Why you must love what you do.

February 27, 2007

Are you constantly stressed out by the work that you do day-to-day? Do you hate getting up during the week because you dread going to work (wherever that may be)? Is "job" a four letter word in your vocabulary?

Then you need to change what you do, fast. Did you know that stress has been proven to cause heart attacks and strokes? Yes, long term, doing work that you don't love can kill you–literally.

Besides, if you don't truly love what you do, your success will be limited. A "secret" of the most successful people in the world is that they have a real passion for their work. To them, it's not really work at all.

For example, today I got up, answered some support tickets, hung out at the $7 Secrets Forum to answer a few questions and read what was going on, and checked my inbox for the flood of sales that had come in over night. I was interviewed by an associate I met at the $7 Secrets Forum, and that went very well. I decided to reward myself with 9 holes of golf (and I did much better than usual). Then I came home, answered a few more support tickets and got the pool and spa cleaned up and heated for my family to enjoy later tonight.

Not one single thing I did today felt like "work". In fact, I often tell people who ask me what I do for a living that I don't really have a job–"I play around for a living" is what I like to say.

And yet, despite not really doing "work"–since I love what I do–I earn many, many times more than I ever did with a J-O-B. Success found me because I am passionate about what I do.

That's not to say that there aren't some stressful days or situations that I have to deal with. They happen, sure, but they are not the norm. If you're not loving what you do 4 out of 5 work days, then you seriously need to consider a change.

Being passionate about your work means you'll put effort into it to make it the absolute best it can be, regardless of whether or not it will "pay off" in the end. People who are focused solely on the bottom line will only invest as much time and energy into their projects as they feel they can get out of it. Those financially implied limitations, while maybe understandable, never produce the "great" products or web sites. The greats are built around passion and interest, not money.

Work at your passion, give it your all, make it the best it can be. That will show through in the final product, and it will naturally draw people who are interested in the subject. They will see your real love for your work, and they'll respect and admire that. More importantly, it will keep them coming back for more.

No, you will never truly succeed if you don't love what you do for a living. You'll hit a ceiling and never go any higher–or your stress level will grow and grow until you die of a heart attack or stroke.

Love what you do, and every work day will be like a mini-vacation.

Posted by Jonathan Leger | Filed Under Blog | 26 Comments

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Why you need a support forum.

February 21, 2007

I'm a fool. A big fool. A really big fool. Why? Because I always thought forums were too much work to maintain.

I never liked creating forums, because I always felt like I wouldn't have the time to moderate them properly. I felt like they were more work than they were worth. I was so wrong.

I had a number of people suggest that I start a forum for my $7 Secrets product, since it's caught on like wildfire (with more than 6,000 customers just through my site–not to mention the copies sold by the hundreds of resellers out there). They thought it would be a good place to share ideas.

So, against my "better judgment", I created a forum for the product. It's at:

http://7dollarforum.com/

I emailed my $7 Secrets customers about it, and as of the time of my writing this (less than 24 hours after sending the email), I've got more than 200 people registered to the forum (and lots of people "lurking" about but not registering).

This forum made me realize that I was a fool for not creating forums in the past. Here's why:

The Forum Is Covered In Testimonials

The first thing people started posting to the forum were testimonials for the product! Now anyone who goes there will see a bunch of really happy customers–and that's great for sales. I am indebted to my posting customers for these unsolicited comments.

The Forum Has Sparked New Ideas

Yes, in less than 24 hours, I've already received and implemented some great profit-creating suggestions made by the forum members. There was a suggestion that I add a "tell-a-friend" form to the scripts that come with $7 Secrets, which I did. My testing of that form has resulted in dozens of new visitors to the site already–and it's less than 16 hours later.

The Forum Members Answer Support Requests

There have already been a half dozen examples of people posting questions and issues they're having to the forum about the scripts that go along with the $7 Secrets report. This happened while I was sleeping, and one of the members who was still awake and at the forum answered the support question in detail.

I woke up, checked the forum, and saw that my members were helping me out with support! I actually had fewer support tickets today in my help desk because of their generous support of those other users.

What a fool I was for not realizing that people will help each other out.

Summing It Up

So yes, I was a fool. Whether your product is informational, or whether it's software (or like $7 Secrets, a combination of both), you need a support forum. I am thrilled with the success of this one, and it only took about thirty minutes to setup and configure.

Posted by Jonathan Leger | Filed Under Internet Marketing, Blog | 6 Comments

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Beating the SPAM filters.

February 17, 2007

I was noticing that all of my email announcements were always getting sent to the SPAM/Bulk box in my Yahoo! email account. Now, Yahoo! is, in my opinion, way too SPAM-filter-happy, but that got me wondering: if Yahoo! is sending my emails to the SPAM box, how many other email services might be doing the same?

That got me worried, especially since I had reason to believe that a fair percentage of people weren't getting my support emails. That's one of the reasons I switched to my support-ticket system instead of doing straight email support.

So I decided to do some testing and research and figure out why Yahoo! was filtering my emails into the SPAM box. Hopefully what I discovered will help you if you find yourself in a similar situation. Also, since Yahoo! is so SPAM-filter-happy, it made sense that if I could figure out how to get past their filters, it would get past almost everybody else's, too.

(Just an aside: GMail has never flagged any of my emails as SPAM. Yahoo! is the only mail provider I've used who would consistently flag my messages as SPAM.)

The first thing I did was look at the full headers of the messages that were going into the SPAM folder. I noticed that it had this line in it:

X-YahooFilteredBulk: 70.85.202.162

That told me that Yahoo! considered my message to be part of a bulk mailing–which, in fact, it was, though that alone isn't enough reason to put it in the SPAM folder. So I knew there must be something else going on.

Step by step I tried everything. I changed the FROM field of the message so that it appeared to come from a different domain. I also changed the TITLE field to the title of a message that did not get sent to the SPAM folder. Neither of those actions caused any change–the message was still landing in the SPAM folder.

So I took out the BODY completely and changed it to the BODY of a message that didn't get sent to the SPAM folder. Lo' and behold, the message made it directly into the inbox!

So I started dissecting the BODY to figure out which part of the body was causing the message to land in the SPAM folder. After a few tests, I realized that it was my domain name (jonathanleger.com) appearing in the BODY that was causing the problem.

Then it all made sense. You see, Yahoo! (and other ISP's) give people the ability to click a button that labels the message as SPAM. Now, some people "forget" that they opted-in, but others simply don't realize that by flagging a message as SPAM, they are causing problems for the owner of the list they are on. If you have an opt-in list, you know what I mean–so called "SPAM reports" coming from people who have opted-in of their own accord. It's frustrating, but it's a fact of life in the list-building world.

Yahoo! had gotten the wrong impression about my jonathanleger.com domain, and that domain name just appearing in the BODY was causing Yahoo! to flag my message as SPAM.

The solution? I simply used a new domain (jonleger.com) to redirect people to the pages of jonathanleger.com. When I include jonleger.com in the BODY, Yahoo! lets the messages into the inbox with no complaints.

So if you find yourself caught in the SPAM filters, run a few tests to see if perhaps a domain name you're putting in the BODY has been misflagged as a source of SPAM. If so, use a redirect work-around like I did to get past it.

Here's a tip that got posted in the comments for this post. The tip was so good I had to include it here:

Take your email list and sort it by domain. Find the top 5 domains like yahoo gmail, then create test accounts on them. Before sending out to your list, send to your test account list, check to make sure they got the email.

(That tip was submitted by Roger Seher.)

I'm not alone in the struggle against the SPAM filters, as some of the top Internet Marketers in the world are landing in my SPAM folder these days (including the likes of Mike Filsaime). Maybe they'll read this post and implement the work-around themselves.