Putting Yourself in the Pillory and Taking The Tomatoes

Like Bryan, you can take your entire life’s work and put it online, and a pack of mogrel dogs with no experience, no intelligence and no manners will happily rip it to pieces. Not only do you need to reject the rejection, you need to realize that the fact of others’ criticism is itself an indicator of its goodness.

No good deed goes unpunished, no great accomplishment uncriticized. The toughest thing you’ll deal with all your life is rejection, and a life lived for the purpose of avoiding rejection is gonna be a pretty mediocre life.

Actually that life is the life of the 24/7 discussion board guy. He won’t put himself in the pillory, he’ll only be the anonymous critic of somebody else.

To some extent you need to put safeguards in place. If you’re a writer and you take criticism personally then it’s probably a good idea to let someone else handle the refunds. To borrow a phrase from John Carlton, there are a lot of psychic vampires out there who will suck every ounce of self respect out of you and throw your tattered carcass to the dogs.

Don’t let ‘em.

Is Google Trying to ‘Clean Up’ the Internet?

Starting with Google Slap, Google’s been increasingly draconian about what they accept in the advertising department. I am quite convinced that in some cases if a Google editor doesn’t “like” a website they can disapprove it with impunity and that’s the end of the story.

All you’ll get from them is noncommittal email messages about the necessity to conform to the guidelines given in the FAQ page etc., and the only thing that can help you is if (1) you’re already spending a lot of money (i.e. over $100,000 a year) or you have an empathetic account rep who can work the system. Ebay gets to show their stupid ads anywhere they want, after all. It’s just the Rule of Gold, he who has the gold makes the rules.

There is certainly some motive at Google headquarters that’s concerned with improving the ‘reputation’ of the Internet as a whole. Since there’s hardly anything on the Internet that is not somehow connected to Google, it’s only in their best interest to use their influence in this way.

The odd part is, whose definition of “good reputation” is going to get used?

Keep in mind that the socialistic idealism at Google has an enormous bankroll behind it, and the people there are so convinced of their own righteousness that I seriously doubt anyone sees the irony. If Courtney or Portia or Brevenay whacks your pee-pee because she doesn’t like your weight loss ad, it probably doesn’t bother her in the least that your money covered her paycheck last month. After all, she’s was a Rhodes Scholar with a 4.0 in French Literature at Stanford. She deserves to have power over you. Right?

Cynicism aside, it is not in your best interest to have an adversarial mindset towards Google. It will do you no good to frost the ad editor just because you’re mad. They are what they are, they’re the king of the Internet, there’s nothing you can do to change that right now, so your job is to make them happy whenever they awake from their slumber so that they roll over and go right back to sleep.

The most productive way to think about Google is:

Whatever rule or algorithm they’ve just rolled out was enacted for a specific reason that conforms to data they have about some kind of behavior, for some objective that they’re not telling you about. Just because they’re not telling you does not mean they don’t have a reason. And just because they’re not telling you does not mean the reason isn’t good for somebody, maybe many people.

The whole bid price – CTR formula creates a win-win between you, Google and the customer, and this mirrors the puzzle that all businesses must solve: Understanding yourself, and Google and the customer.

If you do this, you still have to keep Google happy…

For a long time, my advice on how to do this was: Wherever you register your domain names, they probably have a “redirect” feature you can get on your new domain name, maybe for an extra buck or two. You register it and redirect to your website, then you just put the display URL you are testing in the ad and the actual website you still have now in the destination URL and away you go. Or if you’re more sophisticated, you use ZoneEdit or a similar DNS service and do the same thing there.

That’s not working anymore. If you use redirects, Google will disapprove your ads, telling you the display URL and the destination URL don’t match up.

So here’s what you do instead:

(1) You register the domain with the DNS pointing to your hosting company’s DNS servers, just like your existing website. You call your ISP and tell them about the new domain, that your site has two URL’s not one. If they’re halfway competent they’ll understand what you’re talking about.

(2) If you use ZoneEdit, the IP Addresses menu will assign the IP address of your website to the domain. (This works great but only if your website has its own, exclusive IP address):

If what I just told you is over your head, don’t sweat it. This is kindergarten stuff for a halfway competent web programmer.

If you’re trying to hire one, this could be the first test for seeing if he knows anything.

The Over-Hyped, Overlooked Domain Name

There’s always been money in domain names and domain name squatting, for those smart enough to do it right. Business.com was sold for $8 million. Other million dollar domain names include AsSeenOnTV.com, Altavista and Wine.com. Then there are all the squatters who buy clever sounding domains and names of people and companies, and sit on them, hoping to cash in someday.

I think if you have a real business – or a collection of real businesses – domain name squatting is for the birds. Because the most valuable domain name strategy of all has been almost completely ignored, and that’s testing domain names for marketing viability.

I’ve been talking about this for probably 3 years now but I haven’t talked about it enough, and with some new Google changes it needs to be revisited. Here’s an example from one of my own campaigns:

Beat the Adwords System

The Definitive Guide – 35 Examples, 8 Industries & Fast Start Toolkit

AdWords.MakeYourWebsitePay.com

CTR: 1.9%

Beat the Adwords System

The Definitive Guide – 35 Examples, 8 Industries & Fast Start Toolkit

AdWordsStrategy.com

CTR: 2.6%

Beat the Adwords System

The Definitive Guide – 35 Examples, 8 Industries & Fast Start Toolkit

AdwordsEbook.com

CTR: 2.0%

The only thing that’s different in these domains is the display URL. The difference between 1.9% and 2.6% is not 0.7%, it’s 37%. Clearly a great deal hangs on the appeal of your URL. In Google it’s always in the context of keywords, but in this example people who want to know about Google AdWords generally have definite preferences about domain names. Your domain name says a great deal about you. It’s the last thing they think about before they decide to click on the link.

This is not an extreme example, by the way – it’s fairly typical. More than once I’ve gone and purchased ten domain names and tested all of them, and the spread between the best and the worst was 3:1, i.e. the best one was 200% better than the worst.

Most people simply chose a domain name with only their own personal arbitrary judgments and have never tested any of this. If you’ve never tested this, you most definitely need to. You may get an instant 37% improvement.

When Creating New Reality Becomes Your Passion

For the truly inspired person, that all-important to-do list is created by the voice inside. You have a picture of what you want to create and nobody’s email, no erroneous tax bill, no can of white latex paint is going to get in your way. You’re guided by an inner sense of where things belong and you’re not content until the vision becomes reality.

“The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him… a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create — so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating.” -Pearl S. Buck, novelist, Nobel laureate (1892-1973)

Lost Leadership Secrets of Forrest Gump

One of my favorite scenes in Forrest Gump is when Forrest ran. By the end of his three years, two months, fourteen days and sixteen hours of running, he had a considerable following. His disciples weren’t very happy when he decided to stop, ‘cuz they thought he knew where he was going.

For all the irony of the movie, people really are like that. People will follow someone who is in motion.

And notice that Forrest wasn’t studying running. He wasn’t contemplating running. He wasn’t talking about running. He was just running.

“I ran for three years, two months, fourteen days and sixteen hours. When I was hungry, I ate.

When I was tired, I slept. When I had to go, you know, I went!”

-Forrest Gump

Distractionitis vs. Busy Work vs. Productive Work

If we eliminate the couch potatoes from the outset – the armchair quarterbacks with the Budweiser and the bag of Ruffles, vicariously living their life through Monday Night Football – then there are three kinds of work remaining. Distractionitis, Busy Work and Productive Work.

We all know what Distractionitis is. Distractionitis is the endless morass of TV, email, spam, phone calls from telemarketers, urgent but useless news flashes, dangerous impulses and self-imposed Attention Deficit Disorder. Distractionitis seldom even looks like work. Doesn’t quite feel like work, either. A day of Distractionitis leaves you feeling agitated, irritable and drained at the same time. It’s notably unlike the feeling of accomplishment that we all associate with a good day’s hard work.

Busy work can be moderately productive, sometimes necessary. But it’s all reactive. Busy work is working within the system. It’s constantly responding to what other people do. Answering the phone, it’s sweeping the floors, changing the oil, paying the utility bills. It’s applying the white latex paint, appealing the property tax increase, answering almost all of your emails.

For an entrepreneur, Productive Work is working outside the system. It’s working on the system.

Creating the system, changing the system, creating a future that does not exist at the present moment. Being proactive instead of reactive. Building something for which instructions have not yet been provided. It’s the 20% of action that creates 80% of the change.

Productive Work follows the inner voice, rather than reacting and responding. Which means you must write the words of the inner voice on a piece of paper, then followed. (For me it’s a Post-It note as often as not.)

School teaches us to do that. Teacher asks a question, we raise our hands, we get picked, we answer the question. But the To-Do List, even the one on a Post-It note, is the king of Productive Work. The To-Do list must pre-empt all the reaction and responsiveness that most of us are conditioned to provide.

If you’re like most readers of this newsletter, your email box is at the center of your work and your productivity. When you’re talking to a friend about lunch and you end the conversation with “send me an email” what that means is, “The email I get from you with the time and location makes it official.” The email box and the appointment book and the task list are all connected.

The only problem with this is: All kinds of peripheral, unimporant people have constant access to you in that email box, spammers included.

Combine that with the fact that many of us check our email – click that send/receive button 10 or 12 or 30 times a day – and you’ve got a recipe for feeling like you’re swimming in molasses most of the time. Write this down:

The reason you are checking your email right now

is because you don’t know what to do.

This is the exact truth for most people, most of the time.

Most people are way too permissive about who gets to occupy their email box. Most people do check their email because – at least right at that moment – they are undecided about what to do.

Or they know what to do and they’re avoiding it. So they let somebody else show up literally every minute of the day and get them to do something else. This will murder your productivity. It replaces the feeling of a big day of challenging, satisfying work, and replaces it with a vacuous sense of aimless motion and frustration.

The fix is easy: Your email box must always be subordinate to the to-do list. Checking email is something that goes on the list, and then gets crossed off when it’s done. Not something to be done 17 times a day.

In fact most of us will do just fine checking email once or at most twice a day. That leaves the rest of your time for working on the system, rather than in the system. You shouldn’t be responding and reacting to other people. They should be responding and reacting to you.

When you take this approach you’ll be pleasantly surprised at (1) how much truly valuable and productive work you get accomplished in relatively little time (most of the systems you have now took a comparatively small amount of time to actually implement, right?) and (2) how readily most other people respond and react to you when you know what you’re doing – or even appear to know what you’re doing.

“There Are No Secrets”

Failure usually has more to do with Action Prevention Demons and Stupidity Spasms than not knowing what to do. A vital segment of personal AdWords coaching is the session we call “building the maze.” We explain how you combine autoresponders, teleseminars and direct mail to build a 2-month, 6-month, or even 1- 2 year sequence of messages that (1) drip-irrigates prospects and customers, and (2) separates the tire-kickers from the serious customers, naturally.

A sequence like that might have 15 or 30 messages. Marketing gladiators put together more than that.

But 15 pre-planned email messages alone is nearly enough to separate the real businessman or businesswoman from the also-rans. Hey, it only takes half a day or maybe an entire day to pull the material together. You just lock yourself in a room and get it done.

Most people, well… they just never quite get around to doing all that. They get distracted by some hot new software that’s going to create search engine directories or something.

Plus, in the middle of installing and setting that up…. An email shows up from somewhere and now they’re flipping houses and investing in real estate. The wife is immensely frustrated because money goes out and never comes in, and the winners take all.

The winners do take all, by the way. You name the market, the top 2-3 guys are making it all and everyone else is dining on the scraps.

(And the winners hire the David Bullocks of the world to help them win bigger still.)

What Dave does, is it a secret? Well, I guess it sort of is. But for a modest fee he’ll give you a formula and it’s plug and chug from that point forward. All you have to do is thwart the Action Prevention Demon before he thwarts you, and pay dirt is right beneath your feet.

BRIEF QUIZ

1. Which of the following is a legitimate money-making course?

A. “How to make fistfulls of cash just sitting at home, doing nothing”

B. “How to make money on the WORLDWIDE INTERNET with 5,000 mini-malls!”

C. “You too can own dozens of houses and collect giant rent checks with no work”

D. “The Win-Win Guide to Scooping Up Foreclosed Homes from Dumb Little Old Ladies”

E. “How to make a million dollars a year running a Jazz radio station.”

2. Which of the following can you easily sell to a gullible jackass?

A. Reprint rights to “How to make fistfulls of cash just sitting at home, doing nothing”

B. Reprint rights to “How to make money on the WORLDWIDE INTERNET with 5,000 mini-malls!”

C. Reprint rights to “You too can own dozens of houses and collect giant rent checks with no work”

D. Reprint rights to “The Win-Win Guide to Scooping Up Foreclosed Homes from Dumb Little Old Ladies”

E. Reprint rights to “How to make a million dollars a year running a Jazz radio station.”

Answers: 1. None of the above. 2. All of the above

The bad news is, there’s always going to be a steady supply of shiftless, loafing drones who will consume this tripe.

But the good news is, once the con men vacuum out their wallets, they won’t be able to buy any more of it. The con man and the sloth are made for each other, in their own special way. (Even the wolverine, the most remorseless, vicious killer in the forest, has his place in the food chain, doesn’t he?)

For many years of my life I thought I was lazy. My dad told me I was lazy and he dearly hoped I’d get straightened out. I had mediocre expectations for myself.

I’ll never forget the day it changed. I was a junior in high school. One night had a coke with Dr. Lee, an extremely successful university professor, department chairman and management consultant, who told me his story. Suddenly the light bulb goes on: Work is not this dreary obligation that starts the day after vacation.

Work is the thing that pays for the vacation. Work is something that can begin to absorb all your attention and interest as soon as you get back from vacation. Work can be a pleasure and a challenge.

I realize very, very few people reading this newsletter are shiftless, loafing drones, in fact my readers tend to be the cream of the crop in the marketing community. Most of us are only slowed down by the drones and con men and rip-off artists. Every single one of us expends effort each day to overcome the problems those people create, to earn trust that others have stolen.

Here’s the real point: All of us still have a shiftless loafing drone inside our head who occasionally arises and starts stomping around and muttering. All of us have a little con man in the control room who offers clever suggestions about taking some little old lady’s money. All of us possess a few gullible-sucker brain cells who desperately want to believe the con-man. Some days, we’re a bit too self-assured to stop and investigate the con man before we accept his deal.

And, back to my conversation with Bullock – all of us have an Action Prevention Demon that tries to slam on the brakes when we’re right on the cusp of success. 10 minutes from triumph and you get a sudden impulse to go for a potty break.

I’ll tell you about my demon – about six or eight months ago I had been putting off a really important copywriting project for several weeks and I finally came to an inevitable afternoon where it was unquestionably THE thing to do.

I sit down and start writing and suddenly get an almost irrepressible urge to get a haircut.

A haircut?

I hate getting haircuts. It’s an incredible waste of time. I always procrastinate haircuts.

And I don’t enjoy making petty small talk with hairdressers. (Which is why I usually go to a Spanishspeaking haircut place, so I don’t have to talk to the lady. One of the less-touted advantages of living in a big city like Chicago.)

My Action Prevention Demon was trying to tempt me away from my writing project with a haircut!

And it almost worked, too. After all, I rationalized, I am looooong overdue for this haircut.

But then I said to myself NOOOOO! (I think I even yelled it out loud.) Doggonit I’m doing to sit down and write this thing right now, if it’s the last thing I do.

Sure enough, cranked it out.

This happens to everyone. I don’t think anyone is immune.

(OK, maybe I’ll take that back. You know that dufus of a boss you had way back when, who was had obviously risen far above his level of competence? Yes, he’s a genuine idiot, but he doesn’t have an Action Prevention Demon to slow him down. So he’s always at least doing something. I’m convinced most politicians, government officials and public school administrators fall into this category.)

The real victim is the entrepreneur who vacillates between all these voices, ever distracted by a cacophony of fear, genuine inspiration, procrastination, sluggish oafs, con men, Action Prevention Demons and sudden urges to get coiffed. He’s got a history of nineteen projects 80-90% done, then abandoned. Doesn’t know that seven of them were roadworthy and would have paid rich dividends.

His shovel was one foot from the gold, then some guy selling fake goldmines got his attention (the hero of our story was hot and sweaty and almost hoping for a distraction to come along) and told him – “Hey buddy, you see that gold mine over here? One more foot and the gold’s all yours, my friend.”

He pauses from his work, and…. one more near-success, thwarted. Ten minutes from triumph.

One day at the music store I was thumbing through a guitar magazine, and somebody was interviewing this lady whose specialty is band promotion. She said, “The biggest enemy a band has is not the record labels, not the A&R men, not the agents, not the club owners. The biggest enemy is band members who refuse to get along with each other, who sabotage their own success right when they’re at the edge of something really big.”

Dang was she ever right. It did in Pink Floyd and Zeppelin, Van Halen and the Beetles. John and Paul just couldn’t learn to be friends. David Gilmour and Roger Waters couldn’t even stand to be in the same room.

At the very peak of success, David Lee Roth’s career was crushed by the weight of his immense ego.

You can’t help but wonder, was all that really just an Action Prevention Demon who was determined to stop success in its tracks?

Chicken Soup for the Lazy-Ass Slacker’s Pathetic, Thumb-Sucking Soul

“The sluggard buries his hand in the dish, and is too weary to bring it back to his mouth.”

–Solomon

Today, some shiftless, loafing drones are gonna get a big spanking.

From me.

This is long, long overdue.

I was putting off writing this newsletter today, mostly because I didn’t know what I was gonna write about. Then the legendary Wizard of Taguchi, Dave Bullock, called me to gripe… now I’ve got puh-lenty to write about.

He says to me, “Perry, I can’t believe some of these Internet marketers. It’s unfathomable how utterly lazy they are. This week they’re buying some tool that’s gonna spew out 500,000 keywords, then they’re joining a membership site that reveals The Royal Road To Wealth, next week they’re on to this cool new technique for getting a bunch of fake traffic to their fake AdSense pages…

“But then when I give them instructions – when I show them exactly what to do to 4X or 8X the sales on their website – they look at me like I’ve violated some ordinance and say “Whoa, baby! Just you wait a minute, Dave… this is starting to sound like work!”

One seminar host commented his material had too much substance for most people in the crowd. (This was sincere praise by the way, not a left-handed compliment.)

If I only had a nickel for every web page generated by some garbage-spewing robot… if I only had a nickel for every scheme where nobody could possibly benefit except hopefully the hatcher of the scheme itself…

Neither Dave nor I have much patience for such people.