Wayne and Kat’s Blog

Hey! How’s everything in your world?

It’s been a few weeks since I have had time to write a post, we’ve been really busy getting the Spring 2008 Edition of The Magic Happens Magazine ready to be released. Finally, it’s complete and available for your pleasure. This season’s feature is Self Appreciation! Sounds really springy doesn’t it?

Incase you’ve never heard about our magazine before, let me give you a brief overview of what it is about and why we do it.

The Magic Happens is a free internet magazine by, about and for people who are Thriving in Life. Many of the contributors have long since retired from the everyday work world and pursue their own interests these days. The contributors aren’t really talking much about what they do per say as they are about who they are and their own personal and spiritual development progress.

The saying goes, ‘Your business will only grow as big as you do.’ And so, these people are expressing how big they have grown. It’s an amazing journey for all of us.

The first issue of the magazine was posted for public viewing on July 1st, 2008. Our intention for the magazine is to share what we have learned about the art of Thriving in Life and contribute to as many people as we can.

It is a quarterly magazine being released on the first of July, October, January and April.

We also have a companion community where some of our readers and contributors hang out and get to know one another. Everyone is having a great time sharing knowledge and learning more about Thriving in Life.

Why not drop by The Magic Happens Magazine and The Magic Happens Community? We would all love to get to know you and learn what you know about Thriving.

Happy Trails
Kat

The brass ring in Internet Marketing is to have your own product to sell and I have just recently stumbled my way through creating an e-book. I wanted to pass along some thoughts about the creative process that you might find useful incase you decide at some point to reach for that brass ring. Here is my ebook if you want to see it: ‘A Beginner’s Guide To Website Design.’Layout and design is king, so do your research on how e-books are put together. There is a huge difference between an e-book on the internet and a book on the shelf at a bookstore.

We all seem to do a lot of it and yet reading anything on the internet can get really boring after a few paragraphs. A good ebook will be spiced up with some interesting photos or graphics and adhere to good web design basics to keep the reader’s attention. The photos and graphics break up the monotony of several pages of text and offers relief to the reader’s eyes.

Most of the materials on the internet are written in some form of how to do this or how to do that. A great way to break up the dry monologue of how to instructions is to offer personal stories. While it is important to make sure those personal stories are relevant to the text, they will add the entertainment value to an otherwise dry text.  Information exchange is what an internet book is all about so make sure your content is supreme while spicing it up with some personal anecdotes, an occasional joke or witticism and a little bit of dramatic expression.

It is important to know who your target market is and write with that in mind at all times. Who is it that you want to reach with your work? By staying true to your niche, the questions that come up later like ‘how to market this puppy,’ will be far easier to answer. Also by being clear from the beginning, you will avoid making your topic too general. An overly general topic will not address anyone’s needs by being too basic for some and way too complex for others. If your e-book is about a basic knowledge of …., ensure that you write using basic concepts, not using rocket science babble. If your ebook is for an advanced user, while it is prudent to provide basics, an overly long explanation of them would not be useful.

It takes a bit of time to get an e-book designed and written but eventually it will get finished. Then there is a whole list of other questions to consider like: Where do I promote it? What do I charge? How do I get past myself to believing that someone might actually want to buy my book? These are just some of the unanswered questions that popped up for me. What I learned and would like to share with you is ‘take it one step at a time.’ Talk to others that have created an ebook and see what they did to promote etc.

Have a good friend read your material to see if it is a smooth read and makes sense. Ask another friend to run your ebook through a spell and grammar check and modify what needs to be modified to honor the flow of the book. With the tools available on our computers these days, anyone that is even marginally gifted with language can serve in the role as editor; a professional editor is no longer necessary.

Added value is a powerful way to sell a product on the internet. Be sure offer something that adds value to the dollars spent to your potential buyers Maybe offer up a free chapter along with some other gift(s). Even the most established authors of the hard copy book world need to and do offer a free chapter or some kind of trailer when they are marketing their books on the internet. Extra gifts and added value are an important marketing strategy on the internet.

Add a sign up box for a newsletter so that you can send these people further information from you. A newsletter, if well handled, can be part of your added value strategy (by offering useful information to your subscribers) as well as giving you the opportunity to develop a relationship with your subscribers for future releases of other products.

Create a limited time special offer with clear and concise dates. Allow some of your purchasers to acquire your ebook at a discounted price so that you can begin to develop a following to your work. This will serve you in the word of mouth ‘viral marketing’ aspect. There is no marketing strategy more powerful then a happy customer or client telling their friends.

Above all else, be very accurate, open and honest in all you do. People will pick up on your level of authenticity and integrity and it will determine if your customers wish to continue a relationship with you. A single happy repeat customer is worth far more then ten one time unhappy customers.

Last but not least, create from a place of passion and all the other concepts and questions will fall into place for your amazing ebook.

Peace and Love
Wayne

Every once in a while a healthy thoughtful mind needs to go on a tear about something and boy have I been on one lately… I’ve tried my best to keep it to myself and change my thinking but as the Law of Attraction demands, it keeps growing. So it’s time to let it out and take a look at it. For pineapple’s sake girl! Just say it!!!

Why is it that we as a culture still fall for the ‘quick fix’ mentality that has been so prevalent the last couple of decades? Are we really that gullible? Or is it that we are in so much of a hurry that we don’t stop and think it through; or perhaps a really bad case of wishful naïve thinking?

It doesn’t matter if we are talking our spiritual journey, our personal journey, our financial journey, building relationships or anything other thing – it takes time, commitment and effort to learn, grow and understand!!

So many people seem to always be looking for the snake oil that will make life perfect –and there are huge numbers of marketers out there ready, willing and chomping at the bit to sell them that snake oil!

We live in a physical dimension! Every manifestation no matter what it is has an action – probably many actions – required to finish the manifestation. Even if I won the lottery, I would probably have to buy the ticket and then I would definitely have to go collect my winnings. I will never fall out of the ceiling and land on my head. Even if it did, I would still have to get up, pick up the money and put it somewhere…

It simply doesn’t make sense to me that we all believe in instant and effortless fixes. There are inspired actions that can feel effortless and they are still actions that could feel effortful under different circumstances.

Here’s an example:

Wayne and I are co-founders of the internet community called Powerful Intentions. If you are interested in Law of Attraction, manifestation or the movie ‘The Secret’ you’ve probably heard of us and if you haven’t you probably want to. Powerful Intentions played a big role in the launching and the viral marketing of The Secret and therefore, we are counted among that number.

We absolutely love The Secret; it is energizing, up lifting and has helped many people to change their lives in ways they never could before. Gosh, the principles of the Law of Attraction (which is what The Secret presents in laymen’s terms) have given Wayne and I a way of life we could never have even dreamed of fifteen years ago so we are eternally grateful to this kind of work.

The truthful thing to point out here is that it is those who have taken the time, committed themselves and made the effort required to have successfully made the LOA information work for them. Since Powerful Intentions hosts The Secret forum, we get to watch hundreds of hopeful people flock to the forum every week, most expecting a quick fix to all their challenges and to have their dream come true next week, because they are after all following the steps. We also get to watch almost the same number of people give up in frustration and defeat because their every whim hadn’t manifested the very next week and it wasn’t even possible to begin with!!

Sadly, this is in part due to The Secret movie itself. The presentation of the Law of Attraction information, while up lifting and energizing, alludes to the idea that you will have instant success if you follow the steps. We believe there should be a disclaimer at the beginning of the movie telling viewers that the information presented is the equivalent to a kindergarten level of learning and that far more understanding is necessary to reap the benefits in any powerful way.

If only it was that easy and it’s not so why keep lying about it?

And why do people keep accepting those lies?

The promise of a quick fix is a widely used marketing ploy that really irritates me because not only is it a lie, it discourages people leaving many to feel less then adequate since they couldn’t reproduce what was promised to them if they just bought this or practiced that. The last thing our culture needs is less self esteem.

This false promise is prevalent in so many markets that it is astounding that more people haven’t caught on yet. I left Network Marketing for this very reason – promises of instant success that left people feeling inadequate. I’ve read massive amounts of internet marketing material that make promises that are so bold, I can’t believe they get away with it; always alluding to the idea that if it didn’t work for you in the first week then you must not have tried hard enough…

Don’t get me wrong here: I believe everything and anything is possible. What I don’t believe is that instantaneous results are possible for most folks. It would serve us all to begin looking at life as constantly going to college and really putting the necessary effort into learning each new skill (the principles of the Law of Attraction are a skill set!) we choose to learn. Those who take that approach, always succeed in whatever they are trying to do.

Wayne and I are working on a number of projects and a few books. We’ve been told that it will take us longer to achieve what we want to achieve since we insist on telling the truth about things. We can’t in good conscious tell it any other way – to us, it’s not in integrity to lead people to believe something we know is not true. We will always tell the truth about that…

If I could change the world, this is where I would start. I would begin to adjust the expectations of people to help them get back to a place where we took pride in the development of a skill; to move away from the idea of fast food, fast answers and instant success strategies. Who knows, maybe I will get the chance to help this one along one day.

Happy, truthful trails!

Kat