QUESTION ONE: Is this just for designing web sites? Or can
it help me (or my assistant) do graphics for blogs,
landing pages, affiliate pre-sell pages, ebook covers and
Power Point presentations?

ANSWER: It’ll help you with anything you need to do
graphics for. Even if you outsource, it’s GREAT to be able
to whip something out in a hurry when you don’t have time
to wait.

QUESTION TWO: Is this something I can REALLY do without
sweating bullets and going through the learning curve from
down below?

ANSWER: ONLY if you have “The Design Dashboard.” If you
don’t, yeah, it’s gonna be a real pain. But with the
Design Dashboard, you have step-by-step screen caps that
make doing things a breeze. Plus, video where needed.

QUESTION THREE: Why would I need this if I use templates?

ANSWER: 1. A blog header with graphics looks better than a
plain one. You have the chance to do a little branding.

2. Templates for Power Point are just backgrounds. What
about graphics that illustrate your point?

3. If you buy the SAME templates from the same places
everyone else does, will YOU break through the noise?

4. With just a little skill and the right software, you
can create some GREAT graphics for affiliate pre-sell
pages.

5. There ARE programs that create ebook covers but they
don’t do the GRAPHICS FOR the covers in most cases. The
Design Dashboard serves many purposes.

QUESTION FOUR: How much is the software gonna ding me for?

ANSWER: $100 or less for the graphics software. If you
want to add flash audio buttons to your site, you can
spend $27 to $100 for that software, but SAVE $20 a month
vs. what most people do.

In other words, if you do just ONE graphic header in 2007
yourself instead of outsourcing it, you paid for it.

QUESTION FIVE: Why learn to do design when I can outsource
it?

ANSWER: 1. You may not get the special treatment and same
quality that “gurus” receive.

2. Talented designers sometimes get booked up for weeks.
What if you need it sooner rather than later?

3. Once you see how easy it is to do graphics, you’ll
probably find yourself doing at least SOME stuff yourself
when you’re in a hurry.

4. Outsourcing is great. But you may want to only
outsource when you need that special touch and do
bread-and-butter stuff yourself.

5. You can have your ASSISTANT use the Design Dashboard
and do stuff for you. It can be your training tool for
THEM.

QUESTION SIX: What will the Design Dashboard do for me?

ANSWER: 1. You can design GRAPHICS for blogs, landing
pages, affiliate pre-sell pages, ebook covers, power
points.

2. Above and beyond that, there are step-by-step
instructions for your sales letter (if you need one), ftp,
shopping cart and other stuff. This is ONLY for the people
who need it. You can use all the design part even if you
don’t need THOSE things. But it’s nice to know they’re
there if you need them.

3. You will save money.

Other programs use software that isn’t mainstream and may
not keep up with the times. Plus, you can’t buy any books
on it at the bookstore. Or they use Photoshop CS which is
$650 or $750 USD. Then, for html, they use Dreamweaver,
which sets you back more. I could go on and on. I’ve
stripped out every possible cost.

4. You will save time

I know you have 1,000 things to do. Even watching videos
takes TIME. That’s why I’ve used as many screen caps as I
can. Learning from them is faster than video. But I’ve
used video where it made learning faster.

5. You will avoid a painful, full-blown learning curve

The worse thing about software is the learning curve. I’ve
taken out the learning curve and JUST given you the steps
you need to know.

QUESTION SEVEN:
What is the difference between the Design Dashboard and the
Marketing Dashboard?

ANSWER: One is for design. The other is for marketing.

The URL is:
http://www.designdashboard.com

Best wishes,

Dealing With Machines Instead Of Humans
Another common mistake by Internet marketing newbies – is that they do not spot the hottest trends.
You see, some people are sadly mistaken because they assume that Internet marketing is all about dealing with ‘machines’.
At the core of it, the very people who are going to be your customers (or the people who are going to click on your advertisements) are HUMAN BEINGS. We have to apply the proper psychology when we are dealing with them.
Dealing with humans require the human touch. Are you just writing articles for PEOPLE to read or are you just writing articles to please the search engines?

Not Being Focused
There are Internet marketers out there who try every traffic generation method in the book but they are not focusing on one.
They try driving in traffic from blogs, search engines, AdWords, viral marketing and everything under the sun, but they are not focused.
It is better to have ONE traffic generation method driving LOTS of traffic compared to 10 traffic generation methods that produce less than one focused method because dabbling with many methods often do not produce concentrated results.

The Niche Marketing Series

As we went over in the last article the term ‘niche marketing’
means selling a specific product to a specific type of buyer.
In this article I’ll compare niche marketing to its far more
competitive cousin: marketing in an internet marketing niche.
Niche marketing is a much easier way to start a home based
internet marketing business.

Much as you consider apples and oranges as fruit; you can compare
niche marketing and marketing in an internet marketing niche.
They may both be fruits, so to speak, but not from the same tree.

Here’s an example just to be sure you understand the difference.
With a niche market you may have a website, a newsletter and be
selling an ebook on beekeeping. Your customers would be beekeepers
and they have no interest in SEO tweaks to the site or the
conversion rate of the salespage. If internet marketing is the
niche you are working, then you could sell an ebook on how to make
money on the internet.

A mistake that many beginning home based internet marketing
businesses make is in using internet marketing as their niche.
How do you teach people to be sucessful on the internet, if you
are not sucessful yet yourself.

Most niche markets are more open to the latest marketing
strategies, as well. Small niche markets are not over stocked
with gurus and wise men and are much easier for the beginning
marketer to break into. A niche market allows you to promote
your own niche product or that of a niche affiliate product.

There is a niche market for anything and everything you can
imagine. All it takes to break into a niche market is a good
idea, a good product created by you or someone else that will
appeal to certain people, some advertising and the desire to
succeed.

The Internet marketing niche, on the other hand, means that you
will be promoting your own Internet marketing product. This is a
very crowded field of endeavor and really difficult to break into.

It’s a world filled with gurus and wise men who have been playing
and winning the game for a long time. This doesn’t mean that it
is impossible to cash in on the Internet marketing niche because,
of course, you can. It is a world still built on demand and that
means that if you have a product that can compete and if you
have the willingness to play hard ball with the big boys then you
can succeed at the Internet marketing niche game. Just be
aware that there are easier niche market nuts to crack.

The New Year is a common time for reflection and evaluation, however; this should be an ongoing process. Whether you have a home based business, a home based internet marketing business or just life in general. Reflection and reevaluating is a continuing learning process.

Reevaluation should not be limited to a once-a-year calendar event. To take full advantage of it you should have a more formal evaluation procedure. You can pick the first week of the month for evaluation time. Or, maybe one day of the week, let’s say Monday, but it can be Friday or Sunday or whatever works for you. To be effective the process should be defined (write it down), it should be a simple and efficient way to judge whether you should continue a certain action or discontinue it.

Look back at everything you did last week from a business building perspective, (You are keeping a daily journal aren’t you), recognize what worked. If you don’t take the time to recognize your success with a particular action you may discard it and move on to something else, and continue to wonder why you are not making any money with your home based business or home based internet marketing business.

What actions may still pay off in the future? Many actions you take will not have an immediate result within a week and will need to be tracked through several weeks before you can make a determination.
For example, a home based internet marketing business that places an ad on a directory site may need to track those results for a few months before making a fact based decision.

What was a total waste of time? Well even the waste of time was not a total loss, for example, You spend two days working on what you think is a great offer for your mailing list, you send it out and only a few people respond. Now you know what the list is not interested in and you will avoid that subject in the future.

After you start collecting this information and applying it to your home based business or home based internet marketing business you will see trends develop. Information such as always getting a great response on article marketing products can be a valuable tool to determine what type of major product you should launch next.

Evaluation is a powerful tool that must be used to avoid repeating mistakes of the past and to establish patterns that lay the foundation for your future plans.