I haven’t kept up with posts lately due to all of the activity in my life. I know this is going to sound like a cop-out, but I’ve really been busy w/ my family, my girlfriend, working, and trying to become more active in local networking groups plus the Dallas Tea Party movement (most recently).

I am happy to say that I have a new website design coming, and it is AWESOME. There are some amazing new elements, and the navigation should be very simple.

To those of you who have kept up with me, I have not forgotten you. Please drop me a line and let me know what topics you’d like to see trending here.

Thank you,

Ryne Landers

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Have you thought about being your own publisher without all the headaches and costs associated with printing a paper or newsletter? If so, you’ll want to consider the advantages of creating and publishing your own eZine (paperless newsletter). 

The most obvious reason publishing an eZine can be the most ideal business to you is that it is so easy to start that any individual can do. There is no need to invest in starting a brick and mortar business or even staff and heavy machines for that matter.

In fact, you can do this from the comfort of your home as the most important thing you will need is an auto responder equipped with broadcast feature. Auto responders such as GetResponse.com and aWeber.com are highly recommended when it comes to publishing your own eZine.

There are some start up costs and monthly fees, but within a short time, you can start making money from your newsletter simply by the content you provide that sells your business, the list you build that provides an ever growing number of followers, and selling advertising space on the newsletter itself. 

Most importantly, you get to build your own personal media and spread your marketing influence, making you more valuable to product and service owners and increasing your options of Joint Ventures and list sharing on webinars and teleseminars. The possibilities are endless once you have a decent following of readers and after you cross the magical number of 500, things really take off.

Now as you’ve probably figured out, when choosing a topic you should focus on what your readers want to know, what are the demands that drive the masses to continually ask for more.  There can be different sub-topics centered around your business, but they all lead to answering the eternal question, “What’s in it for me?”

The experts suggest you write non-time sensitive content such as short tips, mini stories, and interviews. Make it informative, entertaining, and educational.  There is no harm in asking others to contribute to your newsletter, give them credit, and don’t charge them, but make sure that what they provide will benefit both you and your readers.  Which leads me to advertising sales. 

There is no difference between a newspaper published in McKinney Texas, and an ezine newsletter created in Concord, CA.  They both need to sell advertising space in order to make a profit.  As you know, one takes a tremendous amount of capital, the other doesn’t.  The biggest issue you have with selling advertising space, be it to internet marketing companies or affiliates, is the ability to prove you have a demand for your service.  This simply means you need to have a readership of more than 1000 people and unless you’ve left a previous business with an instant database, you’ll either need to partner up with someone who has a list, or you will need to start using social media to pre-launch the idea of your ezine.  I recommend using surveys, blogging, and twitter as good sources of generating a list.  No it won’t happen overnight but if you market it correctly, in less than a month you should have a decent list. 

Once you have the list, and have been publishing your newsletter periodically for 3-4 months, you should consider going after paid advertising for every newsletter thereafter.  In this manner, you turn every issue you send out to your subscribers into a profit-pulling device.  And since there is virtually no end to the stream of advertisers as products, services, and businesses are cropping up everyday, so are your money making opportunities.   

All in all, if you do not have the commitments of creating your own product for sale, then publishing your own online newsletter can be one of the wisest decisions you will ever make, given the benefits of impressive marketing power and influence it can offer to you.  To learn more about marketing your own business both online and offline, go to www.L7marketingsolutions.com

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Apparently the iPhone has had some tethering capabilities in Europe for quite a while now. Gizmodo has posted a detailed guide to installing this application (as opposed to an outright “app”), and you can read all about it. I’ve got the little piece of software, and it works completely. I gotta admit, I’ve used tethering before, with mixed results, so I wasn’t too thrilled to be replacing my dedicated aircard with my iPhone. But, the simple fact is that if you just need to use it occasionally, and for a little bit of time, it can save you literally  hundreds of dollars per year.

On top of this, the connection is pretty fast. Here’s  a speed test I ran in the Dallas area with my laptop tethered to my iPhone.

As you can see, the AT&T network tops out at over 2mbs here, which is pretty respectable. Occasionally I’ll hit 3. Of course, this is nothing compared to the speed of 4G networks, and the latency is the big issue when uploading files or playing games, but for busy, on the go entrepreneurs, this is an amazing way to save money and multitask anywhere, anytime.

If you have an iPhone and would like to know where to find the file, email me ryne (at) l7marketingsolutions (dawt) com and I’ll let you know where to find it.

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As you can see, “Greed is Good”, as Gordon Gecko famously once said.Go out there, bust your ass, make a ton of money, and then have fun with it. Your fun employs people, and your taxes subsidize government aid programs and our military.

Read the full article here: http://blogmaverick.com/2009/08/13/the-most-patriotic-thing-you-can-do/

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If you’re reading this, you have to know that no matter what type of marketing you’re in, Joint Ventures will greatly increase your chance of success in building a lasting income.  In every partnership, each party must know their strengths and weaknesses.  Equally important, is determining who will be responsible for various parts of your joint business.  Once you’ve covered all your bases (killer product(s), capital outlay, promotions of the product(s), etc…) you can get started building your dream.

All things being equal, properly executed Joint Ventures have the incredible potential for exploding your income, increasing your list building, and opening the doors to a lot more business opportunities.

What are the key strategies to forming a profitable Joint Venture?  First of all you need to identify those people you interact with, to determine who has skills, knowledge, and credibility that is willing to share what they know with you.  You might equate this process to the “needle in the haystack” approach.  There are a lot of people today who don’t want to share their skills and secrets.  No surprise there, but you can still find those that desire success and are willing to help others who have the same goals, achieve it.  Once you’ve decided on whom you’d like to work with, you must create a plan that you can present to them which outlines the mutual benefits of working together.  The laws of reciprocity definitely come into play.  Each of you is helping the other focus on the “Team” approach of making the partnership a long term relationship.  Once you’ve found your partner, you have to take action and look at your target audience, and what it is you want to market to them.

Assuming you have a product in mind, you have two options, create the product or promote the product of someone else.  By determining what’s Hot, what it is people want, you’ll direct your efforts to finding the product and then promoting it like there’s no tomorrow.  Naturally you have to have an audience to promote this to, and I’d be the first to suggest that you “don’t put the cart before the horse”.  In any joint venture, you either come to the table with a list, or determine the quickest way to get one.  You can have the greatest product in the world, but if you don’t have someone to market it to, your Joint Venture will struggle to get off the ground floor and will more than likely take longer than you anticipated, to make a profit.

No matter the size of your list, you will always want to expand it, and this takes time.  So consider writing articles that get you exposure, speak at every opportunity you get, network with others, promote webinars, teleseminars, and use all of your Social Media outlets to start building credibility.  If more and more of your audience see you as an authority, the contact list will grow.  Contrary to what the internet guru’s tell you, this process doesn’t happen over night, and it’s not always easy, so don’t throw in the towel.  You might not instantly strike it rich on your first try, but Joint Ventures are truly one of the best recipes for improved chances of lasting success in internet marketing.

Until Next Time – Ryne Landers, L7 Marketing Solutions.

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Twitter's new home page has a more search-oriented design

Twitter’s new homepage is set up now as a search engine. This is very powerful stuff. Internet marketers and bloggers have been expounding Twitter’s search abilities for months now. Michael Arrington of TechCrunch, in an August 5^th post stated that “It’s time to think of Twitter as a search engine.”

Twitter can be thought of as the anti-Google. Google builds links based on authority, trends, and statistics. Twitter, on the other hands, builds trends that it displays based solely off of the participation of its users. Twitter is a collection of emotional search terms. It’s a search engine that tells you how people are feeling about keywords or subjects, rather than how old that keyword or subject is, how it’s been trending for the past 5 years (Google Trends), or which site is more authoritative on the subject.

With Twitter, you search not for the price of items, but rather what people’s experiences with the products and services have been.  Was the product of good quality or poor? How were you treated by the company’s customer service? These are the kinds of questions that are typically harder for Google to address, but are perfectly suited for Twitter’s social environment.

As more people are beginning to use Twitter to talk about brands in real time, companies are starting to take notice. Large companies, such as Delta Airlines, maintain a dedicated Twitter team, whose job it is to scour Twitter in real time and address customer complaints or re-tweet good reviews. I was even surprised earlier this year when Palm messaged me directly, thanking me for talking about the Palm Pre. After I tweeted about it some more (I love the Pre-it’s awesome), Palm even re-tweeted a tweet of mine. Very cool.

As a business, this provides you invaluable data and opportunity for growth. Growth is fueled by making a positive impact on customers, and truly engaging them. The data you gather from Twitter will tell you whether or not your product is a success, what its highs and lows are, and what you can do to improve it and your marketing efforts.

As a strategic move, Twitter is positioning itself to be a rival to Google and Yahoo, but in a very different way. Perhaps this new search will one day gain the volume and credibility of traditional search, while not stepping on their traditional search brethren’s toes. I can’t wait to see it.

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