Nope, nobody signed up for this carnival. I’ve decided to do my own for the purposes of reciprocity. I decided to find many of the blogs who were linking to me, find out who they linked to, and decided to just see what everyone was talking about. I found a number of blog posts worth reading, so I decided to share them here.

James Brausch says a href=http://www.michelfortin.com/>Michel Fortin Sucks… at a href=http://www.michelfortin.com/>Michel Fortin’s Blog
This post is about the use of the Law of Reciprocity. Good stuff, check it out.

Mike Sigers says If You’re Cheap, Please Don’t Advertise It Like This at Simplenomics
Horrible copy doesn’t only exist in the online world!

Stephen Dean says Someone’s watching me! at Stephen Dean’s Blog
Apparently Stephen Dean helped write a song? (wrong Stephen)

Ed Rivis posted Interview copywriting expert Stephen Dean. at the Ed Rivis Blog
He actually managed to get an interview with copywriting expert Stephen Dean?

Terry Dean wrote How to Influence Others at Terry Dean’s Blog

- Aaron

I faced a serious problem when trying to read a local fishing website on how to fish in the area I live in. Suddenly, I felt like a child with a brand new list of words I had to remember definitions for. It wasn’t a huge problem, it just required a bit of unexpected research.

The same research is a requirement when moving in to new markets which aren’t as familiar to you. 

I’m sure most of my blog readers have gone fishing at some point in their life. Those who have gone fishing know these terms:

Rod, reel, line, bait, hook, lure, tackle… right?

I thought I knew it all too, but apparently it’s far more complex than it looks.

Downrigger, trolling, angler, dabbling, and jig, are a few more terms to add to the mix. Some of these I’ve heard in the past, but would never have understood them if I saw them in a guide.

So what’s a good way around this? If you want to become more familiar of the terms used in your market, simply do a search in Google or any search engine for “keyword glossary” or “keyword terms”. (Replace keyword with your market) Continue your research reading your markets message boards, blogs, and watch a few videos until you’re more familiar with how they’re talking. What’s their most common word?

Do you know what language your market is speaking? How to communicate with them?

And until you learn the language of your market, don’t attempt to sell anything to them.

There is a process in an internet business which I haven’t mentioned in a blog entry before. It doesn’t have to apply to information products. It can actually apply to most types of products.

Sometimes putting your own steps into a flowchart will make your own business easier to understand. Spotting unnecessary steps and eliminating unproductive parts can save time, as well as money in some cases.

Here’s the business process.
I’ve added descriptions for each process. If you’d like to use this for improving your own business, feel free to do so.

New Product Development

Engineering

The first part is engineering. In my business, it is not drawing a blueprint, nor is it using some special software, or hiring some specialist to do any work for me. Engineering in the product creation process is getting an idea. Using my own brain and thinking about what I know. If there’s an idea I think of which I want to pursue, but need additional information for a product, I will use content sites, blogs, books, and friends for additional research.

Production

Once you’ve researched your idea of a product in the engineering step and have decided to pursue it, you will now need to produce it. In my internet business, producing a product has a process within itself. For videos, it starts with recording using screen capture software. They are then compiled into a compatible format for best viewing experience. Audio, or text, and software may also be used instead of video.

Now, the videos I compiled are ready to be burned to a CD or DVD. I use data CD’s if my product will fit on them.

Does the product work when played from the CD? Yes? Then it’s time to download the software from the “machine”, or CD/DVD manufacturing service.

The manufacturing service software uses 6 steps with the outcome of your CD or DVD being ready to purchase by a customer, or in quantities for yourself.

Finance

There have been no costs in the product creation process at this point.

Marketing

This is an endless procedure. I release my product for the first time promoting it in a new blog entry as a special. The subscribers who are on my blog update list are often the first to be notified, to purchase my new product.

I’ll continue to promote the product on my blog as necessary.

I’ll also write articles, or will have articles written for me to promote my product further.

Sales and Support

Sales are taken care of by the manufacturing service. A check is mailed to me once a month. $1.60 is deducted from each sale for the cost of the CD/DVD disc and case. The manufacturing service charges the customer a handling fee, and the correct shipping cost to get the product to their address. I do not keep either of these fees.

No support is available for the product. Neither I or the manufacturing service accept refunds for the physical disc courses. All steps should be clear enough to understand in the course, and the disc was already tested and works from my own computer. Any additional information is found at my blog. The URL is advertised either in the product itself, or on the case of the product.

There are 5 hours remaining for this special offer. At noon PST (GMT -8) I’m raising the price of the Market Research CD to  $30.

I have a few more CD’s left of:

“Earn An Income By Publishing Your Own Printed And Mailed Newsletter…
Even If You Live On A Remote Island With Only Internet Access To The Outside World!”

which I’m mailing seperately with anyones order of Market Research for Information Products.

I’m pretty confident that anyone who would like the extra CD included will be able to get one, as long as you order now, and not after the special has ended.

If you want these two products for just $15 (that’s a $130.00 value) then simply use the link to order below:

http://kunaki.com/sales.asp?PID=PX00QAZ56F

I will mail the extra CD to all of those who have ordered once the special has ended.

I just finished uploading my latest physical CD course:

Market Research - Market Research For Information Products.

This course includes:

• Getting an idea
• Choosing a market
• Identifying market trends
• I also included a few extra videos on the CD

You put the CD into your computer, and you simply play the videos from the menu!

Here’s the deal… I want to make this 24 hour special, EXTRA special by doing something new. I’m going to send the first 24 customers who order my new course within the 24 hour period a copy of:

Earn An Income By Publishing Your Own Printed And Mailed Newsletter…
Even If You Live On A Remote Island With Only Internet Access To The Outside World!

Now, don’t expect the extra CD to arrive in a DVD case. Recently, James decided to go all fancy and make that product into a DVD. I’m giving you the CD in a jewel case. This CD also plays from your CD drive of your computer.

I will mail “Earn An Income By Publishing Your Own Printed And Mailed Newsletter…” separately from the Market Research CD.
I’ll have your name and address information once you order Market Research For Information Products.

Remember, this is for 24 hours only for $15, and I only have 24 extra CD’s! After that, the price will be increased to $30 dollars, and no longer will I offer the additional CD!

Go grab a copy now! Here’s the order link:

http://kunaki.com/sales.asp?PID=PX00QAZ56F

The special ends tomorrow at noon Pacific Time (GMT -8)

Did you know that “Success encourages you to repeat the behavior”?

That’s was one point that was made in the new course called Self Help Meeting.

Think about that for a minute… How can success be dangerous?

One example in the the video session was gambling.

If you pull the lever on a slot machine and $100 dollars in quarters come out, should you keep on inserting more quarters and pulling the lever?

I have a question… Can success be dangerous in an internet business?

Comments?

Today I decided to purchase a brand new course called Self Help Meeting. It’s currently being released as a 24 hour special at jamesbrausch.com.

Here’s the link to the post: http://www.jamesbrausch.com/?p=698

For $10 (regular price is $50) I simply couldn’t resist purchasing it. It’s a 45 minute video session with a medical doctor… I know, that sounds a little strange. It’s ALMOST like sitting down with a psychiatrist…

Anyway, the course was very well put together and I learned a wealth of information.

I recommend this course to all of my blog readers.

Go check it out, it’s only $10 during the special offer. He will be changing the price back at noon tomorrow (MST which is GMT-7). The sales page says $50, but once you order it should still say $10 on the order form.

Self Help Meeting

Well it looks like Market Research for Information Products is going to be my next product.

Here are the results:

• Market Research for Information Products: 2 votes
• Distraction Management: 1 vote
• Something Else 1 vote

I’m happy with the poll results, because I’ve really been wanting to create a product for market research since that’s where it all begins, and…

“All achievement, all earned riches, have their beginning in an idea” – Napoleon Hill

…which is the first part of market research.

Your comments were all very helpful. I agree that many outdated products will talk about using the overture tool for market research. The problem is, this tool seldomly works because it times out. My market research process does’t include this tool.

Thanks for all your help! Market Research for Information Products will be available very soon!

“I am. I am. I am.”
How to Get Everything You Want In Life

That’s the title of the first book I want to give away to one of my blog readers.

This is one of the first self-help books I ever read. It does talk about the “Law of Attraction”. If you think the movie The Secret was the first time the so called “Law Of Attraction” was mentioned, you’re wrong. This book was published in 1999, and the term was even mentioned back then.

Maybe you need a self-help book to motivate you, and to help you find what it is you’re looking to achieve in life. Or, maybe there’s someone you know who could use the book.

If you would like my copy of the book sent to you, simply post a trackback to this post from your blog. If you don’t have a blog…why wouldn’t you have a blog?

I’ll pay the shipping, of course.

I want to create a new product that will be valuable to my blog readers as well as all internet business owners. I created the Blogcast course when I saw a demand for those who weren’t getting their blog readers back to their blogs (or simply didn’t have an opt-in form). I then decided to make that course into the Blogcast physical course for those who wanted it on CD rather than an online video course. I made the DVD Cover Creation Course for those who are already making physical products but would like to know how to design their own custom covers for their cases. But what’s next?

Here are a few products  I could create:

• CD Case Cover Creation – Jewel case cover creation
• Market Research For Information Products – The first step for a successful online business. Getting an idea, etc.
• Distraction Management – How to discover and remove time wasting distractions from your workspace
• Something Else

Please cast your vote by simply making a comment below.

In the input box, write in one of the options above. If your choice is “Something Else”, please write in a suggestion for a product that would help your internet business.

Thanks in advance!

Recently, a blog reader asked me what the “Share This” link did which is located at the end of each blog entry.

Well, I can see why it could be a little bit confusing for some… you click on it and you see a number of icons with strange names next to them

Ok, what “Share This” allows you to do is share a blog entry of your choice with more people, or, a single person if you click on the E-mail tab.

You may have heard or seen people talk about “Digg”, which is “a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web.”

So, if you come across a blog entry of mine you think is worth sharing with more people, click on “Share This” at the bottom of the entry, and simply choose one of these services and submit my blog entry. Registering to the service is likely going to be required if you haven’t already.

The reason there are a number of services listed is simple. Not everyone uses the same site to share content. For example, if a visitor already has a browser toolbar like StumbleUpon, chances are they’ll likely use that service over the others.

So now you know! Thanks for bringing this to my attention!

I recently created the DVD Case Cover Creation course which sells for $20 now. However, in the course, I never mentioned where to get the types of images I used to create the cover of that product. If you purchased that course, you’ll notice that the cover designed in the course, is not the same cover that I used on the case.

I want to give my blog readers a great source for some great quality stock photo images that you can download for free. I’ve been using the site I’m about to mention for several years now. I’ve used the images for websites, covers, advertisements, and more.

The website is http://www.sxc.hu/. You just need to register a username and password to be able to download the large images. Many of the images there are similar to the photos you’d have to pay an arm and a leg for usage rights elsewhere. So go check it out!

Ever since the first course I created, I’ve simply set my computers resolution to 800×600 to record. That way, I’m able to produce a video that most people are able to easily view the videos without scrollbars appearing in their browser. On top of that, the smaller video size enables faster loading times for users with slower internet connections.

 Latetly I ran into a problem where the audio and video were not in sync. I believe this was due to either the Vista operating system (the aero theme), or too many programs running during the recording. I doubt it was a low memory problem because I tend to close every program I won’t be using before recording.

Another problem for me is recording in Vista since the majority of users likely still have the XP operating system. I don’t know the statistics, but I imagine that’s still the case.

So, I found a fix for both of these problems. Though the audio/video sync problem might be able to be fixed with a different theme, or simply disabling hardware acceleration (my graphics card didn’t allow that), I’ve decided to just record my next few courses by simply using a remote desktop connection to my desktop computer through my home network. It works considerably well. In fact, since the remote desktop connection uses less colors, a smaller resolution, and won’t use hardware acceleration, the recording is smooth; i haven’t come across any problems.

This last weekend I saw two new movies. One was an action film, the other a documentary.
I’m sure most movie watchers can guess which movies I watched just from that information.

The first movie was Live Free Or Die Hard. You may remember the previous Die Hard movies from a number of years ago.

Here’s one thing that was portrayed in the movie that I really thought was well done. Hackers have taken over just about everything you can imagine that are connected to computers or the internet in some way. At one point, they manage to take over all of the television channels in the United States. People who were tuned to the news, are now tuned to a picture of the capital building…or was it the white house? Doesn’t matter. In any case, the building suddenly blows up. Everyone is now in shock over what they just thought they observed.

The people in D.C. who are able to run and view the building do so, and to their surprise, it’s still standing. It was just special effects.

Of course, someone unable to see the building in person might wonder if this was real or fiction. You could just call a friend and ask if what was on television was real. Oh, one more problem, the phone lines had been hacked and they’re out now too. Millions of people are now stuck with an image of what might be happening to their country. A situation much like The War of the Worlds being read over the radio in 1938.

What’s your solution to this problem? Would you simply believe everything you saw on television? Do you believe what you see and hear on television, now?

The other movie I saw was Sicko, Michael Moore’s latest documentary. It was very well done. I recommend you see these movies when you have a chance. Oddly enough, this film also mentioned how most people are simply tuned into ridiculous media on television.