If you’re not familiar with a Virtual Private Network,  it’s like having your own private Internet. One where you are sure you’re surfing without peering eyes or keystroke recordings. Amongst other safe surfing features, VPNs typically require remote users of the network to be authenticated, and often secure data with encryption technologies to prevent disclosure of private information to unauthorized parties. The bottom line is you are on Stealth Mode when you use a VPN. Large corporations, file sharers and those who have wanted to surf the Internet anonymously have used VPN’s for years. Now they’re affordable for the rest of us.

You should be familiar with Identity Theft, Medical ID Theft, Motor Vehicle ID Theft and now IRS Tax Refund Theft it is brutal and growing. As more and more of our devices are WIFI mobile, it is up to each of us to protect our own personal data, our family’s data and if we’re business owners…our business data. As a business owner or exec, do you have remote workers who login to your website/portal? Do you always know where they login from? (Huge security hole.) Are you banking online? Do you share your address, age, credit card numbers? Do you have Spyware? Malware on any of your machines? Do you really know? Is your tax preparer/accountant using a VPN before they transmit your refund data?

One of our clients, www.iSurfSafeVPN.com, has a personal VPN service for only $16.95/mo. (unlimited bandwidth) The service is good for 3 users/devices meaning you can protect your computers, tablets and mobile devices.  You can also choose your IP address whether US or International. If you travel abroad, sometimes you have limited access to US websites. With a VPN service, as long as you have Internet access, you can choose your US IP address. Business VPN service is available too including US and international IP address choices.

www.iSurfSafeVPN.com – I am available to answer questions with you by email or phone – iSurfSafeVPN[at]gMail – Ask me how you can use this VPN service for your non profit or organizational fundraiser.

Disclaimer: We may receive a financial reward or bonus should you purchase this VPN service. Note however that you will be protected and receive the best service. LOL

The best part of what we do as marketing consultants is being able to work with so many great companies in various industries. There’s never a dull moment. Some of our clients have products that are still in development, all are trying to increase sales, while others have products that are nearing the end of their life cycle desperately needing fresh strategies.

Effective online marketing strategies change rapidly, hot ideas today are cold and saturated bad ideas tomorrow. It’s the innovative companies, able to brand, communicate and adapt to changing markets, who are winning today. As I pondered what to write about, the idea hit me to start writing about some of our clients and sharing their challenges, strategies, failures and success stories. Hopefully you will see some similarities in your business and will contact Woo Media Works to discuss them.   So here goes…

Two of my clients, who I am going to tell you about are in the credit repair industry. To share with you the potential market size for credit repair, it’s estimated that over 60 million Americans have problem credit. The US credit reporting, credit bureau services and credit repair business is a multi billion dollar a year industry. When you have these kinds of prospect numbers you have tremendous business opportunity.  It’s no wonder why there’s so many ads to start your own credit repair business.

My client, LMR International, developed Credit Money Machine Net as a professional credit repair software.  Any reputable credit repair company, wanting to be successful, must use some kind of software to assist them in managing the business. Credit Money Machine is the most powerful professional credit repair software on the planet! It takes the place of 5 to 7 credit repair processors and is intelligent plus adaptive.

What makes the software so powerful is that it’s designed to run the business from A to Z. Email, Accounting, Financial, Marketing, Task Management, Contact Management, Client Communication, Affiliate Communication, Reports, E-commerce are all parts of any successful business.

The first challenge for LMR was that they recognized that they weren’t software marketers, they’re software developers. Their competition has  inferior software but do a much better job in marketing.  The second challenge for LMR was price, the full business solution wasn’t the cheapest software on the market as you can imagine. So, how do you get your customers to make a logical buying decisions, considering hundreds of factors which they don’t realize or understand could be a major issue next week  and to not make the decision solely on cheaper price? How do you convince the customer to buy your software which allows them to do in minutes what takes 2 to 5 hours in other software? How do you convince your customer of the value of their time? These were a few challenges facing LMR.

Without making this post a 3 chapter book, I will highlight some of our broad strategies/solutions which have helped LMR experience over a 37% increase in sales over the last 2 years.

First, we analyzed their software from the user’s perspective and suggested various layout changes which made the software, developed on the File Maker Pro database platform, look more like a Windows software. We helped reconstruct their product websites assisting the information flow, telling the story all while making information easier to find. LMR added more hands on training, training videos and resources right in the software. SEO, link building, article posts, forum marketing, social media, video posts, keyword targeting are all part of the marketing mix.

Product pricing is always a challenge. How do you sell a Rolls Royce and convince the average person that you’re affordable? We suggested that they create a “Lite” version of the software which would compete with the low end credit repair software currently on the market.  Credit Money Machine Lite became the low entry solution providing automation and speed that the others couldn’t.  This is a strategy borrowed from the auto industry. LMR took it one step further and created a middle of the road product with Credit Money Machine Pro which adds more features than the Lite and includes the must have client and affiliate communication portals.  The full business solution, Credit Money Machine Net actually went up in price but still leases for the same price as their leading competitor. So for the same price as their software, customers can have Credit Money Machine Full Business. What a country!

For financing, our suggestions for LMR was to implement an in house lease program along with an equity plan. The equity plan allows their customers to start with any of the software and upgrade and apply built up equity to the upgrade. This has been a huge success and has provided another source of revenue.  With the introduction of  live webinar demos with qualifying customers, the demo test drive now leads to more sales.

Understanding your marketing metrics is so important to any campaign. LMR through their software is able to track all of their advertising campaigns down to the IP address of their clicks to their received emails and phone calls. This allows them to measure in real time their advertising success with placed on promoting and supporting successful campaigns.

Yes there’s more to this marketing story than we have time to tell, we call that the “Secret Woo Sauce” and can’t disclose it all.

In these past 2 years that we’ve worked with LMR, the credit repair industry has changed; however LMR has been responsive to their customer’s needs often updating the software weekly. The FTC, BBB and LMR Software are leading the cause in pushing  credit repair companies to clean up their act. One of these changes is supporting the Pay Per Deletion model, where it’s expected that credit repair companies do the work before charging their customer. LMR adapted their software and provided an awesome solution which allows their clients to contrast and compare credit reports within minutes. It’s this ability that keep LMR customers singing praises and leaving testimonials. If you’re interested in more information about Credit Money Machine for your business, let me arrange a demo and free trial for you.

Interested in repairing your own personal credit using credit repair software? LMR has a personal version at www.PersonalCreditRebuilder.com

How’s your marketing? Are you researching, measuring, strategizing, implementing, executing, measuring, researching and adapting? Let’s talk!

Next time I will tell you about our client CreditMRI.

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I am convinced that you’ve got to want to  see the big picture in order to be able to see the big picture. Some business owners miss the big picture with their overall marketing success because they refuse to think out of the box.

I start this post out of frustration because I failed to creatively and mentally reach one of my clients. He is a 15 year local residential realtor, who sells on average between 15 to 24 houses per year.  His bread and butter market has been new home buyers, however, due to a changing market he has wanted to sell more short sales and to a more affluent market. In this current economy he wants to recreate his marketing and brand.

His initial comments to us were that he didn’t have time for social media. He understood that it was a necessary evil, however he didn’t see the value in Twitter, Facebook and others. I agreed that social media was time consuming, however it was necessary. I gave him numerous examples of how he could integrate social media into his current marketing.

His current “real estate” website is parked on an obscure domain name which brings very little SEO value. He also had recently subscribed to a “business in a box” complete short sale website system that he was paying $90 per month and has pointed to another domain. His goal was to create a new “real estate” website and I suggested that instead of a new website that he change his current template color and use better images and more professional graphics.

I shared with him that the problem that I see with traditional local real estate websites is they’re boring and they don’t reach new markets. Most tell about the company, showcase some homes and change infrequently.  Some realtors have tried to add blogs, however they find it challenging creating interesting optimized content. Most realtors understand that they have to advertise their business and/or advertise individual homes to bring attention. Traditional real estate advertising tries to reach people who are looking to purchase now.  But how does a real estate company reach and develop new markets  who may have other real estate needs and/or know people who they can refer? Social media is one answer.

My client and I started talking early this year about social media marketing. He admitted that he didn’t get social media and surely didn’t have time to tweet and sit on facebook. I shared with him some of the success that we have had by automating many of our social media tasks. I explained to him how social media is about developing relationships and using social tools for various SEO functions. Automating many of these functions would save him time and money in the long term. I wanted to set his expectation levels.

I put a proposal together, spelled out what we were going to provide. We threw in developing of several social profiles. He decided to move forward and we built him an automated social media platform. We started by grabbing a key word rich domain name. We made sure that his city name and real estate was used too. We optimized the WordPress site with a great theme that allowed us to monetize the site with various links and banners. We used various real estate related rss feeds to provide content. We couldn’t get too real estate specific because most of that content was being posted by competitors. We used local community content with information for schools, dining  and points and places of interest. We automated the posts for 4 times a day to this site, which also posts directly to 3 Twitter profiles and my client’s Facebook Fanpage.

We helped monetize the site with books from Amazon for subjects like: Home Repair, Decks, Appliances, Kitchen gadgets. We used feeds from Home Depot and other informational sites to add a variety of content. Why? As we explained to our client, we want to attract all sorts of people to our content and bring them back to your new info site and share “real estate” information, pictures, links etc. You get a chance to brand your company on a cool information website that doesn’t smell like a real estate website.

Part of our proposal called for the client to advertise his banners on other news sites as well as print. Images are everything online and we recommended improving the images on all of his media.

Since we started in September, the WordPress site reached the top 100K on Alexa for US websites. It averages 6 unique visitors per day organically. It has posted over 974 posts and broadcast many of these posts directly to our client’s Twitter and Facebook pages. This was supposed to give my client an opportunity to Tweet about his own content and give him topics of interest for his personal comments on his Facebook page.

Success? Recently, a local upscale hotel, thanked my client on Twitter for helping spread the word about one of their events that we retweeted and posted. A local news website sent a Tweet that they wanted to feature my client’s houses. Here’s another company finding my client on social media to form an alliance. Wow!  In a follow up email, that I sent for my client, this other company is now interested in doing a banner exchange with my client. This all happened because of the client’s social media automated platform.

Now granted this was not a home sale, however this news site saw value in what my client was doing. Obviously, they had visited my client’s website to even know that he had homes to showcase. This could be the beginning of something great, if nothing else additional free advertising which adds to my client’s ROI.

Needless to say, after all of this, my client called a few days ago and said he didn’t like his new platform. It wasn’t what he expected. He said he didn’t get it, our posts were all over the place and he didn’t want to put any additional money into it. The additional money was $10 to $20 a month in maintenance to pay someone to add special real estate content and answer emails. He needed to spend $100 in some banner ads and a new header for his main website. But he doesn’t see the value in his automated platform. As far as the content, this could be adjusted.

He has always been concerned with ROI. How many houses am I going to sell? I tried to get him to understand that this is not something that he can measure immediately. I asked him how much would he have paid someone to find various content, post 970+ articles, post daily links on 3 Twitter profiles, then log in and post also to Facebook a few times per day? $5/day, $10 per day? So to pay someone from September to December at $10/day for 7 days per week is over $1000 already. How about that ROI?

I take his decision personally, his answers during our conversation were short. Maybe he was having a bad day. His closing words to me were that he only knew how to sell homes and that’s what he wanted to do. I told him that I could help him sell the platform. I told him that I could call several realtors in his area who would instantly see value in his platform and domain name.  I told him that we could flip the website for atleast 4K as is. Of course, he declined.

When it comes to your business, either you get social media or you don’t. You have know that Twitter and Facebook for business is more than just posting comments. Social media is a lot like fishing. You just have to get it!

I recently answered a question on a LinkedIn music business discussion group and thought I would share it here.

The question asked:  Lets say I invest my money and produce a Music Album. Who will take it to the market? The distributors?  Do I have to pay them too or is this kind of a partnership between me and them?

My answer came after a few other responses which had addressed  his questions about partnerships. Here’s what I said:

You have received some good information. As a consultant not knowing what style of music you have or your budget, here are a few of our suggestions. First you should have a Business Plan. Part of your business plan is your marketing and promotion plan. Develop and adjust your plans as you go along. Fail to Plan, Plan to Fail!

As a new artist, you shouldn’t concern yourself with physical distribution in music stores. Without promotion, no one is going to go into a music store and request your music. So initially, this is a waste of your time, effort and money. Most physical distributors now a days want you to have marketing, charts, spins, promotion and some kind of club, internet or radio buzz before they will take you on. Then you have to press up all of the CD’s for distribution. Not worth it!

You should concentrate on digital distribution first. The last thing you want is for a record to take off on you and you can’t catch it. You want to be in as many digital places that you can, so that people can find your music, buy your music where they feel comfortable shopping and spending their money. Depending on your style of music, you have to consider global sales too, because the US is only 20% of the global music market.

Tunecorp, ReverbNation, RainySongs all offer digital distribution. They typically will place your music on about 15 to 25 sites. They charge a fee to upload and a yearly fee to keep your music online. Your business plan has to consider this because, for example, in year 5 if you’re paying the 59/yr fee that ReverbNation charges per CD, if you have 4 CD’s you may be your own best customer. RainySongs gives you more control and is great for labels, however they charge to use their software. CD baby has a 1 time upload fee, however they are limited on where they place your music.

With distribution you want to be in as many places as you can and is why I recommend our client Rob Schwartz/ Who?Mag! Distribution. They will place your music in up to 600 digital outlets worldwide including mobile, online, TV etc for a one time fee. ($100/$50) With other digital distributors if you don’t pay the yearly fee, guess what happens to your music? It comes down meaning all the links you posted, all the blogs that wrote about you will now have dead links. Artists must plan/think about this if they’re trying to leave a legacy for their heirs. Will you leave a legacy or a yearly bill?

Today, distribution isn’t hard. Concentrate on making great music, marketing and promotion. Build a buzz with your music and create demand! Use social media, video, press releases, local promotions and the Internet. Be Creative! After creating demand, consider starting locally with distribution to local/regional music stores. Concentrate in physical stores in markets where either you’re performing or where your music is played. Go digital on every release. Don’t make people hunt for your music, have your music in their fave sites. Know that everyone doesn’t buy iTunes.

Consider using music cards instead of pressing up CD’s. One of our client’s music cards will give you your soundscan when your music is downloaded. You’re also able to capture demographic and contact information which will help you build your fanbase. Music cards also can help you tie in local sponsors which could help you defray some of your expenses. Be creative.

There are 3 things that you must have to make it in the music industry: 1) Talent 2) Money and 3) Creativity. You can have 2 out of 3 and still be successful, however you need all 3 to move forward.

I could go on for days, however I will stop here and hope this helps. Let me know if I can provide contact info for any of the sites that I have mentioned. If we can provide any additional services, let us know. ~ Continued Sucess!

Rob Schwartz site is www.whomag.net. Call him directly. (Yes, they work with more than Hip Hop artists)

Chuck Woo
www.iFastFwd.com
www.WooMediaWorks.com
www.MusicBizInfo.com

I am one who is not surprised at all by Tim Tebow’s current success in the NFL. That man is winner!  I first started watching Tim Tebow, as many of you did, when he was at the University of Florida. I don’t follow college football as I once did, however what always struck me about Timmy, was his attitude. I often reflect on that famous statement after a disappointing Florida loss where he willed himself to work harder and be better than anyone else. As you know Florida won two national championships while Timmy was there.

The Sunday that the Broncos decided to start Tim Tebow, I watched ESPN NFL morning. Tebow didn’t have too much support!  Through the TV, I told each one of them that they were wrong. Even one of my favorite sports editors, Garry Howard, recently made a Tebow Facebook comment after the 1 Tebow loss. Howard said that the Tebow project was a bad idea. Bad idea? I commented on his page that if my Cowboys could stay with Romo for 9 years, surely the Broncos could give him more than a week. Today, most writers have nothing but positives to say about Tim. Everyone loves a winner.  Attitude is Everything! Attitude is Contagious. You see Elway on the sidelines smiling don’t you? I still don’t like the Broncos, but I pull for Tim Tebow!

After watching the Tim Tebow story, I see that it was no accident that he turned out this way. His parents raised him to be the man you see today! That’s where it should start….at home. Fruit never falls far from the tree.

As a new salesperson, one of the first things I learned was that your attitude controls your destiny. That’s why we read all of the positive motivational books and listened to Norman Vincent Peale, Brian Tracy, Les Brown, John Maxwell and others. I also learned the importance of having dreams, setting goals and that sometimes your goals are more achievable when you use a higher source as your motivation. When the leader of your team/company/family has a positive and confident attitude it can’t help but rub off on the entire team/company/family. So what you have seen over the past few weeks, as some are calling 4th quarter miracles, is really nothing more than that team setting their attitude to win. Where there’s a will, there’s a way! When your goals, plan and attitude are set right you find the will to win.

The overall lesson here is that in the waning moments of any quarter/situation/milestone, even when hope may seem but futile, your attitude can make the difference of you winning or losing. This obviously transcends to our every day life with our  spiritual, family, secular and overall karma. So, what can you do to improve your attitude? Positive, motivational books and audio daily still works wonders for me. Content on YouTube could keep you busy for months. Surrounding yourself with positive people also works wonders.

Being positive all of the time, takes practice and doesn’t happen overnight. One thing’s for certain…. give me a team of a few positive motivated people over a horde of negative bad attitude people any day. Here are a few of my favorite success motivation videos.

Stay Positive My Friends!

 I have learned from experience that life throws you curves. When this happens to me, which seems to be more and more recently, I have to read and reread one of my favorite poems. I have it on a wall plaque in my bathroom so that I can read it everyday. I wanted to share it with you. It’s called Anyway and the author on the plaque that I have just says “Karma”. I am sure that you have read it before but if you haven’t, trust me it can make you feel better.

Anyway!

People are unreasonable, illogical and self centered. Love thm anyway!

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives. Do good anyway!

If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies. Succeed anyway!

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway!

Honesty and frankness makes you vulnerable. Be honest and frank anyway!

The biggest men with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men with the smallest minds. Think big anyway!

People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs. Fight for some underdogs anyway!

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway!

People really need help but may attack you if you help them. Help people anyway!

Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you’ve got anyway!

Hope you enjoy this one…..

I had been a member and associate of Prepaid Legal for 10+ years. I have always been a believer in insurance. I must have got that from my dad who sold insurance for John Hancock. So, when I heard the pitch for Prepaid Legal eons ago, the thought of having full access to attorney’s just made sense to me.

I can tell you about the traffic tickets where I have used Prepaid Legal to represent me in my presence and my absence. I can tell you about the countless calls that I have made to ask major and minor questions. Or the personal and business contracts that I have had the attorneys review and the countless phone calls that they’ve made on my behalf. When I tell someone that they will hear from my attorney…..I mean it!

As a business owner, to have a personal attorney on retainer for $26 per month to answer personal questions is priceless. Having said that, I think the biggest value is the peace of mind that no matter what the circumstance, I can ask an attorney questions and not have to worry how much it’s going to cost me. That’s the biggest reason why most people don’t seek legal help, the “thought” of the attorneys cost.

If you don’t know the history of PPL, it’s an interesting one. The company started in the 70′s after Mr. Stonecipher, who was involved in a serious accident, recognized how much he was unprotected going up against the insurance companies. Prepaid Legal went on to become a publicly traded company. Recently the company was acquired by a new owners, reversed to a private company and has re branded under the name…..LegalShield.

Prepaid Legal is now LegalShield! What a great idea! Why? Several reasons however, that’s exactly what the service provides for individuals and families. It Protects and Shields against life’s every day occurrences. Sometimes the word “prepaid” can be negative to some people. You know how some people can be.

I could talk about LegalShield for days however the important facts are that your membership includes:

• Advice – Unlimited topics, personal or business, even on pre-existing conditions
• 24/7 Emergency Assistance – After-hours consultation for legal emergencies. If you’re arrested, detained, etc.
• Letters and Phone Calls
• Legal Document Review
• Standard Will Protection – Standard Will included with yearly reviews and updates
• Motor Vehicle Services – CDLP too
• IRS Audit Services

LegalShield has services for Truckers, Corporations and Businesses. The company also has an Identity Theft protection service as well as a “Safeguard for Minors” program.

So here’s the sales pitch……Visit the website and check out the features. If it can help you and your family the decision is easy. It’s not expensive usually costing less than a large pizza per month. You can check on features and prices here >> LegalShield

Note: LegalShield offers a fantastic business opportunity. If you’re looking for extra income both full time and part time. Take a look at LegalShield. Go here to hear real stories from  our associates. Start a Business

I am in Independent Associate of LegalShield. The links in this post will take you to websites where your membership may lead to me being compensated. Just FYI.

So I found this article about this 28 year old college dropout that started his own online payment platform and was on track to transfer over 350 million dollars over the next year. So I was instantly drawn to the article. Come to find out this guy has built a payment system that bypasses bank credit cards. Just a pure peer to peer money transfer system with members and a flat .25 per transaction. No monthly fees. They’ve integrated social media allowing to to accept payments from your social network whether they have Dwolla or not.

In the article Ben Milne, the founder says he doesn’t want to be another PayPal rather he wants to rival Visa. My kind of guy! I visited the Dwolla website and signed up a commercial account.  Another payment gateway as an online marketer is not a bad thing. In fact it’s a poor rabbit that only has one hole, just ask any marketer who has had his merchant or PayPal account frozen/shut down. “Unlike PayPal, Dwolla doesn’t take a percentage of the transaction. It only asks for $0.25 whether it’s moving $1.00 or $1000.

So as I was looking for something interesting to share with you, Here it is…….(drum roll please) I present to you  Dwolla.

Here’s the Fiscal Times article on Ben Milne. He has an interesting story….

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2011/11/11/The-28-Year-Old-Out-to-Kill-Credit-Cards-and-PayPal.aspx#page1

Here’s the website where you can visit and signup if you choose. www.Dwolla.com

Note we are not affiliated with Dwolla and much to my chagrin we are not receiving any compensation for referring you to Dwolla.

Ok, I am on a roll today. When the creative juices flow, you have to just type. I just got off of the phone talking with a potential client about WordPress. They are currently using Joomla so I couldn’t personally help them but was able to refer them to our Virtual Assistant Services. Their normal web person has disappeared and they need help.

I had flashbacks of my early Earwax site days and my frustration with disappearing web developers. I was a happy camper when I started using WordPress. I have slowly converted most of my sites to WordPress. The sites that I don’t convert, I make sure that WordPress is installed somewhere on the domain. I could tell you a thousand reasons to use WordPress, however my 3 favorites are the Content Management, Themes and Plugins.

WordPress plugins save so much time. I have spent more money than I care to admit, but they are a necessity.

Here are 28 WordPress plugins for marketing that you must have. When you take a look at the page, you will find several plugins that sell for a lot more than the $14.95 that I am asking.

Go here before I change my mind….www.OnlineMarketingTools.net/28-best-wp-plugins

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Developing Your Business Potential: Building a Virtual Assistant Team

Finding the best opportunities that are available to you as a business owner doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to look far. Believe it or not, some of your best business options are right in front of you.  In fact, if you simply look for the right resources, you can find Edgar Allan Po-Tential everywhere!  To truly succeed at any business also means discovering ways to build relationships and working success teams.

The idea behind using a virtual assistant means you have the ability to have someone do non income producing tasks so that you can concentrate on more income producing tasks. Income producing tasks include sales, relationship building, creating new products and services etc. Using a virtual assistant for your non income producing tasks also means that you can find time freedom. The ability to do more of the things that mean the most to you.

I can tell you from first hand experience that today’s online business is challenging. There’s just so much to do.

Coming up with a team of professional virtual assistants who all have unique abilities will be beneficial for you to accomplish your goals.   Whether you are new to online marketing, a growing small business or a major corporation outsourcing is an option to consider. Getting started using virtual assistants is not hard. It’s as simple as Submitting a Ticket on www.Virtual-Assistant-Services.info