Ask Mr Mark

Your "I can do this" Answerman

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New Home, Making the Adjustments

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welcome-to-our-home

Greetings All!

We have just moved AskMrMark.com from DreamHost, where it’s been hosted for the last ten year to its new hosting location with  SiteGround.  So we are needing a little time to get the new home spruced up and to get everything back in place and looking new again.

Not much will change, my focus is still helping you to build a better (small) business that makes your life easier!

What will change is the amount of resources, tips and techniques to help you be a better business owner.  More videos, more podcasts and more stories from those who have walked before you!

Mark Anthony

3 Ways to Shop Local This Holiday Season

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Shop Local, Save A Business

The one thing I ask of my friends, family, and clients at the end of the year:  Please Shop Local when you can. The Job You Save May Be Your Own. The Business You Save May Be Your Neighbor’s!  Most people do not have a clue to how important that small business is to your neighborhood.  The jobs it provides inside the business as well as outside the business, the tax base it supports and the benefits it brings to your neighborhood and community. Once it’s gone, it’s gone and you will wonder if it was worth ignoring in order to save $2.50 shopping at Amazon.

The amazing thing is that is really is easy to shop local this season and all year long.  Here are three easy ways to shop local and support your neighborhood business owner.

  1. Notice the Small Business Owner.  It’s that simple.  The next time you are at the grocery store, look around the mall.  See all the other businesses?  Franchises, as well as mom and pop shops contribute to sustaining your local community as much (if not more than) the big box stores do.   Take a few minutes and check them out.
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  2. Shop Locally Online.  Now I bet you never thought you could shop online while supporting your small, local businesses!  But you can.  You probably know a friend, a client or a neighbor that has a website.  Or they have an Etsy store or an eBay shop.  Working from home either part time or full time, they make sales and they spend some of that money supporting the local community too.  So shop their stores online.  Drop them a comment and tell them you are a local and that you are buying from them.   They would appreciate the words of encouragement.
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    Even if it’s just a small blog that only has a few affiliate links on it, I ‘m betting it’s like this one, it has an Amazon link or button on it.  You’re going to buy from Amazon anyway, why not let your neighbor have a piece of the action?? It doesn’t cost you anything to help them out (Hint: My Link)
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  3. Pay It Forward.  I realize we are all trying to save a buck when we can.  But at what cost to the future of our shopping experience??  Save Now, Pay Later?? So the lens you want costs $350 at the local camera store.  But Amazon has it for $315.  In the big picture of things, was it really worth saving $40 to lose that local resource?  The one place you can go to when the online store can’t or won’t help you?  That one place you can walk into and they will answer your questions, give you advice and not push a sale on you?  That one store yu can quickly run into and grab what you need NOW?? They could be one or two sales away from calling it quits and closing their doors.  Was it worth losing THAT place in order to save 10%?

Now I am not asking you to patronize the local merchants just because they are local merchants.  Like any good business, they do need to earn your business and many of the will work very hard to do just that.  If you give them a chance.

One of the great things about shopping a local small business is the opportunity to meet and talk with the owner, or at least a vested manager who has some skin in the game. Where you can ask them about the business. Give them ideas, feedback and maybe suggest new items to carry or a new service you think they could provide and you would want or need.  If you are thinking of it, so are others.

Shopping small business can also offer a uniqueness to your shopping experience.  You may find new and unique item there that the big box stores won’t or can’t carry.  Hand-made items, creative manipulated creations from a more popular item.  Services that can be tailored to your specific need or  gift giving requirement.  Smaller businesses are able to move, change and adapt to the changing local market and provide quicker, better service with that local change.  Not everyone loves Moonpies!

I include franchises in this list because many of them are owned and operated by people in your neighborhood who invested their money and their future in the business and live in your community.  Most of the money they make stays in your community.  They provide jobs, buy other local services (that create other local jobs) and support community projects they may also be personally involved in.

So there you have.  My rant for the day.  If You Can Shop Local, I ask that You Do.  You May Never Know What Life You Changed By Doing So!

And don’t forget how blessed you are to be living in a land of opportunity.  Give a little back to those less fortunate than You.  Please donate some time, talent or resources to a local charity this year!  Ok??

Multiple Streams of Income

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In this big world of ours, there is something for everyone.  I love it when I meet people who actually love what they are doing for a job.  Yes, people can be very happy doing the 9-5 thing and I salute them.  They found their calling and can’t see doing anything else.  Except they do wish they could have just a little more money at the end of the paycheck.

That’s when I want to talk to them about having multiple streams of income.  It’s not always about having another “job” or taking on the efforts of starting a small business, even if it is technically is a business.  But it’s a way to have extra money.  To not have that paycheck as the only source of income to pay the bills and buy the things that would make your life a little easier.

In today’s economic environment, you need something else to help make the ends meet and get over any hurdle that may come your way.  So it’s best to have multiple streams of income.  The best form of multiple streams would be passive income. Things you do once and forget it for awhile.  Another would be to be paid for what you already do or already know.

Affiliate Income

My first real niche website went live in 1996.  I had signed up for some affiliate ad network like Shareasale or something like thatLinksys and was just playing around. Trying to figure this all out.  One day I went to my mailbox and there was a check for $16.65 for some purchase someone made from a link on my website to a company I apparently had advertised.  I thought that was cool.

Then the next month I got another check for the same amount.  I’m getting paid for doing nothing. I posted the ad code and left it there.  That monthly check continued for over 5 years!  It’s not much, but it was basically free money.  Add to that the other checks from other affiliates I was playing with and it was enough to pay a few bills, take my wife out to dinner, etc…   I now understood the power of affiliate marketing and multiple streams of income.    I was hooked.

Your Talents on Loan

Ok, so let’s say you have a job with a  paycheck.  You also set up a little niche website you are working on building and generating some affiliate income.  But there is more.  Have an hour or two available during the day?  How about offering your services online?  Can you draw a picture? Make banners?  Do voiceovers??  Join a site like Fiverr or Elance and offer your services freelance.  Work when you want and for how much you want in your spare time.

Sell Photos

With today’s camera phones, everyone is a photographer.  But not everyone knows they can sell those images of cityscapes, gardens, and wheelbarrows.  Media agencies don’t like to get sued, so they buy images and video clips from companies like Shutterstock or Getty.  So where do these places get the photos to sell? From people like you.  Again, it’s not much on a per photo basis.  But after you build up a portfolio and start selling two, three or more a month, it adds up.  Think back to the first example.  Shoot the photo once, sell it a thousand times.

So now you went from having a paycheck as your source of income to haveing the paycheck, affiliate income, freelance gigs and photo sales…  You went from a single source of income that if you lost it today, you would probably be in a bit of a panic, to having multiple sources to help you over those rough patches.  It eases the fear of being broke, homeless or worse.

You Are The Boss

When you have those multiple streams of income and know you are not tied to your job or to that paycheck for survival;  That you have options.  Life gets a little brighter and little more fun.  You  have control of your destiny.  With that, you start seeing other opportunities, other ways to make money, create income and build a better future.

What is Social Media Marketing?

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In very simple terms, Social Media Marketing is the process of gaining traffic or attention through social media sites like facebook, twitter or Pinterest. It’s a quick way to connect with your customers or potential customers, showing them what you are, who you are and what you are doing and to give them a reason to follow you or hopefully visit your website.

Why is this important to you and your business??  Social media feeds into people’s way of discovering new content such as news stories, people, and trends.  Social media allows individuals an easy way to share what they like with other people, giving them input and authority.  This gives the business an open door to new customers and allows them to share your story.

Marketing using Social media can also help build links that in turn support Search Engine Optimization efforts. People also like to perform searches at social media sites to find new social media content. Having well optimized Social Media connections may also impact the relevancy of some search results.  Search engines love it when your website is talked about outside your domain.

There’s Too Many of Them!! 

I know.  Every day there seems to be a new social media site that you “just have to be on”.  No, not really.   A good Social Media Marketing strategy is one where you spend the time and the energy developing the following where your top customers would be if they were on social media.   Not everyone lives on Facebook and not everyone is on social media. There is a balance there.  Each niche has their own Hot Social Media Site plus you need to be on the established mainstream ones.

Do research to see where your competition hangs out. Do a search on the various sites to see what the discussions are and if they fit your specialty.  Ask Your Customers!  I recommend that you focus on maybe two or three.  Understand the community in each. Spend more time on one to learn its ins and out.

I Don’t Have The Time!

Yes, You Do.  You just don’t know it yet.  Most of your Social Media marketing can be automated or at least enhanced by simple plugins or online tools.  I use HootSuite for most of my Social Media marketing.  I can post to multiple accounts, schedule posts and track clicks.  Working on a WordPress powered website?  You have JetPack that will automatically publish your new posts to different sites and services.

Finding WordPress Again

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Using WordPress

When I first started to do Internet Marketing many moons ago, I was coding my own web pages with Microsoft FrontPage (don’t laugh, I found a lot of great websites built with it!).  Some of my buddies were raving about this new website called WordPress and I needed to look at it.  “This,” they said was the future of the Internet.   Yea, right…. You couldn’t use your own domain, it was a basic journal in an online form that you shared it all with a bunch of other people.  There was nothing that differentiated your journal from the next person’s just one click over.  This was not the future of the internet.

I continued building and updating with FrontPage, time went by and WordPress finally started to mature. I found that you could now have a WordPress template on your own domain so  I started to use it on niche sites. They were still pretty plain, simple looking yet effective for niche marketing.  Not much good for anything else.  Then one night, I was jumping around the Internet when I came across a really nice website that just popped out.  I was fascinated by its layout. It looked like a website for a real magazine or how a news site should look, but I knew I was on a mom & pop website. No way they could afford such a well-coded, customer catching site like that!  The footer said this website was designed on a “WordPress Theme by Revolution” So I followed the link and discovered a company now called StudioPress and I rediscovered WordPress.  It also introduced me to a thing called “Premium Themes.”  Now I saw the future of the Internet!

Revolution was started by a guy named Brian Gardner, who had a pretty good “down and out life until I discovered coding” story and I loved what he had already designed. So I did something I thought I would never do, I bought a theme. When everything I needed to build an ordinary functional WordPress website was free for the taking, why would anyone pay money for a theme??  Brian convinced me it was worth the cost and to buy a theme instead.  That I would soon see the difference in search results as well as traffic.  So I took the risk and I did.  My new website was a dream to setup, to operate and to update. He sent out frequent emails that explained how to improve your marketing using the WordPress themes as well as the advantages of a premium theme. I loved how he did not make them pushy sales emails, but informative emails that happen to include his themes as the center of the examples.

Seeing the advantages of using a WordPress premium theme over using the standard free WordPress themes on several of my own websites convinced me that I needed to buy all his themes.  I was thinking of new websites I could build just to have an excuse to buy a certain theme he had created.  As karma would have it, the clouds parted and I got an email from Brian saying to please support him in his marathon run for a charity and he would give me (members of his mailing list) the whole package.  Every StudioPress theme ever created and all the updates for life.  Now that was an offer too good to pass up!

In an instant, I became a Revolution Themes brand ambassador and sang their praises any chance I got.  I loved the themes, I loved the community Brian was building up as well as the normal WordPress community.  I stopped coding and started to build everything on the WordPress platform.  I was rocking with my Internet Marketing with WordPress, Brian Gardner and Revolution Themes!

I’m still a StudioPress fan, but as you can see, this website is not on one of their themes.  It is on a new one I recently explored and decided to try called Magazine Theme by MHThemes. So far I like it.  As with StudioPress, it’s easy to set, good tutorials to help you answer any questions and it’s coded to keep Google Search happy. Smooth coding, fast load times and mobile friendly themes that still keep the professional image of the desktop.

Today, some of the biggest websites use WordPress as their content management systems (CMS).  StudioPress is one of the most preferred and loved brands when it comes to WordPress premium themes that work.   One of the biggest selling points to suing WordPress is the community. Like the software, its an open and sharing community that spans the globe ready to help with any question or problem you may have.  The learning curve, if there really is one, is simple and fast.  the updates are always on cue and always seems cutting edge. trying to keep the users safe and growing.

 

if you have any questions or need help setting up or building a WordPress site, please do not hesitate to contact me. we can set up a consultation or I can refer you to a resource that can help.

Life in Real Time

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ADD Living in Real Time

Sunday Night I was laying in bed trying to sleep and I could not. No matter what I did, how I moved or anything else, I could not fall asleep but for a few minutes at a time. For once I could not blame my ADD for not being able to sleep. Realizing it wasn’t my ADD that was keeping me awake, I had to smile. The reason I was unable to fall asleep was because I was living life in real time. For me, that was so cool!

Let Me Explain: After 5 nights of being the social media point man for my clients, covering the PBR World Finals in Las Vegas, with all the deadlines, commitments and everything else that goes along with being a media person during a live sporting event; you tend to have a huge energy crash as you unwind afterward.  I know I did.  After filing the last article and making sure the last update was sent out everything was put to bed, I was finally home, in my own bed trying to sleep and yet I could not sleep.

It wasn’t the 5-Hour energy shots, the Dr Pepper’s or the adrenaline you get from being on a 5-day constant deadline. No, it wasn’t that. It wasn’t the fact that the melatonin I take at night wasn’t working or that I was reciting the thousand and one things I need to do the following day that was keeping me awake. In fact its the fact that I wasn’t thinking of the 1001 things I needed to do Monday that made me stop and think. My head was empty of thoughts and deadlines and commitments. The squirrels in my head were all fast asleep. That’s it! My squirrels were all asleep and I wasn’t.  That’s what made me smile!

The reason I wasn’t sleeping was because for the first time in years, I was living life in real time. That’s New For Me! It was the world around me at that moment that was keeping me awake.  The fact that after 5 nights of being on point at the PBR, the home life still continues and I was catching up on that.  That’s why I wasn’t falling asleep.  The feeling of being in the moment was a new experience.

Still Lost?? 

For a lot of entrepreneurs with ADD, we are used to having a hundred different things going through our minds at any one moment – about things we think we “need” to accomplish, not forget and get done tomorrow.  We tend to not live in the moment, but to be thinking past the current moment in time and looking in the future.  The squirrels in my head normally never take a night off.  But they had.  My head was somewhat of a quiet place tonight.

For most people that may sound strange that I was smiling because I was not sleeping.  I was smiling because my body was reacting to the world around it at that moment.   The things that needed to be attended to at home but were not because we were gone or we were focused on the business.  I was reacting to my body being overly tired, the toll my health took while being on media duty and not eating right and sleeping wrong. I was living in the moment right now and that really is a new experience for me.

A New Drug

It was only a week earlier that I finally talked to my doctor and told him that I needed something for my ADD. I have been self-medicating and controlling my ADD for the last 15 or so years.  For the most part, I thought I was doing it successfully.  I just reached a point in my life and career that I finally decided that I needed help.  Or at least wanted to try medication again.

The first time they tried to put me on Wellbutrin and had disastrous results.  I am not good at being normal.  I  hated the feeling of being what was explained to me as everybody else’s “normal” thanks to the Wellbutrin. It wasn’t me and the people around me told me that.  Ritalin was out of my budget, so I went medication free (with some periodic help from naturalists).

My new doctor prescribed a low dosage of ADDerall to see what happens. After a week of being on it, I can say that I am loving the response. However I’m feeling a little like a drug addict, taking ADDerall in the morning than after a full day of more focused work (YEA!), play and life, I  take melatonin at night and that lets the squirrels go to sleep.  Between the two I am having a wonderful time living and working. Being more organized, better focused, keeping the commitments in check and not taking on the world alone or fighting battles I know should be left alone.

With the low dosage, I still have several friendly squirrels running around in my head with new ideas or new paths they want to take, but at least it’s not like before with a 100 squirrels running around saying “do this… No, no, do this…” I am still having my entrepreneurial “Aha” moments that I love and the new inspirations are coming with better thoughts and cleaner decision making.

One of the key parts of my ADD diagnosis was that I would have ten different projects going at the same time.  I never lived in the moment, never in real time.  I was always moving on to a new project(s) even before the current project was completed.  Leaving a lot of projects unfinished, ignored or abandoned.  I was always moving forward.  This quirk killed a lot of business deals and ruined a lot of relationships.

I know, it’s only been a week, but I am seeing the differences. My focus is more on today, not tomorrow as much.  I had one bad day at the PBR when I think my body finally accepted the new drug and let it do all its magic, but otherwise I am feeling fine and smiling at the world, not fighting the world as I used to. The best part is that I am still not “normal”, I am still me… Mark Anthony… just now the ADD is better managed. Living in Real Time for a change!

 

Recommendations

 

Optimize Your YouTube Videos

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My newest video will show you how to optimize your YouTube Videos on upload. Doing the optimization right on upload will save you time in the future and help you get found faster and be recognized as an authority in your niche because more people will see yours and not the other guys videos!

First thing you need to do is to set your default privacy to “Private”.  You want to be able to play around and work with everything behind the scenes before going live or “Public”.  You don’t want your subscribers to be notified that you have a new video and have them go there to see nothing but a video and some generic text.  Same with the search engines.  You want them to see it all optimized the first time.

Much like a blog post, your-your YouTube video titles and descriptions must be keyword rich, relate to the video, yet easy to read and not stuffed. Make it very organic search friendly since it will be read by all the search engines.

Somewhere in the description, you can add a hotlink to your website and those of your social media accounts and affiliate links that relate to the video.  I usually put my website first and in the show notes, put the affiliate links and at the bottom, put my social media links.  Also remind them to “like” the video they are watching and to subscribe to your Youtube Channeel

Unlike a blog post, YouTube reads the tags to help figure out what the video is about and what they should recommend to the viewer to watch next. Put your name and the name of your YouTube channel in the tags first.  Most search engines read about the first 250 characters of the tags. Nobody is really sure the exact number and each search engine works differently.

For bonus points, have the video transcribed and that file used for the closed captioning. The auto transcription in YouTube is not always accurate with the words. It doesn’t matter if you have it transcribed or not, Google does it anyway and posts what they think you said on the video.  So to be accurate and feed the search engines the right information, have it transcribed.  I use Fiverr.com for most of my work.

 

I hoped this helped and if you could, please leave me your comments below!