Since the weather was turning nasty in the region we were in, the decision was made last night to travel all the way home today – 396 km.
The trip was easy, although we did get caught out at the Fruit Fly quarantine station.
Because we were travelling from Victoria into the South Australian fruit-growing region, specific fruits and vegetables are prohibited from crossing the border.
The biosecurity risk of carrying fruit fly into the region would seriously impact their markets.
There are plenty of signs and a dumping station before you get to the checkpoint, but we forgot about the remains of a small punnet of cherry tomatoes in the refrigerator.
There may be a fine imposed on us for that. It will depend on the assessors when they read the report.
Bugga. The fine could be up to $300. That would make those tomatoes some of the most expensive we’ve ever had, and they were confiscated.
Some mistakes cost more than others.
It’s still nice to be home again.
Regards, Brent.
P.S. A more expensive mistake I made was not starting an email list when I first came online.
Then people would throw their email addresses at you for anything you offered them.
Not so much now though.
The prominent email marketers you see and read about started back then and have email lists numbering in the tens or hundreds of thousands and make big bucks with their email campaigns.
While it’s still possible to build a list like that now, it will take a concerted effort and some serious money to get there.
Fortunately a list of that size isn’t required to make a good living today.
All you need is an engaged list of 1,000 people to do very nicely thank you.
If you were to buy the traffic to build that list, it would cost approximately $600 – $1,200 based on a 25% – 50% sign-up rate.
A cheap investment considering that you could return that investment 100-fold over the first year and then the same for the following years, provided you keep emailing.
There will be unsubscribes, so you need to keep adding new subscribers, which becomes a minor daily or weekly task.
For years ignorant financial advisers have spouted the mantra, “Shop around. You’ll always get a lower price“.
They think that getting the lowest price is a good deal.
This misguided thinking has permeated business and government to the extent that most purchases are made on price.
I think this is so misguided that it’s a significant part of the supply chain issues the world is now facing.
Anyone can make a product cheaper, but you lose quality and reliability along the way because you can’t make it cheaper and better.
What happens is that manufacturers source lower grade materials or materials from countries with lower labour costs or supply less product in the same container.
A case in point.
When we arrived at this caravan park, I accidentally ran the Pajero over the grey water drain pipe, creating multiple splits along it.
Today I bought a replacement at the same branded outlet that I got the original several years ago.
The new pipe is enough smaller in diameter than the old one that I cannot connect and seal the additional lengths that I carry.
The manufacturer has used less plastic to make the same length hose to keep the retail price lower.
I can fix this, but I shouldn’t have to.
Eventually, that rush to have the lowest price must hit rock bottom where the manufacturers go out of business because they cannot make a profit.
Then what?
Some people think businesses shouldn’t make a profit, but they don’t understand that without a profit, no taxes are paid, and there are no jobs and no income.
So, don’t search for the lowest price.
Search for local businesses to support as it keeps your local economy going.
Regards, Brent.
P.S. Most people starting their Internet careers consider affiliate marketing their first step.
This is not a stupid thing to do, as most top-level marketers got their start the same way.
But, many people struggle with getting this setup working.
You need an autoresponder.
You need a landing page with a signup form.
You need a valuable lead magnet.
You need a way to deliver your lead magnet.
You need follow-up pages or a funnel to help monetise the subscriber immediately.
You need a way to deliver the follow-up product.
You need a way to get paid.
You need a follow-up email sequence.
None of this is hard once you’ve done it a few times, but it’s easy to make a mistake, as you’ve seen me do occasionally.
You’ll do much better when you have a process and templates to follow.
Today you get access to a free professional funnel put together by a well-respected and experienced marketer.
Yes, it is free.
Yes, the products for sale are his so he will make a commission on your sales.
Yes, there are other products for sale in this funnel that you don’t need to make the free funnel work, but which can enhance your profitability.
You can pull this little hack off with your mobile phone, so it’s available for everyone.
I saw this done a couple of years ago and didn’t realise how powerful it was until recently.
When I saw it being done, it was a daily thing by a very smart marketer.
He was doing a 10-minute daily video called “Letting the chickens out with Jim”, in which he gave a couple of pointers on a single subject to his followers on Facebook.
It wasn’t a sales video.
It was a content only video.
The purpose was to increase engagement on his Facebook page, where he did have things for sale.
I think he has stopped doing it, which may be a mistake.
This works because Facebook now focuses on video and has stopped promoting your text and image posts in favour of video posts.
Where your posts get maybe 20 – 50 views, these video posts will get 400 – 1000 views.
They do not have to be 10 minutes because you can make them 15 – 30 seconds and get the same traction and engagement.
You can then post them to YouTube as shorts, Instagram as reels and TikTok to help bring more visitors to your Facebook page or other targeted sites.
You can still do this if you don’t want your face in the video.
Grab those scenery shots and talk as you walk.
If you don’t want your voice either, sheesh.
OK, record what you want to say with the scenery, then add the video to pictory.com and get it transcribed.
Also, in Pictory, you can use that transcription to create an A.I. version to go with the video.
But why go to all that bother when you could just record the video and audio in a single take?
Recently, in an email, I was told that a well-known motoring T.V. host had just discovered that the little arrow alongside the fuel pump symbol indicates which side of the vehicle the filler cap is.
I’ve known that for years, as it’s been like that for the 50 years I’ve been driving.
I haven’t checked lately, but it was always in the owner’s manual of the cars I owned or drove.
It’s a handy tip for those who need to hire cars.
RTFM was a common expression in the early days of the Internet when someone would ask a question that was answered in the manual.
Then there was a rather thick manual covering most situations in excruciating detail that most people didn’t read.
Now, of course, when you contact the ‘help desk’ of most big companies via email, they don’t read it.
Instead, they pick out one part and answer that, which doesn’t usually cover your main question.
Since there is rarely a manual to read, their response is less than helpful.
But Hanlon’s Razor comes to mind.
“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
Then you realise that people operating the ‘help desks’ of the world are not conspiring against you.
They just don’t understand their software or tools any better than you do.
Of course the same can be said of our political class and their advisers.
Regards, Brent.
P.S. In January, I wrote about building a money-making blog
Some people will tell you that blogging is no longer a way to make money. Mainly because they don’t make money with their blog(s). Check out flippa.com and have a look at the blogs for sale there. Yes, there is a big range of prices and revenue, but this is…
You must write a bunch of posts to get the blog enough attention to attract traffic.
To help you see how easy this can be, I’m sharing an article I found that explains exactly how to build many posts without writing all of them yourself.
Doing this shouldn’t take you more than an hour a day to source and post to your site, and it will help your visitor retention, improving your ranking and bringing more visitors.
You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.‘
Marcus Aurelius.
You do have power over your mind.
The Secret is correct in that part, and it is also true that everything in our world that’s man-made has come from someone’s imagination.
But they didn’t ‘manifest it’ by thinking about it.
Belief in that is where The Secret becomes dangerous.
It’s a nice way to spend some time.
Daydreaming about how your life will be different when you win the lottery or have a business that makes $1 million a year, but it will remain a fantasy if you don’t take some action.
With the lottery, you do have to buy a ticket.
Not that that guarantees you’ll win, but it does mean you have a better chance.
With a million-dollar per year business, you’ll have to buy or build that.
To get to that million per year, you’ll first have to make that first dollar, then the first $100, then the first…
…you get the picture.
Baby steps on the right path grow to bigger steps leading to ten league boots.
Can you do that and become the hero at your place?
Of course you can, everyone can take baby steps.
Regards, Brent.
P.S.Start your first steps by setting up your landing page and autoresponder.
Some companies seem to think they’d be better off without their customers, so they treat them with ignore.
I really don’t understand the attitude.
Case one:
Last September, we had a wind storm here while we were away.
That storm damaged two different lots of outside blinds, so we put in an insurance claim and began the process of getting things fixed.
After six months, we finally managed to get the insurance company to give us the approval to get the repairs done.
The blinds came from two different companies, one small local one and one much larger national one.
Contact with the smaller company was easy, and they’ll complete the job when they said they would.
The national company have proved to be masters at failing to communicate, failing to get stuff in place so they can do the installation, and masters at the excuse.
I won’t be dealing with them again.
Case two:
An app that I need to use for my cycling records got updated.
It then promptly lost all my records and my connection to an online platform that had been working fine.
I couldn’t resolve the issue, a login problem, because there is no way on their website or in their app to recover a lost password.
I don’t think it’s lost.
I think they screwed it up with the update.
So I contacted them via their contact details on their website last week.
Not a peep from them.
My bike computer doesn’t work with any other application, so I’m totally screwed until they sort it out or I manage to figure out a workaround.
What is wrong with these people?
Have you got similar stories?
I bet you do. Let me know. I might feature the best ones in the email, anonymised and with your permission.
Regards, Brent.
P.S. Those free lead magnets have proved popular with you.
I trust you’re putting them to good use.
Would you like to have the whole funnel?
Because it’s in Convertri, I can provide a code that allows you to import the funnel to your account and drive traffic to it.
