1. Listen: You have one mouth and two ears. Let that dictate
   how much you use both.
2. Stay In Touch: Make a decision to contact all your past clients
   at least once a month. If you don’t, guess what? Your competition will.
3. Differentiate Yourself: Why should someone buy from you? What
   makes you different from everyone else? It is better to be more
   significant than you are a “nice, trustworthy, cuddly, sincere…”
4. Ignore The Competition: If you are looking at them or worried
   about them at all, your focus is in the wrong direction. You should make
   dealing with you so much more powerful that competition doesn’t even
   exist.
5. Control Your Mind: Whatever helps you stay positive is what you
   need to do first thing in the morning and the last thing you do before
   you see a prospect. For me it’s loud music. I put on a good song and my
   adrenaline starts to flow.
6. Get Rid Of Negative People From Your Life: Now, that might be
   somewhat difficult if you are married to them, and I am not advocating
   divorce but you need to surround yourself with a solid group of
   positive, big thinking encouragers.
7. Send Out 35 Sales Letters Every Week Regardless: Get in the
   habit of sending out at least that many letters to prospects every week.
   No matter what, make sure they go out every Friday.
8. Get Computerised: Do you know how much moneymaking time you
   waste trying to remember who your prospects are and when was the last
   time you called them? If you want to make more money, get with it
   technologically! I’m a big IBM user and Windows from Microsoft runs my
   copy of ACT Contact Management software, I’d be lost without it.
9. Think Big: For heaven’s sake see the potential within you.
   Someone once told me that my yearly income (low six figures at the time)
   was garbage. “Garbage?” Yes, it’s garbage for you to make that much a
   year when you have the potential to earn that much in a month! I had
   never ever entertained the idea that I could. I did it. Now, I am
   working on how I can do that much in a day. (Once I figure that one out
   I’ll let you know, then I’ll figure out how to do it in an hour!)
10. Learn From Your Mistakes: Every sales job has some “failure
    factor” in it. Learn and keep on going.
11. Stop “Trying”: “Trying” to do something is a cop out. Either do
    it or don’t, but stop lying to yourself.
12. Create Special Offers: No matter what you sell, you can create a
    special offer which will put you in a favourable light in the eyes of
    prospects.
13. Write A Special Report: If you are in selling, you are in
    solving. What do you solve for people? Write a 10 pages report, offer it
    to your prospects for Free and your telephone will ring off the wall.
14. Give Up Manipulation Tricks: Stop using those silly closing
    tricks you learned about how to make the buyer buy. No, instead, listen
    to them, build trust and they will buy.
15. Put Your Message On Video: Put your entire sales presentation on
    video and offer it for Free and prospects will see that you are
    different from the competition.
16. Use Contact Cards: A contact card is a postcard that is printed
    on both sides. One side has your picture “A Note From…” and your
    telephone and fax numbers. Keep 20 of them on you always with postage
    stamps already on them. After each sales call, jot a note to your
    prospect, drop it in the mail box. You will create a prositive
    impression.
17. Write A U.S.P.: A U.S.P. stand for Unique Selling Proposotion.
    What is your number one competitive selling advantage? It should be
    brief, exciting and should compel people to want to know more.
18. Realise That Your Past Clients Are Gold: You will starve if you
    have to continue to find new customers. Repackage what you sell and
    visit them again and again and again.
19. Make A Deal With Your Competitors: Do you have prospects that
    you have been unable to sell? Why not go to a competitor and let them
    have a try. They might be able to sell people you were unable to and pay
    you part of what they make. You do the same for their list of dead
    prospects.
20. Deliver Fast: Society is impatient. People will not put up with
    slow delivery.
21. Got Nuts With Follow-up: I’m serious, you will never offend
    someone by sending them cartoons through the fax or dropping a “Thank
    you” note. It will tell them you value the relationship.
22. Think Long-Term: If you are in it for the one off sale, you wil
    be hungry and poor in this business. Everything you do should be
    focussed on keeping this customer for the next 20 years.
23. Hand Address Envelopes.: My research and that of other experts
    in this area indicates a significantly higher percentage of mail is
    opened and read if it’s hand written.
24. Be Confident: If you have confidence in yourself, your product,
    your company, prospects will have confidence in you. If they have
    confidence in you they are much more likely to buy from you.
25. Get Related Quickly: Establish rapport with prospects quickly by
    finding something that relates the two of you. It could be a hobby, a
    common interest, faith, children but find something.
26. Ask More Questions: People want to know that you understand what
    they are going through. Why not ask twice as many questions on your next
    sales call and see what happens.
27. Become A Single Figure: Remember that selling is more about
    perception than about products. Get interviewed, write a book or a
    booklet or a report. Produce a tape, give a speech or debate. Become
    known.
28. Get Your Customers To Own You: By that, if you sell insureance,
    make sure that when they think of insurance they think of you. If you
    sell real estate they automatically think of you.
29. Use The Power Of Because: Every time you talk about or decribe a
    benefit to your prospect for what you sell be sure to tell them why that
    is important to them.
30. Don’t Be Like Archie Bunker: Archie, from the TV show, All In
    The Family makes decisions arbitarily. Never do that, test everything.
    Don’t do what you think is right. Do what the prospect thinks is right.
    There is only one way to find that out and that’s to ask, test and
    measure.
31. Keep Your Customers Happy At All Costs: If you fail in this area
    (and most do, in my opinion) you will fail to build the greatest assets
    in the sales world and that is a client base who trusts you.
32. Develop And Keep A Positive Attitude: I know of very few statues
    erected to “cynics and critics”. Get happy! Read a good book or listen
    to an inspiring message.
33. Be professional: Forget begging for business.
34. Hang Up On Jerks: When telemarketing if you encounter a “jerk”
    (anyone who tries to make you feel bad) simply hang up and move on.
35. Sell To Help: People don’t care how much you know until they
    know how much you care. Get your eyes off your commission and onto their
    problems.
36. Sell At Your Location: There is something called “home court
    advantage.” Get them to come to you if possible.
37. Break One Bad Habit Today: Pick one thing you know you should
    stop doing (TV, gossip, smoking, coffee house,ect), decide to stop only
    one thing. Get someone to hold you accountable, give them your plan and
    break it, finally and forever.
38. List 10 Things you Like About Yourself: Work on building your
    self-esteem. Sometimes it’s so easy to focus on all our flaws. Give
    yourself a break today.
39. Set A Goal For The Year: What’s one thing you would really like
    to accomplish in your selling this year? Write it on a small card and
    carry it with you where ever you go.
40. Attract Prospects By Conducting A Seminar: This is a great way
    for you to have people who are predisposed to buy what you sell step
    forward and identify themselves. I speak to thousands of prospect per
    week when I do a seminar tour. Why would you ever want to sell one
    person at a time when you could sell in several?
41. Be Unique: Do something different. Fax everyone a cartoon. Send
    people a dead flower and tell them that you can bring flowers back to
    life with a special potion, all they have to do to find out how, is book
    an appointment with you.
42. Get Funny: So many people are so uptight. Relax! Let your hair
    down. It is a powerful sales tool. Humour can do for you in seconds what
    talking wouldn’t in a lifetime.
43. Use Testimonials: One of the most powerful tools you can have is
    the endorsements from satisfied clients.
44. Use Pictures: Pictures of satisfied clients go further than
    lengthy letters. People are visual and if they see people just like them
    they will think you are Okay.
45. Create Your Own Marketing Binder: Put any awards you have in the
    binder along with photos, testimonial, product information, how you do
    business, your sales presentation and leave it with prospects, so they
    can evaluate you.
46. Be Prompt: When you make someone wait, it communicates lack of
    respect for their time. Invest in a Rolex, it’ll help your image and it
    will get you there on time.
47. Find The Real Objection: They don’t always feel comfortable
    telling you the number problem at first.
48. Be Honest: I once caught a car salesperson in a small lie. I
    shut down immediately. People more than any other factor, want to buy
    from people they can trust.
49. Raise Your Referral Rates: After surveying over 5,000
    salespeople in Malaysia, my research shows that the average salesperson
    gets less than 10 per cent of their income from referrals, that’s
    terrible.
50. Don’t Do Administration During Prime Selling Time: What are you
    doing shuffling paper when you should be infront of prospects?
51. Stop Cold Calling: Get them coming to you. You can’t kiss
    someone who is backing away from you. Cold calling, for the most part is
    a function of prospect backing (or often, running) away from you. Give
    them some compelling reason to come to you. A clue : the word FREE is
    still one of the most loved words.
52. Welcome Complaints: You can turn around most complaints if you
    are committed to winning. Make it easy and acceptable for them to tell
    you how they feel about you.
53. Create Urgency: Every letter, every sales call, every marketing
    piece must have a deadline.
54. Sell You Guarantee: If you have a guarantee, tell your prospects
    about it more.Too many guarantees are full of small print and so
    salespeople never get the advantage they were intended to create.
55. Ask For The Order: This simple advice is obvious! Or is it?
56. Don’t Be A Door Mat: If people are putting you or your company
    down, stand up to them. You should have pride. You don’t need any
    customer that much.
57. Save 10 Per Cent Of Everything You Earn: Starting with your next
    payslip, put 10 per cent away for yourself. Why is it that we pay
    everyone else but ourselves?
58. Join Toastmasters: They will teach you how to speak in public.
    The benefits of that are tremendous for your sales presentation and
    confidence. You can find their number in the Yellow Pages or you can use
    the search engine found on the mainpage of this website.
59. Refuse To Quit: You will never win in selling if you give up. I
    have felt like stopping about a million times (per week sometimes) but I
    know that I’ll never learn anything from giving up except how to quit.
60. Get Organised: I use a Sharp orgainser for my schedule, contacts
    and memo’s. It’s handy, easy to use and portable. Oh, I always back it
    up and keep a hard copy of the data.
61. Take Resposibility For Your Results: You are the only person who
    can improve your situation. You got yourself into it and you are the one
    who will get yourself out.
62. Attach Something To Every Sales Letter: Put a coin, dollar bill,
    anything. It will be novel and get people’s attention.
63. Sponsor a Community Event: Give back to your community and they
    will give back to you.
64. Instead Of A Letter Send An Audio Cassette: You may have noticed
    something called the “jam”. Instead of writing a letter, speak your
    letter into a cassette and they will listen to it in their cars in the
    “jam”.
65. Get On Everyone’s Mailing List: I love to learn from what people
    send me.
66. Get Your Spending In Line: Credit can kill you. If you are
    consistently spending more than you are earning you are in for a bad
    time. Trust me, get rid of the credit cards, and cut back your expense.
    You can’t sell well if you are worried about debt.
67. Use a Headline In Your Sales Letters: Also keep in mind that
    every sales letter must have a P.S. You have less than five seconds to
    capture their interest, headline and P.S.’s help.
68. Sponsor A Contest: This will give you a vehicle to bulid your
    database in a hurry.
69. Record an Interview: Get your best friend, with the best voice
    to ask you a series of questions and record it on audio cassette. Then
    give it away to prospects. Title it An Interview with ….
70. If Possible Charge Differently Than Others: Make comparison
    shopping difficult.
71. Clean Up Your Life: Everyone has certain things they have
    procastinated on doing for ages. If you have been planning to clean that
    desk of yours and it’s getting in the way of you increasing your
    product, clean the stupid thing!
72. Qualify First: Don’t start selling until you have enough
    information about what they need.
73. Assume Prospects Are NOT Liars: Most salespeople I know think
    that prospects are liars and will do just about anything rather than
    give you the truth. I assume they tell me the truth until they give me
    some reason to not believe that.
74. Use The Telephone To Weed People Out, Not Prospect.: “Use the
    telephone to disqualify non-buyers,” as Bill Good says.
75. Create Order In Your Client Base: You should have a list of all
    your past contacts, past clients, hot prospects preferably on computer.
76. Position Yourself As An “Expert And Authority”: Even if you are
    new to your industry you can be preceived as an expert. The way to do it
    is with information. Write something, research something or print
    something and you are an instant “expert”.
77. Get In Front Of The Right Person Or Don’t Waste Your Time.: So
    many salespeople complain about not closing more sales but they spend
    forever trying to sell to the wrong people. If the decision maker is the
    managing director (MD) then you should stop talking to the director of
    human resource. Figure how to get into the MD.
78. Under Pressure?: Take a day off.
79. Use Cross Promotions: Find someone who is in front of your
    target market and get them to send a compelling offer to their client
    base.
80. Hurry Up And finish this Article.: How much time do you have to
    be off the job?
81. Remember Rockefeller: He said “Take something common and make it
    uncommon.” Make what you sell or do extraodinary.
82. Build, manage and exploit your database: Your list of contacts
    is one of the most valuable assets you have. Always add more names to
    it. Get them coming to you by regularly creating offers that make them
    step forward. Capture everyone’s name.
83. Get Rid Of Hassle Rules: If you can, get rid of all negative
    rules like “No refunds without receipt” or “No cheque accepted.”
84. Blow Your Customers Away By Exceeding Their Expectation.: The
    word of mouth benefits of doing this is fabulous.
85. Build A Wall Of Fame: In your office create a wall for all
    letters of praise and endorsements.
86. Post My Article Every Week: This is not as self-serving as in
    might appear. It will get people talking about similar things when it
    comes to selling.
87. Give Something Away: People love getting Free Samples, Free
    Offers, Reprots, Booklets, Tapes, Videos, etc.
88. Host An Annual Special Event for Your Past Clients: Want more
    fererrals? Why not host a party, social, seminar, debate, forum once
    every quarter and only invite your past clients?
89. Focus On The Customer Not On YOU: People don’t care about you,
    your credentials, or your company. They care only about one thing :
    THEMSELVES. More specifically, how spending their hard-earnd money will
    solve their problems?
90. Snap To It!: Take your past client’s picture and send it to
    them.
91. Keep In touch By Fax: Send a weekly or monthly report or
    newsletter via the fax machine. Send a positive quotation of the day.
92. Start Your Own Association: A.A.R.P. is the American Association
    for Retired People. It has 30 million members. Guess who started it? An
    insurance company who wanted to sell to .. retired people.
93. 93. Write A Book: I’m serious! If you knew what a book would do for
    you and your sales, you’d be up for the nedt month writing it, beg,
    borrow or steal the money to print it and it would be done. Give
    yourself permission and reap the benefits. You don’t have to write the
    next Gone with The Wind>/i> but just Eight Steps Winning in the 90′s.
94. Print A Personal Brouchure: Even if your company has a corporate
    brochure, do one up on YOU. People don’t buy fron campanies they buy
    from people. This will set you apart from the competition.
95. Increase The Size Of Each Sale: Ask for bigger orders.
96. Invest In Yourself: Get the best books, go to seminars, get a
    support system. Spend money training yourself.
97. Be A Person Of Intergrity: Be a person your kids would be happy
    to emulate.
98. Take A Break!: When was the last time you kissed yor spouse?
    When was the last time you gave yourself fully to your kids?
99. Focus On The Journey Not The Prize: Selling is about becoming a
    better person. It’s not really about hitting the home run. Sure that’s
    important but what is more important are all the wonderful ways you are
    better because you are a professional salespersons.
100. Pick Two Things From This Article And Start Doing Them.

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A Google search of ‘tie-dye clothing’ had shown us on the first page of the search engine results pretty consistently. But when I looked yesterday we were nowhere to be seen.

Did I make a Google-Boo-Boo that I was punished and sent to the end of the line?

Sure looked like it. But I could not imagine what I might have done there – always tried to be a good Google citizen. Sure, I had to do some more investigation.

Next thing to try was the search term that always showed us very much at the top of the SERPs – ‘tie-dye bags’. Yeah, we were still there but it was not right either:

First of all it did not say anything about tie-dye bags in the title and then look at the URL at the bottom – there is an extra .com tagged to the end of the correct URL, and that, obviously did net get a user to the right web page. Made sense now that we had not sold any bags lately.

Then I wanted to know when the main page had been indexed last. Firefox has the Google toolbar installed and next to the page rank indicator there is a drop down, one of which is ‘Cached snapshot of page’ which I often use to inspect how Google sees my pages and to find the date of the last cached version, which should be about the time when Google came visiting the last time.

To my great surprise, when I clicked that link, I got to the error page that indicated that the link pointed to – again -

www.thaidye.com.com

Now it was clear that Google had a bug and it was costing me money!

Next stop of my investigation was the webmaster tools – could not find anything wrong here, and then I was off to the webmaster forum, where I described the bug, Google has, and asked for help.

The answer was quick to come. Bob Gladstein set me straight, real quick – not Google’s fault but all mine.  Here is what I realized after seeing Bob’s observation:

When I had learned about the canonical tag a while ago, I thought that this was a great idea and I found a plugin for my blogs quickly to utilize it. On the ThaiDye web site, which is completely hand crafted, I thought that I implement that as well and I added this line in the header section of the main page

<link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.Thaidye.com.com” />

proud as can be about how smart I am, not noticing that in copy and pasting I got that extra .com in there. I actually don’t know how long ago I did that, but it finally bit me in the butt. I found out that the product page, which might be hit by quite a few different URL – with parameters, etc. – also had the double  com canonical link command but is now back in it’s old beauty as

• http://www.thaidye.com/products.php  to show all our amazing tie-dye in the right way

I just wish there was something in the Google webmaster tools to correct the boo-boo I made, like the URL removal tool, but it does not appear to be the case. So I just sit tight and wait for Google to come by and read my corrected web pages.

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By the way, in my eyes stompernet was Andy Jenkins – I still read what Andy has to say, but more and more skip over the emails from stompernet. This is how it happened that I read Andy’s blog on the clarification of the new FTC rules. This blog was more or less a pointer to an interview of an FTC agent by Jim Edwards (an internet marketer.)

You might be aware of the fact that my political tendencies are towards the complete abolishion of the rule by the few (aka government.) This made listening to this interview very taxing for me, as the interviewer acted as if the interviewee was an equal or even higher-up to be bestow his wisdom upon us. For god’s sake, he was talking to a bureaucrat!

I did not think that a comment on Jim Edwards blog would have made any effect, so I did not comment there, but with Andy I had the idea a comment, I would post, would stay there, especially after the great broomstick metaphor in a comment by Dan Thies, another great man in the internet marketing arena.

In order to ensure the survival of this comment I also want to post it here. You might have to go to Andy’s blog and from there to Jim’s interview to get the whole story, but anyway, here is what I had to rant:

Oh man, this got my blood boiling! What’s really frustrating are these comments like “good info, thanks!” The only light in the tunnel was Dan Thies broomstick metaphor, which shows a bit what all ‘agencies’ are about – initiating violence.
Reasonable men, if they have a disagreement, sit together and work it out and come to a mutually acceptable agreement. Not agencies! They work like bullies: “We tell you how it is, and if you don’t do was we say – - – you know where the broomstick is, and how long it is!”
Still, we can learn from them: they came up with the idea that we don’t negotiate with terrorists. That is a good policy particularly if applied to them, because they are, in fact, the terrorists, a they initiate force. You don’t think what they do is initiating force? Think again: they issue a fine (or sue you, which is the same because the courts belong to them and are paid by them), and you don’t pay. Then you see that it IS force – just play it through in your mind.
The only reason I write this is to plant this little seed in your mind, that you all see that ‘agencies’ are agencies not for us but only for themselves, that they are not our friends that will protect consumers. That’s just double talk to hide the fact that they are taking more control by threat of stealing and imprisonment.
Yes, follow the rules (for now) but keep in mind, that the tyrants are not here to help you.
A slave master can only stay what he is as long as the slave behaves as a slave – stop being a  slave. Resist with every fiber, without the need to put yourself in danger, but resists, don’t see them as the benefactor.
And above all, see them as different from you. They are not one of us, where we all work together to make the world a better place. See that anybody who has the idea to know better than you, how to live your life, is to be met with at least suspicion.

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It certainly has the theme of showing all the things that irk or interest me – but I suppose that is a category that is only relevant to me.

Now I got reminded again through Steve Pavlina’s blog article “How to Make Money From Your Blog” that, in order to be able to monetize a blog, it needs some kind of focus on some niche. Does that mean that I will never be able to monetize this blog which has pretty good search engine ranking?

So far I have used this resource of good standing with Google to tell the search giant to come by and take a look at a site that I needed to get indexed quickly. One of these sites was our tie-dye clothing site ThaiDye.com that, whenever I mentioned it here on this blog, gets a visits from Mr. Google the next day.

With a site as broad as this – I mean what could be broader than all the things that irk me? – I probably have to do it the other way around – get a real niche site going very strong and then this can drive traffic to my catch-all site here. And then I might actually be able to monetize this site – huh, maybe…

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But today, when checking out something at Google’s webmaster tools I noticed that the link to this post generated a 404 error – oops! It took me a while to notice what was different in the URL that worked and the one that did not. A little sub-directory /blog/ – I had moved WordPress from it’s directory /blog/ down to the root of the web site.

The whole thing turned out to be a false alarm because Google had also indexed the later version of the site without the /blog/ and the page was found just fine. But as I was already looking into this I thought why not revisit the issue and strengthen my position as the most important guy on the internet and everywhere else.

So, yes, if you ended up here on this page then you probably – for whatever sick reason – searched for the this one totally smart guy on the web. I suppose you were hoping to find your name – sorry – but that position is taken by your’s truly Merlin G. Silk!

So, I would suggest you get a life and do something constructive.

C Ya!

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Backlinks are the big item of highest value. A backlink is a link from another site to the one being optimized. Google sees that as a vote for the site – Google listening to the ‘word of mouth’ of the internet.

Now, if an ax murderer is talking highly about you that might not be considered a good vote for you and your character. That means Google is looking for ‘quality’ links, it is disregarding links from sites that just list one site after the other. The question is then what is a ‘good’ link, and this article is an attempt to find out.

• I am now offering you, Google, this link to a website I want to test: The Alpha to Omega of Website Linking.
• Dear Google, I am now very curious what you will do with this link.

I will report how it went.

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Admitted, you probably would have come here too.

You might be wondering why there is a page for this oh so intelligent guy making waves on the internet. Let me tell you what’s behind this post here.

It is actually a research project in SEO (Search Engine Optimization for all of you who are not involved in internet marketing.) I thought about a search term like intelligent guy in the world or maybe the internet to optimize a page for to see what I will have to do to rank on the first page of Google.

I did not want to make it too difficult for me by selecting a search term like “coolest guy on the internet” – that is taken by a master of SEO, so I thought I might tackle that later.

There was no page that was actually titled The Most Intelligent Guy on the Internet, so I thought I go for this one.

Search engine optimization is really an interesting game to play. It requires the willingness to play games with the big players on the internet, you certainly need some intelligence to grasp all the rules, but you don’t really have to be a guy, a gal will do just as well.

Often people who do SEO think they are battling the search engines to subdue them to show their pages at the top of search results, but this is actually not true. The real target is the other website that competes for that position in the search engine. If there is no competitor you have it very easy to find you spot at the top of Google. But then again what would it be worth if nobody is interested?

With the internet and so many intelligent guys and gals on it – if nobody is searching what you have to offer there is probably no interest.

Anyway, if you want to help out making me indeed the most intelligent guy on the internet put a link to this article on your web site or blog with the link text that’s a bit varied from the standard title of this page.

Why don’t I give a few examples of what you could paste into your post.

A pretty smart guy

Make sure not to break a line where it should not be broken.

A rather intelligent guy on the internet

The most intelligent guy on the internet

This guy thinks he is so smart on the internet

OK – let this be enough – thanks!

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