Dearest baby Jack,

On Labour Day, 2000, I was going to school for something I hated and gearing up to divorce your brother’s Daddy.

On Labour Day, 2001, I was living in a homeless shelter and pregnant with a baby boy you’ll never get to meet, although you can trust me that he was pretty awesome while he was here.

On Labour Day, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005, I was getting ready to go back to work after the long weekend. It was a different job each year — all temp — and I hated each with varying degrees of intensity.

But on Labour Day, 2006, you came, and everything was different.

There’s a Bryan Adams song that you will one day hear on oldies radio and cringe, and it says, “Everything I do, I do it for you.” I personally think our pal Bryan is a bit of a poser, but I know how he feels on this one.

Everybody says that when they have a child, it changed their lives forever. This is obviously true, but it’s kind of a retarded thing to say if you ask me. I mean, do you think all these parents were pacing the halls at two in the morning before they had kids? Like, for fun? Because if we’re honest, you and other people in your demographic are a bit of a pain in the ass, frankly. So yeah, kids change lives.

But in your case, you unknowingly changed a lot more lives than just mine.

Between the bedrest and the panic attacks and the dental surgery without anaesthetic and the abject poverty, being pregnant with you was not what it said on the tin. I kind of wanted my money back, really. But then you decided to join us in the world of the living and breathing and cussing earlier than strictly necessary, and the shit kind of hit the fan. My water broke really, really early and they strapped me to a bed and wouldn’t let you come out.

Since you are my son, after 10 days you said, “Fuck this shit!” and came out anyway. Your Daddy took six months off work because neither you nor I were particularly healthy, but things were not looking good in the Dunford family bank book.

After we hung out with you for half a year, though, we didn’t really want to stop, so we created IttyBiz. It’s been a battle at times. Trying to work with you nursing and screaming and demanding fruit cups and insisting that feeding a magnetic letter C to the cat is your basic human right ain’t exactly a walk in the park. But we did pretty well. Your Daddy was able to quit his job in time for your last birthday, and now he gets to hang out with us all day. That made it all worth it, and we were able to take on more clients and do more stuff.

Because of you, we’ve been able to help a lot of people with their own IttyBiz’s. We’ve been able to help people quit their own jobs to hang out with their own kids. One lady had a husband who wasn’t being very nice to her at all, and she had FOUR of you. She’s getting ready to move her babies to a safer place now, and we got to help.

Another lady was on bedrest like me, only she lived in America and didn’t get to take time off like I did, and we helped her start freelancing from her bed.

I got an email from a man the other day, and he said that he’d made enough money with his new little side business to take his kids to Disney World for the first time.

A whole bunch of kids like you are able to see a lot more of their own Mummies and Daddies because you showed up and made it happen, and I think, if they ever knew, they’d say thank you and share their fruit cups with you.

Dearest baby boy, this post goes live at 11:04 PM, exactly two years after you came into the world. Your Daddy and I don’t know what we ever did without you.

Because of you, the world is a little brighter, a little funnier, a little sweeter. Because of you, I have the perfect family. Because of you, I have the greatest job in the world.

I hope that being two is better than you could have ever hoped. I will move mountains to make sure it is full of raspberries and rubber ducks and books and choo-choo trains and red buses and bubbles and the number TEN screamed over and over and over.

I hope that all you ever know is love.

Mama.

By Naomi Dunford - Sep 4, 2008 in Small Business Marketing - 68 Comments

I was going to title this post “Small Biz Marketing for People with No Budget.” Then I realized that there is a very big difference between zero and $100 for many people. (If you have NO budget, start commenting on blogs like a crazy person and get active on Twitter and Facebook. Or sell your Xbox and follow the rules below.)

I get a lot of questions about low budget marketing ideas. People are like, “I have $100 a month. How the hell can I get people to my site?” (It’s always $100 for some reason.) Here’s my answer:

Go to a conference.

Take the $100 a month you would’ve spent on random banner ads over the course of a year and go to a conference. You can do South by Southwest for that, and you can do SOBCon for half if you’re careful with where you stay and how you get there.

Conferences are just like those lame ass Small Business Association meet and greets except the booze is better and they’re not so sleazy. People are away from their families and other responsibilities, so their inhibitions are lowered. They’re more amenable to meeting new people and hearing what they have to say. They’re conducive to actually getting the same type of people in the same room and talking.

If one more person complains to me about how expensive conferences are, I’m going to do something drastic. If you make one decent connection at a conference — and I’m not talking Arianna Huffington here, I’m talking me or Michael or Clay — you will make more money in a month than banner ads will get you in a year. And if you do it right, you’ll meet ten. Do the math, people.

If you’re not a people person, fake it or learn. Read a book on self esteem or loving yourself or whatever. Go hang out in the self-help section of your nearest big box bookstore. Talk to the Havinator for a cyber-snuggle or take the course. Call me and have me kick your ass. Whatever. Just channel all the balls you’ve got to go to a conference, paste on a happy face and meet some real, live humans.

Other $100 Marketing Ideas

Hire a VA.

Get them to rock the shit out of your Twitter or Facebook profile. Give them a starter list of people to follow people or add as friends or whatever the latest social networking jargon is, then spend 20 minutes a day finding new people. I hated Facebook until one of my favorite authors in the universe added me as a friend, totally out of the blue. I don’t hate it anymore. (You can get me here on Twitter or here on Facebook.)

Teach something.

Head down to your local library, book a room for fifty bucks, and buy a box of donuts. Teach something. Ideally this “something” would be at least peripherally relevant to what you do for a living. Repeat each month.

Learn something.

You know how many friends I made from the home office asskickery yesterday? A bunch. Not only is my house cleaner, but now I know people. Knowing people is useful. If one of those people tells one of THEIR people that I am awesome, I will make money. That course in particular cost me $46. I will have made my money back from that by tomorrow. Plus I’ve got a cleaner house.

Sponsor something.

Sponsor a contest. Give away something cool. This must be repeated, though, because you won’t really get any traffic the first time you do it. The most important takeaway for the sponsoring thing is that it MUST BE COOL. (Rules here are similar to the rules for cool swag.) Also, try to sponsor something where the audience is similar to your own, but not so similar that the holder of the contest competes with your offering. IttyBiz example: For me, Problogger yes, Duct Tape Marketing no.

As with any marketing initiative, any of the foregoing MUST BE REPEATED. Do not quit after two months (or one conference). One push does not make you internet famous. You have to be there, over and over. Sooner or later, everyone eventually says, “Jesus, I keep seeing this guy. I should go check it out.” If it’s good enough for Leo Babauta, it’s good enough for you.

By Naomi Dunford - Sep 4, 2008 in Small Business Marketing - 23 Comments

I had an awesome post written to run today about whether or not pricing and charging and value and all that shit but then Kelly had to start running her mouth off about $100 hamburgers and I realized I had a lot more to say. I would’ve gotten my shit together to say it if Havi hadn’t bullied me into going to the Home Office Day Spa with her because she’s bossy like that.

“Home office day spa?” says your favorite filthy marketing whore, incredulously.

“[random woowoo gobbledygook]!” says your favorite duck-wielding habits educator.

So I go, thinking she’s a total nutjob but she’s my friend so, whatever. (It’s kind of like going to the bar with your single friends so they can pick up.)

It. Was. AWESOME. AWESOMEAWESOMEAWESOME. Eight of us hung out on the phone and talked about office zen and then went away all refreshed to sort out our biz baggage and then got together to cheer with each other after. It sounds totally loopy, but it was wicked.

Anyway, you should do it. She does these classes on the first Wednesday of every month and I get no financial incentive for sending you there, but it’s just all around cool enough to give it the IttyBiz stamp of awesomeness.

(Aside: At the end, when we talked about all the cool stuff we accomplished, I said that I realized I didn’t really do any work in my office. I do my work in bed. The actual words that came out of my mouth were, “I make all my money on my back.” I have a feeling that didn’t come out quite right.)

***

On the same topic, while we were doing this class, we introduced ourselves and talked about our ittybiz’s. One guy, Karl, is a marketing consultant. Cool, huh? Yeah, but he’s not just any marketing consultant. He only does marketing consulting for museums. Cool, huh? Yeah, but he’s not just any museum marketing consultant. He is a marketing consultant for train museums. Fucking train museums!

That, dear reader, is a USP.

***

I’ll be back tomorrow with the pricing/charging/value thing.

By Naomi Dunford - Sep 3, 2008 in Small Business Marketing - 8 Comments

I warn you, this is going to sound like self-indulgent drivel, but there’s a really, really good lesson at the end. Just sayin’.

Over the last few days, Havi and I have been getting letters from people saying that the price of the VIP package for the course we’re offering is too cheap. People have been pointing out that we’re charging only $80 an hour for personal coaching. Since we normally charge about double that, you’d think that wouldn’t be very VIP, would it? And isn’t a VIP package supposed to be a big fat coup full of exclusivity and scarcity and all that filthy marketing whore stuff?

Good point, and I’ll address it here.

To the outside observer, cutting our rates for this sounds kind of dumb. Where is the exclusivity in a VIP package if we’re slashing our rates? But there’s method in the madness. Continue Reading…

By Naomi Dunford - Sep 2, 2008 in Small Business Marketing - 15 Comments

* As you can see, I’ve completely given up on the philosophy of not swearing in header text.

This is a very, very important post. If you don’t have time to read it right now, save it in your reader or whatever because it’s a big deal.

I got an email with the title of this post as the subject line. Want to get my attention? That’s the way to do it, baby. Here it is, in its entirety:

“Naomi, thanks for doing the series about writing and selling ebooks. It’s very useful and timely for me, as I’m currently writing my first paid ebook, as well as looking for a way to work from home.

Right before you started that series, I was thinking about emailing you to suggest that you write an ebook called “How To Work From Home When You Have No Fucking Talent.” I don’t mean that the readers are useless, just that they don’t have any particularly extraordinary rockstar talent. People who are fabulous copywriters can be you or Brian Clark or James Chartrand, people who are superb graphic and blog designers can be Harrison McLeod, people who are fantastic internet marketers can be Yaro, people who know how to do everything can be Tim Ferriss, etc. But what about more normal people, how can they quit the 9-5? Continue Reading…

By Naomi Dunford - Aug 29, 2008 in Small Business Marketing - 44 Comments

I was on the phone with a client today. He wanted some help with some internet marketing and information product stuff. Pretty typical questions — paid search, landing pages, conversion rates — nothing too exciting. I helped him, all was well. (It was well enough that he decided to send me more money to do more stuff, which is always a good sign.)

Now, right now, since he’s paying me, I’m his consultant. But if he weren’t paying me, a lot of people would say that in this particular facet of life, I’m his mentor. And I guess they’d be right.

Except this particular client attended Stanford Business School.

I have a feeling, just maybe, there’s something he can teach me, too. Now at the moment we’ve only just met and we might end up hating each other, so it’s not exactly the time to start proposing this sort of mutually beneficial relationship. Besides, right now all he needs is to start making some fucking money already. But later? I’d be kind of a dumbass if I didn’t pick his brain, don’t you think?

This leads me to the topic du jour. Continue Reading…

By Naomi Dunford - Aug 27, 2008 in Home Based Business - 26 Comments

This is a guest post from the ever ass-kicking Dave Navarro of time management and productivity fame. Did you ever notice how all the guest posts on this blog are so much better formatted than mine? Yeah, I did too, and I don’t want to talk about it.

Quick quiz: What do you absolutely need to have if you want your business to pay that mortgage of yours?

• A) A kick-ass website
• B) Clever business cards
• C) A catchy mission statement
• D) Arrogance

If you answered anything but D), you’ve got a hard road ahead of you. Continue Reading…

By Naomi Dunford - Aug 26, 2008 in Small Business Marketing - 52 Comments

There’s an ancient Scottish saying that I love:

“Build a thousand bridges and they’ll never call you a bridge builder. Fuck one sheep and you’re a sheep fucker for life.”

(Prove it’s not an ancient Scottish saying. Go on, prove it.)

It seems like a large portion of the world has taken it upon themselves to email me and tell me they hate me. I’m used to hate mail, but this has been a special time. I’ve been fortunate enough to receive a whole year’s worth of fuck-you, all in the matter of less than a month. Continue Reading…

By Naomi Dunford - Aug 25, 2008 in Personal - 95 Comments

Well, it’s been quite a week. We’ve covered figuring out if you have a market for your ebook, we’ve covered writing the ebook, and we’ve covered how to sell the damn thing. So why are we still here? Because you’d be really surprised by all the extra stuff that comes along with it.

You read about people who get book deals talking about how their whole life falls apart in the process of trying to get the whole thing to come together. You wouldn’t think that would transition over to a document of fewer than 100 pages that you’re publishing yourself. Well, maybe you would. I sure as hell didn’t. Continue Reading…

By Naomi Dunford - Aug 22, 2008 in Small Business Marketing - 19 Comments

Hi again!

OK, so you’ve decided you’ve got a market and you’ve written an ebook. This is normally where the writer of the post would be all “good for you, what a tremendous accomplishment, pat yourself on the back”, but that’s not how I roll. There may be some esoteric benefit to writing an a novel and not selling it, but the same doesn’t apply to ebooks.

The only thing more lame than a book languishing in your drawer is an ebook languishing on your hard drive. Let’s face it, you could write the next Gatsby but if you can’t sell it, you stay poor. Continue Reading…

By Naomi Dunford - Aug 21, 2008 in Small Business Marketing - 20 Comments