Business Growth Strategies

A Few Thoughts on Snow, Focus & Motivation

Ryan M. Healy — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:33:40 +0000

I’m drinking a cup of coffee and typing at my computer.

This is what I do eight hours a day, five days a week (the writing part, that is; I’m usually done with the coffee by 11 a.m.).

Today is a little different because there’s a big storm system sitting over Denver. It’s dropping all kinds of snow right now.

We’re approaching a foot of accumulation, with somewhere between 18 inches and two feet projected.

Fortunately, I’m a freelance copywriter, so I get to carry on with my work and enjoy a cozy day in the office.

Better still, I’ve stayed exceptionally focused this week, so today I can take some time to read, tidy up the clutter in my office, and spend some time pursuing one of my many pet projects.

I seem to have a lot of those.

One of my friends asked me recently, “How many web sites do you own?”

“Do you mean how many domains have I registered… or how many web sites have I created and are live on the Internet? Either way, I don’t know.”

It was a pretty short conversation.

Let’s see… just looked it up because now I’m curious. 130 domain names registered. (I have set some to expire, so that number will go down this year.)

And it looks like I have 21 web sites that are actually up and running. (This doesn’t count a few I’ve pulled down because I felt they had outlived their usefulness or never achieved their purpose.)

If you accused me of not being focused enough, I couldn’t deny it.

What I’ve realized in the time I’ve been working online is that I’m not primarily motivated by money.

Sure, I like to have enough to pay my bills. (Who doesn’t?)

But beyond providing for my family and having a little extra for date nights, vacations, and field trips, I’m more interested in creating impact… changing minds… getting people to see things they haven’t seen before.

That’s what really gets me excited.

That, and snow.

I love snow days.

Talk to you next week,

-Ryan M. HealySimilar Posts:

Be Stingy with Testimonials

Ryan M. Healy — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 22:11:50 +0000

On the one hand, getting testimonials from colleagues and clients can boost your credibility in the market and help you get more business.

On the other hand, giving out testimonials can be risky business.

If you give somebody a testimonial or endorsement after only brief interaction with him, you’re playing with fire. You don’t really know the person in question, and you don’t know what that person may (or may not) do in the future.

Consistency in behavior… longevity in the market… these are the kinds of things that breed trust. This is why I only give testimonials and endorsements to people I’ve known and interacted with for a couple years.

It’s also why I’ve turned down a number of requests for testimonials. It’s just not worth the risk.

I realize it’s easy to get caught up in the “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” world of testimonial swapping, but my advice is… don’t.

If you’ve really done good work, the testimonials and endorsements will come in over time.

No need to rush or hurry things up by whoring yourself out to every marketer who asks for a piece of your credibility in hopes they’ll reciprocate.

Be stingy with testimonials.

Protect your credibility.

Because at the end of the day, it’s all you’ve got.

-Ryan M. HealySimilar Posts:

Workers of Iniquity in the Internet Marketing Cesspool

Ryan M. Healy — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 23:56:45 +0000

If you’ve ever wanted proof that the guys running boiler rooms are workers of iniquity, look no further than John Paul Raygoza of PushTraffic.

The short version:

Raygoza and his thugs scammed people in desperate financial straits in amounts ranging from $4,200 to $58,000.

They manipulated “marks” through false promises of financial gain, then denied refunds.

They used deceptive means to capture credit card info, then charged credit cards without permission.

They intentionally targeted and preyed upon the elderly and those with physical and learning disabilities.

It’s apparent that John Paul Raygoza was running a criminal enterprise. That’s why he got slapped with a class action lawsuit accusing his company of racketeering and RICO violations.

Fraud, false advertising, unfair competition, elder abuse, negligence… these are just a few of the items listed in the lawsuit.

“Defrauded, Lied to & Cruelly Manipulated”

Quoting from the lawsuit…

The plaintiffs are a diverse group living on four different continents united by several common factors:

(1) They all sought out a legitimate home based Internet business due to disability, retirement, unemployment or other good reasons;

(2) All were defrauded, lied to, cruelly manipulated, and deceived by defendants who promised massive returns on their investments;

(3) Not a single plaintiff earned a return on their money despite the services that may have been provided by defendants;

(4) Plaintiffs lost well over $600,000, almost all of which was financed by credit card;

(5) Plaintiffs were approached multiple times and resold on the same program often masquerading under various trade names controlled by the same group of defendants;

(6) Defendants utilized strong arm sales tactics and made unauthorized charges on credit cards;

(7) Defendants, even during the pendency of this lawsuit continue to contact plaintiffs in an attempt to sell the same bogus services yet again under yet another program name.

As mentioned above, Raygoza et al targeted people who were especially vulnerable:

Extravagant promises were made to plaintiffs by the Criminal Enterprise’s salesmen including Raygoza, Sipes, Molina, and Denton in order to gain access to their credit card and debit card accounts. Promises varied by individual but all of which falsely promised guaranteed returns on their investment. High pressure sales tactics were utilized and the elderly, ill and unsophisticated plaintiffs were targeted especially.”

A Full-On Money-Sucking Operation

This wasn’t just a boiler room… it was a full-on money-sucking operation designed to string victims along until they’d been sucked dry.

The operation was was quite successful (by monetary standards) for two or three years.

Naturally, Raygoza got drunk on his own “success,” so he decided to host a $4,997 workshop to reveal how he became a millionaire and how others could (allegedly) do the same. He recorded the seminar and sold the DVDs first for $497, then for $147.

Here’s the headline from that seminar/DVD sales letter:

A few sentences later, another equally awful headline/subhead appears:

This second one is actually really funny. I mean, “finally”… I’ve been waiting for months and months and months for Raygoza to break his vow of silence and show me how to make $3 million this year.

Last but not least, Raygoza makes a blatant attempt to convince you that he’s not a professional con man. (FYI: If somebody is working hard to convince you he’s not a con man, he almost certainly is.)

Read the copy above carefully. In case you didn’t notice…

Raygoza Is Actually Revealing His True Character!

He is basically telling you that he’s selling you a “get-rich-quick piece of shit” and that he’s a professional con man who’s out to suck you dry.

You know what they say, “Out of the mouths of con men come the most ridiculous blabberings.” Or something like that.

Anyway, Raygoza lost the lawsuit and, as Salty Droid reports, a $1 million default judgement has been entered against him.

But Raygoza’s bad behavior did not start (nor did it end) with his boiler room scamming.

A History of Criminal Behavior

Raygoza’s racketeering is not his only criminal experience. In fact, he has already been convicted of:

Battery resulting in serious injury
Drunk driving

Both of these convictions ought to be enough to cause any normal person pause. Drunk driving is a crime of stupidity, not necessarily malice. But battery resulting in serious injury? That doesn’t happen by accident.

But I guess Raygoza isn’t yet satisfied with the length of his rap sheet. He’s now been charged with the following (serious) crimes:

Kidnapping with intent to ransom or extort
False imprisonment
Robbery
Witness tampering
Possession of a gun after being convicted of a felony and/or while addicted to a narcotic drug

I don’t know the story behind all these charges, otherwise I would share it here.

Now, here’s my point, which I’ve been a long time coming around to…

Internet Marketing Is a Cesspool!

You might be tempted to think Raygoza is the exception to the rule, but you’d be wrong.

Raygoza is the rule.

It took me a long time to see this because most of the “gurus” go to great lengths to make sure you never see what goes on behind the scenes.

Unfortunately, ignorance demands a steep price, especially in the Internet marketing space.

That’s why I’ve written this post as well as some others that detail the criminal and unethical activities that happen online.

Get educated. Be skeptical. Always do your due diligence.

It could save you from making some very expensive mistakes.

It might even save your life.

-Ryan M. Healy

P.S. Mike Filsaime heartily endorsed John Paul Raygoza back in December 2008.

In his email, he encouraged his subscribers to buy Raygoza’s “The Truth DVD Series.” Mike claimed, “[Raygoza] doesn’t leave any stones unturned in this DVD course.”

Ironically, the one stone he DID leave unturned was the stone called “truth.”Similar Posts:

How to Declare a Winner in a Direct Mail Test

Ryan M. Healy — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 18:12:22 +0000

When you are testing two direct mail pieces against each other, it is not always easy to determine a winner.

Unless, of course, you are basing it solely on initial responses.

One piece brings in 42 orders; the other brings in 55. You have a winner!

Or do you?

The truth is, direct mail pieces not only affect the number of initial orders; they also affect the lifetime value of the customer.

In the introduction to Million Dollar Mailings, Denny Hatch shares this interesting case study:

Circulation consultant Gordon Grossman illustrates the need for a precise understanding of the arithmetic in direct mail in his eye-opening analysis of the long-term value of the full-dress direct mail package (outer envelope, letter, circular, order card, etc.) vs. its cheaper cousin, the double postcard. At the end of year one of a mailing of 100,000 pieces, the double postcard brought in 955 paid subscribers and a profit of $2,418 vs. 900 subs for the control package and a loss of $4,436 for a swing of $6,854.

Based on this math, it appears that the postcard is the winner. But if you declared it the winner at this point in time, you’d have made a big mistake.

Hatch continues:

However, at the end of year five — after carefully tracking payments and renewals — the full-dress package was responsible for a net of 2,024 paid subs and a lifetime value of $53,803 vs. 1,517 postcard subs who paid $33,160.

In other words, in direct mail (and direct marketing in general) lifetime value is everything in terms of the health and growth of a business.

What are you basing your decisions on: initial orders or lifetime value?

-Ryan M. HealySimilar Posts:

Try Your Hardest, Then Let It Go

Ryan M. Healy — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:04:57 +0000

I’m reading Bossypants by Tina Fey. It’s hilarious, but also includes some useful lessons and anecdotes about life as a writer.

On page 123, Fey writes about “Things I Learned from Lorne Michaels.” (In case you don’t know, Lorne Michaels is the creator and producer of Saturday Night Live. He is the guy who hired Tina Fey for SNL and later helped her start 30 Rock.)

Anyway, here’s the second lesson Fey learned from Michaels:

“The show doesn’t go on because it’s ready; it goes on because it’s 11:30.”

This is something Lorne has said often about Saturday Night Live, but I think it’s a great lesson about not being too precious about your writing. You have to try your hardest to be at the top of your game and improve every joke you can until the last possible second, and then you have to let it go.

You can’t be that kid standing at the top of the water-slide, overthinking it. You have to go down the chute. (And I’m from a generation where a lot of people died on water-slides, so this was an important lesson for me to learn.) You have to let people see what you wrote. It will never be perfect, but perfect is overrated. Perfect is boring on live TV.

When it comes to writing for a living, there is no such thing as perfection: only deadlines and results.

If you are a comedy writer (like Tina Fey), the audience either laughs at your jokes or they don’t.

If you are a direct response copywriter (like me), the market either responds to your sales letter or they don’t.

So forget about perfection.

Just do the best work you can possibly do in the limited time you have.

Then sit back, relax, and see what happens when you let go of your writing and let it do its thing.

-Ryan M. HealySimilar Posts:

Trite Headlines and Old Virgins

Ryan M. Healy — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 18:43:07 +0000

The headlines and copy used in big brand ads are often so ridiculous they’re hardly worth commenting on.

But I found this post by Nancy Friedman both funny and interesting. She writes:

“X just got better” [is] a formula frequently employed by headline writers short on time and imagination.

She then lists 18 specific examples where this headline formula was used, each one as dull as the last.

Actually, that’s not entirely true. Among her examples there is one exception that stands out like Christmas lights in July:

My favorite variation, though, comes from the dead trademark database: “The Oldest Virgin Around Just Got Better.” It was registered to the California Olive Corporation between 1997 and 2005.

I don’t know how many bottles of virgin olive oil this headline sold, but at least it’s interesting. If I saw that headline while flipping through a magazine, I’m pretty sure I’d at least read the first sentence to discover the tie-in.

Nevertheless, you ought to avoid trite formulas like “X just got better” or “X just got easier.” It’s not specific and it requires the reader to think too much.

Instead of saying that your product just got better, why not tell your over-stimulated reader precisely how your product is better — right there in the headline!

I know, it’s a novel thought.

But that’s why you read this blog, right?

-Ryan M. HealySimilar Posts:

Creativity and Constraints

Ryan M. Healy — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 18:43:26 +0000

In my early twenties, I wrote a number of “philosophical fragments.” These thought-fragments were inspired by Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, Blaise Pascal’s Pensées, and Søren Kierkegaard’s Philosphical Fragments.

Fragment #92 I wrote says this:

Creativity thrives under limits, be they natural or imposed.

Since then, I’ve seen this principle at work time and time again.

So it was no surprise when I came across similar sentiments in The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur by Mike Michalowicz.

We Are Innovative When Resources Are Scarce

“It’s awe-inspiring how careful, thoughtful, and innovative we are when our supplies are scarce. But it’s also confounding how quickly we use and abuse our resources when we perceivably have a lot.”

Lack of Money Forces You to Grow the Right Way

“Money covers up problems and weaknesses. Without money, you’ve got to bring your A-game every day. Lack of funds forces you to optimize everywhere and grow the right way.”

Conclusion

Do you lack resources?

Don’t despair.

It may be a big blessing in disguise.

-Ryan M. HealySimilar Posts:

CommentLuv Internal Server Error

Ryan M. Healy — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 16:10:05 +0000

If you’ve installed CommentLuv on your blog and are seeing an Internal Server Error when leaving a comment, here’s the problem.

First of all, your site is probably hosted with Hostmonster or BlueHost. These two hosting companies have the same owner. Both hosting companies use CPU throttling if a script or chron job is taking too long to process.

Unfortunately, I did not know this until now. This site is hosted on Hostmonster. When I checked my Control Panel, I discovered my host is throttling my site more than normal, probably because of high traffic volumes.

Anyway, there will sometimes be a conflict between caching plugins and CommentLuv. It seems like this conflict is more common if your site is on Hostmonster or BlueHost. (Ironically, I switched this site from GoDaddy hosting to Hostmonster last year because I thought Hostmonster would be better.)

Fortunately for me, another CommentLuv customer discovered that WP Super Cache was causing the Internal Server Error. When he disabled that plugin, CommentLuv worked just fine.

As it turns out, I was also using WP Super Cache, so I disabled it. Problem solved!

I tried installing the Quick Cache plugin in place of WP Super Cache, but the Internal Server Error returned. So, for now, I am not using any caching plugin on this site.

To sum up, you might get an Internal Server Error when one or both of the following conditions are met:

Your site is hosted by Hostmonster or Bluehost.
You use any cache plugin with CommentLuv at the same time.

Andy Bailey, the creator of the CommentLuv plugin, responded to me in the support forum. I thought his response was quite helpful:

cache plugins are notoriously troublesome for anything that requires a dynamic site. there are plenty of blogs that have commentluv and use cache plugins but because there are so many options and configurations of hosting I cannot give an exact set of settings to use. the truth is, if you are not completely familiar with cache plugins settings and what they do then it is pretty much hit and miss when you install one if it will work or not.

there are also many users on bluehost that use commentluv with no issues. it is possible that your site is saying internal server error because an error is happening when commentluv tries to fetch posts.

there is no way to tell what is going on in your case until you check your error log. that should show you what is going wrong.

I hope this post helps you solve any Internal Server Error you get with the CommentLuv plugin.

-Ryan M. Healy

P.S. Click here if you’d like to add CommentLuv Premium to your blog.Similar Posts:

CommentLuv: Get Keyword Backlinks Every Time You Leave a Comment

Ryan M. Healy — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:57:17 +0000

I bought and installed the CommentLuv Premium plugin over the weekend.

Now, every time you leave a comment, CommentLuv will automatically pull in your latest blog post and create a link to it.

Because I have the Premium plugin, there are some additional things you should know:

Once you’ve left 10 approved comments, you’ll be able to choose any of your last 10 blog posts to be linked instead of only the most recent.

If you’ve left fewer than 10 approved comments, you can Tweet, Like, or +1 the post to get more posts to appear as options to be linked.

Even better, I’ve reverted back to the standard WordPress Comment system. I’ve also installed and reactivated the DoFollow plugin, which means all CommentLuv links will pass PageRank back to your site.

If you’re looking to improve your site’s search engine rankings, you’ll benefit simply by commenting on the posts I write.

I hope you like the new commenting features.

And I look forward to more of your comments.

-Ryan M. HealySimilar Posts:

How the Media Tries to Get You to Vote for Bad Candidates

Ryan M. Healy — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:21:51 +0000

Old media is still a powerful tool that influences millions of people every single day.

Yet the media is far from objective in its coverage of political issues. Reporting is dead; but putting spin on information is alive and well (even if you’re in the “No-Spin Zone”).

With that in mind, let’s talk about this issue of “electability.” Why is it being repeated so much by the talking heads on TV?

The reason is simple:

They’re trying to convince you that it’s better to vote for a bad candidate who might be able to beat Obama than a good candidate whom the establishment would like you to believe doesn’t have a chance.

But this is the underlying message: There is a better candidate!

His name is Ron Paul.

And if people stopped believing the lie that they must vote “for the lesser of two evils,” then Ron Paul would beat Obama by a landslide.

-Ryan M. HealySimilar Posts: