Welcome back to Self Employed Mum. Thanks for visiting!

This week I discovered that trade shows are not the only place you can bag a decent bizz freebie.

Let me introduce you to my latest hobby – collecting wisdom from the Gurus.

The hobby is not hard to manage. It work like this:

1. Find a Guru
2. Visit Guru’s website/blog
3. Download freebie

In the never-ending rush to list build, you’d be surprised at what people are willing to give away – MP3 training, Audio recordings of teleseminars, workbooks, CDs, worksheets, organisational tools…

All in return for my email address. As I’m genuinely interested in what the peeps have to offer, being on their mailing list is no hardship – I may even become a customer – and in return I have a mountain of audio and PDFs to enjoy. All of it is fab stuff as I’ve been careful to only connect with Gurus I’m interested in.

My top tips are as follows:

Identify a guru whose thang you love – via facebook, twitter, word of mouth, whatever

Once you’ve downloaded their freebies, take a look at who they’re linking to and check out those sites

Try US/Canada sites for some of the most desperate generous freebies

Only download stuff you will find useful – no point clogging up your inbox with rubbish

Enjoy!

photo credit: •°°• ♥♡ baghi ♡♥ •°°•

Some of you may have caught some of my tweets on Saturday (from @selfemployedmum and @alisonrothwell) and been a bit mystified as to why I was promoting a product for you to buy, as I don’t normally do this.

On Saturday I was a guest speaker at an Internet Marketing seminar, organised by Nick James. Nick is a mentor of mine and an information product guru. For those of you unfamiliar with the phrase “information product” these are literally the products you see for sale on the net solving a problem someone has with the aid of books, audio CDs, software, DVDs etc, on all kinds of subjects from puppy training to crochet. I’ve bought quite a few information products and have always been interested in how they are put together.

On Saturday, in front of a live audience, Nick showed how easy it was to create your own quality information product, and, just like Jack Bauer, did it in “real time.” The product research was done in advance – Nick put together a package for people to learn how to make their own information products (!) The 24 hour Product Formula for a very reasonable price of £15.00. On Saturday he put together the webpage, blog and ran live direct marketing campaigns. The tweets you saw from me, were part of this.

The webpage went up, with minutes to spare, at the planned time of 11.00 a.m. (just as in real life there were a couple of technical glitches!). At 11.17, the first order came through. Every hour after that, the sales were announced and the Paypal account figure shown on the screen. I have to say it was amazing to see that whenever some action was taken (like launching the blog), you were able to see the effect on the sales figures.

My presentation focused on using SEO to promote your product, and I shared some SEO tips for quick returns. Other speakers explained how the graphics were put together for the product, how to use video marketing, set up a blog etc.

And the best thing?

Not only did Nick show how easy it was to create and market a quality information product (to an audience of Newbies), every penny of the money raised from each sale of the 24 Hour Product Formula is being donated to Oxfam, for their Haiti appeal.

By 5pm, Nick had reached his target of 100 online sales. By 2300, just 12 hours after launch, this had doubled to just over 200  orders. Yesterday, the total was 260 online sales and he’s hoping to make $10,000 within 48 hours of the product launch.

What I learnt:

• That putting together an information product is so much easier than you think
• You have to “take action”, make things happen and not dither about
• That creating an information product could work really well for lots of businesses e.g. PR, accountancy, VA services, for both marketing and making money. For example, one delegate at the seminar had created products to help the self employed put together a SA tax return quickly.
• If you create a quality product, for an audience which has a reason to buy, and market it properly, then you will make money.

Could you create an information product to help your customers?

You can check out the sales page here and also the blog.

photo credit: John Griffiths

OK, I’m waiting for Godot, sorry Google, and Man is it getting tedious…

I built a site on Sunday – nothing fancy – just a self-hosted wordpress blog skinned with a magazine theme. It’s a test site for me to do some experimenting on, in particular, some marketing stuff.

I set it all up, wrote ten pages of content, and then sat back smugly expecting Mr Google Bot to come calling and pay his respects.

Except he hasn’t.

Last night I logged back into Webmaster Tools (http://www.google.com/webmastertools/) to find that Google hasn’t been able to access my site map beacuse of an error with a plug-in. So I’ve removed that and submitted a rss feed instead.

Woke up this morning. Nada.

I’ll let you know when I finally get indexed, but in the meantime, here’s some ideas about how you get google to notice your new site:

• Bookmark it using a social bookmarking site such as Delicious
• Write an article for the site and submit it to an article directory, remembering to add a link back to your new site
• Leave your new URL in any forum sigs you have
• Add the new site to online directories (but make sure they’re ones with a good rep, not spammy)

And not forgetting, a manual submission here: http://www.google.co.uk/addurl/

photo credit: Yodel Anecdotal

On Tuesday 12 January, I’ll be kicking off a new FREE webinar – the Beginner’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization.

A webinar covering everything you want to know about search engine optimization (SEO) but were afraid to ask.

Join me as I explain

• What meta tags are and why they are important
• How to build the best backlinks and avoid the ones that are worthless
• What Web 2.0 is and how it can benefit your business

And much, much more…

The webinar dates are below. If you can’t make next week’s then do sign up for the February or March dates.

Tue, Jan 12, 2010 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM GMT
Registration Web Link: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/127695905

Tue, Feb 9, 2010 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM GMT
Registration Web Link: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/327353297

Tue, Mar 9, 2010 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM GMT
Registration Web Link: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/675296305

Word has it that there’s soon to be a new search engine in town…

The mighty behemoth Google has been undergoing a face-lift since the Summer, code-named “caffeine”.

Google is rumoured to be rolling out this new search engine in the New Year. There has been some research so far into the suspected changes to the algorithm and how this may affect websites and I will be sharing this with you in this special FREE webinar:

“All the News on Google Caffeine and What it Means for Your Website.”

At the internet marketing seminar I attended last weekend I discovered a new time management technique which I thought I’d share with you all.

It’s called the Pomodoro Technique (a name close to my heart as I love tomatoes!). It was invented by an Italian student, Francesco Cirillo, who used one of those “tomato kitchen timers” to measure chunks of his time. It enables the user to focus on the task in hand they need to accomplish and to use time as an ally instead of a source of anxiety!

To get started, all you need is:

• A kitchen timer
  You can use either a real timer or a software timer. Set it to 25 minutes.
• A sheet of paper
• A pencil

The Pomodoro Technique then works like this:

1. Choose a task to be accomplished
2. Set the timer to 25 minutes
   
3. Work on the task until the timer rings, then put a check on your sheet of paper
4. Take a short break (5 minutes is OK)
5. Every 4 Pomodoros take a longer break

So the idea is that you break down that impossible task into smaller chunks which are do-able. Apparently, you’ll be able spot improvements within a couple of days and master the technique after a week or so.

So, I’m going to give it a go and see whether it improves my time management

The Pomodoro Technique website has a free e-book to download plus a cute “starter kit.”

Blogging for Profit Web Seminar
Join us for a Webinar on November 24 9-10.00 p.m.

Space is limited.

Reserve your Webinar seat now at:

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/249549833

There are lots of questions in the blogosphere, particularly on the ‘mummy blogging’ scene about online advertising – from how to get it, who to get it from, technical aspects, getting money from empty wells like PR peeps, ad networks, and even just the act of contemplating running advertising.

We’ve decided to run our first web seminar and it’s going to be Blogging for Profit – The Quick Guide to Online Advertising.

This one hour web seminar is aimed at demystifying online advertising in the context of blogging. From understanding key terms and why they are important to you and to the person asking about them, to working out what to charge, ad types and positioning, and how to make yourself advertising friendly for prospects by giving off a professional front, even if you consider yourself to be ‘just little ‘old me writing a blog’ or ‘just a mum’. From selling advertising direct, to getting the lowdown on affiliate stuff, to basically getting an idea of your options, be prepared to be armed with the key information you need. More importantly, we’ll help you ensure that you don’t get taken advantage of.

Title: Blogging for Profit Web Seminar
Date: Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Time: 9:00 PM – 10:00 PM GMT

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

System Requirements
PC-based attendees
Required: Windows® 2000, XP Home, XP Pro, 2003 Server, Vista
Macintosh®-based attendees
Required: Mac OS® X 10.4 (Tiger®) or newer

“See” you tonight!