It seems that people respect their boss and they do whatever they demand — more or less — in exchange for their salary. That's how this boss-employee relationship works. What can you learn from this for your own business?

Even if you have changed the sides in the meantime and become your own boss, either as owner of your company or manager of a department, you will remember the days, when you worked late or on weekends to meet the deadlines given to you by your superiors. All of a sudden everything became less important: your plans for Friday night, the date with your new acquaintance, the movie premier, etc.

You absolutely needed to finish your assignment, because your boss would not accept any excuse and even could fire you. Even, if your assignment appears to be ridiculous to you.
Your boss is your boss.


I will cut a long story short (… and save your time).

I start the new week with giving you excellent reading tips. Yes, I feel a bit lazy today, and I do admit it. However, the content I give you links for is worth your clicks.

In my Get More Done posts I have written about the importance of handling email the right way rather than getting overwhelmed by email. Tim Ferris (↑), author of the 4-hour-workweek goes one step further. He even outsources the handling of all of his email (about 1,000 emails per day) and only spend 10 minutes with it a day. Sounds cool? He even shows you his procedure that works for him and he actually wants you to steal it, modify it, use it for yourself. If you have trouble with handling the size of your inbox, you should learn from Tim.

Even, if you are not ready — but being not ready is one of the oldest excuses for procrastination by the way — you can apply some of the rules to automatic filters, autoresponders, etc.

Here is Tim's post:

In December 2007 I wrote a little Thank You Post for all the editors that featured my articles in their blog carnivals. It got quite a positive response.

I have not been very active during the holidays and in January, but I decided this second that I will do something similar on a more continuous basis. I am not sure yet, if I will write a quick post for each carnival or if I will keep something like a monthly post and update it as necessary.

Since there will be a new post (at least once a month) the embedded backlink to the carnival will eventually get more exposure. I am not sure if my readers will click through to the Carnivals, many follow their favorite carnivals on their own anyway, but if I just put a link into an old post it will get noticed less likely.

Anyway, what do you think? Leave a comment and let me know.

Here are the carnivals of January I am in as of today.

• Bootstrapper » Carnival of Business and Entrepreneurship #6 (↑)
  
  
• Customer Service Carnivale: The 2008 New Year Edition (↑)
  
  
• Carnival of PACE: 07 January 2008 | PACE with Emmanuel Oluwatosin (↑)
  
  
• Carnival of Tech News, Tenth Edition - January 27th, 2008 (↑)
  
  
• 42nd Edition - Carnival Of Network Marketing - January 29, 2008 (↑)

Thanks to the editors.

Yours
John W. Furst

If you are struggling with making just US$ 145.63 or US$ 297.12 a month from Google AdSense, you will think it is not fair that others are making US$ 6,681.34 or even US$ 86,234.78 a month and are not even paying for their domains! Well, it seems Google thinks that's not a fair business model either.

What is “Domain Tasting” all about?

Domain tasting, is a practice using a 5-day grace period at the beginning of a domain registration that allows the registrant to test the domain name for marketability. This means, if you don't like it during those 5 days, you give it back and get a refund.

But how did it all start?

After the “.com bust” and corresponding stock crash in 2000/2001 anything related to Internet — including domain names — were perceived as worthless. Later in 2001 and 2002 IAregistry.com (now Spirit Telecom) and DotRegistrar.com allowed a small group of large clients to bulk register thousands of domains, test them for profitability and only pay for those they keep. The earliest document I found at ICANN.org on this matter is from February 2002 (↑).

Many Internet marketing and Making Money Online “Wannabes” refrain from creating and selling products of their own, because

• they believe it were too hard to create products
• they do not want to deal with customers.

They rather get into affiliate marketing, drop shipping, selling advertising, …

“Of course it is possible to make money online without a product of your own, but building a real sustainable business is on the other side of the coin.”

Creating your own products has certainly many advantages that outweigh the so called disadvantages.

• You are in total control of every aspect.
  • Product quality
  • The offer
  • Customer relationship
  • Cash flow
  • Your Affiliates
  • etc.
• You set the rules and you own the customers. They are yours.

Does this sound interesting, “They are yours!”, or scary to you?

What's the deal about customer service anyway? I don't want to talk about product creation today, but rather about the question, “Are you ready for a relationship with your prospects and customers?rdquo;

A great long-term, profitable customer relationship is based on the following.

• Products, services, and value that keeps up with the expectations created during the sales process. That means: High Quality Products (I say high quality, not necessarily overly expensive.)
• Excellent documentation
• Excellent follow-up and customer support
• Respect (*)
• etc.
  
  
• Overdeliver and you won't have much problems!
  

Of course, there are certain types of folks that will try to pull your leg. But when selling a product of your own, you are in control how to handle this and you will learn ways to minimize those negative side effects. Otherwise you leave it to someone else (like your affiliate partner, Google, … to fix the problem. All you get are refund reports, invalid click reports, smart-pricing, …)

The key to long term success is building a relationship with your prospects and customers. Yes, I include the prospects that might be on your email list already, but did not buy anything so far. The terms of such a relationship varies of course with the ticket price, and if you sell to businesses or consumers.

Back to respect (*)

I have observed it in large corporations, in small businesses (though more in consumer markets than in business-to-business markets) that product managers, CEOs or other relevant employees call their customers names and simply ignore their input and signals.

“Any business person that fails to understand the basic tenets of treating people right is most definitely not a genius. It’s very, very disappointing.”
CRM & Business Rule 101 (↑) by Ed Rivis

Many companies operate on the edge of what is fair or even what is legally allowed, and not too few have lost masses of clients, credibility, reputation, and fortunes.

“There is no place to hide in todays Web 2.0 economy, you better show respect and play fair in all what you are doing. Otherwise it will fall back on you sooner than later.”

Think twice about how you can support your prospects and customers. Is your business built on arrogance or support?

Yours
John W. Furst

My readers from the USA celebrated Martin Luther King Junior Day today. This national holiday is meant to remember Martin Luther King, Jr., one of the main leaders of the American civil rights movement. King has become most famous for his “I Have A Dream” speech. King became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his effort to end racial discrimination with non-violent means.

On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean we got a duststorm from the Sahara, which happens every once a while throughout the year. In 2000 about 8 million metric tons of dust were blown as far as Puerto Rico.

This time it does not seem to be that strong. I am living in the North of Tenerife on the leeward side. All I noticed was the yellow, brownish “fog” all day long, a sudden rise in temperature, very low visibility, and the terrace is covered with fine dust from the Sahara desert. I could not even see the horizon where the sea normally touches the sky.

The other islands, foremost El Hierro, got hit harder with 120 km/h (75 mph) hour winds. Schools have been closed there.

As you can see I am still around.

Yours
John W. Furst

I received a great comment for my last post Adsense Is Bad For Marketing by Stephen Cronin of his Blog

Scratch 99 - More Than Scratch The Surface (↑).

You'll remember my post was about the pitfalls with Adsense. Here is Stephen's comment again.



Stephen Cronin (↑) writes about web development using PHP, MySQL, CSS, Javascript, Ajax & about blogging via WordPress.

What I found of immediate interest for me on his Blog were the articles:

• How To Avoid Smart Pricing On Blogs (↑)
  
  
• The Adsense Dilemma (Or How To Make Money) (↑)
  
  
• WordPress Plugin - DualFeeds v1.11 Released (↑)
  
  
• IFrameWidgets (↑): Stop slow JavaScript widgets breaking your page layout!

Just to name a few. Thanks Stephen for your comment.

Yours
John W. Furst