Season's Greetings!

Just getting everything ready for Christmas . . . which means cleaning the house from top to bottom (almost done), wrapping the presents (done), decorating the tree (done), making the puddings (done several weeks ago), icing the cake . . . oops, I knew there was something I still had to do!

So, I'd like to send best wishes to all of you and say thank you for reading my blog over the past year. 

Photo © Martinased | Stock Free Images & Dreamstime Stock Photos

Festive Spirit - a Personal View

Christmas is just two weeks off . . . although the shops have been displaying Christmas goods since September (and, in some cases, August).  Christmas lights have been switched on - and in one English town, at least, there were complaints at the poor quality of the display.  One of our local superstores has already run out of Christmas trees.  People are replenishing their drinks cupboards, parents are spending huge sums on whatever the latest craze is that the kids are demanding, and numerous presents are being bought  that, once Christmas is over, will be consigned to the bottom of a drawer or advertised for sale in the local paper.

Now, I am not a Christian, so I'm not coming at this from a faith-based angle.  But, even so, I find all the commercialism of Christmas rather sad.  Yes, it's great to buy presents for those you love . . . but somehow each year there seems to be a compulsion to spend more and more.  And giving things isn't the only way to show love.

Because, as a non-Christian, I believe that Christmas is about celebrating the birth of someone whose mission was to bring more love into the world.  I'm a great admirer of the Salvation Army whose idea of a good Christmas is to ensure that lonely elderly people and homeless people have a hot Christmas dinner and a happy day, feeling wanted and cared for.

And I'm also a great admirer of the entrepreneur Andrew Reynolds.  Not because he's a self-made multi-millionaire (although that, in itself, is admirable) and not just because of his enthusiasm in encouraging others to follow in his footsteps.  But simply because he is a great philanthropist and works tirelessly for charities including Great Ormond Street Hospital and the Make A Wish Foundation and has helped many people in South Africa to achieve a better standard of life that, without his help, would have been unattainable.

But there is no doubt in my mind that internet marketing can encourage greed . . . think of the marketers who sell worthless packages, or who don't offer a money-back guarantee, and the retail companies and eBay sellers who sell substandard goods.  There are so many people trying to make a living through the internet, there is so much competition, that I feel that it's very easy to lose sight of what it's all about.  Because, as one of my other marketing 'favourites', Armand Morin, always stresses, it's not just about making money, it's about providing value.

And so, when I'm feeling jaded about the internet, it's good to be reminded of how it can bring people together and make life easier.  And when that reminder has a Christmas theme, so much the better.  I first saw this YouTube video last Christmas and loved it then.  Not everyone does, and if you don't like it, then I apologise.  But if you haven't seen it, please have a look at the Digital Story of the Nativity.

A Cautionary Tale - or How Not to Set Up a Website

I have just spent an hour ordering some wine as a Christmas gift.  Not different bottles going to different people.  I wasn't even choosing individual bottles.  Just sending a case of six wines that I should have been able to order and pay for in a few minutes.

I had browsed a couple of websites and discovered that Wines Direct was offering a £30 off voucher for new customers at Laithwaites which meant that I could send something really nice rather than just quite nice.  So I clicked on the case I wanted, filled in my details and clicked the big red button saying 'continue'.  Which brought me back to the main page.  Eventually, after doing this a few times, and realising that 'continue' really meant 'discontinue'  I discovered three links at the top of the page for 'delivery', 'summary' and 'payment'. 

I clicked 'delivery', filled in the details of the recipient, and clicked 'payment'. I put in my card details and my billing address plus the voucher code and clicked ‘make purchase’. A message came up to the effect that the recipient’s name and address were missing. I backtracked and put them in again (and this also required putting in my card details again). The same thing happened.  I tried it a third time and, yes, you’ve guessed it . . . it didn’t work.

Finally I gave up and rang the company.  The girl I spoke to was helpful but knew nothing about the vouchers on the Wines Direct website and I spent ages hanging on while she asked her colleagues about it.  She said it must be a Virgin Wines voucher.  I read out to her what it said on the Wines Direct website and told her that clicking on the voucher code brought one to the Laithwaites - not Virgin - website.  I gave her the url of the voucher offer.  The only thing that stopped me giving up and starting again . . . with Virgin Wines or another website . . . was the fact that, with £30 off, this case of wine was very good value.

Eventually we got it sorted and I paid for my wine.  I put a little message in with it . . . it had to be little because Laithwaites allows only a measly 70 characters (including spaces) - half the length of a Tweet!

So I think this is a lesson to anyone who has a direct sales website, especially at Christmas when you sell products that might be sent as presents.  Your website has got to work.  I wonder how long it is since any Laithwaite employee has checked out the website and tried ordering something to make sure that it's possible without the customer tearing his or her hair.  I wonder why the customer service staff on the 'phones don't know about all the voucher codes available - surely someone could print up a list for them.  I wonder why they are so mean about the size of the message . . . surely a few more characters would cost them nothing.  And I wonder how many customers they lose simply because of the inefficiency of their website.

It's not easy to find time to read everything

There is a huge amount published every week on the internet on the subject of internet marketing, affiliate marketing, using social networks, blogging . . . and the all the paraphernalia of making money online.  Some of what's written is interesting, some is informative, some is both interesting and informative. 

I read a lot of it and, as you'll know if you read this blog regularly, I like to share things that I find helpful.  So about three months ago, I started to compile a weekly newsletter containing twenty of so of the stories and articles that had caught my eye during the past seven days.  I offered it to the people who were already on my list and, three months on, more people are reading it each week.

I haven't advertised it at all but the response I've had to it has now prompted me to mention it here in case any of the readers of this blog would like to subscribe to it.  It's free and all you need to do is click here and then fill in your name and email address on the form and click 'sign up'.

Recent articles have included:

• 5 easy ideas for increasing blog traffic
• 7 reasons to join Pinterest for Business
• A report on the new Facebook purchase tracking tool
• The secrets behind great business websites
• Best practices for SEO content writing
• Making money with social media
• 6 Insider Secrets to a Winning Affiliate Marketing Program
• How to Build an Online Business From Scratch
• 10 reasons for using videos for marketing
• How to Get Started with Affiliate Marketing on Pinterest
• 10 ecommerce turn-offs to avoid
• Why businesses fail online
• How to make your online branding brilliant

The Sphinx House Newsletter comes out every Monday.

Does Anyone Here Understand the Rules of Twitter?

My Twitter account was just suspended.  Fortunately it's not a big hoo-ha to get it back . . . you just have to tick some boxes saying you'll be a good girl (or boy) in future.  But it's the reason I was suspended that puzzles me.

The page . . . and yes, it is a 'one size fits all' page . . . said I had been suspended because I'd been following aggressively and there had been a large number of reports of my spamming.

Now first of all, I'd like to say I abhore spam.  However, it seems that Twitter's definition of spam is very different from what most of us might understand by that term.  According to Twitter, you are spamming:

• If you have followed a large amount of users in a short amount of time;
• If you have followed and unfollowed people in a short time period, particularly by automated means (aggressive follower churn);
• If you repeatedly follow and unfollow people, whether to build followers or to garner more attention for your profile;

all of which sounds, to me, identical to their definition of 'aggressive following'.  But spamming covers other actions as well - in fact, there's a long list - and one of these is:

• If your updates consist mainly of links, and not personal updates;

which is also troubling because I do post links in almost all my posts - they're to articles and news items that I think may be interesting or helpful and which, I believe, my followers are following me in order to see.  I hope that what Twitter means is just links without some text saying what it is . . . but it's not clear.

As far as the 'aggressive following is concerned',  my following habits have remained exactly the same for at least the past six or eight months and I've never been suspended before.  I always follow roughly the same number of people each time . . . and only every other day, never ever two days running.  So why now?

And what also puzzles me is who these large number of people who reported me are.  Because a very large proportion of those who I follow, follow me back - usually around 70 to 80 per cent.  And, although I guess quite a number will automatically follow back anyone who follows them, I'd like to think that a lot of those who follow me do so because I post links to interesting articles and news items.

So, yes, I'm quite offended to have had my account suspended for aggressive following and spamming.  Of course, one of the problems is that no one outside Twitter actually knows what aggressive following consists of.  The guidelines say  "if you don’t follow or un-follow hundreds of users in a single day, and you aren’t using automated methods of following users, you should be fine."  (Notice it says 'should' . . . not 'will be'.)  But how many hundreds is 'hundreds'?

One Twitter expert I know used to teach that you could follow up to three hundred a day for three days in a row.  And some bigwig at Twitter had assured him personally that it was OK to do this.  But I know someone who was suspended for following 200 two days in a row and then, once she was reinstated, two days later for following ten!

I find it difficult to understand what Twitter hopes to gain by being so vague.  It would, after all, be quite easy to say "You may not follow more than 200 people once every two days" or something of the sort.  Then we'd all know where we stood.  But, sadly, this seems to be the way things go online these days (if you've read the posts I wrote in January about Google adwords, you'll know what I'm referring to).  And I wonder whether ultimately it's just about power . . . knowing that they have a hold over so many people who are anxiously pussy-footing around, trying not to break rules that haven't been fully explained.  Sadly, we'll never know.

The Value of Stepping Back

I've been away for a week.  During that week I've had some thoughts about the new business I've been working on.  Not that I've been consciously sitting down and thinking about it . . . I was, after all, on holiday . . . but just odd thoughts that came into my mind.

From the physical distance of 100 miles and the much greater mental distance, I was able to take stock of what I was doing.  For the past few months I have been focusing mainly on building up - and maintaining - my list in this new niche.  Using the same techniques over and over again, this has been working well.  But other aspects of the business have been slower to take shape.  For example, I've had very little time to design my website and that's holding up some of the other things I want to do.

From a distance it became quite clear how I can re-assign my time so that the list building continues but I can also start on other aspects of the business.  Having become aware of this, I also became aware of how easy it is to get bogged down in just one part of building a business.  And I could see that it would have been much harder to realise this from within the work, so to speak.

So I have learned a lesson and now, from time to time, I shall allow myself to step back and see how what I have been doing looks from the outside.  Perhaps this is the real secret of successful business - to be able to see the whole picture and to maintain a balance within one's work.  We shall see!

It's About Time!

Internet marketing, particularly when you're starting out, can be very time consuming, especially if you can't afford to outsource any of the work.  And, in my experience, many training courses tend to play down the amount of work that's going to be involved.  I'm not just talking here about courses on internet marketing.  When I applied to train as a counsellor, I was invited for an interview at the college.  As with every interview I've ever been to, at the end the interviewer asked me if I had any questions.  I knew that the teaching part of the course involved going to the college one day a week  but said I'd like to know how much work was required in addition.  "About half a day a week" was the reply.  Actually, it turned out to be closer to two and a half days a week and, in the last months of the course, even more.

I've noticed the same sort of trend in some internet marketing courses . . . "you can achieve this in three months working two hours a day".  Well, perhaps some people can.  But I'm equally sure that a lot of people can't.  I think there are several reasons for this . . . firstly, if you're a bit of a perfectionist, like me, you'll want to get everything 'right' before you move onto the next bit - and that, in itself, can slow the process down considerably.  Or maybe your concentration isn't that good or your environment is such that you're constantly interrupted.  Or perhaps you're so new to internet marketing that you have a lot to learn about the basics before you can even start . . . or you can't afford to invest in all the time-saving software and have to take the slower route.  Or possibly you're just disorganised and don't make the best use of your time.

Now some courses will give you a little 'extra' in the form of some sort of time management training.  I've tried a few of these . . . and they've never worked.  For me, and my lifestyle, they are far too rigid.  Yes, indeed, I can plan a timetable but when it comes to it, I can't keep to it.  There's a great line in one of the episodes of the drama series The West Wing.  Josh Lyman is asked about a typical day at the White House, where he is Deputy Chief of Staff.  He says "There's no such thing.  There's a schedule and there's a structure, to be sure.  And to a certain extent it starts out as a nine to five job.  But you can count on it being blown to hell by 9.30."   And I know just how he feels. 

Planning a timetable that's set in stone means you've got to be certain that nothing urgent is going to pop up and need attention.  It also means that you've got to have a rough idea how long each task will take.  And it means clock-watching to ensure that a session where you're working on task A doesn't overrun into time allotted to task B.  And, apart from being distracting, that can be quite annoying if task A is going well and you want to continue until you've finished it.

So I've generally ignored any suggestions of time management schemes . . . until a few weeks ago when someone recommended The Pomodoro Technique to me.  It's a remarkable book written, so I understand, by a young man who was trying to organise his university studies.  The scheme is imaginative and flexible and doesn't require clock watching and - best of all - it works!  I've been using it now for two or three weeks and have found that not only has my productivity improved but I'm also far more aware of how much time certain tasks need, and I'm managing my time very much better.

The scheme entails the use of a kitchen timer (the 'pomodoro' of the title).  Instead of this, I've downloaded a free timer to my computer.  The alarm sounds are programmable . . . so I have beautiful flute music and birdsong telling me when a working period has ended . . . what could be nicer!