Well, as you can see, I’m writing this update under my new ezine design. You’ll get a complete edition of the new ezine next week.
However, in the meantime, here’s what I’ve been up to:
1. The Bluehost Blahs
Last Friday, all of my websites and those of many of my friends and colleagues were offline due to a major outage by the conglomerate company that owns Bluehost, Hostgater, and others. It was very frustrating, as I lost all email ability, as well. This is the 2nd outage in the last week that I’ve experienced with them — the first was due to AT&T blocking their servers — so I’ve started rethinking my hosting. I’ve gotten several great suggestions from Facebook pals, but I haven’t yet decided to make the leap. I know that no hosting service is perfect, but two major outages in the same week??? I expect better, Bluehost.
2. Natalie Sisson’s 30 Day Blog Challenge
I seem to resonate with 30-Day Challenges, so I’m playing around with this blog challenge this month. The aim of this series is to inspire you to build a blueprint for creating an online business and a lifestyle you love. It’s free to join and at the end of the 30 days you should have a serious plan of action with which to create freedom in business and adventure in life.
You can check out her blog challenge here.
I’m also checking out Natalie’s brand-new book, The Suitcase Entrepreneur. I love reading true-life stories like hers where she outlines her life and business journey and tells how she went about starting her business. Her story ignites the travel bug in me, as I have a longer-term goal of touring the US/Canada in an RV and visiting all the places I’ve wanted to visit for so long.
3. The World’s First Accountability Partner Network
I wrote about this a few weeks ago when it was in the pre-launch phase, but ProftProfitProfit is now live. It’s a new service for small business owners that helps you set goals and achieve them. I’m super excited and signed up and I think you should too. I just completed my profile, and should get notice any day now of the mastermind group I’ll be working with. You can request both an accountability partner and a mastermind group, but I thought I’d start out slowly with just the group for the time being.
What’s very cool about this service is that they manually fine-tune the matching in a mastermind group — they’re not solely relying on a computer matchup of demographics. And, at $27 per month for a small business, how can you go wrong??
4. Turbocharge Your Video Courses
Ever wanted to create your own in-demand video course that your customers will love? Now, there’s a really inexpensive video course teaching you exactly how to do that. Stephen Luc’s Video Creation Secrets is the fastest and simplest way to get up and running with a minimum of fuss so that you can create and market your own video products using only basic screen capture tools.
It includes 17 videos and right now, you can grab it at 75% off — only $17 for the next 12 hours or so. Check it out here.
5. Email Marketing Upgrade
I finally decided to bit the bullet and upgrade my grandfathered aWeber account to the version that offers the latest in marketing metrics. This was long overdue, and I purged many of my lists when I made the switch, as this new version counts both your subscribers and unsubscribers in the total subscribers count in this new pricing matrix. This means I’ll get much better information on who opens my emails and what they do when they open. And, I’ll get some additional info to purge my list again. Why would I do that? Because it’s kind of silly to pay for subscribers who never open my emails. And, this will boost my open rate, as an added benefit! More on that as I start to implement this process.
6. Redesigning My Coaching and My Signature System
I was on a call with Kendall Summerhawk last week and decided that it was high time I redesigned my signature coaching system to better fit in with my new branding. More importantly, I’ve decided that I’m no longer doing 1:1 coaching in the same way I’ve been doing it. Instead, I’ll be offering VIP days, which I’ve been thinking about doing for quite some time. To help me in this process, I purchased Kendall’s VIP Day Quick Profit Secrets: How to Quickly and Easily Design, Market and Deliver Exciting and Profitable VIP Days and am finding it VERY helpful in both my signature system redesign and in my VIP days design.
So, as you can tell, I haven’t been up to much. <g> That’s it for the week.
Best-selling author Donna Gunter works with successful business owners who are experts in their fields and established in their industry and are seeking a way to stand out from their competitors. Using her Ideal Clients on Autopilot System©, she helps them determine the exact strategies to generate more qualified leads and better-paying clients with automated systems. This proven system makes all their marketing easier and more effective and they find themselves positioned as the only choice for their clients.