You know what I love about WordPress? I can change the future.

Right now, it’s Thursday. You’re reading this on Monday. (Well, maybe you’re lazy and not paying any attention to your feeds. Whatever, that’s cool. You get my point.) Right now, on Thursday, I’m in a wonderful mood. I’m casually sipping a glass of wine. I’m looking around my still fully furnished apartment and thinking, oh well. I’ll deal with the packing and moving later.

By the time you read this, it will already be later. I will be considering burning down my new apartment just to get the insurance money and move to Bali. I will subsequently be realizing that my insurance won’t have kicked in yet and burning my apartment down will bring me no financial benefit. I will likely be drinking wine anyway, but it won’t be quite so casual. Think nice thoughts for me. I think I’ll be needing them.

Anyway, the point of all this rambling is to lead into the exciting news that:

SEO School now has a public affiliate program

(Give a girl some big red header text and she goes CRAZY.)

You can now get 50% of the purchase price of this book, just by whoring it to your readers, friends, and loved ones. If you consider that Amazon gives you something like 40 cents a book, $19.50 ain’t a bad deal.

Knowing that a lot of you are new to blogging and the internet and stuff and would just like to FINALLY MAKE SOME FUCKING MONEY, I figured y’all would dig this. I also figured I could turn this self-promotional blog post into something useful even if you hate me, hate my book, and wish us all ill. Therefore, I unveil:

5 Ways to Suck at Affiliate Marketing

1. Don’t own the product.

Check out ClickBank and look for the stuff with high payouts. Write a quick review telling your readers how awesome it is when in fact you know fuck all about it and it could be porn for all you know. Make sure you don’t make actual business decisions. Say, “I don’t want to pay for it!” to save yourself money in the short term and ignore the fact that doing a shitty sales job will lose you far more than the purchase price in the long term.

2. Don’t review the product.

Look at the advertising section on your blog or website and realize that nobody’s paying you to advertise. Figure it would be a good idea to fill that space with something, and plop a few pretty affiliate banner ads in there. Don’t tell your readers about it — just plop in the ad. Whatever you do, make absolutely certain those banners link directly to the advertiser’s website, not to your review. Do not presell, just let the advertiser do all the work. Cross your fingers that you’ll make some sales.

3. Be a big fat liar.

Review the product and make ridiculous claims about how wonderful it is. Say it can do things that it can’t. Forget that most electronic products and software have return policies and assume that any sale made through your link is one that will make you some cash, regardless of whether or not the customer keeps the item. Do everything you can to ensure your readers will never trust you again.

4. Pay no attention to returns or return policies.

Make no inquiries as to the return rate of the product, or what the advertiser’s return policy is. Think your readers are too dumb to care about return policies. Think the advertiser is dumb enough to pay you even though the item is returned.

5. Ignore your ads and anchor text.

Pay no attention to Advertising 101 — ad blindness. Grab your favorite banner ad, slot it in, and never move it. Ensure your readers ignore your ad, always and forever. At the same time, don’t link to your review from within your blog. If you do get it together to link to it, use lame anchor text. Whatever you do, DON’T use anchor text that could result in search engine traffic — and therefore sales — like “SEO School Review” or “review of SEO School”. Use something like “Click here” instead.

***

(If you don’t do snark or are more literal minded than I am in your sense of humor, I’ll tell you now that the foregoing was sarcasm. Don’t totally screw it up and then tell everyone Naomi told you to do it that way.)

Anyway, onto my shameless self-promotion:

1. Our top referrer has sold 25 books since SEO School was released. If you’re not math inclined, that means they’ve made $375 from one blog post, and I have a feeling they ain’t done.

2. After nearly 200 sales, SEO School has not been returned once. Even still, the return policy is 100%. We won’t screw you.

3. If you want ads, there are ten 125×125 banners to choose from. You can choose based on what works with your site, what contrasts with your site, or you can switch them up (very highly recommended, by the way) to reduce ad blindness. (While we’re talking about this, I’ll give you a little general advertising advice. Switch up your ad placement regularly. If SEO School is at the top, then Tadoodlist, then TLA, switch them up every now and again and you’ll see higher click throughs on all of them.)

4. Payout is monthly by PayPal, and there’s no minimum. None of this “we pay you when you’ve earned $100” bullshit. (That is a sneaky way to get out of paying affiliates what they’ve rightly earned. Most affiliates never make the minimum payout and the advertiser keeps the cash. I joined Amazon in October and haven’t seen a cent.) We don’t go in for that shit here. If you sell one and make $19.50, we pay you $19.50.

5. This is the interesting part. You have today and tomorrow left to buy SEO School with the coupon code “MovingDay” (no quotes) for only $30. Then you’ll go and sell it for $39. You only have to sell like, one and a half copies to make your money back. If you can’t sell one and a half copies, you might want to rethink the whole affiliate marketing thing.

If you’d like to get in on this, go to the SEO School Affiliate Program page and get this party started.

Oh, and one more thing. UK people? I KNOW you just got paid. That’s why I left the coupon code up till the first of the month. Just for you guys, cause I’m cool like that.

By Naomi Dunford - Jun 30, 2008 in Marketing - 22 Comments
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The home business marketing homeless dude is back to reiterate his lessons.

You may or may not know that I wrote an ebook. In that ebook, I told readers that if they ever had any questions about SEO, they could email me. Lots did, which was awesome. One in particular stands out, though, and I want to tell you about it.

Brandon (hi, Brandon!) came through StumbleUpon. He’d never heard of me before that. He dropped me a line through my contact form and we got to chatting.

He wanted to talk about his blog-to-be. He knows he shouldn’t use Blogger, but doesn’t know what to use instead. If he’s like most newbies to blogging, he’s read the posts where people spit venom at Blogger but don’t give an alternative because the writer thinks it’s obvious. I know I’ve been guilty of that.

So we chatted back and forth a little about Wordpress and the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org and all that totally overwhelming shit you have to think about before you start a blog. We get to what I think is a logical end to the exchange, and he fires back one more quick email. He wants to know about hosting.

Ahh, hosting.

Knowing he’s a newbie, and not knowing if he knows anything about affiliate marketing, I figure it’s important to hit him over the head with the fact that I am an affiliate for InMotion, so I will be financially compensated if he goes with them through my link. I make this as crystal clear as possible because I don’t want to fuck him over. (There’s plenty of time for him to get fucked over by internet marketers later. Life is long.) He thanks me and goes on his way with these parting words:

“PS- i think its awesome that u respond, in an actual friendly manner; and also seem sincere when doing it. I ran across a few sites similar to yours prior, and got rude responses if any response in return.”

The other bloggers are not being very nice to Brandon, and I think that’s fucking ridiculous, for more reasons than one.

Most importantly, there’s the karma element. Be nice to people or karma will fuck you.

Secondarily, remember the Cool Kids Edition? When I was a dick to Dan Schawbel and felt like shit afterwards because he was in Fast Company and about to be all famous? You never know who you’re dealing with. Be nice to people because you don’t know who you’re dealing with.

Lastly, and most shallowly, these people are your customers. They buy things from you. They are the ones with the money. Be extra nice to the people with the money.

Today, I found out Brandon bought hosting through my link. And he bought my book at full price. Brandon gave me $89 yesterday. I have a feeling, considering we’re getting tight, he’ll probably buy more of my stuff, or take my recommendations, or become an affiliate for SEO School in the future. Maybe he’ll send his friends.

But because I took a little time out of my night to help someone — and keep in mind, I didn’t think there’d be cash coming from this — I have a customer, maybe a fan, and I get to know that I made someone’s day a little better after he got treated like shit by other people in my industry.

So what does this have to do with the homeless dude? Lesson # 4. “Don’t be a prick.”

As a life lesson, you shouldn’t be a prick at all. As a home business marketing lesson:

Don’t be a prick to the people with the money.

Click here to get free email updates every time IttyBiz publishes a post.

By Naomi Dunford - Jun 26, 2008 in Home Business Marketing - 32 Comments
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Yesterday, I got a Google alert for my name. It came from a website I have heard of, but not really visited. The website has a subscriber base of about one quarter of what IttyBiz has, give or take, and doesn’t have a bad design. Definitely in my niche.

I dutifully followed the link and saw an article with my name on the byline and my photograph in the top left corner. Here’s what it said, with identifying details removed:

“This week’s [name of series] is a special contribution that [website] Founder [name of dude I’ve never heard of, hereinafter shortened to DINHO] lined up from Naomi Dunford. Naomi Dunford writes for IttyBiz, a blog for entrepreneurs, freelancers, and other work-from-home types. Come by for marketing tips, small business advice, and the occasional very bad joke. Naomi shares with use [use?] her top ways to get a new business off the ground.”

Um, WTF?

The funny thing is, this article was indeed written by me. I wrote it for a client who never paid me about eight months ago. Since I had no use for it on my own blog, I gave it to a website looking for guest posts. Apparently, the dude with the website I submitted it to sent it to these guys and said they were free to publish it.

So I emailed the webmaster dudes and said:

From: Naomi Dunford
Subject: Who is [DINHO]?

Also, maybe I should meet [DINHO]. Since he hooked up the interview with me and all. :)

Here’s the response I got:

Hi there Naomi,

Also, we may be looking for some writers for our new site launch of [our site] later this summer. What would you charge us to write a blog for [our site] on a home-business topic? 5 posts per week minimum? Let me know what you would charge us on an ongoing monthly basis as we are looking for some great writers that want to help us, help like-minded entrepreneurs!

I fucking HATE IT when I’m sarcastic and nobody gets it.

I can’t figure out whether or not to be annoyed by this. I mean, they didn’t scrape my site, they scraped some other dude’s site. I got a link and a little bit of traffic. Maybe some people subscribed and I can subsequently upsell them a bunch of crap they don’t need? Is there money to be made here?

Jamie says (sarcastically, because apparently I need to make that clear now) that I should quote him my consulting rate and see what he says. “Well, a blog post takes about two hours and I bill $100 an hour, so that’ll be $4000 a month.”

Let me know your thoughts. Should I be pissed? Should I laugh? Should I go all diva and start screaming “DO YOU NOT KNOW WHO I AM?” Should I write a real blog post instead of this filler copy?

By Naomi Dunford - Jun 24, 2008 in Home Business Blogging - 38 Comments
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Regular IttyBiz readers will know that every now and again, when I do something really fucking stupid, I’ll write about it here and teach you a valuable business lesson at the same time. Because I’m cool like that.

If you were paying attention and actually read the monster home business resources post, you’ll have seen my warning about Skype. If you haven’t, I’ll recap here and say that Skype is WONDERFUL. It took me forever to suck it up and get it but it has totally changed the way I do business. I heart Skype. It has saved me a boatload of money and hassle and is generally awesome.

Except. (You know how they say, “there’s always a but”? Not true. Sometimes there’s an “except”.) If you’ve read any of the must read books/magazines/blogs about home business, you’ll know that the first order of business when you go out on your own is to treat your home office like you would treat a real office. Take it seriously, they tell you.

Wear work clothes.

Put shoes on.

Don’t drink before noon and if you must, do so out of a clean glass.

Never one for following convention, I have blatantly disregarded this advice and that disregard has served me well. I run a pretty successful little IttyBiz. I have clients and book sales and money. All is generally well.

Yesterday I got to talk to a client for the first time. (My first time talking to THAT client, not any client.) Since this client lives in Australia and neither of us wanted to give up on the opportunity to send our children to college just to pay for long distance, we used Skype.

The conversation is going well. We are getting to know each other. We are discussing USPs and target demographics and sales strategies. Here’s a brief excerpt of our conversation:

Client: We should do video. I don’t know what you look like, except for that you have a shaved head.

Me: Cool. How do I do that again?

Client: Click the little video button.

Me: (clicking aforementioned little video button) There. Is it working?

Client: [pause] I love that you’re wearing lipstick but no shirt.

Here’s a little quote from the home business resources post I mentioned earlier. It’s important to note that I WROTE THIS POST and I did so only a week and a half ago.

“My only issue with Skype is that people keep asking me to video call with them and I generally prefer to work topless while smoking. You can imagine how well THAT goes over.”

Moral of the Story: Beware technology. It will fuck you.

If you’re new to Moral of the Story, check out these similar tales of woe:

Moral of the Story: Operation Iraqi Freedom Edition, wherein I try to sell the residents of Guantanamo Bay at half price via AdWords.

Moral of the Story: Violent Snuggling Edition, wherein I am caught by my husband in a compromising position.

Moral of the Story: Neocitran Edition, wherein we find out why I am no longer a freelance writer.

Moral of the Story: Marketing to Alcoholics Edition, the one that made Moral of the Story famous.

By Naomi Dunford - Jun 21, 2008 in Marketing - 33 Comments
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This is the second post in a three-part guest post series about making money online and avoiding scams during your search. It’s by Joe and Steve of I’ve Tried That. They still maintain they are separate people. I still maintain they are not. Read part one here — How To Make Money Online and Avoid Scams.

If you’re new to this race—the “making money online” race—consider yourself lucky to have made IttyBiz one of your first pit stops. (Editor’s note: Remember the other day, when we were saying that in order to get a guest post on IttyBiz, you have to use the word “shyster”? Additional rule: Please suck up, but do so intelligently like Joe/Steve.) As you’re about to discover, there are LOTS of bogus money-making programs making false claims in an effort to take your money. One thing that’s in your favor, though, is that they all use the same or very similar tactics. Snake-oil salesmen are never original, it seems, and that’s a fact you can use to your advantage.

Warning Signs That You’re Being Misled

At I’ve Tried That, we sign up for programs and products that make claims and then publish the results. We’ve found that the following are reliable warning signs that the page you’re looking at is at best misleading, and at worst, selling you a bag full of bullshit and claiming it’s gold bullion.

• Stock photos of pretty people, cash, mansions, and cars. This red flag is the online equivalent of a used car salesman calling himself “Honest Vinnie.” What, everyone making money online is a model? Aren’t there any guys with bellies and women who don’t wear makeup? And the cash! I challenge you to find just one genuine business with photos of cash on its web site. There aren’t any. That’s because real businesses don’t have to rely on that cheap tactic. It’s a tacky practice meant to push your emotional buttons.
• High-pressure sales tactics. There are only three positions left! Act now to get the special price! You see the ticking clock?! Give us your money before it runs out or you might not get in! Folks, there is not a limited number of positions available. The price isn’t about to go up. Again, these tactics are meant to push your emotional buttons and get you to make a decision with your heart instead of your head.
• “Anyone can do it!” Have you ever seen this? “No special skills required. If you have a computer, an email address, and an internet connection, you can start making money today.” Honestly, why is it that people looking to supplement their income leave their brains in a jar in the fridge? In what alternate universe can you get a legitimate job or start a real business with no skills? My seven year old can check his email and do the two-finger peck to type, but he’s not going to be pulling in $1,000 per day any time soon. Online as in real life, you need marketable skills to earn money.
• “Proof of income” images. These are images of Clickbank or Adsense accounts showing lots of sales, lots of clicks per day, in a bar graph format. These images can be faked, but honestly, I don’t think most of them are. We’ve seen some that were copied from other sites, but also, the scammer may very well make the kind of money shown in the image. That problem is that he makes it by selling the very scam he’s pitching to you.
• “We’ve researched 4,237 online opportunities, and 99% of them are scams. This one is legitimate.” This announcement, or something like it, is almost always a prelude to selling you an “opportunity” that is misleading and can’t deliver what it claims. These self-appointed watchdog “researchers” tell you a truth (”99% of them are scams”) to earn your trust, and then they give you their affiliate links to the 1% that is “genuine.” You think they’re researched, so you sign up. The watchdogs earn a nice commission. See our posts on watching the “watchdogs,” in which we call two of them out. One of these “research” groups is even promoting processathome.com—the most blatant scam of 2008.

A Little Common Sense Goes a Long Way

Finally, consider this parting bit of advice: If a program really does generate thousands of dollars per day, GUARANTEED OR YOUR MONEY BACK, why would the owner sell it for $49.95? Here’s the math:

$1,000 per day (a conservative claim, by what we’ve seen)
x 365 days in a year
= $365,000 per year!

And some guru will sell you that secret for $29 out of the goodness of his heart? I don’t think so. Here’s a promise from me: when we discover a guaranteed method of generating even $200 per day, we’ll sell it here at IttyBiz first. And how will you know it’s legit? Because we’ll sell to only 5 buyers, and the opening bid will be $50,000, which you’ll earn back before your first year is out!

Our third and final post will tell you about some of the most common scams and about real moneymakers we’ve found.

By Naomi Dunford - Jun 20, 2008 in Home Based Business - 35 Comments
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This is a guest post from Joe and Steve from I’ve Tried That. As far as I’m concerned, Joe and Steve are the same person. This will likely turn out to be false. Also, neither of them are the guy in this picture. Read, comment, go to their website, and I’ll be back when I’ve recovered from writing an ebook.

Even with a seemingly clear-as-ice title to lead you, half of you reading this are misunderstanding me. Well not you, of course, but some other reader less savvy than you. Because you’re an IttyBiz reader, you’re better prepared than most who come to the Internet looking to supplement their income.

You’ve already learned the lesson most people have yet to learn: those who go to Google and search for “make money online” are like country rubes stepping off the train in the big city and asking, “Can anyone tell me where I can give away a lot of money?”

This post is the first in a series designed to limit the blood loss you’re going to suffer if you’re one of the rubes.

It’s a Scammer’s Market

Where do those easy victims go wrong? Their first mistake is the expectation they bring to the table Google altar. When they type in “make money online,” they’re actually looking for jobs they can do from home on their computers. The difference is important: making money online involves running a website or many, affiliate advertising, SEO, contextual advertising, and other tactics you read about here. It’s a pretty sophisticated undertaking. Working from home, on the other hand, is a simple one. You find an employer that needs skills you already possess, and you convince him or her to hire you.

The problem is that newbies think they’re searching for work from home jobs. Knowing this, the scammers write their pages to make affiliate marketing (a sophisticated money making proposition) look like a “rebate processing job” that looks simple.

If you’ve spent any time at all in the work-at-home niche, you know that it’s a fairly slimy corner of the net. It’s full of hucksters, shysters, liars and thieves, many of whom rank high in search engine results. (Editor’s note: All guest posts on IttyBiz now need to use the word “shysters”. Is that not the awesomest word in history?) They rake in thousands of dollars per day by selling the secret of how to rake in thousands of dollars a day by selling the secret of how to rake…you get the picture (for a clever satire of this deceptive hype-based approach, see You’re a Poor Loser.com.). Many are sucked in every day. You won’t be among them after reading our posts.

Pulling Your Emotional Strings

These hapless searchers for online income are ripe and ready to have their emotional strings pulled by flashy websites full of shiny, happy people and wads of cash. They are only too eager to believe the message that making money online is easy and everyone’s getting rich online except you! For only $197, they’re told, you, too, can learn the secrets of making $5,000 dollars a day in your underwear! People under financial stress are not always well equipped to make smart financial decisions. The result is even greater financial stress after throwing money at a scammer.

A struggling single mother of two toddlers, a retiree who’s discovered too late he can’t live on his retirement income, a two-parent household bitten by adjustable rate mortgages and rising gas prices: these are the types of people we see every day at I’ve Tried That (”We lose money so you don’t have to.”). They’ve searched for information about a program they’re ready to spend money on, and they decide to check it out a little first.

Sometimes they spend the money first and then come to us a little too late, but ready to start the disappointing process of bubble bursting that is necessary before they can really begin to make an income using the Internet.

I hope our small series of posts will add to Naomi’s excellent work here at IttyBiz by beginning or continuing that bubble bursting process for you, wherever you are in your pathway. You can never learn too much about the work-at-home niche and how to avoid those who would prey on you.

By Naomi Dunford - Jun 18, 2008 in Home Based Business - 25 Comments
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Somebody I don’t know was recently given the unfortunate and God-given responsibility to publicly inform me that I am a shitty copywriter. (Sadly, this means I will have to quit my life’s work and become a perpetually temporary switchboard operator, but there you are. C’est la vie.)

The reason that this is coming up today is that I have spent a great deal of time over the last couple of days thinking about the blog post I will write to introduce my ebook. When you write a landing page and promote it — and therefore your product — through Pay Per Click advertising, you have the luxury of anonymity. When you write a blog about marketing and advertising and copywriting and you’re trying to sell your shit to the readers of that blog, well, the pressure’s on, isn’t it?

Therefore, I have decided to write this blog post while high. I mean, I’m not high high. Just cold medication and sleeping pills. But I’m high enough that my inner short-copy-versus-long-copy, features-versus-benefits, which-of-the-four-key-personality-traits-is-my-target-customer dialog has been temporarily silenced and I’m just going to wing it. Wish me luck.

The book is about SEO for people who don’t know piss all about SEO. It’s for people who are like, “I have a website and I’d really like some traffic but fuck knows how I’m supposed to do THAT”. You can read more about it on the SEO School page.

A Brief History of IttyBiz

I am a home business marketing consultant. I charge people a relatively low sum of money to help them with their business plans and marketing because I believe that really fucking great businesses go under every single goddamn day because they can’t afford decent help. They’re trying to navigate this new world of online marketing and they don’t know anybody who’s done it before. They don’t know who to turn to because there are so few people who have succeeded in this arena. The bad guys win and the good guys lose, and I find this tragic.

When I was very small, my parents ran some businesses. Some were very successful. Some, not so much. I saw how hard they both worked — separately, of course, as they divorced before my first birthday — trying to make a go of working for themselves so they could have more time with their daughter. I heard my father typing late into the night, sometimes crying and raging and throwing things and crying some more. I saw my mother bringing work home and doing her design work long after the kids had gone to bed. There were no weekends in either of these houses.

One night when I was about four, I got up and asked my dad what was wrong.

My father, so big and strong in my mind, wiped his eyes and looked at me. “Just trying to make it work, Sunshine. Just trying to make it work.”

Because I was very small, I couldn’t do much to help. I tried to make him tea but I was afraid of the kettle and I usually fucked it up. I tried to stay out of his way when I could. I tried to make sure I wasn’t being too much trouble because I knew how hard he had it. I tried so hard to make it easier for him, but I was only one little girl and I could only do so much.

I knew he was sad because he had to go away on long business trips. I remember the days before I started school when we had a night-time nanny so that he could work all night and hang out with me all day. What little sleep he got was during my naps. When the time came for school, I know my father was devastated that he couldn’t homeschool me because he had to work.

Flash Forward 20 Years

When I grew up, I realized that the internet was making it easier for people like my parents to run businesses from their home. I realized that there were literally millions of people out there, desperate to go home and be with their families and make a decent living. They don’t want to be millionaires. They just want enough so that they don’t have to spend another Christmas hoping the babies aren’t disappointed by what they find under the tree. Enough to take the kids to see Mickey at Disney World and stay at the good hotel this time.

Finally, I could help. I couldn’t bring them tea and I couldn’t make their mortgage payment for them and I couldn’t find their kid the last Tickle Me Elmo in the store. But I had a pretty good knowledge of why people buy and I knew that marketing was the single most important factor in a small business’ success.

So I learned marketing. I learned everything I could. I had a baby too young, married the wrong man and promptly divorced him. I couldn’t go to school and be a decent parent at the same time so I learned at night. I read everything there was to read. I wanted to be the best fucking small business marketer on earth so I could make sure all those people who just wanted to be with their families could get what they needed to make their businesses work at an affordable price.

But it’s all a means to an end. When I have enough money, I’ll be doing this pro bono. I don’t have enough money yet, so I’m selling ebooks. I’ve started with SEO School.

It has recently come to my attention in the comments of my first SEO School post that SEO is snake oil. Thank you to that commentator, because you just gave me a new selling point. Those of you who know me know:

IttyBiz is all about the snake oil.

Hopefully I’ve created a resource that will help you. Hopefully you’ve gotten enough information out of this blog to know that somebody has finally written something about SEO that ISN’T snake oil. Hopefully I’ve made it a little clearer for you. Hopefully if you read the book you can do some stuff to get your business in a better spot and still look at yourself in the mirror with respect in the morning.

Since I didn’t want to create the world’s longest sales page, I held off on the who-needs-this-ebook for this post. Let’s face it, more of you are reading this anyway. Therefore:

* If you’re thinking about starting a website someday and have heard that Google favors older sites but you don’t know what to put up there

* If you’ve started a website and you feel like you’re drowning

* If you’re not really drowning but you hear that people are getting all this search engine traffic and you’re just, well, not

* If word of mouth referrals will not keep food on your table and you don’t know what else you’re going to do

* If you know you should be doing something about SEO but you don’t know who to trust

* If you think SEO is for people who “get” websites

* If you were thinking of hiring me but can’t afford it

* If you think you might need an SEO consultant one day but don’t want to pay $500 an hour to learn the basics. You’d rather learn the basics on your own and think about consultants later.

Then you might like my book.

If you think you might like my book, you might want to buy it soon. I’m moving in like, fourteen days and I could use the cash before I move more than I could use it after. Therefore, what’s normally $39 is now $30. It’s good till July 1st.

Use the coupon code “MovingDay”. Get it? Cause I’m moving?

If you want to read more about what’s actually in the book, here’s the SEO School main page. Read the P.S. — it’s about you.

I would really be honored if you’d buy my book. Thank you.

By Naomi Dunford - Jun 16, 2008 in Marketing - 35 Comments
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Hey everybody,

So it’s 1:30 Monday morning and Jamie and I are going to bed after successfully launching our ebook SEO School. If you would like to check it out, click here. If you don’t want to read all the sales copy you can just scroll down to the bottom.

Thanks all, more on this later when I am more lucid.

PS- If you do decide to purchase the ebook, when you get to the page that asks if you have a discount code, enter “MovingDay” (no quotes) to get $9 off. I’ll explain later.

By Naomi Dunford - Jun 16, 2008 in Marketing - 13 Comments
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If you’re like most home business owners or future home business owners, you’ve done your homework. You’ve probably been hanging around here for a while and you’ve probably read a lot of the posts and comments. Maybe you read Entrepreneur magazine. Maybe you have a Delicious profile full of resources and home business tips. You have researched and planned yourself to death.

Just to overwhelm you, I’d like to add one more piece of advice. This is probably the most valuable advice I could ever offer anyone in your spot.

First, some background. When I started offering the IttyBitty package, one of my first customers was Selene Bowlby from iDesign Studios. She’s does custom website design, and she’s pretty damn good at it. But in addition to being a highly cool web designer, she is also possibly the most prepared home business owner I have ever worked with. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone so set to succeed.

We started talking in January. She was working in a day job that allowed her to work from home. She was running her home business at night. And she had a two year old. Her plan was to quit her day job the following January.

Selene (and I hope she doesn’t mind me writing this, although there’s piss all she can do about it now, isn’t there?) was scared. Prepared, but scared. She knew she had a rock solid service and she had received nothing but good feedback from her customers. She had a medium sized salary she had to be able to replace, and her calculations brought her to the realization that it would take her about a year to transition to full time self-employment.

She hoped she’d be able to do it a month early and quit just in time for Christmas.

When we started working together I was blown away by both her designs and her business savvy. Yes, I was her marketing coach, but I also really identified with her as an individual. We became friends and have supported each other. My support usually consisted of emails that read, “You have fuck all to be afraid of.” (Because I’m supportive like that.)

Three weeks ago, I got an email from Selene that was similar to many emails I’ve received in my home business marketing career. It’s my favorite kind of email to receive but it was especially wonderful from someone who has become my friend.

Tomorrow is Selene’s last day at work.

Seven months ahead of schedule, Selene’s going out on her own.

If you become friends with Selene, you’ll realize she can teach you a lot. She can teach you about dedication and hard work. She can probably teach you about design. (Check out her web design portfolio for that.) She can teach you about staying calm in a crisis and keeping some balance and dealing with toddlers and home business. I would argue that those are important, but not the most important. Here’s the most important lesson you can learn from her.

Do not get sidelined by fear.

Not once did she let fear stand in her way. She charges more than some designers because she’s worth it. She did not let her fear that people wouldn’t pay her stand in her way. She didn’t let her fear that everyone wanted free templates stand in her way. She didn’t let her fear of losing a steady paycheck stand in her way. She was scared shitless and went full steam ahead.

Friends of IttyBiz will know that I’m releasing my first ebook on Monday. Very close friends will know that I’m terrified.

I’m scared that I don’t have a sales funnel. (For non-marketing types, creating a sales funnel is what internet marketers do to get you to pay ever increasing prices for ever expanding products by selling you on something free first and then upselling you later.) I didn’t release a free ebook first. I don’t have an email list other than my subscriber base. I haven’t gone all Stompernet and sent out sexy videos. I have not created fear based sales copy saying that if you don’t buy, the puppy gets it. (I don’t even have a puppy.)

I’m scared that people won’t pay for something they think they could get for free. Recent comments on this blog have indicated that there are people who believe that in the age of the internet, nobody should have to pay for anything, ever. (Does this include food? Rent?) I’m afraid that all two thousand or so people reading this blog have all the time in the world to do the research and read everything there is to know and won’t need what I’m selling.

I’m scared that I’m going to let my family down. I believe that what I’m offering is insanely useful and pretty damn inexpensive. I believe that it will help the people who have emailed me saying “I wish I could afford you but I’m not making any money yet!” I believe it will take months off the home business learning curve. But what if other people don’t agree? Jamie and Jack rely on the income from this website, and I’m terrified I’ll let them down.

Cue big ass red text.

But I will not let that stop me.

I will continue to be terrified, but I will release my ebook anyway and let the chips fall where they may. I will tell myself what I tell my clients — your product is good, your price is good, you have a great group of people who trust you. I will channel balls and go for it. (Then I’ll write some crazy link bait post with my sales figures in the title and get rich.)

Anyway, that’s all. That’s my advice. Don’t be afraid of being afraid. Be afraid, but get on with it.

By Naomi Dunford - Jun 12, 2008 in Home Based Business - 36 Comments
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First, some administrivia.

I got some email feedback after the 45 Home Business Resources post from people who were stoked about the Site Build It! thing but were spazzing about the price. I just got a ping about an hour ago from SBI saying they were doing a special until June 21st that let’s you get a second one for another hundred bucks. (Are they reading my email?)

I said to myself, “Self, you should tell your readers about this.” Then I responded, saying, “If they can’t afford one, they sure as shit can’t afford one plus an extra hundred bucks.” I commenced ignoring the email.

But then Jamie decided to buy a couple for himself and it occurred to him — because he is smarter than I am and FUCK OFF I’M TRYING TO GET AN EBOOK WRITTEN HERE!!! — that two people could split it. (I checked with SBI and this is totally legit. They’re actually recommending it themselves.)

So if you’re on the fence, see if you can find someone else who’s on the fence and you can each save yourself some cash. From Steph in the comments: “My husband is already using Site Build It now and he swears by it. It’s totally incredible how much they prepare you before you even start and how detailed the steps are. The money is very, very worth it. I’m quite impressed!”

Site Build It info is here.

Site Build It info specially for WAHMs is here.

Now For The Social Media Stuff

Speaking of cool shit that happens in the IttyBiz comments, remember the other day when we talked about how social media sucks? If you were paying attention, you’d have noticed the charming and handsome Mr. Copyblogger himself say this:

The “conversation” is not between seller and buyer, but between buyers. And buyers are now media participants and producers.

Now take a look at this comment thread about InMotion Hosting from the home business resources post:

Thanks for the recommendation for InMotion!! I have been using GoDaddy and they have been great, but InMotion looks less expensive and if it’s great too, then wa-hoo!

Thanks!

blume

@ Blume - I fully recommend In Motion over GoDaddy. I also believe In Motion is in the top five of hosts.

James Chartrand

Thanks for the InMotion recommendation. I was leaning hard toward them thanks to James & Harry’s recommendation, but knowing of two businesses who like it is even better.

Sandie Law

In Motion hosting allows hosting for 6 websites on their $10 Pro account. I called for clarification and they really mean 6 separate sites, with unique domains and separate content. Quite different from other hosting sites that promise the same, but it’s actually just 6 domains pointing to 1 website.

Which beats the hell outta GoDaddy. The In Motion Power Plan hosts 6 sites for what I pay GoDaddy to host 2-3 sites. Upgrading to the In Motion’s Pro Plan, it’s 16 sites on one account for $20.

Yah. That’s what I said.

Crystal

Wow!! That is just awesome about InMotion. I am so excited I could pee my pants! I am switching today. I just looked through all of their info last night and it sounds incredible. Thanks again, you guys just made my week!

blume

When was the last time your hosting made your week?

How about “so excited you could pee your pants”? Huh? Yeah, that’s what I thought. THIS is how to “harness the power of social media”. I have a feeling the very nice people at InMotion are digging this newfangled social media craziness.

By Naomi Dunford - Jun 11, 2008 in Marketing - 10 Comments
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