Petey's Pipeline E-zine

Issue #7

September 18, 2003

Business First Editorial This Changes Everything
Guest Writer, Not Ghostwriter Ginger Geracitano Persistence, Determination and Hard Work
Random Ramblings and Miscellaneous Musings Saturation Kills Businesses
Write Thinking Essential Tools for Writers
Preview of coming distractions The fortuneteller's predictions

Business First (Editorial)

This Changes Everything
by Phil Hanson

Once again I find myself in the uncomfortable position of having to apologize for a late issue. Honest, I'm not going to make a habit of running behind schedule, but there are mitigating circumstances involved and, at this point, I feel compelled to explain them.

It all has to do with obligations, commitments, responsibilities and necessities—and the hierarchy in which these are arranged. (Oops! I sense the makings of an article here but, lacking the time to write it now, I'm going to modify my approach by changing my train of thought. Look for the article in a future issue of Petey's Pipeline.)

For nearly three weeks prior to my change of residence more than two weeks ago, I was engaged in numerous off-line activities needed to make my new habitat habitable. During this time, half of every day (seven days a week) was devoted to cleaning, repairing, painting and myriad other tasks. As a result, I fell behind in my on-line duties as a freelance writer, Web page editor and e-zine publisher.

Since completing the move, I've been busy helping my friends Tom LeBlanc and Donna Lairmore (collectively known, since Saturday, as Mr. and Mrs. Tom LeBlanc) prepare their home to meet the state licensing requirements for adult foster homes. Tom and Donna will launch their new rehabilitative adult foster care facility shortly after they return from their honeymoon.

Needless to say, all of these off-line activities have had a dampening effect on my on-line ones; hence, I've slipped behind. However, the pendulum has started to swing in the opposite direction, and the scales that weigh obligations, commitments and responsibilities are slowly coming back into balance.

In other news…

Specific changes to the Perfect Text Web site and to Petey's Pipeline E-zine have been under consideration for some time, but this morning's telephone conversation with Edward Thorpe (publisher of THGBA eRag) not only confirmed my suspicions that changes are needed, but it also makes those changes imminent. Don't look for them to happen all at once, however.

For starters, The Third Degree interview will cease to be an alternate issue feature. Instead, it will appear on an irregular basis, as time and interviewee responses permit. When proposed interview subjects agree to an interview, then fail to return the interview questionnaire, it really leaves me in a bind. Simply put, there's no easy way to fill the blank space on short notice. Other changes are in the contemplation stage and many of them will take place as time and energy allow.

Before I conclude this editorial, I'd like to tell you a little more about Ed's telephone call, which came as a complete (but pleasant) surprise. Although I've been a subscriber to THGBA eRag for several months, I've had no prior contact with Ed before yesterday, when I sent him a brief note, via e-mail, commenting on something I'd seen in the latest issue of THGBA eRag.

Usually, when I initiate contact with someone, my standard operating procedure is to send a brief (or not) e-mail containing something of a humorous nature. People may remember tragedy more easily than comedy, but they tend to respond to comedy in more favorable ways.

My best hope was that my comments would elicit a smile from Mr. Thorpe, just as his humorous writings have elicited numerous smiles (if not outright laughter) from me. While I wasn't expecting a reply to my e-mail, I distinctly remember thinking that an acknowledging note from him would be way cool. Edward Thorpe did not disappoint. In fact, his timely, friendly telephone call made a very profound, deep and indelible impression on me, if only because it went the extra mile.

Not only had he looked at my Web site prior to calling, but he'd made some observations about it, too. His helpful suggestions and pointers on how I might improve it were most welcome.

It proved to my satisfaction that Ed Thorpe is a man who not only talks the talk and walks the walk, but is also a man who walks his talk (does that make him a walkie-talkie?). He is, obviously, a man who cares about his business, his customers and his potential customers.

His actions indicate that he's a true professional and prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he's a person worthy of my support—and yours.

You can visit Ed at http://www.The-Home-Grown-Biz-Advocate.com. Be sure to sign up for his e-zine, THGBA eRag, while you're there.

Guest Writer, Not Ghostwriter

Persistence, Determination, and Hard Work
by Ginger Geracitano

Quote:

"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent." –President Calvin Coolidge

If you're on a quest for overnight success and magical solutions, there are plenty of dishonest people on the Internet that would be more than happy to sell them to you. You'll be throwing your money away and be incredibly disappointed when you're not raking in cash your first few hours, but hey! You'll hear what you want to hear!

If you're serious about starting an Internet business, or working from home, there are some realities that you must first be willing to accept. First and foremost, nothing happens overnight. There are no magical solutions.

More reality for you:

Without your own web site, you're not really serious about running a business, you're looking for a cheap way out. Think about your reasons for wanting to start your own business. In most cases, you want to stop working for someone else, right? If so, why would you even consider relying on sales through someone else's site – one that you have no control over?

Replicated sales sites such as you find with most affiliate programs or MLM companies are tools to be used as a part of your promotion efforts. Don't allow anyone to convince you that they are all you need in order to succeed. They don't build credibility for you and, in most cases, the hard-sell approach taken on these sites will, in fact, turn your prospects away from your opportunity.

Promoting your business takes persistent, consistent effort. A daily (yes, daily!) routine of promoting and tracking your previous efforts is a must if you want to succeed! Tracking your efforts will help you to see what is working and what is not. Save time by dropping the efforts that don't work and, perhaps, concentrating more heavily in the areas that are producing results for you.

Web site hits, and tracking links, are useful in this area. Most host servers worth using give you the ability to do all of this directly from within your Web site's control panel.

Persistence is key for many reasons, most importantly because no matter what advertising methods you use, it may take a day, a week, and yes, in some cases a month for your efforts to show results. Instead of allowing yourself to become discouraged, become determined!

Don't fall for the hype, please! They say that the way to defeat spam and hype is to ignore them completely. Maybe if we all just deleted the spam and ignored the hyped-up sales tactics used today, marketers would stop using them! I have to believe that the only reason marketers continue to use those methods is because people continue to react to them!

The people that claim to have made "$100 in the first three hours" (or similar results) have a secret that they aren't telling you. The reality of it is that these people already have established businesses and large subscriber bases that they present these opportunities to.

As such, they have already established credibility and have a trusted relationship with their audience. Unless you can say the same, you will not see the same results they have.

Although reality may not be as attractive as the hype-styled marketing that you see, it's much more productive. Instead of looking for the easy way, look towards the long-term business building strategies.

Focus yourself on one business—yours. Start a Web site. Even first-timers that have built Web sites see more success than do people who have no Web sites. There are free templates and Web site-building software available for beginners that make it easy to get started.

Start a newsletter about something you're passionate about. Make building your subscriber base your number one goal for a year, at least. Make sure that every page of your Web site and all the e-mail you send holds an invitation to join your newsletter.

Celebrate every success, no matter how small.

Give yourself a reasonable amount of time to reach a realistic level of success. I'm currently using a two-year plan.

Build relationships. Join online communities of like-minded individuals. You're not alone, and you should never feel as if you are. Join forums and chat rooms. Talk to people.

Communities I recommend joining:

i-Cop

Newbies911

Internet Business Women's Interviews Forums

Random Ramblings & Miscellaneous Musings

In part one of this series, we examined how shakeouts took their toll on smokestack economy businesses, citing examples from the trucking industry to prove our point. In part two, we showed you how, and why, the same causes are affecting on-line businesses in the same way. Part three began an analysis of how saturation and competition are affecting 'Netrepreneurs in the on-line marketplace. Now, part four, in the form of a parable, brings you a continuation of that analysis.

Saturation Kills Businesses
by Phil Hanson

It's nighttime, you've just arrived in a new city (we'll call it McDonaldsville) and you're astounded by what you see. There, on every street, in every direction, for as far as your eyes can see, are brightly-lit McDonald's restaurants, each displaying the famed golden arches, those imminently recognizable symbols of corporate success.

Wow, you think, there must be good money in McDonald's restaurants in this town. You decide to move to McDonaldsville and open your own McDonald's, based on what you've seen. There must be huge profits in this business; after all, everybody's doing it, aren't they?

You scout around, find a nice little property on the outskirts of town that you think will be a good location. Soon, you're the proud owner of McDonaldsville's newest McDonald's. It won't be long, you think, before you're living life on Easy Street, just like the thousands of other McDonald's owners.

You throw open the doors to your establishment and announce to the world that you're open for business, but, something strange happens. Or, rather, doesn't happen. People don't come flocking to your restaurant like you'd anticipated. No one shows up on the first day or on the second or the third. By the end of the first week you still haven't had a customer and you're a nervous wreck.

Perhaps, you think, you're doing something wrong, so you decide to spy on some of the other restaurants to see if you can learn their secrets for running profitable businesses. What you discover leaves you shaken, and you realize you're headed for a nervous breakdown.

Most of the other McDonald's restaurants in town aren't doing any business, either. They, like you, aren't selling to a hungry market. With so much competition, and the saturation it brings to the marketplace, how could anyone possibly be hungry? Disgusted, you close up shop and move on to the next big opportunity.

The moral of the story is (actually, there are two):
1. Sell to a hungry market.
2. Do what everyone else is doing, only do it first.

Unfortunately, newbie 'Netrepreneurs repeat this scenario on the Internet every day. When will they ever learn? The sad fact is most of them won't. Their lust for easy riches constricts their minds, diminishes their critical thinking skills and prevents them from learning useful lessons.

Would anyone in their right mind open a brick-and-mortar business in a location where there were thousands of identical businesses vying for the same customers? Not very likely. Why, then, do so many people think that they can get away with it on the Internet?

While a limited amount of competition is usually beneficial to competitors and consumers alike, too much competition saturates the market with identical offers of identical products. 'Netrepreneurs are trying to sell the same over-hyped and over-used information products to each other and, as a result, hardly anyone is buying, almost no one is making sales, few people are getting wealthy and, it seems, fewer still are giving the existing situation a second thought.

If you are a newbie who would succeed in an on-line business, you must resign yourself to the fact that you cannot become wealthy by doing the same things, in the same way, that made the gurus wealthy—yet. You don't yet have mailing lists numbering in the tens of thousands; you don't yet have affiliates numbering in the thousands; you don't yet have hundreds of visitors to your Web site every day.

Until you have these things yours is just another on-line business, competing for a limited amount of customers in a fiercely competitive environment, trying to sell identical products to a market that's no longer hungry. To succeed, you must distinguish yourself, build your reputation, target a niche market, offer superior products and/or services and provide exemplary customer service, support and satisfaction.

Until then, yours is just another on-line business waiting to be shaken out of the Web.

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If you have ideas, opinions or commentary of your own regarding this subject, why not share them with Petey's Pipeline readers?

Submit your thoughtful, thought-provoking comments in body of e-mail addressed to editor@perfecttext.com. Don't forget to include your signature file or resource box.
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Write Thinking

Essential Tools for Writers
by Phil Hanson

Serious writers need serious tools in order to work accurately, quickly and efficiently. Professionals recognize the importance of having, and using, essential tools of the trade; it's part of what distinguishes the quality of their work from that of amateurs.

Listed below are some of the essential writing tools I frequently use in my work as a freelance writer, Web page editor and e-zine publisher. While this is not a definitive list, the software and reference materials represented here are among the best available. It is these with which I'm most familiar, and it is these that I would never be without.

Software

At the heart of every modern writer's tool kit is the word processor. Of those that I've tried (WordPerfect 5.1, WordPerfect 8.0, Microsoft Works and Microsoft Word) I like Microsoft Word the best. It costs less than WordPerfect, is easier to use—and, therefore, is easier to learn—than WordPerfect, and it does everything I need it to do.

WordPerfect, for most writers, is overkill; Microsoft Works is vastly overrated; Microsoft Word is intuitive and user friendly and is clearly the best choice for writers who are looking for a balance between functionality and usability in an affordable product.

Reference Materials

All writers must have at their disposal various reference works to facilitate the writing process. Among the writer's arsenal of essential tools should be included an encyclopedic dictionary, a thesaurus, English usage books, writer's handbooks and style manuals.

On the top shelf of a bookcase, located within easy reach of my desktop, you'll find a much-used deluxe encyclopedic edition of The New Lexicon Webster's Dictionary of the English Language.

On the shelf below it, in no particular order, you'll find a slightly tattered copy of Roget's International Thesaurus (third edition), The Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage, Modern English Usage (Fowler) and A Manual of Style (University of Chicago Press). My other style manual—The Elements of Style (Strunk)—mysteriously disappeared a few months ago, so now I access this one on-line.

Three writer's handbooks—Handbook for Writers (Millward), The Merriam-Webster Concise Handbook for Writers and The Rinehart Handbook for Writers—round out my personal arsenal of writing tools.

These are my personal favorites. You may have your own. One thing's for certain, though: if you're not using some, or all, of these types of reference works in the course of your writing, you're not taking your writing as seriously as you should be.

Preview of Coming Distractions

Issue #8, due out on September 25th, will be smaller than usual (and probably late, too, as have been the last two issues). Work on Tom LeBlanc's rehabilitative adult foster home project is winding down, so I'll have more time to devote to the e-zine. I'll try to get back up to speed and resume my normal publishing schedule as quickly as possible. Thanks for your patience and understanding.

Disclaimer

The articles appearing in Petey's Pipeline E-zine are based on information believed to be true at the time of publication. Neither Perfecttext.com, Petey's Pipeline E-zine nor their publisher assume any liability or responsibility as to the accuracy or efficacy of any information, products or services that are submitted, advertised or rendered by contributors to Petey's Pipeline E-zine. While we make every effort to screen out scam artists and bogus offers, you should still do your homework. Caveat emptor!

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