Shanti’s Dispatches

I get a lot of LinkedIn spam. Perhaps its because I leave my email address on my profile.

I believe that’s a good idea, generally - I’ve made some pretty good contacts who just emailed me out of the blue from this.

It’s nice, though, if you’re going to use this technique, to at least:

1) Read up on my profile, and send a nice customized (could be just 2 sentences long) message, instead of one of the generic LinkedIn ones.

2) Perhaps Googled me to find out a bit more about me (i.e. perhaps this blog), and mentioned that in the request (this is not required, I know people are busy)

Introducing the LinkedIn Flip

Instead of ignoring or deleting spam from LinkedIn users — try selling them on one of your own products or services (do this *before* you accept their connection invitation).

If they doth protest (which I just had one person do), explain that you don’t know them, that they spent a grand total of 10seconds sending a form-letter template, and that you only connect with people who you have a working or personal relationship of some kind.

The Pushy-salesman Flip

This technique works equally well on pushy salespeople who have not buttered me up appropriately yet. You see, I have a rudimentary understanding of Psychology, so I know that if you at least butter me up first by being more personable, or perhaps give me something of value for free (with no expectation of reciprocation), then I’m a lot more likely to say Yes when the time comes for me to buy your product/service.

But I’ve had a few instances where I was approached by someone (either online or off) who was rather pushy or very forward — In retrospect I would have loved to sell them on one of my products/services instead of just blowing them off.

“Coffee’s for closers” - Alec Baldwin’s character in Glengarry Glen Ross

Coffee’s for closers (direct link)

John Jantsch from Duct Tape Marketing has a new book coming out (of the same name) in January ‘07.

I’ve stumpled across Duct Tape Marketing many a times over the years through Google searches, etc.

What impresses me about John is he knows a ton about each of the different ways you can market your business or website, whereas most marketing experts tend to specialize in just one area (i.e. blogging, SEO, AdWords, etc).

Within marketing (and Internet marketing) you have:
- brand building (even though branding is dead) - but y’know, name/identity recognition aka The Artist Formerly Known As Branding
- SEO
- pay per click
- blogging
- press releases & PR
- referral marketing
- affiliate marketing
- sales letters
- etc

It’s tough for a business to be effective in all these different areas, but I think it helps to experiment a bit in each and find out what works best for your business.

It looks like you also get a bunch of bonuses if you pre-order.

I’m subscribed to Joel Comm’s newsletter. It’s interesting because he’s deeply plugged into that semi-shady world of Internet Marketing. Some of these guys make hundreds of thousands of dollars within a few days of launching their products. Sometimes, even a million.

It’s a refreshing change of pace from the TechCrunch world — where you might see many “startups” blogged about daily, some of whom I’m quite sure will never even break $10k in revenue (for the entire history of their company).

But this recent email from Joel started the old “omfg this has got to be another bubble” alarm bells ringing:

I know it is the day before Thanksgiving in America…

And I know that I’ve already sent you an email today…

But some things just can’t wait. I just discovered a
new site that is about to publicly launch, and I’d be
doing you a disservice by not telling you about it!

Please read on…

For those who were online in 1999, you may remember
the very first “Get paid to surf” program. It was
called AllAdvantage. Basically, by displaying the
AllAdvantage toolbar while you surfed, you got paid.

And when you referred people to the program and they
surfed, you got paid.

It worked VERY well, except that the management team
at the company messed up the opportunity.

Don’t get me wrong. I earned THOUSANDS with this
program. And it was incredibly viral.

Since then, I’ve been waiting for a similar opportunity
to arrive.

It just has!

http://www.makemoneywithjoel.com

Ugh.

In other unrelated news, Happy Thanksgiving ya’ll!

I guess this author has never ventured too far off the beaten path of Internet marketing and web development.

Guys like Corey Rudl have been raking in millions for 5+ years by selling things like ebooks and info-products on some supremely ugly websites. (Can we say 20 pt. font, backlit by a bright yellow hi-liter ?) I actually bought Corey’s original marketing tips package, oh, 6+ years ago when I was a Sophomore in college. Those were the days!

If it were only that easy though (selling ebooks and making millions)… Part of my subconscious would find it a little disturbing to charge someone $97 for an ebook full of “secrets” about marketing or what-have-you. Of course, to each their own! I’m not a capitalist player hater. Most of these gurus offer refunds, but still…