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As you know I've moved all these posts to my Business Growth blog which is where I'm posting new content.
The latest is a review of Six Disciplines Of Excellence, a book aimed at helping SMEs grow.
So go check it out and I'd love it if you'd leave any comments.
By the way currently the site is best viewed using Firefox as Internet Explorer seems to not display the blog theme as nicely.
It was great, while it lasted. I ca truly say Blogger helped me understand and appreciate blogging.
Anyway, at last I've moved...
I've had a very extended period of trying to write a few postings while I got the Wordpress implementation of the new blog sorted out.
Now if you wait...
You'll see this blog automatically transform into the shiny new Wordpress one. It's still not completely finished as there's a fair bit of housekeeping to complete on the new blog.
Wordpress allows more flexible publishing so hopefully you won't get 2 or 3 posts a day. Although if I get over-enthusiastic please bear with me - normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.
My Alexa ranking and page rank has plummetted dramatically, although when I started this I was sure I could keep my page rank!
Still the content remains as good as ever, or at least I hope you think so.
I've had a private members blog for a while too and I may open that up to allow a few more people to join after I've converted it to Wordpress too - let me know if you're interested - email me at secretblog at acornservice dot com.
The new Wordpress version of this blog is located at http://www.business-powerpack.com and it's called "Business Growth And Internet Marketing."
Check it out and leave a comment about it, it'll be most appreciated.
See you there
People have asked me why I keep the blogging to the bank banner going on this blog.
The simple answer is because at the moment it's the one thing that will pretty much definitely help people do better at blogging and at making money from their blog.
Does the book guarantee untold riches?
Not quite. In fact although it has a pretty good set of solid steps you can easily take to get blogging and making money it misses out one thing.
That one thing is the massive emphasis you need to place on choosing the right niche.
You can get a set of keywords that have 5,000 searches per month and you can have keywords that have 5,000,000 per month.
The 5,000 search niche might be ok to choose if everyone buys compared to, say, 1 in 100,000 buying from the 5,000,000 search.
However, all things being equal...
The money you make depends on the traffic you're exposed to. Which in turn is linked to the size of the niche you have.
So it's essential you choose the right niche.
It had to happen.
If you know anything about Internet Marketing you know there are always seminars running that pluck one person from the audience and teach them step by step how to make money from the Internet. And of course they do make money!
It's argued that television watching by the younger age groups is dropping as their attention is switched to the Internet.
The next logical step in teaching people how to use the Internet to make money in a seminar is to have an Apprentice-like competition, not on TV, but on the Internet.
So New York Times Best Selling author Joel Comm (The Adsense Code) is hosting an Internet-based reality show called "The Next Internet Millionaire."
Intriguing title.
And of course there are 12 contestants. They are:
Plus, there's a veritable who's who of Internet Marketers who are mentioned in the trailer credits:
Although noticeable by their absence were Alex Mandossian, Dan Kennedy, Michel Fortin, John Reese, Ken McArthur and the ubiquitous Joe Vitale.
According to "The Next Internet Millionaire" web site the whole thing kicks off on 15th August 2007.
And I'll be there to watch and comment on it...
...Only please let it be better than Tycoon!
I've said this time after time.
Yet it bears repeating because so few businesses actually do it.
You need to know the marketing cogs, or "the whys", that power your marketing machine.
The answers you give to those 4 simple questions tell your prospects whether it's worth their while continuing a dialogue with you.
Does Blogging Answer The 4 "Whys?"
I'm busy, yet I make time to write my blogs.
Why?
Look at the "4 Whys" again:
A blog is one way of allowing you to decide whether you want to talk further with me. You will learn about different business growth techniques and strategies in the blog. Strategies and tactics that can power your business forward, faster, more profitably. Implementing them makes you more money!
This blog provides an inexpensive way to get good business growth advice. You can test all the relevant advice in your own business. When you find it works you've answered the second question yourself.
As Yoda in Star Wars says to Luke, "Do or do not... there is no try." Which means you can either do what the blog suggests or not do it. If you do it you find out whether the advice is useful. If you don't you're doomed to simply read stuff off the Internet to while away your work day. At which point I'd suggest you stop reading this blog because I'd rather speak to people who take action.
Of course you've heard the phrase "strike while the iron is hot." The reason is that as iron cools down it loses its ability to be shaped. Similarly if you don't take action from the advice on this blog, and others, or more directly through my coaching you'll miss the opportunities that I guarantee you have in your business right now that are staring you in the face that you may be dimly aware of and yet could make you more cash that you're making now.
So think hard. Why this blog? If you've found the advice I give valuable let me know. Equally if you've found the advice really stinks let me know.
And finally, the bottom line behind this post is that you need to get your marketing message sorted out. Just doing that puts you ahead of so many other businesses and gives your prospects something they can understand about what they get from you.
The latest business thinking is a phrase that marketers like to use when they're offering something that they want to appeal to people who must have the latest.
You probably know someone like that...
They must have the latest gizmo, drive the latest car, seen the latest film or used the most recent business school buzz phrase.
And of course the latest business thinking is a phrase that springs readily to an Internet Marketer's pen.
Particularly when talking about search engine optimization (SEO). Because SEO is a subject that gets talked about whenever a small band of people with web sites gets together.
And yet they all agree content is king!
So how can they agree on that I wonder? "Content is King" and yet we still need Search Engine Optimization, surely that's not necessary?
Well of course SEO is necessary but it needs to be integrated with the content. So trying to "do" SEO on a web site or blog without paying attention to how you write copy is a complete waste of time.
There is so much that you can do to help yourself with SEO:
Above all, write great content, publicize your site and the hits will come.
Then Bob's your uncle and I'm the coolest guy on the planet still!
This story has been bubbling under for the last few days as Sir Alan Sugar and Sky agree details for Sky to buy Amstrad.
They've finally sealed the knot as reported in The Guardian.
Of course as an Amstrad shareholder I'm over the moon with the shares racking up a nice healthy premium.
And the good news for us Apprentice fans is that Sir Alan will stay in that role with Margaret and Nick as his faithful sidekicks.
Amstrad now becomes a division of Sky, still run by Sir Alan Sugar.
My immediate thought was that someone like Sir Alan may not take kindly to being told what to do. Because as an entrepreneur he's been used to having the buck stop with him.
Of course in reality, as he himself has said, his customers are the people who tell him what to do. So he is used to having a boss of sorts.
This purchase is definitely a "good" thing for Amstrad. The research resources and leading edge developers will help Amstrad get stuff to market for Sky more quickly.
I'm starting another blog about health and fitness and so I've been scouring the Internet so I can review useful programs.
Don't worry the Power Packed Business Growth Blog is still in the process of being upgraded, or should I say converted to Wordpress. And I may well not use my current web domain, for a number of Search Engine Optimisation reasons.
Anyway, I just had to share this with you:
In the constant fight for fitness a lot of people in the western world need to lose weight. Only problem with that of course is that you can easily get into the yo-yo diet vicious cycle.
Now, I don't normally do this...
I'm going to recommend you pay a visit to this site where they tell you how to melt the fat without losing the muscle.
Sign up for their ‘Big Fat Lies’ mini course. This course gives you the 12 most blatant, self-serving lies about weight loss. The sign-up form is about half-way down the page. I've signed up as an affiliate but I just think the email course is worth getting itself.
Let me know what you think.
Ok...normal marketing and business growth continues as I wrestle with Wordpress and new domains for this blog.
I've just had an illuminating interview with David Speakman of Travel Counsellors. David originally set-up Travel Counsellors to do the administration for agents and allow the agents to do what they do best: organise holidays.
The company is now a multi-million pound one that's based in Bolton in the Northwest. David has handed over the UK operation to a management team and runs the Spanish operation in Spain.
I'm putting the full interview into the launch issue of Good Company but one nugget that really hit me and which I'd like to share with you is this:One of the doormen at David restaurants remarked,
"If You Don’t Let Them In You Don’t Have To Throw Them Out"
Obviously referring to the incoming customers. David took this comment to heart and realised that the same was true of taking on staff members. Why take on staff just because you have a vacancy? Instead it's better to have the management problem of too few staff compared to the management problem of how to get rid of a member of staff.
You may remember from last time that Peter Jones had selected all 4 of the remaining businesses to go forward to the grand finale.
The grand finale looked extremely impressive and again the introductory credits were very like "The Apprentice" in appearance.
And yet...
Tycoon completely failed to impress. Kate Thornton was the compere for the night and did a reasonable job. Almost all the finalists were dressed in their finery.
The finale set looked nice and big and glittery. Up for the prize was the over £200,000 of profits made by all the companies since Tycoon started.
Then we were treated to half an hour of clips we'd already seen and mini interviews with the people involved, including Peter Jones with amazing stripped socks.
I'd advised closing Justin and Lauren down last week and I had a question over whether Iain's Helicopter business was sustainable.
In the end Iain won. Which seemed only fair as he'd made over half of the £200,000 profits available as the prize.
I can now give a big unequivocal no!
It was like watching paint dry. Who wanted to hear more of what we'd already heard?
There was no drama. There was no reason that the watching public (if any watched) should change their minds about one person or another.
I've never sat through such an insipid production before.
Peter Jones needs to get his production company to come up with a much better format than this.
It was almost as if a group of mates had gone out to the pub after watching The Apprentice and said how great Dragon's Den was too. Then said, "wait a minute, think how amazing it would be if we combined the two!"
As you know I love business programmes. And my reasons for watching, which may be different to others are as follows:
So for me Tycoon failed to deliver any of my reasons for watching
As I've said before if Tycoon ever comes back I need to be convinced it's much, much better than this before I watch another second.
I've really enjoyed blogging with Blogger. But now I've hit a number of its limitations. One major one is a lack of good plugins to enhance the user experience.
Similarly I've decided not to transfer all my posts to my Wordpress.org blog because of the limitations there.
So I've decided to enhance the blog for us both and the blog is moving to my own domain: www.acornservice.com where my current web site is and will be powered by Wordpress blog software.
If you've any Wordpress templates you think that would particularly suit my blog style let me know. At the moment I'm thinking of going with the rather nice theme we're using for The Manchester Blog.
Anyway, I've been promising myself that I'll freshen my web site so I will see whether it's feasible to roll the blog transfer and freshen up into one project.
My only concern is that I don't lose YOU my dedicated reader in all this as the URL will be different and as I'm unlikely to post much for the next few days.
So to make sure you can still read these posts please subscribe by email at the top of this blog and you'll get the posts by email until you unsubscribe.
Or if you simply want me to let you know when the blog has been transferred send an email to me at transfer(AT) acornservice.(X) and replace (AT) with @ and (X) with com.
Then I'll email you twice (on 2 different days) to let you know the blog has been recreated. Then I'll delete your email from my system.
Either way spammers are unwelcome and your email addresses remain safe with me!
So sign up or send me an email and I'll see you on the other side on a refreshed Power Packed Business Growth Blog.
You may remember in the first episode of Tycoon I suggested Tom and Elizabeth should both go.
...and they have.
I have very mixed feelings about this Tycoon series.
On the one hand it should be interesting to see apprentice entrepreneurs (appreneurs) work in their new businesses and start to make money on the other hand at times you're not sure what on earth they're competing for.
Take yesterday night's episode where Peter was going to decide who should go into the final.
Which out of the 4 remaining businesses would get canned?
If you haven't seen the episode yet, I'll reveal the answer at the end with the title "So Who Went Through To The Tycoon Finale?"
Suffice to say I was baffled by the criteria that Peter was using to establish exactly which business should go through into the finale.
Justin almost got an order from Sainsbury's for 60,00 bags for life and he also managed to find a much cheaper supplier of the bags.
I'm sorry almost an order is no order.
And 60,000 compared to Tesco's 250,000? Didn't Justin point out the size of Tesco's order?
And are Sainsbury's really the only other supermarket to express an interest in bags for life.
The most strategic and vitally important supermarket of them all was completely ignored - ASDA. After all they're owned by WALMART - the biggest supermarket in the USA and chain you'd want to get into to sell such a bag!
Justin seemed to be sitting back on his laurels. As an entrepreneur he needs to continually thinking of new ways to get his bags into shops. Plus what about putting ads on the bags?
My Advice: Close Justin down.
Iain Morgan became a selling whirlwind and sold an incredible amount of helicopters.
Unfortunately, a good salesman does not mean he's a good businessman.
That said he had made the most money this week and it was around half the total that everyone else combined made.
My Advice: I'm undecided on Iain because you can see his business will saturate the UK market for toy executive helicopters. What does he do then?
Lauren continued to sell her hair extensions, despite her extension suppliers labeling the extensions Goosip instead of Gossip!
My Advice: Close Lauren down. I know extensions are currently fashionable my only concern is that a number of celebs appear to have stopped wearing them now. So it may be a declining market.
Helen and Cathy only made a small amount of money compared to everyone else but have won deals to get into large garden centres with their clothes ranges.
I think the connection with Dragon's Den will help them too.
My Advice: These two are the ones I would vote for to win. I think that once their excessive prices had been pared down a bit for garden centres they've every chance of selling lots of gardening clothes.
I really don't know.
If Helen and Cathy can show large orders, or even sales from the garden centres I think they've got it sewn up for the few viewers who've stuck with Tycoon.
The criteria Peter appears to be choosing the finalists are unclear. And I suspect the same will be true in the final.
My previous Tycoon posting reveals my thoughts on whether I'd watch another series of Tycoon. Suffice to say that at the moment I'm terribly underwhelmed.
After watching Peter invite Justin and Iain through because of their high sales figures and Lauren for her reasonable one it all looked curtains for Helen and Cathy.
Then Peter decided to let them all through.
So much for being on the edge of my seat with high drama!
I watched a Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmare I hadn't seen last night.
On first walking in the restaurant (Morgan's in Liverpool) looked very well presented and had an unhurried air.
It soon became clear that all was far from well. Obviously!
It was being run by 3 people. A form of company abuse I've across several times before and often (but strangely not always) with the same effects.
Those effects are usually that because decisions are shared they don't get made properly. And in this case the mother and two sisters involved seemed to be forever treading on each other toes. None of them seemed to have any real idea what they ought to be doing at any one time.
Equally the chef they'd chosen was not a stickler for good food and would let completely incinerated sausages out to the paying punter!
And yet they had a second chef who produced an excellent sticky pudding and wound up, of course, becoming the head chef for the restaurant.
Now the thing that really interested me about this programme was that everything was being done as though the business was about to fail:
And of course Gordon Ramsey sorted it all out - got the head chef to cook with more focus and to put out good food, allocated the right jobs to the right people and scrapped the (as usual) pretentious menus - I mean mashed potato and apricot? YUK!
And on Ramsey's return a month later the restaurant was continuing to make a profit.
The moral behind this story is for a business to work it needs a unified strategy that all agree to and can contribute to. Anyone who can't needs to go.
After the first episode of Tycoon I pointed out that Tom should be sacked and Elizabeth given enough rope to hang herself.
Although I started watching the second episode I lost the will to live part way through and didn't watch the rest where Tom got his just desserts.
ITV management pulled the show from its prime time slot and shoehorned a shorter version into a later slot.
Thank goodness.
The editing has got much tighter and it looks as though they've inserted a few new clips of Peter's assessment of what's happening.
In this episode Justin Chieffo is appointed by Peter to look after his fellow entrepreneurs as Peter has to go away for a few days.
I think it's important that anyone on these reality shows needs to remember is that "they return to the real world after the show is finished." Elizabeth wearing a sticky label on her forehead with the word 'FRAGILE' on is not going to endear her to future customers or employers.
So what happened to Elizabeth Hackford?
Peter finally gave her the elbow.
And can someone please tell me why on earth they're talking to the doomed candidate on the end of the pier? What is the point?
OK, they're trying to get away from the boardroom firing scene as shown on The Apprentice. But a pier? Why couldn't they fire someone from Peter's Bentley? Or maybe in Peter's office?
And guess what? Lauren said that it was expected by the others.
Yes she should never have been in the contest!
Like I said before my wife still believes his carrier bag dispenser is a good idea. So when Tesco ordered 250,000 she looked at me in triumph!
I'm still not persuaded. As I said last time you can use a carrier bag to carry spare carrier bags around in.
Anyway, you can't argue with an order. It could be Tesco wants to test it out.
Anyway, back to Justin's management ability...
It was tested to the limit in his dealings with Elizabeth Hackford.
He didn't help his case by telling her he had to have a meeting with her while she was already having a meeting with Grace, the ex-Big Brother contestant she wanted to use to endorse the drink.
Then he used the weak threat that he would tell Peter about her...
We also saw Justin with his feet up.
When Elizabeth told him he'd embarrassed her and flounced off Justin mimicked her holding a handbag and even said the word "handbags" - not very good for team building with the rest of the troops.
What impressed me most about Justin was that he still had £8,000 of the original £10,000 provided by Peter. Well done!
My Advice: You need people who can run a business. Someone who doesn't understand when to make a stand or not with an employee just can't at the moment.
If Justin doesn't get any further sales close him down next.
Iain Morgan is now demonstrating and selling his executive helicopter. It looks like fun but I wonder exactly how many he can sell.
Apparently he's going to try and get a large order from Argos next time.
My Advice: Iain still seems to know what he's doing from the ordering point of view. My only thought is the quality of the helicopter.
He does need to start selling volumes of the helicopters. A 20 helicopter order requires the same selling time as 2,000. So he would be better off with Argos or an upmarket executive gifts catalogue.
Lauren Pope met up with Philip Green at Top Shop. Of course Philip was involved in a meeting that would normally be beneath his notice.
Philip wanted Lauren to sell from his shop without him investing in anything. That would have meant a lot of work for Lauren and she was right to turn it down.
She did well to get an order for £47,000 from an online company in Leicestershire.
My Advice: Keep up the good work! And also do some promotions too.
Helen and Cathy met up with Harrods Owner Al-Fayed and pitched to have their range sold in Harrods and to have their launch there too.
They successfully persuaded him and Peter Jones was ecstatic when they told him.
My Advice: I think these two could do well still getting their product into Harrods needs to be done as soon as possible to get the maximum exposure whilst Tycoon is still running.
I am watching again but...
As there's not much longer to go with this series I will continue to watch but I'd be wary about watching a second series, unless the suggestions I've made were implemented.
Otherwise I'd rather watch paint dry. Oh no, Big Brother's already done that one!
I've been impressed by the way Rob Benwell's Blogging To The Bank 2.0 takes a step by step approach to showing how to make blogging pay.
So much so that I'm going to pay for 27 minutes of my Advanced Blog Coaching for anyone who orders the book through my affiliate link: Blogging To The Bank 2.0
With the coaching you can get help on any of these topics:
Whether you buy through me or someone else I'm sure Rob's no nonsense guide will help you improve your blog.
One caveat.
As I said in my previous post...
If you've written more than 200 posts in a year and you're currently making more than $100 per month from your blog you'll know almost everything Rob explains.
That said, I still managed to get some nuggets I'm using right now!
I thought I'd better let you know what's happening because I've not posted for a couple of days.
I've been working on setting up and making prettier the new Manchester Bloggers blog in Wordpress.
There's a lot you can do with it and Wordpress has so many plugins that really help you improve the reader's experience.
So the Manchester Bloggers blog has been sucking up quite a quantity of my time.
Rob Baker (from ArtisanMC) is also posting to the site but had to deal with a heavy cold, followed by not being able to get in to post because I'd used a capital letter in his username.
Go post something now Rob!
Well, I'm glad you asked me. I've got a few book reviews that are bubbling under:
I'm also writing a review of Monday's episode of Tycoon.
So sign-up for the email feed and you'll be getting those, and more, over the next week or so.
Rob Benwell has provided an e-book that reads well and will certainly benefit most bloggers.
Rob sets out 5 blogging commandments that are key to making money with blogging.
During his explanation on how to set-up and make money from your blog Rob notes that Adsense plastered sites wont make money. They just turn people off.
He also points out that whilst "cheating" the search engines can make your blog visible it's also not a practice he encourages for a longer-term blog.
As you'd expect Rob first emphasizes the importance of market and keyword research and then explains how to pick the best affiliate programs for your chosen market.
He underlines the importance of owning your own domain, although you can of course use two blogging platforms free of charge: Blogger and Wordpress.
Rob walks you step by step through the process of setting up a blog that is better than your average templated blog.
Rob notes his secret weapon to keep the new blog filled with useful content. Because after all content is what attracts traffic, the life blood to monetize your blog.
Rob recommends two methods of monetizing your blog.
Of course someone who's been running blogs for a while had access to a number of tools. You get links to the tools. In fact while I was reading this book Rob emailed to say that he was putting more tools on the site as a bonus. One of which allows you to find dead blogs.
What do you do with dead blogs? Rob explains in detail in Blogging To The Bank and is worth the price alone for me.
He also gives 5 blogging commandments that you must follow to give your blogs the best chance of being seen and read.
Rob Benwell has cleverly provided 2 pre-written reviews to help affiliates say something about Blogging To The Bank.
I noticed a spelling mistake (yes I can be that sad sometimes) in one review and Googled it and found 7 lazy bloggers hadn't bothered to change it in reviews they posted.
That said the pre-written reviews don't say much. Which is a shame as I'm sure there's more that Rob could have put into the reviews without giving out his secrets.
In summary this book is aimed firmly at the beginner and advanced blogger alike.
If you've been blogging for more than 2 years you'll be aware of a number of the techniques that Rob describes. But you'll almost definitely find, as I did, that there are several things you kind of knew about and hadn't realised how much it could help pour in the cash into your blog.
My recommendation? Get Blogging To The Bank 2.0 and implement Rob's methods because I know they work as I've used some myself.
The bonuses Rob gives are all very worthwhile themselves. The dead blog finder software is the one I'm going to look at in detail next. So I'll see you then!
