You have to wonder what those pitches sounded like when they were greenlit. Apparently, people have been screwing up the pitching process for a heck of a long time. [Hat tip to @bergopolis (who also writes for Leverage!)]

Finally, I want to wrap up with my favorite Lisa post of the week. I think every industry can relate to this post a little bit. Lisa draws a very clear line about what you should and should not ask a when trying to hire a copywriter. I love this post to bits and not just because Lisa was thinking of me when she posted it.

That’s all, folks! Have a great weekend.

Friday Recap – Geek Love Edition was originally published on BruceClay.com, an SEO services company.

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Friday Recap – Geek Love Edition