Why GDI is the business YOU have been looking for

Blogging here has brought me a number of new customers in all my core businesses, but some of you still need some more encouragement and convincing!

One way or another you’ll all be thinking about sending greetings cards to your nearest and dearest in the next couple of months, for the best way to do it see my previous post under the link above.

Now, let’s talk about GDI! GDI will give you a web domain with the suffix .ws, hosting for your website to go under that domain and a great business opportunity all for $10 a month – the price of a few cups of cappuccino.

Why should you join GDI with me rather than any of the thousands of other GDI affiliates out there?

That’s easy. Join through me, and I will build you a one page lead capture site with a mail form that returns data to an email box of your choice. It can be the mailbox associated with your GDI account or any other. Cost – NOT A PENNY!

GDI are about to launch a brand new webmail service so you don’t have to forward your domain’s email or bring it into a mail client like Outlook or Thunderbird.

You will, by the way, get more than one mailbox associated with your GDI domain, so your whole family can have one or more email addresses and you decide for each one whether you collect it by webmail, forward it to something else or collect in your mail client.

You can use your one page website to get new potential customers for anything you choose, the background image can be exactly what you want, we will work together to achieve it.

After your potential customer has completed the mail form, you can go to a second page with some simple text saying thank you, or re-route them to your blog for example, or to an affiliate site of your own choice.

I can also quote for creating a website like My Greetings To You. GDI hosting does have some limitations as to what you can include on your site, but will be fine for basic needs.

Many people just use their .ws domain to cloak their GDI affiliate site, or other affiliate site. I think this is not a good idea - sure you get something that looks individual, but all the more disappointing when the visitor finds out its just an affiliate site behind that carefully chosen personalised domain name.

However, if its the unique and unusual domain name you want, then go ahead - its your choice!

One possibility that might get you good traffic, is to choose a domain name that is a mis-spelling or mis-typing, lots of people will search using the name without the suffix for example. You get the idea... beware of blatant cyber-squatting though which could get you into trouble.

So, what does GDI pay? For every customer you bring to GDI, you get $1 per month in commission, so you’ll need 10 customers to cover your costs – EASY!

This special website building offer is my personal way of adding value to the business – it isn’t a standard feature of GDI.

You'll get your first week with GDI free, while you find out all about the opportunity and what it can do for your income - that applies to every new joiner.

So, check out my GDI site and sign up today - I'll be in touch as soon as I see your registration - thanks and have a great weekend.

An alternative to joining just GDI is to join via this site which can really put your recruiting 'on steroids' - .

Hi Entrecard Buddies etc.

I have now got my second blog 'Pushing the Angry Button' Entrecard enabled and I hope you will all visit.

Although I say it's about being angry about things that happen in the UK, it's not quite that parochial and USA readers will find a few comments about the candidates for their upcoming election.

Anyway, hope you all enjoy it - you know if you drop, you'll get one back !

6 Degrees of Separation welcomes non-US members - at last

I joined the social network 6 Degrees of Separation quite a while ago now, but haven't been promoting it because till recently they had no way of paying non-US members.

I can tell you it made us feel very second class and not wanted.

Now, although it still doesn't work for everyone everywhere, they have decided to implement Paypal while they find a 'long term solution'.

But wait - is all perfect yet? Well actually no! What they have said that is we won't get any referral money for any non-US members for the time being. They don't seem to have any good reason for this, and have deleted a number of forum posts where members have tried to get answers which isn't very good policy.

Plus, they are proposing to charge some additional fees on every referral payment which appear to be over and above the fees Paypal charge the paying organisation per payment and are not charged to US members,

I'm going to continue to promote for the time being, but there are some tough questions that have to be answered by admin before I am really sure that it is worthwhile. If you are a US resident, entitled to open a bank account there, please sign up with 6DGR here

http://www.6dgr.com/index.php?mode=join&ref_id=15018

I can get a referral fee for you and you will get one for every other US resident you recruit.

If you live ANYWHERE else in the world, you can choose to sign up now and hope that you'll eventually get paid for the people you refer who are not in the USA.

I like the site, and I'm meeting some good people there, but the admin need to be a little more open and transparent about why they are discriminating like this.

Please click............

If this is the ONLY day you ever do it, please click in memory of my friend, Dee Munday.

Dee's funeral was today 16th October 2008. She died of heart failure following 3 bouts of cancer that started off with breast cancer.

Help to stop this happening to another woman by clicking on the Breast Cancer link on my sidebar, each click will help to pay for a mammogram.

Thank you so much. If you like, comment here that you clicked. It would help so much to know how many clicks for mammograms were done here which might help save a life in the future.

You could also help by donating to Macmillan Cancer Support - Dee's wish and on her funeral order of service.

How NOT to treat customers

Something you have to learn immediately in business is that the customer is always right (even when they are wrong) and what you NEVER do is to upset a long standing existing customer to the point they go to your competition.

One of the UK's largest mobile (cell) phone companies has really got me angry today. Read about it on my other blog Pushing the Angry Button. And if you were thinking about a change, I'd advise you to give O2 a miss, because its clear, they really don't give a damn.

Problems with entrecard today etc.

Entrecard's server is very sick. Been trying to drop on all my regulars since last night, but now won't even login.

So I guess I am going to have to concentrate on other things till it comes back.

Having signed up for a second Linkreferral account for the blog, I was pleased to get some reviews very quickly.

As I go through blogs and sites each day, a very large number have Adsense as I do, but I'm wondering if people really make the huge sums they claim from it. I don't say I click on ads on EVERY site I visit, but I do a significant percentage on the sites I visit each day and I don't seem to be getting the same treatment. :-(

What I'm wondering is if Adsense recognises the tags in each blog post as it does keywords in a web page as well as the text itself when it is selecting ads to display. The ones I see on my site and on my blog seem rather limited and boring. I'll have to do some more research and make some changes to get some more varied subjects in the ads.

Better or worse for online business?

Listening to the dire news from around the world about crashing stockmarkets I wondered what effect this is going to have on those of us who make their living via the Internet.

I came up with two possible and completely opposing answers.

One is that it will be very good for us all. If conventional businesses close their doors and people can't get another job, they may well turn to the net for earning opportunities. And, what is more it is up to all of us to see they get ethically treated and led into honest and real opportunities with real products and not scams. That is one of my 'missions'.

The other side is that as people tighten their budgets they may decide that they cannot afford the cost of the monthly subscription to a particular online business, however small.

So, what I think we have to do is to review what businesses we are promoting and see how appropriate they are to the economic conditions.

I will be keeping all three of mine. GDI is such a tiny outlay per month when you consider what you get and if folks are looking to do business our way, they will want domains and hosting and also to look to those of us who can do it, to create websites for them and explain the art and science of promoting, advertising and monetising.

Plus, I will be continuing to sell on ebay (despite their fee hikes) and to promote and extend my web design skills.

I still get some disbelief from UK friends when I tell them that Sendoutcards is cheaper than going to Clintons or similar card shops even though the cards are posted in the USA. But it's true!

And even in the deepest recession, you'll still want to send cards for occasions and holidays. So why not save yourself the trip to the shops (fuel, parking) and possibly another one to the post office by doing the whole job from your PC.

There will always be those people who manage to find a way to make money even in these desperate times. Those people will want to spend some of their lolly on travel and holidays, hence why I am keeping Travelencia in my portfolio.

I would love to hear my readers' opinions on how we shall do over the coming months, and how we can recession-proof our businesses, so come on - get your commenting fingers out.

Interlude for Haiku Friday

I refuse to get depressed. I have debts (gas, electric, council tax) which I really can't ignore for much longer, my skanky absent husband is still refusing to pay his share of the mortgage, but I know with effort, dedication and some work, I can survive. If nothing else, its a nice day and the sun is out. I have friends, I have a (silly) cat who loves me. There is food in the freezer and the last of my tomatoes in the garden. I'm not going to starve and I have reasonable if not perfect health.

Life isn't perfect but I have things to be thankful for. Most of all I have friends.

It is also Haiku Friday so for the first time here goes

markets drop and drop
my investments may be lost
But I still have love

Thank you Christina at http://amommystory.blogspot.com/ for introducing me to Haiku Friday

Adsensibility

It's a day for learning - I didn't realise that I could have more than one Adsense box on my blog - the rules let you have up to 3 on a page.

This actually came from a tip on Adsense itself. Check your monthly reports and you'll find that you get some tips to improve your visibility and clicks and therefore your income too.

My two tips were the multiple ads and also to add Adsense for search. My account covers my website http://www.mygreetings2u.ws/ as well, and a search box at least ONE of the pages on that site could work well.

I'll get around to that later in the day. It's lunchtime, I desperately need a caffeine hit and I have an ebay item to get in the post. Plus a whole load of new stuff to create listings for. Pity I can't have Adsense on my ebay shop!

Langstone Collectables

Your blog needs both!

As I've been traversing Linkreferral and Entrecard, I've noticed that a lot of them have one or the other, but the really 'savvy' ones have both.

What is special about Linkreferral is that it allows a written review - read yours carefully and think about them. What are people saying that they like about your blog? What should you add/leave out?

Entrecard gets you the visitors, but you have to keep them if the monetising aspects of your blog are going to work. OK, you aren't going to keep the ec accumulators who use a bot to drop on 300 blogs a day. They don't have time to think about your content and they don't care.

If you are lucky, the folks that visit from Linkreferral AND have entrecard will drop on your widget because it's natural for them.

The really interested ones from entrecard - probably the ones who you've commented - will, if they like what they see, will review you on Linkreferral. Either way your ratings will go up, more of your posts will get seen and hopefully you will get more customers.

It's an organic viral thing - make the most of it.

First quickie of the day - Linkbacklink

Linkbacklink is a friendly little blog that will boost your Google ratings and your popularity by giving you a backlink.

It is explicitly for blogs rather than websites and will also give you a short review when you have linked to it.

It's free so go on, help yourselves to a little free publicity!

http://linkbacklink.blogspot.com/

Entrecarding to the best effect

In the first few days after I discovered Entrecard, I was mainly browsing and dropping on blogs in the same category as mine.

However, I have now re-thought my strategy.

Some of the blog owners that might well be interested in the products I offer through my online businesses (as users, not necessarily distributors) are in other categories completely.

Particularly so with SendoutCards, the business I showcased earlier in the week. This is a great business to be in as a distributor, but also has the retail accounts for folks who just want to use the service. People love real cards, why not send them from your PC - so easy and so many to choose from!

So, if you are new to Entrecard, think about your target market both in terms of your drops - and potential return drops - and also where you are placing your advertising.

You might be pleasantly surprised where your next new customer comes from!

Have a nice day :-)

Just briefly...a personal interlude for the 1st of the month

Maybe because it is the first of a new month, I feel totally DIFFERENT as a person as I have the past few days and possibly I've learned something about myself that will help me in the future.

I have spent a lot of hours sitting at my PC in recent days, but have also been out and about. Over the weekend we had some real Indian Summer weather, calm and sunny and I took the chance to get out for a drive in Barbarella before the rain sets in again as it surely will later today. The pressure map for the Atlantic (I'm a bit of an amateur forecaster) shows close isobars over the UK for the next few days and we shall have brisk northerly winds.

My route on Sunday took me across to Chichester A27, up towards Midhurst A286 then A272 for a few miles towards Petersfield before turning off onto country lanes and back home via Harting, Funtington and Westbourne. Note to me - go and check that tyre that was softer than the others and make sure it has stayed up.

Yesterday I had one of my little offline jobs - I do mystery shopping. It was threatening rain so I took the Golf rather than the Se7en to Littlehampton. No, it's a mystery, I'm not telling you who I visited. Today I have to go to Southampton later - 2 jobs, and tomorrow Steyning and Chichester.

I always enjoy Littlehampton, and I treated myself to a visit to Julian Graves which is a lovely shop selling all kinds of dried fruits, nuts, spices and herbs. I am now stocked up to make my Christmas cakes - or at least one of the recipes. I have to think about the other ingredients and work out if I have all the fruits for the Caribbean one and get them soaking in rum very soon. I had a talk to the shop lady about a spice mix I use in my cooking called ras-el-hanout and about the recipe for the cake I will be making with what I bought. I'm going to write her a note later and send her the recipes I mentioned - might help to get JG to stock the full Seasoned Pioneers spice range.

So what is this 'different person' thing. Well, on Monday, I felt quite ill all day. I was getting nausea and dizzy spells. My friend Sib suggested I hadn't been eating regularly and yes, that might have been part of it. But this has happened before, and in the dizzy spells I get almost visions of awful things that could happen in my life. The scary stuff is that some of those visions came true. Monday night/Tuesday morning, I stayed up on the PC till the early hours. It was gone 4am by the time I went to bed. Slept in a bit yesterday and felt better.

In the past few years since I split with my husband I have suffered from depression very badly off and on. One of my frustrations is that I cannot voice my anger at him or at the other people who were involved in that situation. Last night I was watching a TV programme on anger management AND there was also a radio thing on the same subject at the same time which I'll have to catch up on. Bad timing BBC. Griff Rhys Jones explored some of his anger problem talking to a Buddhist monk who taught him some meditation techniques.

Although I would say that my faith is basically pagan/Wiccan, I also have deep leanings towards Buddhism and one of my favourite books is The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Llama. What I have resolved is to try and 'drain out' this anger through meditation, and try to leave it behind me. Most people who go to anger management counselling seem to do so because their anger is external and directed at other people. Mine is VERY internal, but I now realise, is doing me just as much damage.

And now I am reminded of Kipling's poem If. 'If you can fill each unforgiving minute with sixty second's worth of distance run.....' Lots to do today online and offline and I will feel so much better later if I can finish the day with all my tasks done. Have a good day all.