At DKTaxServices :  US, Argentina, UK, Canada, India, Jamaica and Egypt.    Somehow I have this picture of some guys in Jamaica, sitting at a beachfront bar, sipping a cool drink and saying “Hey mon, you have to see what I found” as they peruse DKTaxServices US tax news.  

At the TaxLoopholes First Class Lounge Forum, largely because it’s a subscription based model, there isn’t that much moderation needed.  We don’t get hit with the spammers.  I did have a problem with trackbacks on the blog for really inappropriate sites.  A couple of TL watchers caught it right away and sent emails and Private Messages so we could block the IP addresses that were sending them.  So far, anyway, we haven’t had any more trouble.

Jorge and I are the moderators on this B-I blog.  He set it up so that all new commentators have to be approved.  Their first post is held until a human being (Jorge or I) read the post and decide if it’s appropriate.  I supposed now that I’ve published our secret someone might send a very innocent post the first time through, then hit us with spam.  But, we’re both paying close attention, with our trigger finger on the delete button, so I think we’d catch it quickly.

I was just cruising around blogs (I frequently search “blogs” for key words to get ideas of things to blog about or post on the forum, or just to see what others are talking about).  There are real gems in some of the off the beaten track blogs.  By the way, I always read food blogs in cities I’m visiting and for where I live. We’ve found some great restaurants that way.  Anyway, I have seen a lot of the quieter blogs have trouble with trackbacks.  Similar to what happened to me the first time through with TL, sites will link to the content filled blog and take you off to porn, viagra or other such sites that I wouldn’t want to be linked to.  

If you have a blog or a forum, make sure you keep a constant eye on trackbacks and comments.  You could end up with some unwelcome visitors.

We might have launched too early.  The sign up process is through a secure server, but the little lock symbol that we’re used to seeing only appears when you actually sign up.  Until then, it doesn’t look like it’s secure. I’ve gotten a couple of email complaints about that.  And I’ve always heard that for every one complaint you hear, there are a dozen that you don’t.  So, that is definitely an issue.

Then I just discovered that the field for expiration date wasn’t showing up correction for Internet Explorer, version 6 I’m going to guess, because that’s been our nemesis.

We’ll get it fixed and I’ll do another round of emails to push people to the site.  

The offer is too good not to be picked up.  Sign up, follow the program and if you don’t increase your business by 20% I refund.  I don’t think it’s the offer.  I think it’s problems with the site that have caused the low conversion.  

Frustrating.  

His knowledge and experience has been as an affiliate of other sites.  In other words, he sets up websites that buy traffic and then direct it to other sites that pay him a fee when his referred traffic buys.  That’s one of his income streams.

Our topic the other day was how often business owners don’t understand the principals of Internet Marketing for their own business.  In fact, why not set up and run your own affiliate marketing program?  Buy traffic, test it through your own landing pages and see what converts.  

That was my initial thought when I started the B-I project.  And, it has been slowly building, but not as quickly as I wanted.  I don’t know how much has been impacted by the economy and how much is because we haven’t hit the right market and key words yet.  

Over all, though, the secret is to test, refine, test and refine.  It isn’t magic.  It doesn’t happen overnight.  But boy, when it hits, it can explode your business.

Now, will they come?  That’s where I am with HighTouchSystem right now.  My old standby site, TaxLoopholes, is careworn and needs a lift.  I’ll be working on that, as well as doing some change in branding, over the next 3-6 months.  Meanwhile, though, HighTouchSystem is up.   DKTaxServices is mostly up.  Well, it’s live, it’s just that there are still a few glitches I want to work out before I start pushing it too much.

As soon as they are up, I’ll need to start making decisions on budgeting and whether to use contextual advertising, Google adwords, or what to drive traffic.  Plus, I’m not going to forget my lesson that I talked about in the “How to Increase Your Business by 20% or More” teleseminar this weekend.  I need to build relationship marketing in everything I do.

So, those are my next tasks.  We’ll work out the remaining bugs and then start pushing the two new sites.  And, of course, start figuring out the next projects! I still haven’t gotten DianeKennedyCPA dot com even planned yet.  I think it will be easy on that though.  

That’s because some engineers (like my husband, who I adore) will keep tweaking until the day they die.  They are never finished.  Of course, I’m of the more Ready Fire Aim or maybe even Fire Fire Fire category.  So, in between is a good mix as long as we don’t kill each other first.

This past week, we had two sites launch.  One actually starts getting pushed today, still gently, and that’s HighTouchSystem .  I spent 20 hours writing the copy.  Copy writing is hard.  Rob Fore, a copy writer in a former life, has some good analogies about that.

And at the same time we did a soft launch of DKTaxServices .  My programmer and friend, Jorge from LatAmConnect did both PLUS launched a new site for Nouveau Riche University. He did it all in one week.  I don’t know how he handled that without some cross postings, but somehow it all worked.  But he also spent 72 hours up with no sleep.  There at the end, it got a little silly.  So, there are some things that aren’t finished on both of my sites.  I E 6 (Internet Explorer version 6) seems to be our nemesis.

I realized the decision to launch (which was my own) comes down to a basic philosophy with business.  Do you wait until everything is perfect and then sell?  Or do you sell at the beginning for cash flow, realizing you’re going to be busy behind the curtain, fixing and changing?   My husband’s tendency is to have everything perfect and that works great if you have time and resources.  For many small businesses, you need cash quick.  And the cash comes when you can show something.

My favorite story in this line is how Bill Gates sold his very first program off of a concept.  Yet, he talked like it was done because in his mind it was.  That confidence is what launched Microsoft.

In 40 minutes, I’m giving my first teleseminar that will send people to www. HighTouchSystem .com.  It’s an amazing concept and challenge (follow this program for 6 months and I guarantee you’ll increase your business by 20%).  It didn’t increase my business by 20%, it was more like 200% after just one month.  So, I’m very confident I won’t have to pay any guarantees back.

My Journey to a Million Dollars has gotten side-tracked and re-focussed a half dozen times.  Nine months ago I had a significant part of my business blow up when a partner and I parted ways.  It was a blow financially and even more devastating emotionally, especially for my son.  That part breaks my heart.  Some day I’ll talk about that, or maybe let him do it, meanwhile, though - the business part.

I needed to find a way to replace income and quick.  So, I started the million dollar journey.  But I found that there was plenty of “low hanging fruit” with my current business model.  I just did a clean up of my computer tonight and found that I really hadn’t done any significant planning for my online tax education company and my tax practice since 2004.  It had just kind of been rolling along, (or not as the case may be) while I devoted all my time to the other venture.    **Low hanging fruit refers to the business opportunities that are present for your business, just for the taking.

So, I kept getting pulled off with new ideas.  The 4 years since 2004 might seem like it hasn’t been that long, but technology has changed so much.

So, 2 months ago, DKTaxServices began.  it’s still in its infancy, but something amazing happened this past week.  We’re keeping it quiet (well, supposed to, but then I go and blog about it).

This week we did a soft opening on DKTaxServices.  I still owe Jorge copy, so you’ll see not all the links go anywhere.  That’s not Jorge’s mistake, it’s me who hasn’t gotten the stuff in yet.

The news articles update every hour.  So, the front page changes every hour.  But, no I don’t have a small force in Latin America working day and night keeping it updated, programming does that.  A I is our editor.

To my knowledge, we are only the second website to do this.  I blogged a few months ago about esciencenews.com and said how much I’d like to do something like that.  Jorge emailed me and said he could do it.

So, there it is.  We’ll have the bugs worked out in a few weeks and then I plan to do some press releases about it.  It’s pretty amazing!

We’re all using different strategies to build the business.  I’ve always like a very passive, soft sell approach.  I’ll tell you the facts or my experience and then give you a solution.  If you sign up - fantastic, there are always bonuses.  If you don’t, that’s great - we’re still friends.

It’s almost a disadvantage that I know so many people.  One of the guys I talked to who signed up had about 200 people that he was going to talk to.  The benefit of that is that he can quickly find the people that will really help him grow the business and can focus.  I get a little lost in my group.

Another guy is buying a list of leads and sending them an offer.  That’s an interesting strategy and one I haven’t tried.

I’ll be interested to see how it all sorts out!

In fact, I’m sure I had been overpaying for a few years more than I should have.  In March 2007, I bought my partner out of TaxLoopholes and some other ventures we had.  It was an easy and amicable parting.  My partner had other projects he wanted to do and his heart just wasn’t in the company any more.  One of the first things I did was question the status quo with the companies. 

For example, we had a hosting company that also handled our email blasts.  The charge (okay, don’t choke now) was $3,000 per month.  But then he had all these added things on there so the bills were rarely under $4,000 per month.  PLUS we had to buy our own server.  

My first move was to change hosting companies.  I got that for $10,000 per year.  And we started doing our own email blasts in house. At the same time, we went virtual and cut staff so our in house tech costs went down.  The email blasts in house cost something, so it ended up all working out.  

Now, I’m looking at the $10,000 per year and thinking I was crazy for ever paying that last year.  At the time, $10,000 or $36,000 was a no brainer.  Now, it’s more like $500/month (or $6,000 per year) with the competitor.  

I hope I haven’t lost you in the numbers or bored you to tears.  The morale of the story, I think, is don’t assume anything with your business.  There are a lot more solutions these days to just the same old way of doing business. 

The thing I like about this particular opportunity is even if you never sign anyone up, your business still increases.  Your clients and customers want to know that you care about them.  It’s not enough to genuinely care, and I’m sure that’s true for every business owner who comes here and to my TaxLoopholes site, they have to KNOW you were thinking of them.  That’s why I like Send Out Cards - it’s a way to surprise someone with a joke, thought or thank you.  If you’d like to see how easy it is to send a card, please go to www.sendoutcards.com/DK and send one on me.  If you like the process, drop me a note (or post here) and I’ll tell you the secrets to getting it going quickly.  

Anyway, it took me one week to figure the system out.  I’m not terribly techie and so a week is actually very fast.  The second week I made $240, which I received the next week.  Okay, at this point I’m ahead of most beginning MLMers that I’ve seen for AN ENTIRE YEAR.  But that wasn’t it, I just found out I made $120 last week.  Hey, I could get used to this!  I have done NO cold calling, NO annoying “come to dinner and I’ll sell you something”, all I’ve done is tell a few business owners what I’ve done and how it’s working for my business.

It’s a scary time now.  Many businesses are feeling a slowdown, real estate has tanked in many areas, and credit is hard.  Reach out to your customers, prospects, clients, vendors - everyone you know.  Trust me, the more courage and problem-solving you show, the more they will remember you.

So what am I doing less of?   I’m doing less worrying, I’m doing less projecting, I’m doing less of what’s hard - and more of what I love.  I have more time and my business just had the best month ever!  Maybe there is something to this.