Hi Martha; ========================================== I had to read your article and the picture brought tears to my eyes. ... You are a great writer ========================================== Thank you, Martha! I love writing, so that means a lot to me. ========================================== I tried to be different in my nursery and it didn't quite pan out for me. My problem is more of location. ========================================== May I tell you a short story? In Hawaii, there is a small strip of land, roughly 1 mile by 52 miles, called "The Kona Region." Only coffee grown in that small strip of land is real Kona coffee. All other is Hawaiian coffee, but not Kona coffee. Back in 1999, I got an email from the owner of a Kona plantation. They were trying to make their plantation work, but it was hard. It was a husband, wife and small son who helped them pick beans. But, how could they let the world know about their coffee when they lived in such a remote place. Together, the three of them were producing about 28,000 pounds of coffee beans a year (all the farm grew) - but how to get it out there was their question. They had a website, but it had been online for 2 years and never ever sold enough to even pay their hosting, nevermind support the family and farm. They were ready to throw in the towel and take it offline to save the cost of hosting. Fate perhaps, but they happened to read a newsletter written by one of my clients. So they called him and told him their story. He said - don't quit. Please hire Linda. She will help you. I will never forget the phone call I got when they were featured in Forbes. She was laughing and almost crying at the same time and saying they can hardly keep up with orders. They had to call all their friends to help pack orders while her husband roasted coffee like crazy. Today, they are producing and roasting over 750,000 pounds of year and are the number one exporter of green coffee beans as well. They provide employment to an entire staff of pickers and roasters and have office staff, too. I am now doing their marketing on an ongoing basis. It makes me really, really proud to be able to be part of their growth. To know that not only can dreams come true, but for this company, I helped make them happen. Martha, for small businesses, the web truly can be the solution to the limitations of location. It can make or break people. When I see all the garbage on the Internet, the schemes and scams, and the bogus "how to make money online" programs - that's why I get so passionate and outspoken about them. Because I do know what works, and I've spent 10 years helping small businesses, one at a time, figure out this "Internet" thing. It really gets me fired up when I see people feeding out bad advice. That's why I'm writing my tutorials, too... because if I'm going to complain about what's out there, I should at least offer an alternative. : ) Linda P.S. When I offer my tutorials, I'll offer the test drives to my own forum group at Adland first. P.P.S. For anyone that's a coffee drinker, the private reserve and peaberry are very, very nice. It's at KoaCoffee.com - click on coffeestore. (and you can see some of my work, too)

"When I see all the garbage on the Internet, the schemes and scams, and the bogus "how to make money on line" programs - that's why I get so passionate and outspoken about them." We can all find a back alley lined with dumpsters up one side and down the other and strewn with garbage of every description. We do whatever it takes to avoid this section of town. When my wife & I make it a priority to get to the place where we started our honeymoon, I am passionate and outspoken about what's on my mind. Other places that we've vacationed leave the dumpsters and beer cans far behind. The reality is that they are part of life, but let's not get bogged down in spending energy on the refuse of the web. Digressing a bit, ensuring that what we see or post has value will return dividends far beyond finances and currency. As in real life, I've seen, heard and read some very beautiful and valuable gems in many forms.

Hello Everybody, I would just like to say how refreshing it is to see the way that people that listened and learned here. The sig. files all look marvelous, simply marvelous. Now if We could just get Linda to follow along and fix hers as well ;)

Hi Rudy; Yes - we do what we can to avoid that side of town. But only when we have the knowledge to do that, of course. If a blind man pays another person to guide him, and the guide takes his money and drops him off in the back alley, is that his fault? Perhaps to a degree, because he *did* pay the guide. But the guide is wrong, as well. Same thing online. There are many people that get online and don't know what works and what does not. There is a vast number of people that will happily provide *advice* for a price - and even more recommending the inferior advice for the commission. There's also a multitude that will provide free advice for other gain than monetary. For example, almost every company that has an affiliate program will tell their affiliates to use "company.com/?id" as their url. Why? They don't get paid for that advice. But they give it because it increases their linkback popularity. Something as simple as changing a link to "Grow Bigger Tomatoes" can make people start asking questions when "company.com/?id" failed to get that result. Why don't they tell people that? Because 98% of their sales come from 2% of the affiliates that already know this - so they fail to help/teach the 98% that don't. Or maybe they, themselves, don't know any better. Same thing with "how to market" programs. A lot of them say "if it doesn't work, you're not working it" and a "newbie" might not know that the program itself is offering poor advice that does not and will not work. I don't focus on the bad in itself, but for the purpose of re-educating. And to re-educate, I often need to address the problem that exists so I can also explain the solution. : ) Linda

Linda, Question: I used the following link in an email to myself: [a href="http://snipurl.com/gogetter"] The Go-Getter [/a] by Peter B. Kyne and I used the < > When I received the email, it showed the whole code instead of a link. It seems to work in the AdLandPro Treads. The question I have is what can we do to make it work in our emails. Also, should we insert target="_blank" before the > after the url? Oh, by the way, you might enjoy the book listed in this link. It is short and it is what The Letter to Garcia reminded me of.