Update: The Wealth Alliance Group has set up a special memorial site for Sue Riek.

Wow. I am truly in shock. Some friends just let us know about the passing of someone very special.

My wife, Jill, and I first met Sue Riek in February of this year at an internet marketing conference in San Antonio. Sue had an eBay business and was there sharpening her skills and expanding her knowledge base. She and my wife and I all joined the Wealth Alliance Group and have spent the last few months working together under the tutelage of Debra Thompson. During that time, we got to know her — not as well as we would’ve like, but quite well, given the fact that our only interactions were via e-mail and by participating on conference calls.

I had the privilege of seeing Sue again in July at another meeting in Atlanta. It became so clear to me what a treasure she was — loving and sweet, sincerely generous. She had her digital camera with her and we had a new friend snap some photos of the Wealth Alliance Group members that were present. Sue was gracious enough to allow me to snag the photos from her camera’s memory card. I posted them here shortly after they were taken.

As an example of her generosity, check out Sue’s blog. Here, she posted a story about the blessing she received when Dave Lakhani did something honorable… and she just happened to be the recipient of his good deed. It couldn’t have happened to a better person.

We’re going to miss you, Sue. Until we see you again…

We told you previously about the armor we listed on eBay. This isn’t necessarily all that unique — people sell interesting things on eBay every day. What was unique was using a proven platform such as a blog in order to promote the listing.

How’d we do?

Well, we’re happy to report that the auction ended last night. We’ve already been in communication with the buyer (a “mate” from the land down under — howdy, Dan, if you’re reading this!). He seems like a great guy. We’ll be shipping his new purchase out to him tomorrow.

More interestingly, however, are the results we managed to achieve on our search keywords. We got into the top 10 (read: 1st page) of results for these words: antique armor cuirass. Here’s some photographic proof for those of you from Missouri:

The lesson? If you’re trying to get noticed, you can’t beat a nicely-placed business blog. From an internet marketing standpoint, this is nearly magical. If you have a business and you aren’t blogging, you’re missing out on a phenomenal opportunity to communicate with your existing and future customers.

For those of you wondering about our traffic, I don’t have any other armor auctions to compare things to, so I can’t speak intelligently to that. But on the blog site itself here, we had a significant spike in traffic looking for armor. Ironically, much of it seems to have come from Digg!

Get busy blogging!

And, by the way, we happen to specialize in getting you off to the right start. Contact us today!

If you can’t wait, here’s a great article we just found from the folks that put together the snazzy new design for Michelle Malkin’s blog.

Well… we said we’d occasionally write about things that might be useless or trivial!

Here’s the skinny on some fascinating armor (breastplate & backplate) that we have listed on eBay. Know anybody who is a weaponry or militaria buff? Perhaps they’d be interested?

We plan to report back on how this process of using eBay in combination with some other internet marketing techniques actually works out. Watch this space!

***UPDATE: This page describes some items that we came into contact with and auctioned on eBay in 2007. We no longer have these items for sale, but you’re welcome to check out the photos and enjoy the information!

This is a fascinating set of pieces we are currently auctioning on eBay. They were purchased from an abandoned storage unit containing a wide variety of antiques and collectibles. These are clearly very old pieces. They are similar to pieces I have seen with dates in the 19th Century, but it is quite possible, based upon the look of the metal, that they are older than that. I do not pretend to be an expert in these matters, however, so I wouldn’t presume to pin a date on them.

We have not attempted to polish or restore the metal in any way (other than wiping off the dust).

Click on any of these pictures to enlarge:

Some Zoomed-In Shots for Detail:

Both of these pieces are of significant weight and have a nice patina of age. Visit the eBay listing for more information.

Why do small businesses build websites, anyway?

I’ve come to believe that most of them (the businesses) are suffering from dysfunctional strategy.  Perhaps hypo-strategy is a better way to look at it — a sort of neglect where it comes to developing any overall business philosophy or vision.

Why would I say this?

Most small business websites do just about everything except what they should be doing.

Websites should do 3 4 things for a business:

1. Get you noticed
2. Turn prospects who notice you into raving lunatics who will stop at nothing to buy your products or services.
3. Give those prospects multiple ways to: contact you, interact with you, buy from you, and (depending on your business) receive their purchases immediately
4. Get you noticed some more.

If I were to reverse engineer the strategies behind most of the websites put up by small  businesses, I would conclude that the driving business goals were (in no particular order):

• Duplicate our print brochure (from 4 years ago) in HTML
• Show our competition that we can do do that (have a website) too
• Throw uncle/cousin/nephew/grandchild/friend-of-a-friend who “knows about the internet” a bone
• Show the world our lack of taste by giving us a crack at designing (rather than paying for real design work)
• Set it and forget it
• Make it as hard as possible for anyone who might need or product(s) and/or service(s) to actually find us
• Create yet another piece of marketing for which we have no means of measuring effectiveness and ROI

Hey… if you don’t need any more customers or any additional revenue, then by all means, build your website with some of these goals in mind.

But if you’d rather get some results, then there are a couple of things you need:

• Your own self-managed hosting account running Linux or Unix with Apache, PHP, and MySQL
  • There are lots of hosts, but I recommend 1and1.com
• WordPress
• A couple of hours to download, upload, install, and tinker

Why WordPress, you ask?  Two Three reasons:

1. It will get you noticed (as long as you have decent content)
2. It is user-updateable
3. It will get you noticed

Full disclosure:  it would be impossible for me to own any stock in WordPress, because it’s open-source (and they give it away), and the link to 1and1 is an affiliate link (meaning after you buy your account with them, they’ll issue me a small credit).

 ”But David, we don’t have anything worth putting into a blog… and we don’t want to have to keep writing all the time.”

Then just do us all a favor:  close your doors now.

Plus, you can use WordPress as a “content management system” in addition to using it to publish your frequent blog posts.

There’s a lot more to internet marketing than what we’ve mentioned, of course, but in a world where content is king, where frequently-updated content is the supreme king, and where everyone who needs what you’re selling will search for you (most likely using Google), you absolutely must turn on a customer magnet… or watch as your competition gets your future customers instead of you.

By the way, here are some snazzy examples of businesses using WordPress:

• Michael Pink at Selling Among Wolves
• Mountain Lighting Galleries, Hiawassee, Georgia
• Nourish The Dream (OK… a little shameless self-plug)
• Justin DeStoppelaire at C Service Consulting
• Dr. Kassicieh at Sarasota Neurology

There are lots more, of course.  But the main thing to look for is whether a particular business is getting noticed!

Are you?

Now here’s a young lady who understands marketing. She’s found a medium that will evidently reach her father with her request.

Check it out on Seth Godin’s blog.

Now, my daughter’s only 2. But, since I’ve already caught her playing with a Rubik’s cube, I’m guessing that by the time she’s old enough to want new furniture in her room, I have something like this to look forward to.

Thinking about amping up your website’s performance?

Or maybe even starting a new online business?

The recordings are now available for the SUPERB internet marketing conference we mentioned.

We invested 4 days for a trip to San Antonio, not to mention hundreds of $$ in registrations, hotel costs, airfare, etc… to be at this fabulous event and absorb as much information as possible.

It was WELL worth it.

Now you can have access to all of the recordings – 2 days’ worth! – for under $200 on CD.

Go check it out!

**Update: recordings of this event are now available! -DGJ

I admit it.

I’ve always steered clear of “internet marketing” events… partly because of the sometimes less-than-scrupulous practices… partly because I haven’t wanted to subject myself to shady characters and content that may be of questionable morality.

But… let’s face it. We’re all marketing on the internet these days in one form or another. Even if you have a static, brochure-ware website that hasn’t changed since the Clinton administration, your business is doing internet marketing. So… why not make it effective & profitable?

That’s why I was excited when my good friend and expert sales trainer, Michael Pink, turned me on to a family-oriented event (read: no objectionable content, no unethical practices) designed to turn your website into a sales-generating machine!

Here are some highlights:

• Debra Thompson, who specializes in bringing all of the marketing pieces together. She has worked for some of the top names on the Internet!
• Ray Edwards, who has written sales pieces for some of the most successful internet marketers today. He can show you how to write profit pulling sales copy!
• Stephen Pierce, who is a world renown Internet marketing expert who has just come back from a world-wide speaking tour. He gets paid big bucks to speak at corporate events and you get to hear him for free…well, for the price of your registration!
• Dave Lakhani, who is an expert at accelerating your business through the skillful use of the media and public relations. Yes, you too can be famous in your niche – it is not that hard!
• Craig Perrine, who is the online king of building profitable lists. People who anxiously await your email and who actually take action on them.
• Stephen Beck, who will teach you step by step how to create profitable web sites that sell.

I registered right away.

The event is coming up in San Antonio, Texas on February 23rd & 24th. It’s not too late to get in on this opportunity… but it will be soon.

Click here to register or learn more.

Wow.

Give them something valuable. Now THAT’s marketing.

If you’re in business, or if you work in marketing, you need to be getting Alen Rosenspan’s e-mail newsletter. This month, you could’ve learned:

• how to really get results using Strategic Database Marketing
• the one word you should be using in all your marketing if you want it to really, really pull
• why you don’t want to screw up your e-mail marketing
• one important way not to screw up your e-mail marketing
• why the subject line of your marketing e-mails should be 49 characters long
• how many pixels wide the HTML design of your marketing e-mails should be (at least for the top portion that fits into the ‘preview’ of Outlook, Yahoo, and which will soon be adopted by AOL.

Sold yet? I am. And I’m not even a customer of his (yet). I got some valuable stuff.

Oh, and one more trick: turn your marketing campaign into something valuable. Staples has taken in close to $6 Million selling “Easy” buttons…

(If you’re still wondering, the word is “you”)

How easy is it for your future customers to locate you and do business with you?

Evidently, this is a big question on the minds of business people, if Google’s ad revenue for this year is any indication. They are, incidentally, on track to earn over $2 Billion this year from their ‘sponsored links’ business, which is becoming increasingly popular as companies struggle to promote their websites.

Forbes.com reported yesterday on the “Search Industrial Complex” and the (relatively) new flock of businesses which are built entirely around “search engine optimization” and other forms of internet business promotion, quoting Google CEO Eric Schmidt who said, “People are not aware of how big the opportunity is.”

Why does this matter to you?

In today’s digital society, it has become increasingly important for businesses to not only have a web presence, but to ensure that their websites are being found by the people who are searching. This means that your website must rank highly on the search engines – particularly for those search terms or keywords that are most likely to bring you business.

Gone are the days when it was good enough to simply have a website. Businesses are wising up to the fact that investing in an online presence without having it optimized for searchability is much like building a large retail store in the middle of a 100-acre cow pasture. If no traffic is going by, you’ve wasted your money. No one will know your store even exists . . . you can forget having them come in and spend money.

So, from a strategic marketing standpoint, how is your website performing for you? When was your site last reviewed for relevant content? Is it showing up on the search engines when people are looking for businesses like yours? How are you measuring your traffic to understand the return on your online investment?

If it could use some improvement (as most sites could) . . . is a company specializing in SEO (search engine optimization) the right move for you? Perhaps. But I challenge you to answer this question from a strategic vantage point. A better question might be: when was the last time your company evaluated all of its marketing initiatives to strategically determine where and how to invest?

The answer to that question might just determine how tomorrow’s revenue searches you out.