There goes 23 minutes and 42 seconds of my life.

This morning I had a rude awakening.  I was writing an article about some twitter do’s and don’ts and had just finished editing it.

So of course I go to login to TaggZilla and schedule the blog post in my WordPress.  When I go to the page it gives me the nasty greeting “account suspended”.

“So what the hell happened?”  I asked myself.  I’m looking at my financial statement and I see I paid the bill just two weeks ago.

So I login to the billing section of my Host Gator account and it says it zero dollars due.  Now I’m really confused and getting frustrated because I have to waste time calling in.

So I go ahead and call HostGator and get the next piece of good news…it’s a nine minute wait to talk to a customer service rep.

After holding I talk with Mike who informs me it’s not my fault.

Apparently their billing system isn’t working.  So even though I was seeing zero dollars due there was actually an invoice past-due.

So I ended up getting it paid and the account turned back on.

I only had to sit on hold and talk to them for 23 minutes and 42 seconds.  Now I can get mad but I like to have a positive self talk.

So I asked myself how I could reframe the situation.

One thing Mike did tell me is that they’re migrating to their own in-house billing system which they had custom-built.  So they have been using a third-party billing system and I don’t why it just broke now but apparently it did.

He says everything should be back to normal next month and no service outages but to make sure and check closely.

So the only silver lining I see is Host Gator having their own in-house billing system which should be more efficient and avoid any future pains and waste of time.

During the 30 day challenge a free and a one dollar HostGator trial was offered.  Maybe this is what caused problems because Mike told me there was an absolute mass of web hosting accounts which were getting it for free because of the billing system snafu.

So they had an extremely high call volume due to having to shut all these accounts down and I’m sure people wanting to get their sites back.

This is one of those instances where it was actually believable when the recorded message said “due to experiencing extremely high call volume your hold time is 9 minutes”.

So I got it taken care of and hopefully next month everything will be smooth and without any website hosting issues.  Did you get tangled up in this HostGator situation?

Leave your comment because I’ll be interested to see if I’m the only one who suffered this fate or if they really did have a billing issue.

Inner City Youth Magazine Salesman - I was minding my own business on Thursday, November 13 doing work on this very TaggZilla blog.  The news about YouTube PPC had just broken and I was writing the article.

And then my quiet focus was interrupted by the doorbell ringing.  There it was again.

I wasn’t expecting anybody so who could it be?

I got to the door and it was a twentysomething black woman.  I believe her her name was Tara.

She said she was from Cincinnati, Ohio and was working for this program for inner-city youth which allows single young adults to travel around and improve their communication skills, outgoingness, and salesmanship.

I soon learned this was code for selling magazine subscriptions. Instantly the image of Orlando Jones in Office Space movie doing the sales pitch to the computer programmer guys flashed into my mind.

She proceeded to tell me about how this program works and what she needed from me was my “vote”.

I had no idea what she was talking about but she was quick to point out it was nothing political.  I guess since the presidential election of Barack Obama last week she wanted to head off any confusion.

Maybe some people think there’s a late vote.

We were talking for probably 3-4 minutes and I still had no idea what she wanted from me.  What is this mysterious “vote” she wants from me?

I got past this nagging curiosity and listened to what she had to say.  I figured I’d already been interrupted and taken time out of my day so I might as well improve her sales pitch since I am a copywriter.

I proceeded to ask her how she got involved with this program.  I also questioned her accent because it seemed like she had a Texan accent but had stated she was from Ohio.

I definitely know people from Ohio and she had nothing of their accent nor any trace of a northeastern accent.

I was impressed by her ability to maintain eye contact and her quick response to my question which indicated to me she was telling the truth.

Apparently her cousin had died and because of this her favorite aunt chose to move to Dallas and offered to allow Tara to come with her.

I’ve read a couple books on interviewing an interrogation and so based on her answers and mannerisms her credibility and believability levels were very high with me.

Now I had some basic information I could work with.

One thing I immediately told her was giving me a bunch of extraneous details about how young adults from all over the nation including New York, Wisconsin, California and other places were in the program was useless information to me.

Her goal is to hook me in and get me to subscribe to one of the magazines.

Anything else is a waste of time because there’s no way we could become friends since she was set to be in New Mexico two days from now.

This group travels all over the country and is not coming back through this way.

But the personal story she told me about the tragic death of her cousin and the subsequent move to Dallas was a very good piece of information to include in her sales pitch.  I told her to highlight her personal story more in the initial introduction when she’s talking to people.

This will build a better bond between me and her and strengthen my desire to help her because of this tragic situation and the action she’s taking to overcome it.

She also mentioned there are only 60 young adults in the program nationwide.

So out of thousands of applicants she was one of the magnificent 60 chosen for this year-long journey.

This is obviously very prestigious to be selected and something people she’s talking to can rally around to further like and trust her.

I told her to emphasize this prestigiousness and exclusivity in her pitch.

We went over the exact words to say.  She asked me to repeat them three different times so immediately I knew she was listening and was likely to put this into practice.

Of course listening to someone is the highest form of flattery and I highly recommend it.

Each subscription she sells builds points for her.  There’s a corresponding dollar value given at the end of the program for the amount of points accumulated and she planned to use these dollars for her college tuition.

Whether this is true or not I can’t know 100%.  But she didn’t have the feel of a stripper so I believe the college story to be the truth.

The last thing I told her to improve upon was to be clearer with her offer and get to it sooner.

Bottom line, she’s selling magazine subscriptions.

I presented the objection I didn’t need or want a magazine subscription.

Without flinching she said “that’s okay there’s a halfway house for battered women where we can donate your subscription”.

I could tell she had done this many times and was very good at her pitch.  It was very polished.

With a couple of tweaks she could definitely improve her conversion.

Of course this approach won’t work for all of her prospects because there are four different personality types.

So you must tailor your message depending on the personality type of the person you’re speaking to and how they like to be communicated with.

I’m a bottom-line kind of guy so just give me a little that about your story and then quickly get to the point.

I don’t need a bunch of useless and inane details about the story.

At the end of our meeting I had planned to donate $10 to her in cash.  She said the minimum subscription they had was $30.

But there is always a way and I told her to wait there and just put her receipt book away.

Since I respected her sales pitch and her desire to be better I just gave her $10 to do with what she pleased.

I always appreciate when people get out there and take action to better themselves.

How do you feel about door-to-door salesman?  Do you see them as a nuisance and just hide without opening the door?

They’re not going away anytime soon and at some point in your life you definitely going to have to deal with them.

I’ll look forward to seeing your comments and joining in the conversation.

YouTube PPC… it seems like a natural progression that the googlers have applied the mega-successful Google Adwords algorithm and engine to their YouTube site.

And yet it came as a bit of a surprise to me.  Maybe it’s the timing of it because they’ve been talking about making more money off of advertising revenue from YouTube it seems like forever now and yet nothing major has been done.

They just released Google friend connect a couple months ago. And Facebook Connect recently came out. Maybe this is a response to the ever escalating internet arms race.

But make no mistake because this is major.

YouTube is the number two search engine in the world and assuming they’ve applied their Adwords model and algorithm to the site it should be a huge success and major boon to the Google bottom line.

Over 13 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute and countless millions of searches for video content are done on the YouTube site every day.

So the ability to have sponsored video results at the top and along the right side are massive and I’m sure the googlers are going to take maximum advantage of it.

Ads have previously only been shown at the bottom of certain videos for those accounts who were publishers.

Will this be a return to the AdWords days circa 2004 may be even circa 2001?  When it was fairly easy to run AdWords campaign and get decent results unlike today where you almost have to optimize each page for one keyword same as you do for SEO.

In case you don’t know Google has blended their unpaid algorithm (and many of those factors which allow you to rank highly for a keyword) into their AdWords algorithm in the form of quality score.

So it’s a real hybrid doing pay per click marketing with Google and much tougher than it was just a couple years ago and prices have risen.

Facebook has a pay per click engine and I do know some people doing very well at this by demographic targeting.

But being able to target YouTube videos by keywords and paying per click has vast possibilities.  And the minimum bids are the same as the AdWords system but maybe some of the major keywords unattainable due to cost on google results would be affordable at $.10/click in YouTube results.

At least in the early days of Youtube pay per click. Once it catches on and marketers figure it out prices will rise.

Early adopters like you and me will get the benefit of ultra cheap clicks and conversions.

I’d recommend starting with them sooner than later because Fortune 500 companies who have been doing TV commercials will see this as an extension of TV and potentially cheaper.

So I anticipate the big boys getting in here very soon. Because unlike TV commercials they can easily track their ROI here and better target their commercials.

You do the math.

With video it’s theoretically much easier to get your powerful message across and connect much more with your prospect than a little classified ad showing on the side of Google’s results.

Plus you get the advantage of an interesting thumbnail image which will draw the human eye instead of just 25, 35, 35 characters on three lines of text in a Google ad and a URL.

So it seems you get an adwords ad with a thumbnail image.  At least I’m assuming the sponsor results will show similar to the regular YouTube results but the service is so new we don’t have any data yet.

Here’s how it looks when you’re logged into your youtube account and you click on ‘Get Started Now’ from the initial youtube ppc screen:

As you can see it is almost exactly the same as the adwords system. Also the minimum bid is the same $.10 per click.

And it’s cool when you put a number into the daily budget it auto calculates how much your max spend in a month would be. In the picture the maximum spent would be $600.

And then finally, if you’re already connected to your adwords account everything’s good. If not, as you can see from the pic below it will help you do so.

I wonder if the stats will show in your youtube account or be mingled with your adwords account?

For tracking purposes when I’m running campaigns I’d want them to be separate. If they’re mingled I suggest setting up a YouTube only campaign within your adwords account.

Let me know what you think and any info you have not contained in this article. Remember, the comments give a followed link back to your website.

Yesterday you and I talked about the conversation I had with my friend Bryant on exiting the corporate rat race part 1.

Many people I talk to want to quit their job and would love nothing more than to “fire their boss”.

Unfortunately, like most things in life, when you don’t have a plan and no proven, systematic blueprint for how to successfully exit your job you don’t break the cycle.

And you end up either having to get your job back or take a new job within 30 to 60 days.

One of the biggest problems is the culture in America where we save less than 1% or even a negative amount of our income every month.

The last statistic I saw said the average American would be bankrupt within 45 days of losing their job.  With the current economic recession we’re in right now that number may be under 30 days.

So what do you do?  I promised you some specific tips yesterday so now I’m going to get into those.

The first, best and easiest way to exit your job is to make an offer to your boss.  I’m going to assume you have a good relationship with your boss or at the very least your job performance is rated very highly.

In other words your company likes the work you do and you’re bringing in more profits than the salary you cost them.

The easiest way to exit your job is to go to your boss and tell him you want to become a contract consultant.  Basically, you’ll be a general contractor working out of your house or whereever you choose providing the same functions and services you do right now in your job.

And you want to explain why it’s good for the company so your boss and the final decision maker will me much more likely to accept your offer.  Because as a contractor you don’t get any benefits nor do you take up space in one of their cubes.

So even if they’re paying you the exact same salary they save lots of money by not having to cover all of the fringe benefits.

Explain it to them in the ways it benefits them and you’re far more likely to get what you want. Basic negotiating 101.

Now of course you may want to negotiate a lesser salary in exchange for lesser hours because if you’re still working the same amount of hours your gains have only been minimal by exiting your job.

Two of the biggest savings are your morning and afternoon drive commute time, lunch drivetime, and pop-in interruptions from coworkers coming into your cubicle.

Depending on your company your boss and/or the final decision-maker/company owner may reject this arrangement.

Another option you have is to do work for the company’s clients on your own time.  Of course, I’m talking about complementary work.

The company is going to be very unlikely to approve your work for their clients when its work they’re doing and would take money out of the company’s coffers.

But maybe your company offers accounting services to its clients and you want to tackle some of the basic legal issues for those clients.  Or you’re going to provide compliance services based on the accounting work your company is providing.

This scenario would be a win-win for you and your company.  Because you get to provide a complementary service which doesn’t take anything away from what the company is providing to the client.

And the client will further love your former company because they are getting more value as well.

The possibilities for this type of arrangement are virtually infinite.

Just make sure you clear this with your company because you don’t want any kind of legal entanglements or noncompete issues to a rise.

The whole goal is to keep your income steady.  Any kind of injunction or legal entanglements will definitely hurt your goal of steady income (and could take you into a big negative with legal expenses).

Another option you can attempt if the first two don’t work is to contact competitors of the current company you work for and tell them what you’ve been doing for your current company and offer them option one.  Offer to be a contractor consultant for them.

Another good option if none of those is workable is to maintain your job and start putting your services out there for hire.  You can post on places like Craigslist.org, tell your professional contacts and local contacts you’re taking on new clients, and put feelers out for some side client work.

Once you have some client income your schedule is going to get loaded working a full-time job and doing client work.

At this point you can then decide how long to keep your job or go ahead and exit your job once you have those billable hours to an income level comfortable for you.

There are some other tactics you could test but those are quite a few to get you started and get your creative mind working.

I’ll definitely have more updates on this topic soon.

Leave your comments about any successful transitions you’ve done out of a job or techniques and tactics my article has triggered for you.  I’ll look forward to the collaboration of helping you on your entrepreneurial journey.

I was talking on the phone yesterday with my friend Bryant about a couple of projects and newsletters we’re working on.

After getting caught up and updated on how things were going the conversation turned to a new project he was very excited about.

He’s been focused on doing a lot of personal growth lately and searching for his true purpose in life and I could tell he really believed in this new project.

Like me he hates having corporate jobs and working in a cube.

Thankfully, I’ve been able to make enough money from my entrepreneurial efforts to pay my bills and haven’t had a corporate job since late 2006. My local business mastermind group has been instrumental in this.

He recently quit his corporate job I believe it was in October of 2008 or maybe September.  Either way it was within the last 3 months.

So we were talking about the pitfalls of corporate America, the office politics, the depressing nature of working in a cube and feeling like “just another worker bee drone”, when the conversation turned to getting out of the corporate rat race.

So we started to talk about how to exit your job.

There’s certainly a process involved and one of the biggest mistakes people make when considering this life-changing decision is leaping off the cliff before they’re ready and with no parachute.

I don’t know what your personal situation is.  I don’t know what your bills are or whether you have a family to support.

I do know there’s a 99.9% chance you have at least some monthly bills which must be paid.

Despite what the gurus on the Internet and on TV will tell you, having your own business is hard work and there is a ramp up time before you start to see profits.

So the biggest mistake I see people making is being unable to bridge the gap between quitting your job and having the profits from your business role in.

There is that lull in income which takes many people down.

I’ve talked to many people who quit their job and joined an MLM or network marketing company, started their own website business, and even a few who started up a bricks and mortar retail business.

Two of the things they find and have told me about is:

–> they’re working longer hours than ever… way more than they did at their job
–> their bills are piling up with no income to pay them

Inevitably, they end up having to go back and take a day job as they didn’t have enough savings to pay the bills until their business started bringing in profits and they could use those profits to pay the bills.

There is a better way.

In talking with my friend we discussed a few potential ways to make this happen without ever disrupting your income stream.

There are a few creative ideas where you can secure your own little “golden parachute” and have the best of both worlds.

You can secure your income or at least close to the income you are making before quitting your job.  And you can free up enough of your time to start building your own business.  Which is what you want…to have an asset you own and can be collecting money off of every month and/or sell at anytime you desire.

In part 2 tomorrow I’ll go into some of the specific strategies we talked about our phone call on how you can quit your corporate America cube job.