Focus

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black..... :-)

In the process of responding to a message in one of the forums I'm involved with, it occurred to me that I'd not been back to this blog for quite some time - and the reason being I've been doing so much in so many different areas, it really is time to focus on some streams of activities.

What I've learnt over the past 6 months, is there are so many different ways to make money on the Internet, the temptation is to try to do them all!

I think Internet marketing, viral marketing and in fact most business activities are best done in a structured and measured fashion. Hence, learning from my own experience in this area, I think I'll be somewhat more structured in my own approach to selling and activities.

If we approach the various themes or streams of activity our results are going to be better.

In short - focus is key to success in everything we do.

"Give whatever you are doing and whoever you are with the gift of your attention"

Whats the competition up to?

Very intersting to see what's happening in the world of Internet based video / TV streaming at present.

There are a proliferation of web based TV, Video and Photo compliation sites emerging.

However the fundamental premise of Photomax remains the same - namely storing, restoring and sharing photos for the masses.

There are also many niche opportunities that myself and others are currently working on.

In terms of video stuff, all is not roses in the world of YouTube, have a look at this excellent article from Ken McCarthy that dicusses some changes in terms of how they deliver content and some of the "wrapping" being placed around streaming video.

http://www.systemvideoblog.com/2007/06/youtube_develop.html

iGoogle

Hi all,

Have you iGoogled yet?

No it's not some sort of weird eye condition, it's another feature of the Google search engine many have no idea even exists.

The fundamental premise is simple: you customise the home page with what ever elements are most useful and interesting to you. Big deal? The big deal is that google effectively store that information and that "home page" if you like is available on any PC when you log into Google.
Its a great feature and very useful.

For instance, as described in a previous post around how to deal with email I have;
A view of my Gmail inbox - so I don't have to go and look anywhere else, it's right there in my browser, I have my Google calender - which I put my daily exercise and positive affirmations into (which get SMS'ed to my phone every day - but thats a topic for another day :-), I have a date and time gadet, top stories news feed from CNN, NASA image of the day (stars & planets are quite cool up close!), weather for the day, car pictures, how to of the day and a really cool thing called "my gadget". My Gadgets are also quite new but really quite funky. Personalise a component, have it in front of you daily and share it with loved ones if you so desire. In short real cool.

Another thing that can be quite useful if you are moving around a bit, is the web history. Like your browser on your Pc can store where you have been, likewise so can iGoogle.
Here's a great pracitical example. You've gone to someone's home to talk about the business. You don't have a laptop or your own machine, however they have their PC. You know that you have recently visited all of the useful Photomax and GPN sites before, so now you go to Google, you login to your iGoogle page on their machine, hey presto, there are all the pages you have visited before - no need to try to remember urls and web addresses or carry around a notebook (which is a good habit - don't get me wrong). If your smart, you go t the addresses you want to show the prospect te day before and then when you go into web history the following day, all of the links will be laid out nice and neat for you to demo.

So how hard is it to establish such wonders? Very straight forward. Look for the iGoogle shortcut, top right hand corner of your screen. Click on that, you then get to add the various elements you want to put onto your page. If you want to get real sexy, add a theme and then you get some interesting effects in terms of look and feel for the home page. I'd strongly suggest created an iGoogle account - they are a real asset!

As we move to more and more online business, using the tools of the trade are useful and valuable skills. I hope that some of the things that I have found useful over the years, you too can make use of in running your Photomax business (or any other part of your life for that matter!)

Cheers

Darren

Editing Albums

One thing I discovered this morning that I don't know how to do, can anyone tell me, is it possible to edit an Album once you have already shared it?

In sending something this morning I realised I'd like to put some descriptions and narratives on things but can't seem to get back into an album once it shared? Any ideas?

The Email dilemma - solved!

Do you have all of your personal, business and prospect contacts sitting within MS Outlook, Outlook express or another mail client?

Not too happy with the thought that you now have to recreate that list within the Photomax site contact list? Well, the truth is, that you don't have to.

Heres a plan, using the words immotatlised by Black Adder, "so cunning that you can pin a tail on it and call it a weasal".

You only need to have in fact one contact in your Photomax address book - that is your own.

You can simply send the albumn share message, to your self and then using the Message Forward function from your mail client to send the message and its content onto your distribution group, or list of email recepients - we all use use distribution groups right?

For instance say you have an xtra mail account as your default mail address, heres what to do;

First of all I'd suggest setting your photomax email account to forward to your primary mail address - do this within the GWP Webmail / Options / Settings / Mail forwarding section of The Business Centre (access to this is described on page 8 of the Getting Setup Manual). I know this is exactly the opposite to what is also then stated on the bottom of page 8 about forwarding your mail TO your photomax account, but bear with me people - my logic will soon be apparent.. :-)

Then depending on the mail client you use and how you get to your email (but pretty much all of them that I am aware of adopt the same principal) you need to find and set the Reply Email address - set this to your yourname@myphotomax.com - So for instance your xtra email address may be johndoe@xtra.co.nz, but if you set your Reply Email address as the photomax address, in MS Outlook this is under Tools / Email Accounts / Change / More Settings / Reply Email - if you are using xtra web mail it's under Settings / Preferences / Reply-To

And now because you've done the step in step one, you can send mail from any mail client and have it appear that it came from your photomax account, have it returned to your photomax account and then passed onto your normal email account.

And why would we do this all again - so we can make easy use of the contacts that we already have within our mail programs, moreover you CAN be smart about setting up Ditsribution lists and using these for different parts of your business. For instance, you might have one for Prospects, you might have one for Instructors, you might have one for Execs - it just make it so much easier to communicate with groups of people using the tool tha you are most familiar with.

I myself, use a gmail account that has a couple identieties associated with it - because I travel a lot this gives me some options in terms of mail collection - from my phone, anyone's pc via the web, whatever.....

Points to note: you can appear to be still sending the message from your photomax account by setting up the mail client to Send As - not all will allow this to happen, however gmail does this famously. It allows you to select who you want to send as for each message, or by default.

If anyone would like some advice on you to get this setup and operational feel free to contact me - either via email or via skype, my ID is networxnz.

An update

Morning all, well it's 3.10am down here in Nz at present and once again I'm at my keyboard at a crazy hour becasue I'm so excited about life and the positve effect I (and indeed we all can have) on other lives around me.

Some friends and I have come up with a new service whereby we send a positve thought to a cell phone each day via SMS text message. It's early days, but we have customers already from all around the world!

Any way, if anyone likes the idea of receiving a positive thought each day for $1 per week, have a look at http://www.txtthoughts.com/

On the Photomax front, at the training in Rotorua, some people raised the issue about how to get your Outlook or Outlook Express contacts into your Photomax address book, I think I may have a cunning plan to work around this - no promises, but I think by the end of the week, I'll have a solution.

One other thought I have is perhaps having one post that explains the fundamentals of the business for an absolute newbie, and then perhaps another section that could capture popular "elevator pitches" - how to describe the business in 21 words or less .... :-)

More on that to follow....

I was recntly fortunate enough to attend an event called "The System Seminar" in Chicago which basically is a 3 day event whereby the industry leading Internet Marketers gather to present new ideas. I be putting these concepts up from time to time to also help you guys grow your businesses (and some pretty cool photos' I took on my travels between LA and New York on the way) - I'll keep you posted on these to.

Lastly, I'm also writing an ebook called "4 Steps to Leading a Better Life" which will basically incorporate some of the learnings I've had over the past 20 years on diet, exercise, spiritual wellbeing and it's effect on ones mental wellbeing. I'd love to colloborate with some like minded people, let me know if you are keen to help!



Darren

Team Directory

If everyone is comfortable, I will post the list of email addresses and names that we left after the workshop as invites to this list, that way people in our team can actively post and contribute to these discussions.

Regards

Darren

Team Training

A big thanks to David M for hosting the recent team training in Rotorua!

Major take aways for me were as follows;

"We are looking for people that are well connected and have heaps of energy - do you know anyone?"

The idea of loading your affirmations onto your calender / cell phone is a very useful way to have your goals put back in front of you throughout the day.

Feel free to pose any technical questions you may have - it's what I do!