If you have even the smallest amount of exposure to the news, you can’t fail to have noticed the recent events surrounding the capsized Italian cruise liner Costa Concordia, and you will also probably have seen the widely reported, and virally distributed, image of the Belfast Telegraph’s front page with the wholly inappropriate ‘Win a Dream Holiday’ advertising banner sat above the headline that was relaying the tragic news…

Like me, you’re probably asking yourself – why didn’t anybody look at that page and apply a bit of common sense…? Well, in this age when technology seems to have replaced common sense entirely, I’m willing to wager that every last detail like spelling, layout and print quality were checked to the ‘nth’ degree by computer before publication … and by the time the first pair of human eyes saw what had occurred – it was already too late.

It was probably the same lack of human touch that meant one of the pay TV channels unintentionally ended up advertising their new ‘zombie’ series ‘The Walking Dead’ on (amongst other places) … the side of a funeral parlour…

Just two examples of abject buffoonery that those of us striving to earn a few pennies on the internet would do well to take note of, as the following example illustrates…

I was recently asked to cast an eye over the endeavours of one of my students who had taken my advice and outsourced the building of their website, but was a little concerned that, despite all their efforts, it was not really getting the desired results…

And, whilst the website was resplendent with all the bells and whistles you could possibly imagine … the first thing that jumped out at me and indeed anybody else who visited the site, was not the brilliance of all the technical jiggery-pokery but the incorrect spelling in the headline.

Further investigations also pulled up several more examples of what could be considered ‘schoolboy errors’ in some of the content as well, all of which could have damaged a potential customers confidence in what was being offered, and all of which could have been eradicated by a simple read-through of what their tame techie had put together for them…

These errors have now been corrected, but we will never know how many possible new readers and customers had they ‘put off’ with the one simple oversight of ‘assuming’ because they had paid somebody else to do it, that they didn’t have to check it over themselves.

So, you would do well to remember that regardless of who built or who has written it … it’s still your website, and you will stand or fall on how well it is received. You can, of course, give yourself the best chance possible if you just use two things a computer will never replace … the human eye and a bit of common sense.

Until Next Time,

Tim Lowe
Publisher, Tim’s Business Lowe Down

Today’s email was going to be my usual friendly start of year reminder (did someone say ‘nag’ ?) about the absolute necessity of planning the year ahead, about how writing your targets down makes them that much more real …  I was even thinking of dropping in that famous statistic about the Yale class of 1953, when the 3% of the class who actually documented their targets had, after 20 years, accumulated more wealth than the other 97% combined…

But, let’s be perfectly frank, you’ve no doubt heard all this before … and just like the diet, or the yearly attempt to give up this or that, the super organised and efficient ‘New You’ that seemed ever so possible at 9am on January 1^st, is beginning to run out of steam … and you’re already starting to slip back into your old ways…

But don’t panic … this doesn’t mean you’re a failure, it only underlines the fact you are human, and instead of being guilty of slacking off and lacking moral fibre, substance and willpower, your only crime has actually been trying too hard…

Wouldn’t it be a better plan then, instead of trying to change nearly everything about your life in one fell swoop … to choose just one absolutely vital thing you want to change this year and focus your efforts on sticking to that … in short - commit to one change that will simply make your life so much better.

Now, I’d like to take all the credit for this stunningly useful piece of advice, but I’m afraid it’s not all my own work. You see I had help, but not, you understand, from just any old Tom Dick or Harry … but instead from Ali Campbell, one of the world’s most highly regarded life coaches … who’s regular clients include ‘A list’ celebrities and in some cases royalty…

Ali has a wealth of experience and expertise that has equipped him to provide you with what you REALLY NEED to help you get ahead … and on a more personal level he is a close friend who has been known to tweak the occasional masterplan here at ‘Lowe Towers’ over the last couple of years…

Obviously, Ali is already in great demand, and there is only so much Ali to go round, so, as you would imagine he has a website full of resources and a bestselling book ‘Just Get On With It!: A Caring, Compassionate Kick Up the Ass!’ to his name … and, just like all of the very best people, he also publishes a weekly tip for all of his subscribers…;-)

You’ll find Ali’s website at http://www.alicampbell.com/ he also has a separate blog here – http://motivationbyalicampbell.wordpress.com/ … you even can ‘Like’ him on Facebook  http://www.facebook.com/alicampbellcoaching … and last but not least you can get hold of Ali’s book at Amazon: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Just-Get-Caring-Compassionate-Kick/dp/1848501617/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1

So if you really committed to making positive changes in your life, you could do an awful lot worse than take a look at what Ali can offer you through his website, his book or even his coaching programme … It could be all that is separating you from everything you want to achieve.

Until Next Time,

Tim Lowe
Publisher, Tim’s Business Lowe Down

P.S. Here are those links again…

Ali’s Website: http://www.alicampbell.com/
Ali’s Blog: http://motivationbyalicampbell.wordpress.com/
Ali’s Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/alicampbellcoaching

… and for Ali’s book at Amazon: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Just-Get-Caring-Compassionate-Kick/dp/1848501617/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1

Here at HQ, the ‘minions’ have been shuffling paper ever more loudly and staring more pointedly at the clock, hinting strongly that I should do the decent thing and let them be on their way a little early (I think you can probably guess my thoughts on this, but at the risk of being visited by three ghosts this evening I shall keep them private)

Before I release them to go forth and start their Christmas break, (Then of course depart myself and go and offer a few words of advice and encouragement to ‘She who must…’ regarding the festive arrangements back a Lowe Towers) … I just wanted to drop you a quick e-mail just to wish you a fantastic Christmas…

I hope you have a brilliant day and that ‘Father Christmas’ brings you everything that you wish for on Christmas morning … though he is yet to provide what I usually desire most of all … which is a bit of a lie-in

I’ll be back in touch soon…

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Tim Lowe
Publisher, Tim’s Business Lowe Down

Last Thursday I was roused from my office here at HQ by sounds of merriment from downstairs…

Suspecting this frivolity could very well be a sign that my ‘minions’ had removed their noses from the grindstone and were in fact slacking off … I prepared myself to take ‘measures’ and went to investigate further…

It seems that, whilst in the course of their normal duties (or so they tell me) my R&D guys had literally stumbled across a website which offered advice on, and instructions how to build (wait for it) … special helmets that stop you being brainwashed and abducted by aliens…

The website, as you can imagine, was truly astounding, full of stories of those taken by UFOs and the amazing turnaround in their lives since they had started wearing the aforementioned helmet

The helmet itself seemed to consist of a flying helmet lined with some sort of hi-tech bacofoil to stop your brainwaves being fiddled with, and the website was resplendent with several photos of different people proudly wearing one. (One teenage girl however, slightly self conscious, had decided to wear a baseball cap over the top)…

Further reading on this incredible website will reveal that, when it is not being worn, you must keep your helmet in a locked box to avoid having it stolen by aliens, as apparently despite possessing technology sufficient to take them millions of miles across space they appear to have something of a problem with locks.

Also, it transpires, once the aliens see you have outwitted them with your helmet, they will instead brainwash those around you into trying to convince you that it looks a bit daft and insisting that you take it off …:-)

When I curbed my merriment long enough to actually ask how this website was found in the first place … it turns out it came up in a Google search for the long tail keyword ‘alien abduction stories’ – which, with over 8,000 searches a month, is not too far away from being a good little niche…

The moral of this story is not, as you would suspect, that some people will believe any load of old nonsense … but that never in a million years would it have occurred to me that such a large amount of people would be searching for such a thing as ‘alien abduction stories’ every month, and the massive un-tapped potential of similar niches you may have thought were too bizarre to have existed.

So next time you’re sitting there thinking all of the niches are flooded, just remember that a little left field thinking (one of my R&D guys affirms looking at the titles in old second hand bookshops can provide much inspiration in this area) can open up entirely new swathes of possible niches for you….

Now, I wasn’t going to tell you the address of the website in question, as it was really only mentioned to illustrate a point, but human nature being what it is, I suspect if I don’t … not only will I be deluged with requests for the url, but many precious hours will be lost among Lowedown readers firstly looking for the site, and then pointing and laughing (and no doubt constructing an anti alien abduction helmet of your own) … so the website can be found at http://www.stopabductions.com/ … Enjoy!

Until Next Time,

Tim Lowe
Publisher, Tim’s Business Lowe Down

P.S. Don’t Miss Out … My ‘Honourable Mentions‘ page is your second chance to get hold of that programme or system that may have been perfect for you but you missed it completely because of school holidays, email failure, work pressures or even if the dog ate your computer! … All joking aside, perhaps

It is not easy to talk about things like finding the
‘missing 1%’ without beginning to sound like an advert for training shoes or
some new fandangled energy drink … two subjects on which, you can imagine, I
claim to be no great authority…

I could, however, recount any one of a hundred occasions from my life as an
employee, (and one or two from domestic situations as well) when a
perceived missing element was the entire focus of the feedback I received,
rather than the other 99% of effort that went in … I’m sure, regardless of
what you do, you would have similar tales of your own…

And, just like real life – with our online endeavours, if you’ve got it 99%
right, it doesn’t mean you get 99% of the results you would get if you’d got it
entirely correct, and, having just one thing that is not quite ‘there’ could
mean your results are halved or even absolutely zero … but don’t worry – I’m
actually going to tell you why all of this is a good thing…

You see, being a positive sort of chap I know that even if you are getting
nothing in the way of results, it may indeed be because you’ve made a complete
and utter hash of it, but far more likely is the fact that you haven’t got it
all wrong, you really have followed the plan and done the things you were
instructed to do, it’s just some small omission or oversight which has left it just
one thing away from being perfect…

For example, over the last couple of weeks I have had a few instances of
students who have not quite got the results they were expecting … and some
cases yes, there is some way to go before they have something serviceable …
but for the majority of them the thing separating them from what they were
hoping to achieve was just one little tweak, in a couple of cases it was as
small as the unknowing addition of a hash tag (you know, one of those ‘#’
things so popular with twittering types)

So, how can you spot the ‘one thing’ that may need changing…? now obviously I
can’t personally critique every Lowedown reader’s website or project, that
would take more time than anybody would have, but did you know that your family
and friends could be just as well placed to give you information you need as
any internet ‘guru’…?

Remember, chances are, the vast majority of people you know use the internet
regularly (even if it’s just to let their virtual friends know what they think
about the ‘X’ factor) so they have an idea of what looks ‘right’ online, may
well have more in common with the people your website is trying to reach …
and it could really be the case that their passing comment of ‘don’t like that
background much’ might be exactly what’s putting others off too.

Then, if you wanted, you could go a bit deeper still … You see, you know what
the purpose of your website is, so simply ask your ‘tame critic’ if they would
join, or buy or whatever it is you intended them to do, and if not … ask why.
The feedback you get could provide you with the missing pieces to your
puzzle…

Until Next Time,

Tim Lowe

Publisher, Tim’s Business
Lowe Down

They’ve done it again … Google have just thrown a spanner in the works by deciding,
without warning, something was ‘wrong’ with one of my websites – ironically the
thing that was wrong was exactly the same thing that made the website so
‘right’ for them back in April…

To be fair though, Google do not exactly have a reputation for consistency
among our online community so I really should have expected it … but this got
me thinking about companies like Google and how they want to be perceived
publicly as the ‘good guy’ and what you actually get when you work with them,
which is usually completely different…

Google have always placed themselves as being ‘outside’ (or even above) the
idea of making money online, yet they were the people behind Google Adwords, on
which many internet marketing fortunes are based … and now they have decided
to distance themselves from all of that even further, they appear to have
become everybody’s affiliate so I’ve noticed of late that the ‘Google Shopping’
results turn up conveniently high when searching for, say, a new TV…

Pretending not to be the evil empire is certainly not a new trick, after all
Apple built their entire business on the fact that they were ‘saving’ us all
from the evil Microsoft empire even when they themselves became far bigger …
and a lot of future technology will have to dance to their tune (or should that
be iTune?) in pretty much the same manner they previously credited to
Microsoft…

Of course we see this in all parts of our lives … take for instance banks
(certainly an emotive subject in most people’s book) … on one hand you have
the helpful and well intentioned people we see all the time at the local branch
who are tasked to look after our money … and on the other we have the those
several levels above them who took the decision to actively sell mortgages to
people they knew couldn’t keep up the payments after whatever ‘special rates’
had expired…

Add to that the huge pharmaceutical companies who seem to, whilst tirelessly
doing all that research for the ‘benefit of humanity’ have the uncanny knack of
only managing to discover a drug that will keep a disease at bay (so you have
to keep buying it) rather than finding one that actually cures that disease
altogether.

It seems that the newer big companies in the public eye are keen on playing
this game as well…

You see, over recent weeks I’ve also been dealing with another very large
internet empire, whom despite being quite new to all this, and seem to the
outside world to appear efficient and have their act very much together … in
reality have proved to be entirely rudderless and inconsistent … and when
challenged on their behaviour vaguely wave you in the direction of their
various policies … which in summary read: ‘because we said so’.

Quite frankly, we’re not going to change any of this … so I suggest you waste
no effort doing so … and instead, however reluctantly, accept that you might
be on the receiving end of this kind of high level faceless nonsense at some
point in the future.

What you must do, however, is exactly what those of an entrepreneurial bent have always
done … which is ‘think around’ the situation, planning accordingly and have
contingencies in place so that should you fall victim to the wholesale daftness
of others, it is no more than a mere ‘bump’ in the road…

Rant over. Now composing oneself, ‘bucking up’ and getting back on with it…

Until Next Time,

Tim Lowe

Publisher, Tim’s Business
Lowe Down

If I was to ask you to hazard a guess at what would be the perfect dining experience for
yours truly … I expect you might conjure up images of a Michelin starred
restaurant with an extensive menu, carefully matched wines for every course,
all cooked by some shouty chap you’d normally expect to see on television.

And that, certainly, was right up there … until about a week ago … But I
now have to declare that, whilst on a recent short break somewhere nice and
warm, I had one of the best – if not the best – dining experiences of my life
… eating a pizza halfway up a mountain…

We’d been invited by a friend to accompany him on a visit to a former colleague
of his, a restaurant owner who had now opted for a quieter life up in the hills
running his own small pizza delivery business … so we armed ourselves with a
few carefully selected bottles of red wine….and set out to sample this more
‘rustic’ fare.

Admittedly it wasn’t just pizza … there were mushrooms in a amazing cheese,
tomato and garlic sauce, the most perfect bruschetta with fresh tomatoes garlic
and chilli … and of course I ‘may’ have augmented my own pizza with just a
little extra cheese (well, there were too many different varieties to choose
from to pick just one or two) And this, eaten in the open air on a gorgeous
evening surrounded by good company … well, it really couldn’t have been any
better…;-)

Proof then, you’ll agree, that something doesn’t have to be all polished five
starred excellence, as long as it all fits together and each of the elements
involved compliments all the others perfectly…

We can, of course, implement this principle into our online endeavours,
something that may prove invaluable for those who are wondering how they could
ever possibly compete with others who might have ‘big shiny’ websites and ‘big
shiny’ products to offer.

Rustic and honest is just as good as
posh and shiny and way better than shiny and smarmy!!!!

A product made of quite simple, congruent parts that will work perfectly
together and give the user exactly (or even exceed) what they were expecting
will win you more long term customers than something that looks ‘the business’
but ultimately doesn’t deliver.

Even if you don’t have any products of your own, you can ensure whatever
processes you do have (whether it be adding people to your list or directing
them toward somebody else’s offer) flows congruently…

For instance, you could have the same header, fonts or imagery on your thank
you page as you do on your squeeze page … so that your visitor knows where
they are and what is going on right through the process.

The last thing you want is for your visitor’s confidence to be ‘jarred’ by
something inconsistent that makes them have second thoughts about joining your
list or taking up an offer, but instead try and make all parts of your buying
or ‘signing up’ process just like a ‘well greased chute’ delivering them either
to your list or making them a customer…

Until Next Time,

Tim Lowe

Publisher, Tim’s Business
Lowe Down

Now, I know you can probably feel your eyelids getting
heavy at the mere mention of the word statistics, and I agree it wouldn’t be
top of my list of ‘fun’ things to do either … but if I told you that by
taking a passing interest in your stats you could increase the size of your
list (and consequently your sales) without any extra work generating traffic or
spending any more on advertising than you already do … I think you’d probably
agree that would be worth staying awake for…

Firstly of course, you need to know where you are starting from, and if you
don’t have access to any stats already, the easiest way is to get Google to do
it for you. Pay a visit to Google Analytics http://www.google.com/analytics/
and they will give you a bit of code to pop on your site to monitor the
visiting traffic. It’s free, and after a couple of days (or even better a week)
you should have something you can work from.

Before we go any further, please be aware you won’t be studying anything in the
minutest detail to start off with … the main things you need to know at this
stage are how many visitors your site is getting, and how many of them are
joining your list.

Of course Google Analytics will give you lots more information than this, but
there is absolutely no need to bother yourself with such things as ‘bounce
rates’ at this point. (And if I was to go into more detail about what that,
along with some of the more tedious aspects of on-site stats was all about, you
definitely would start nodding off…)

So, once you’ve got your starting point, you are then in a position to ‘tweak’
different things (only one at a time though) and monitor the results to see if
it increases the amount of people joining your list. The most obvious things to
dabble with initially are of course to try different variations of your
headline, or maybe adding (or even taking away) from your list of the benefits
offered by your free report (or lead magnet) … even things like changing the
background colour has been known to affect results.

And don’t think anything is too small to test and try … a year or so ago two
of my students changed the size of the image of the free report they were
giving away (making it look like it had fewer pages so it would not be
perceived as too much ‘hard work’ to read it) and changing just this one thing
increased their conversion rate from 25% to 33%…;-)

So rather than throwing more money at your Google ads campaign or spending
hours trying to increase the amount of visitors to your site using SEO
techniques (probably the only thing more tedious that looking at stats) you
could possibly look at getting the absolute most out of the traffic you are
already getting…

Until Next Time,

Tim Lowe

Publisher, Tim’s Business
Lowe Down

I am asked all the time how some people can start online and make thousands in their first month, and yet others have been plugging away for years but still seem to be approximately where there started … well, you’ll have to forgive my frankness, but I think the main reason some people never get anywhere is the fact they never really actually get going… This was brought into sharp focus in the wake of the recent invitations I sent out to work with me on my new project … and while I can understand how it (or anything else I mention in the Lowedown) wouldn’t be for absolutely everybody … I must admit some of the replies did leave me scratching my head… Of course, I had the usual emails from people explaining that they were either too old, young, fat, thin, short, or tall for it to be possible to succeed (before they even knew anything about it) or how having the wrong family, house, surname or accent would somehow exclude them from earning £12,000 to £57,000 each month… But what I found slightly flattering and mildly amusing (but at the same time a bit worrying) were the emails suggesting that this kind of thing (or in fact pretty much anything) ‘only’ works for me because I am in some way ‘special’… Well, this is something I can assure you ‘She Who Must…’ would find very amusing indeed … and would take great joy (and several hours) producing her huge portfolio of evidence to prove that the opposite was in fact true) Obviously I’m nothing special … I’m certainly not stupid, but I’m no rocket scientist either, I had no starting advantage in either wealth or family connections … in short, I started out pretty much where you are now … and, relatively speaking, had about the same amount of resources. That said however, what I did that so many others never do was … I actually took action and got started… Now although the economy was not quite as it now, when I got started a decade ago there was more than enough going on in the world for me to find a reason to put it off ‘until the time was right’ if I had wanted to, and the same would have been true every year since … and I easily could still be sitting there now, waiting for the perfect set of circumstances to occur… The fact of the matter is that ‘right now’ is the time to start whatever venture you happen to have in mind … and it’s also true to say that ‘right now’, (regardless of when you may be reading this) is, and has always been, the best time to start. So many people hang around waiting for the perfect conditions to get going, which of course will never come, and they just don’t ever start. It really doesn’t matter what is going on in the world, if you really want to succeed you will always find a way to overcome the circumstances. Of course, different situations can often call for the occasional bit of lateral thinking and ingenuity but I’ve found with a little effort you can turn almost any situation to your advantage. Every single year is the same in that there will inevitably be ups and downs and the ideal is to work through the ‘downs’ preparing and planning to take advantage of the ‘ups’. I used to quote a phrase to sum this all up which I will now ‘dust off’ for your consideration … If your sail is always up … then when the wind blows – your ship will sail! Until Next Time, Tim Lowe Publisher, Tim’s Business Lowe Down

A couple of days ago, the lady that books my flights,
makes sure my shoes get repaired and does a million other wonderful things,
wandered into my office, bearing my afternoon cuppa and a ‘purely medicinal’
Kit Kat … then suddenly thought she might have something of a crisis on her
hands…

You see, there I was, laying on my back on the floor of my office … staring
up and out of the skylight window mouthing words silently looking for all the
world like I had had some kind of ‘episode’ and was still tethered to my sanity
by only the most delicate of threads…

Rest assured, I was not suffering from any sudden affliction and had not taken
leave of my senses (well not any more than is considered usual) I was
merely in a creative mood, and for it to work best on this occasion I needed to
see blue skies, and this floor and skylight arrangement offered the best – if
not the most dignified – way of achieving this..

Lying on the floor staring out of the window for inspiration may seem odd to
many … and even a bit ‘divaesque’ to some, but I have found that often you
just have to do whatever
works, regardless how strange it seems because sometimes you have
to look at things, quite literally, from another point of view…

Now I’m not suggesting you spend your days barefoot or dangling upside down
from the ceiling (unless you want to of course) but I am suggesting you give
yourself permission to go against the grain and start thinking about things in
a way you may not have done before…

You see, formerly the Internet Marketing world attracted mainly those who, to
use a cliché – ‘wanted a better life’ or wanted to escape a job they truly
hated, but over the last couple of years, and this year more than ever …
there is a dawning realisation that it is no longer enough to rely merely on a
job … either to still be there at all – or even keep up with the rising cost
of living.

So, what we have instead are those who have decided it can’t be up to the whim
of faceless shareholders or some corporate halfwit with a clipboard (often in
another country altogether) … to decide whether or not we can pay our
mortgage, if we have a holiday this year or what exactly our children will be
opening this Christmas … and that doing something additional to either
supplement or replace a job is no longer just an option but a necessity.

Luckily, this realisation can often become more of a release than a burden and
the prospect of taking your future in your own hands and doing something you
never thought possible … can be not so much frightening as exciting and truly
liberating.

The world at the moment is portrayed as one of hardship and austerity … and
for those that believe this is true – it will become the reality. But for those
willing to grab opportunity with both hands it can be a different story
altogether … more millionaires are created at times like this than at any
other – proof that anything is possible and the playing field is far leveller
than you would imagine… (even if you happen to be lying on your back looking
at the sky…)

Until Next Time,

Tim Lowe

Publisher, Tim’s Business
Lowe Down