Issue #2513
- WEALTHY: Not every marketing effort needs to make money (Michael Masterson & MaryEllen Tribby)
- HEALTHY: A sugar that’s good for you (Kelley Herring)
- WISE: Harriet Beecher Stowe on regret
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
- 13 important actions you can take right now to avoid a future of regrets (Charlie Byrne)
- Every time your customer returns a product… (Suzanne Richardson)
- It’s Fun to Know… about Bolivia’s “Road of Death”
- Add “redivivus” to your vocabulary
== Highly Recommended ==
What If You Could…
- Pay off the Visa and MasterCard credit card bills and wipe out your mortgage early? Check!
- Stop worrying about Wall Street, Uncle Sam and Social Security going broke? Check!
- Have the opportunity to help the less fortunate… maybe snag those occasional nice sports or theatre tickets… line up great schools for the kids or grandchildren? Check, Check and Check!
Can you imagine having all this… while at the same time enjoying “work” more than ever before???
Get your blueprint for a turnkey profit stream right here.
Show Me the Money
By Michael Masterson and MaryEllen Tribby
Radio, TV, banner ads, pay-per-click (PPC), magazine ads, billboards… There are dozens if not hundreds of marketing channels you can use to get your sales message across. We don’t expect you to use all of them all of the time – but you should know what your options are. Test different channels and different channel combinations, and roll out with what is most effective for you and your organization.
Do not, however, make the mistake of thinking that if a specific channel does not meet the return on investment (ROI) goal for your overall multi-channel marketing campaign it should be disregarded.
Take a look at the chart below:
In this example, you are selling your product for $100. You had $85,000 to spend and your goal was to make $1.25 for every dollar you spent, or a return on investment of 125 percent.
You had tremendous success with your online efforts (endorsed e-mails, banner ads, and PPC campaigns).
On your teleconference, your marketing efforts yielded a 90 percent ROI and lost $500.
And on your direct-mail campaign, you produced only an 80 percent ROI, losing a whopping $10,000.
Since two of your five channels lost a total of $10,500, are you going to cut them from your multi-channel campaign? Of course not. Those two channels brought in nearly 42 percent of your new customers. Customers you now have the opportunity to bond with and sell more products to. It has been our experience that customers who come in as a result of direct-mail efforts have a higher lifetime value. This means that the 400 new customers from your direct-mail campaign will most likely become your best customers. On top of all this, you’ve met your goal of 125 percent ROI on your overall campaign.
The idea is to subsidize some channels with the channels that have greater ROIs to produce incremental orders that can bring in additional revenues.
[Ed. Note: The above article was adapted from Changing the Channel: 12 Easy Ways to Make Millions for Your Business, the brand-new best-seller by MaryEllen Tribby and Michael Masterson. This book combines 60+ years of marketing and business-building experience from two marketing superstars - and you can apply each and every strategy to the business you own or the company you work for. Buy your copy here.]
“The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe
When “Tomorrow” Is One Day Too Late
“It’s funny,” I commented to Peggy. “We have a security system for the Maine summer cabin, but nothing here in Florida where we LIVE.”
“Yeah, you’re right. We should really do something about that.”
“Yeah, we really should.”
That was three months ago.
Now flash-forward to a few weeks ago. I was checking into a Baltimore hotel for an important business conference when my cellphone lit up. It was Peggy. Odd, I thought. She knows I’m busy right now.
“Charlie…” My wife was in tears. “Charlie, we’ve been robbed.”
“I’ll be on the next flight home,” I said.
Since then, we’ve both wasted days and days recovering from the theft. Police reports. Insurance reports. Searching for old receipts. House and car locks and keys changed. Alerts on bank and credit accounts. Buying replacement electronics.
Insurance will cover the physical losses, but the emotional and productivity losses can never be reclaimed.
Some things seem important enough to act on only after it’s too late to do so.
“I really should do that some time soon” turns into “I really wish I’d taken care of that when I had the chance.”
I don’t want you to make the same mistake I made and end up with BIG regrets for failing to take SIMPLE actions. I want you and every Early to Riser to take a few steps that could make a major positive difference in your future. And I want you to do it today.
For Your Personal Life
- Do you have a lawyer? A will? A living will? What would happen if you got hit by a truck at lunch today?
Maybe you consider yourself too young to be worried about such things. Maybe you don’t have much money (certainly not anything that you’d consider an “estate”). Doesn’t matter. Just because you’re not a millionaire is no reason to think you don’t need to have a serious sit-down with a capable attorney. Find a good lawyer and set up a meeting to discuss these important issues.
Sure, you can draw up the basic documents online for 50 bucks. But I think it’s worth spending a couple of hundred dollars – maybe even a thousand – to get good advice and professionally prepared documents at least one time in your life. Your spouse, children, or next-of-kin may thank you for it one day. And the peace of mind you’ll have knowing that your “papers are in order” is something that’s hard to overestimate.
- Have your life insurance and disability insurance kept up with your lifestyle?
One of the keys to building wealth is to NOT increase spending while you ARE increasing your income.
But that doesn’t stop many people from acquiring more expensive homes, cars, and other toys as they start earning more money. If that’s what you’ve been doing, think about it: If you were seriously injured (or worse) tomorrow, would you be leaving your family with a financial nightmare to clean up? You really have two options. Start downsizing to the level where you really belong… or make sure you’re adequately covered in the event of disaster. Do one, do the other, just don’t do nothing.
- When did you last back up your computer files?
So many of us now have a huge part of our “lives” stored on a fragile magnetic strip spinning around at 7,200 RPM. Important documents. Financial records. Treasured photos. Key contact information. Future travel plans and receipts. And it all can be gone in an instant and with no warning.
If your computer fatally crashed a minute from now, how many hours/days/weeks would it take you to recover? Some information could be gone forever. The alternative is to spend a few minutes now – and on a regularly scheduled basis going forward – copying your information to a DVD and storing it in a separate safe place.
- Do you have key papers (or copies) in a safe-deposit box?
Should you ever have a serious house fire, you’re going to be faced with a world of problems. (It happened years ago to Peggy, and it still haunts her). Finding your insurance papers, your mortgage, and your birth certificate – so you can start rebuilding your identity and your life – shouldn’t be among those problems. Renting a safe-deposit box could be the best $35 a year you’ll ever spend.
- When was the last time you got your car checked out? What about your furnace and plumbing?
Waiting until stuff falls apart or breaks down is for losers. Take your car in for service on a regular basis. Get the tires rotated, belts checked, fluids refilled. Join AAA. (With all the electronics and computers under the hood of a car these days, you’re not going to be able to fix anything yourself on the side of the road.) Have your oil burner serviced well before winter, and your A/C serviced well before summer. You get the idea. But get these things scheduled on your calendar now.
For Your Social Life
- Write a personal card or letter to an old friend to say something that you’ve been thinking about for years.
Maybe you made a mistake that’s been haunting you. Or you never got around to that “thank you.” So you have a choice. A lifetime of nagging regret (if it’s lasted this long, it ain’t going away) – or taking a moment now to deal with it.
Quick story. When I was 16, my neighborhood pal Chris woke up to discover his father had died. It was on a Friday morning. Over the weekend, I watched through my window as their family gathered and mourned. I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything. My parents and I had planned to go to the wake on Sunday afternoon, but didn’t (for reasons I can’t recall). As the weeks passed, I started running into Chris again, but still said nothing. Years passed and we went our separate ways. But it always bothered me.
Last year, I reconnected with Chris over the Internet. We chatted for a few months. Finally, I wrote to tell him how sorry I was that I’d never said anything about his father’s death. “Don’t feel bad,” he said. “I was the one who went into hiding. I was the one who never talked about it. I don’t remember anything about you not ‘being there’ for me.”
So I’d suffered years of guilt for no reason, when a few kind words at the right time, or a quick note even a month or a year later, could have avoided it.
For Your Health
- Make appointments for complete examinations with your doctor and dentist. That includes getting a full blood workup.
Sure, a preventative trip to the doctor or dentist can seem like something of a time (and money) waster. But what you don’t know CAN hurt you. Putting off making these appointments is just plain dumb, and an invitation to something much worse than “a little discomfort” down the road.
- Throw out all your junk food right now.
Go into your kitchen and dump out the candy, the carbs, the tempting junk you know you should NOT be eating. Put it all in the trash. Enjoy the “bad” stuff a few times a year (pumpkin pie, eggnog) – but otherwise, out of sight, out of mind.
- If you’re not already working out, start a fitness regimen today. As Craig Ballantyne has pointed out in these pages, even doing ONE small thing more than you do right now can help you become healthier. Search the ETR archives and you’ll find plenty of additional great advice on starting an exercise program.
- Better yet, ETR’s “sister” publication, Total Health Breakthroughs, gives out some of the most powerful, useful, and actionable health-improvement ideas available anywhere. The newsletter is published twice a week, and it’s free. If you don’t already get it, sign up here – it takes about 30 seconds.
For Your Wealth
- With the stock market in the tank, IRAs and 401(k)s in trouble, employers laying off hundreds of thousands, and the government going broke, who can you rely on these days?
Yourself. That’s right – you and only you.
But there is good news. It’s NEVER made more sense to (at the very least) LOOK INTO starting your own online business. In fact, it’s almost insane NOT to do it. Getting started online is ultra cheap. You don’t need to rent a store, hire staff, manufacture products, or deal with 99 percent of the reasons you probably think you can’t do it (because it’s too complicated/expensive/time-consuming/etc.).
I spent Sunday through Wednesday of this week with about 200 Early to Risers who now know that “starting a business is impossible” is no longer the case. At our Bootcamp, they told me they are taking personal control of their lives because they know that being passive at this time in history is pretty much like saying “Okay, so the country is going broke and my future is up in the air. But I’m just going to sit here and hope for the best.”
Get going now. Search ETR’s archives for tons of idea on starting an Internet business. Better yet, get the best and latest ideas hand-delivered to your living room with our Bootcamp DVD set, on sale for the next 2 days only.
Listen, I don’t want to brag or boast. But when I walked out of Bootcamp on Wednesday afternoon, I had a tough time leaving the hotel because so many of the attendees were stopping me to thank me, over and over. More than one mentioned specific sessions that they said “will change my life.” Check out the Bootcamp DVD set and I think you will have the same experience.
- And finally, to help manage and grow your existing portfolio, check into another one of our “sister” publications, Investor’s Daily Edge. You’ll find some of the best advice on making it through these rough times from the nation’s leading investment advisors. IDE is worth a fortune, but you can get it at no charge right here.
So there you have it. A baker’s dozen of actions you can take right now to avoid a future of regrets.
One final thing…
Don’t close this page and save it for “later.”
Print it out right now. Start checking off each item right now. Set a deadline for yourself – a week… a few days… better yet, today – by which time you’ll have taken at least a first step on each one.
And keep in mind the words of author Og Mandino…
“I will act now. I will act now. I will act now. Henceforth, I will repeat these words each hour, each day, every day, until the words become as much a habit as my breathing, and the action which follows becomes as instinctive as the blinking of my eyelids. With these words I can condition my mind to perform every action necessary for my success. I will act now. I will repeat these words again and again and again. I will walk where failures fear to walk. I will work when failures seek rest. I will act now for now is all I have. Tomorrow is the day reserved for the labor of the lazy. I am not lazy. Tomorrow is the day when the failure will succeed. I am not a failure. I will act now. Success will not wait. If I delay, success will become wed to another and lost to me forever. This is the time. This is the place. I am the person.”
And oh yes, one more thing I almost forgot.
Get a home security system! And do it now!
[Ed. Note: Take a positive step toward building your wealth today. Sign up for ETR's 2008 Info-Marketing Bootcamp DVD Library, and you'll get over $1 million worth of concrete, actionable advice that can help you get an online business up and running. Don't delay - the price goes up $200 after tomorrow.]
You Can Keep Your Current Job While You Quickly Transition Into Your New Business
How in the world do these money-making programs expect you to work tons of hours building up a new business while holding down your current job? Many just aren’t practical. But I’ve found a new program that is loaded with methods to get you into a new business while you are working at another job.
You can put in as little as 2 to 3 hours a week in your new business, and still bring in nice profits fairly quickly – often in just a week or two. And once your business is bringing in enough income, you can quit your current job and focus full-time on your new business. You get to choose which business to get into (there are 20 to choose from), there’s no limit on what you can make, and it is easier than ever to get started.
There is, however, a limit on how many people I am sharing this with. You’ll learn why when checking out all the exciting details here.
A Gift for a Bad Customer
“Here you go – 20 percent off anything in the store,” the saleswoman said. She handed me a slip of paper with the discount printed on it.
Getting coupons is nothing new. Most of the retailers I patronize hand them out when you make a purchase. It’s a nice “reward” for being a good customer. What I’m not accustomed to is getting a coupon for being a bad customer – which is what had just happened.
You see, I hadn’t made a purchase. I had just returned a jacket for a full refund. That’s the opposite of what a retailer wants its customers to do!
To make things more interesting, the 20 percent off coupon came with a catch: It was only good for the next two hours.
This retailer was making the best of a bad situation. Here was a customer who had actually pulled the trigger and made a purchase. A customer who was willing to spend money… but, for whatever reason, was not satisfied with something she’d bought.
So instead of just handing over a refund, the store’s marketing team had come up with a way to recoup the loss: Give that customer an incentive to buy again. And put a time limit on the incentive, so she has to buy right away. (This deadline-driven approach is a powerful direct-response technique known as “scarcity” which creates a sense of urgency. This is also a form of a “fast-response bonus” that you often see in promotions which offer a special premium based on time limit.)
This idea is easy for an Internet marketer to emulate. Every time a customer returns a product, consider offering him a similar product – something he may like better. You don’t have to give a discount – although that would certainly sweeten the deal. But if you do, put a deadline on it so it encourages the customer to respond to your new offer quickly.
One caveat: You need to do this the right way, or not at all. I’ve written before about how frustrating it can be when a sales person is focused only on selling and not on your problem. What made this sales technique so pleasant was that the sales person waited until after she’d fully solved my “problem” – needing to return the jacket. If you try this tactic, make sure it’s only after you’ve fulfilled your customers’ needs.
[Ed. Note: The more opportunities you give your customers to buy, the more likely they are to spend money with you. Discover 12 profit-accelerating marketing strategies in Michael Masterson and MaryEllen Tribby's Amazon.com best-seller, Changing the Channel: 12 Easy Ways to Make Millions for Your Business.]
Fatigued? Eat Sugar
You already know that sugar is enemy number one when it comes to your health. But just as there is a trans-fat that’s good for you (conjugated linoleic acid), there is a healthy sugar: ribose.
This amazing supplement is used by many to help improve recovery time after exercise. Now new research shows that it also helps alleviate the symptoms of both chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and fibromyalgia (FMS).
In a recent study published in Arthritis Research Therapy, 41 participants with CFS or FMS took 15 grams of d-ribose daily (three doses at 5 g/dose). After 18 days, 66 percent reported significantly better energy, mental clarity, sleep, and overall well-being, as well as less pain.
Ribose dissolves easily in water, and adds a bit of sweetness. (I take mine in green tea.) But remember, it is still a sugar. So make an extra effort to stick to your low-glycemic diet if you begin taking this energy-boosting, fatigue-slaying supplement.
[Ed. Note: As nutrition expert Kelley Herring points out, you can find plenty of all-natural methods for staying healthy. Now, you can access the latest breakthroughs in weight-loss programs... healthful recipes... and other ideas for achieving optimal health - all from one of the largest integrative-medicine practices in the country. Learn more here.
Survive the holidays with Kelley's brand-new recipe e-books, Guilt-Free Desserts and Healthy Holiday Hors d'Oeuvres. You'll find 60+ healthy recipes you can easily make at home.]
It’s Fun to Know: Bolivia’s “Road of Death”
Your seatbelt isn’t going to do much for you if you get into an accident on Bolivia’s Nor Yungas Road. Known to locals as the “Road of Death,” it’s steep, prone to landslides, and unpaved. Plus, it has thousand-foot drops, few guardrails, and is only about 10 feet wide. Not only that, the weather in the area is often foggy and/or rainy. Hundreds have died since the road was built in the 1930s, many by careening off a ledge in their vehicles.
Fatal accidents have decreased since 2006, when an alternate (and much safer) road opened and siphoned off most of the traffic. These days, folks on the Road of Death are usually traveling to small villages that are inaccessible any other way. But they are joined by tourists searching for a thrill and cyclists eager for a death-defying downhill ride. And the dangers of the road remain. Several bikers die there each year.
(Source: National Geographic)
== Highly Recommended ==
An Almost Magical Switch That Could Put All Your Dreams Within Reach
We’re all born with two things: The same 24 hours in the day. And the same opportunity to make our dreams come true.
I firmly believe that each and every person on this planet has a “success switch” somewhere deep inside them.
And all you have to do to accomplish your longest-held dreams is to flip that success switch to the “on” position.
Word to the Wise: Redivivus
“Redivivus” (red-uh-VIE-vus) – from the Latin for “again” + “alive” – means brought back to life, revived or restored.
Example (as used by John Simon in a National Review article about the movie Michael Collins): “As for [Liam] Neeson – of the nose-heavy, asymmetrical countenance and shrewdly darting, soul-searching eyes, he is a lopsided Gary Cooper redivivus – hardly something to sneeze at.”
[Ed. Note: Become a more persuasive writer and speaker ... build your self-confidence and intellect ... increase your attractiveness to others ... just by spending 10 VERY enjoyable minutes a day with ETR's new Words to the Wise CD Library.]
Copyright ETR, LLC, 2008
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