I’ve been completely SWAMPED! Let me tell you about it all and then you will see my progress.

I believe I am a a fairly typical “newbie” to internet marketing. The technology of “the web” is not a problem, but there are so many different people telling you that their way is the best and that some other way is “old school”! I’m flooded with marketing e-mails offering me the latest “get going quick” strategies and I really don’t know which, if any, it sign up for.

I started my internet marketing journey about 6 weeks ago when things were nice and quiet at home. Unfortunately then exam season struck and my 2 boys came home “to revise” – and brought their girlfriends – because it was quieter and they didn’t have to think about meals and shopping, etc. WHAT!!!

Then my husband returned from his sojourn in Spain – bringing with him 2 Huskies – to add to my Jack Russell Terrier (crossed with something with long legs)

So now, instead of the house to myself and the commitment to give 1 dog a quick walk, I have a house full of youngsters and dogs! and MEGA competition for the computer!

Last weekend I squeezed 1 day away from the family to go to the Internet Millionaires Summit in London. I wanted to be there on all 3 days Friday to Sunday, but…

1. On Friday my boss at my current part-time job couldn’t release me for the afternoon – I’ve lost count of how many Friday’s he’s rung me to say “nothing doing this afternoon, don’t bother to come in” but THIS Friday it suddenly became imperative I was at work … sigh
2. A month ago I had promised my daughter that I would attend an event on Sunday with her – prior to her attending for officer selection with the RAF. So I couldn’t renege on my promise, could I?

Well, at least I got to the Saturday session and was able to meet Alex Jeffreys, George Brown, Dean Hunt, Roy Carter and Andrew X in person and shake their hands. Guess what! In all my rushing around and planning and sorting out the family I’d forgotten to take a camera! Oh well, next time, please, lads! Oh, and as the sessions were videoed, I’m really hoping George can arrange for me to have a link so I can catch the sessions I missed.

(The event with my daughter went off very well, thank you for asking )

So, taking all this chaos into consideration, I decided I really must formulate a plan and write out my goals. Does this sound familiar to anyone else starting out? I do hope so, or I’ll feel a freak.

I’m still formulating the plan but I think it will go something like this:

Timetable myself for 2 hours a day to “work”
Allow myself 1/2 hour to blog hop
Allow myself 1/2 hour to scan all these sales e-mails and begin to unsubscribe to most of them
Think how to fit in facebook and twitter too
Inform the family/dogs/hubbie what my “work” times for the week are and bag the computer and living room for that period of time

How does that sound?

I’ve also decided to write an “Elevator Pitch” for my blog.  This is a short, snappy description to catch someone’s attention while you’re riding the elevator with them.  It will also serve to keep me focused. Mark 1 of my elevator pitch is :

JenniferCTaylor.com is my voice on-line where I can paint pictures of my life and my on-line journey. My goal is to have an income that enables me to travel – when all is quiet in my olive grove.

What do you think of that for a focus? Please leave me your thoughts.

PS I got this idea from problogger.com’s course “31 Days to Build a Better Blog”

You may well ask! It really looks like I’ve been neglecting my readers. Many apologies, dear friend! Let me tell you where I’ve been.

The first weekend in June I jetted from London, England to St. Louis, Missouri, USA for a conference.

Things didn’t go well at the start – I arranged for my son to drop me at Heathrow Terminal 1 – I had checked it several times because I thought Terminal 1 was only internal or European flights. When I got there I rang my sister, with whom I was travelling – only to find she was at Terminal 3. I rechecked my flight details and realised that I was flying from Heathrow terminal 3 to Toronto Terminal 1.

So I walked on over to Terminal 3 – well, under, actually as you go down to the underground station and out the Terminal 3 exit. It didn’t take more than 15 minutes, thankfully. Once there, we decided to do the self-check-in at a machine seeing as we only had carry-on bags. Guess what! At each machine there was an airline assistant to help you use the machine! Did that amount to self-check-in? Oh, well, it saved some queuing, I guess. We changed our watches to Toronto time as soon as we took off from Heathrow and took our anti-jetlag herbal remedies – would they work?

The flight was uneventful – smooth, food provided, entertainment in the seat back of the seat in front, etc. We had a 4 hour stop-over in Toronto which was long and there was nothing to do since we had transferred to the “internal” departure lounge and there was nothing there except a couple of lacklustre fast-food outlets. Anyway, we didn’t really want to acquire any Canadian money for such a short time.

On to St Louis in a small aircraft – I really like these because you can see the terrain you are flying over. Most “carry-on” bags had to be left at the plane door for stowing with the checked baggage as there was no room in the cabin.

At St Louis we took the metro from the airport directly to a stop very near our hotel, which was part of the Union Station complexThis used to the largest railway terminal in the world but since the demise of steam travel has been turned into a hotel, conference, shopping complex. Take a look at here and here for some more information.

The hotel was comfortable and convenient. We found that our days consisted of:

• wake up
• have breakfast
• go to 1st session
• grab a quick lunch
• second session
• grab a quick supper
• evening session
• bed

So I can’t really tell you much about the weather except that it was warm and, I think, sunny.

The plan was to do some sightseeing on Monday morning before heading home again but we were all so tired that we had a lie in on Monday – but we did manage to go to the Gateway Arch which was conceived to commemorate the westward growth of the United States between 1803 and 1890. For those of you interested in seeing more, go to here.

And then the return trip was very similar except the stop in Toronto was slightly more bearable since there were several other people from the conference returning on the same plane and we were in the “international” departure area so there were more shops and restaurants.

In case you wondered… the anti-jet-lag remedies DID work – both ways – and we were able to enjoy the conference and hit the ground running when we got back to our duties in the UK.

As to the conference … well, I’ll tell you more of that in my next blog. But while you’re waiting – why not tell us where you have been in the comments section?

PS If someone could tell me how to indent the bullets above, I’d be grateful. Thanks

Well, it’s over a week since I’ve been able to sit down quietly and take stock of what I’ve learnt this week. The “Puzzle” being a metaphor for this venture into internet marketing. And the pieces?

Blog hopping

I’ve been “oil-rig hopping” – the problem with this is that there are such interesting blogs out there that one can take hours reading them, writing comments and following all the interesting links! So I got really side-tracked there.

Fitting this piece in the puzzle: limit the time you spend daily in your blog hopping. I would suggest you either choose several with high page rank and keep an eye on those or visit different ones every day and try not to repeat yourself. What do you think? How do you organise your blog hopping?

Checking out Other Marketers’ Sales

Then I also set out to see what other marketers put in their sales letters. This meant that I signed up to loads of autoresponders – and my inbox got flooded with sales offers. I confirmed my subscriptions and followed through the subsequent pages. Offers upon offers, sales upon sales! Then the one time offers and the up-sells and the down-sells. In the end I found I was receiving the same offers from multiple sources. Guess what!!! I even ended up on Alex’s autoresponder list and received some repeated offers. So I unsubscribed to many – just to keep the traffic in my inbox down a bit.

Fitting this piece in the puzzle: Sign up for a few but keep track what you signed up for so you can follow the sequence of the e-mails – for use as examples of how to run your own campaign. DO NOT buy the offers, down-sells, special offers. You’ll be bankrupt before you get going! How have you gone through this learning loop? I’d love to hear your strategies.

Oh – and take a leaf out of the expert’s book: see what is being sold, especially new launches. Then head on over to see if they offer affiliates and sign up. Then mail out to your list and jump on the bandwagon of the launch!

Forums

This piece of the puzzle is similar to blog hopping but magnified because each forum has loads of threads that are so interesting and very relevant to my situation. Loads of forums to visit – reviews, advice and questions and answers. Again, you can get so involved and engrossed in these that the day flashes by and you don’t get your moment in the beautiful sunshine we’ve had this week.

Fitting this piece in the puzzle: well, I think I have to resolve this the same way as blog hopping. Maybe allocate a certain amount of time to each of these and STICK to it. I know you could outsource this but I feel that you would be misrepresenting yourself if you did. What do you think? Have you found a way to get all this done and still have time to “smell the roses”?

Joint Ventures

What is a “joint venture”? I read:
“If you market ANY products or services on the internet, then you are missing out on big bucks if you never get into into alliance with other marketers who share the same interests as you do. A Joint Venture (or just JV) can produce dramatic windfalls of quick cash when marketers pool their resources together for mutual benefit.”
So I joined one – My First JV  It became apparent that I needed some free products to give away. These I found and you can get hold of them, and loads of other free stuff – software, reports, ebooks- by going to the joint venture as a member . Just click

HERE

What took the time was – finding the products, learning how to put them into the joint venture gift list and then testing my links to see that everything worked. The JV went live today and I am watching with eager anticipation to see where we go from here!

Fitting this piece in the puzzle: Well, I’ll let you know – this jv runs until June 11th so I’ll update you then!

Anyone else in this JV? How are you doing? Have you been to the JV and gotten yourself some free products? What was your favourite? Let’s pool experiences!

My fellow students and I have been set a competition to build traffic to our blogs! The prize is stupendous – to us! So I have journeyed into new and uncharted waters.

I was already using facebook – I have only a few friends – mostly family – and have only used it to exchange photos. Now I’m learning how to network blog. Facebook just keeps getting bigger and bigger.

I signed up with Twitter. Read the rest of this entry

Hey – this is getting more and more exciting!

But I have one major block at the moment. I still have trouble getting subscribers. So when I was invited to be part of this great JV with a TON of ebooks, graphics, and software, I jumped at it.

You know I’m such a newbie that I have to choose carefully and slowly who to join and promote and this just “jumped out at me”

So I encourage you to join me and see for yourself why this event WILL help savvy marketers just like us build a massive list… Do Not hesitate on this one, you have a list to build!

Signup FREE as a Contributor right here:

http://www.jennifersimblog.com/sdg

Here’s to successful list building!

P.S. I strongly suggest you consider the optional upgrade, if you want MAXIMUM Exposure for minimum “scratch” PLUS 100% commissions.

http://www.jennifersimblog.com/sdg

Well…. as I said, I’m being coached by Alex Jeffreys. In last week’s session he showed us how to set up a blog and for homework said “Go do it!” PHEW! EASY!! NO!

The problem is that when your computer/website/hosting service doesn’t do EXACTLY as you are shown you have to fall back on your own devices. Now, I can work out pretty much anything on a computer – by training and my hobby – I’m never happier than when doing something on the computer – except Read the rest of this entry