A couple months ago I was presented with an opportunity that many people would think I’m absolutely crazy not to take.

A very high leadership position at a $26 million (will likely surpass $40 million this year) company that is at the top of their industry and has some of the best marketing minds around right there in the office. If you are in the internet marketing space… you have most definitely heard of this company.

The position was pretty darn good pay (six figures w/ benefits, bonuses, etc.) … a great work atmosphere… a great location… and would have been world class networking and learning.

This opportunity came at me through a reference from a close contact (and friend) of mine in the internet marketing industry… and I’m completely flattered that he has the confidence in me to put his reputation on the line by recommending me for the position… and that the CEO of the company had the confidence in me to go the length with me through the interview process.

You know what, opportunities are funny.

Right off the bat the word "opportunity" is a positive word to most people. Most people look at opportunities as something for the taking… if it’s an opportunity it must be something that you desire… otherwise it wouldn’t be an opportunity. Right?

Up until this opportunity I only had one definition of opportunity in my mind. If an opportunity is awesome… you take it. If you don’t take it… it fades away and doesn’t have the chance to benefit you a whole lot in the future.

The Struggle…

However, when I was pondering about taking this opportunity and moving my wife and I across the country I really had a struggle.

I mean… this is a once in a lifetime job offer (at least that’s what my 25 year old mind told me) that would give me great experience, excellent connections, and possibly a head start in my career. On the other hand, I’m an entrepreneur and am seeing my businesses steadily grow toward my goals… and that of course would be put on the back burner if I were to take the position.

To help get some perspective on this life changing opportunity I called on someone in my network that I trust… and that has a ton of life experience in his pocket. While we chatted outside of a Starbucks about the opportunity and life… he said something that was so simple… but so powerful.

While we were chatting he could sense it in my voice that I was definitely struggling with a decision that really would be much easier for most people. Give up my business (or at least put them on hold) that is growing the way I had envisioned it would and stay in Oregon which I love… or head to sunny Florida and take this awesome position as the head of this company’s largest marketing division… that was my struggle.

But what he said was this:

"Sometimes opportunities are meant to not be taken. Sometimes they come about to force you to really evaluate where you are… where you want to be… and where your priorities are."

So simple… and pretty darn powerful. To me, this was huge because instead of putting pressure on me to make the decision I thought was "right"… I dug deep and figured out whether the opportunity would help me get where I truly wanted to be in life, my career, and everything else. That’s it.

Long story short. .. I ended up not taking that opportunity (I know… crazy huh?). Deep down inside there was something that just didn’t feel right… and I knew my heart really was in growing my business and leveraging the connections I’ve made here in the Northwest. In the end… it really was a simple decision that I analyzed way too much.

So, next time you’re faced with an opportunity… just remember… some opportunities are meant to NOT be taken… they merely are there so you can evaluate your life and find where your priorities really lay.

Popularity: 62% [?]

Are you an email marketing ninja?

Well, take a look at how your email open rates stack up against industry averages for the month of April (and how they stack up against my own open rates for myself and my clients). No matter what people say… email marketing is NOT DEAD.

For spammers and people who cram offers down subscribers throats everyday… ya, maybe email marketing ain’t what it used to be.

But, for us marketers who focus on building relationships with our subscribers… email marketing is still one of the best ways to communicate with your audience and compel them to take certain actions.

Here Are Email Open Rate Averages for April 2008

According to Aweber (one of the top subscription email/autoresponder services… and yes, that is an affiliate link ;-), Thursdays between 2 and 3 pm were the time when the open rates were the best across their network.

In their article , Aweber shows these open rate statistics for April 2008.

• Average Open Rate in April = 13.6%
• Highest Open Rate Day was Thursday with 14.52%
• Lowest Open Rate Day was Saturday with 12.09%
• The Highest Hour Open Rate was Thursday between 2-3pm with 19.1%

Anyhow, this backs up the stance that Tuesdays and Thursdays are the best days to send email according to open rate stats. That’s when I sent my own emails and when I send my clients email newsletters. Those two days have always produced a higher open rate for me and my clients.

Consistently Beating the Email Open Rate Averages…

As I wrote in an earlier article about email open rates , I’ve consistently boosted open rates in my own email newsletters and newsletters for my clients to around 19 - 24% every time (almost every time ;-). In fact, we just sent out a newsletter on Wednesday this week just to retest the results… and so far we are already at an almost 18% open rate and the email went out less than 24 hours ago. So, I think this one will get right around the 20% rate once everyone on the list has a chance to check out the email.

The internet is becoming overloaded with information and people are having a tough time deciding where they should get their information from… so they go where they trust and where they feel they have a bond.

If you use your newsletter more as a relationship builder than a pitch fest, I can guarantee you that people will actually look forward to your emails.

Mix your emails with unexpected elements, humor, high quality content with no strings attached… and watch your open rates climb.

Use email newsletters to build relationships and you’ll see the results paid out in higher reader interactivity and more profits in the end.

Hey, let me know how your email open rates are going. I’m always curious to see what other people are doing find out why their results are the way they are (whether good or bad).

Popularity: 85% [?]

Hmmm…

I was doing a bit of research today and submitted to "get on" a newsletter about Writing White Papers from a very reputable guy… and best selling author.

When…

I came across this interesting (and compelling??) Captcha phrase hosted by the icebase server… which I’ve known to be from Cooleremail (could be other email providers on that domain, but not that I know of).

Here ya go.

Well… lol, the picture speaks for itself.

I actually chuckled when I saw it and really had no problem with it at all. But, what about the site visitors who stumble on a captcha phrase that says "orgasm "… and they have to physically type in "orgasm" to get to the next page??

To me, that could be a place where potential new newsletter readers jump off because they are either offended or think they were forwarded to some kind of x rated site.

It’s all about user experience … and to me, for the professional market that this guy’s website serves… this could damage his image in some peoples eyes.

Once again, I had no problem with it and thought it was funny enough to pass along… but I can guarantee you that there are some people that this could offend and "turn off" (like my play on word there?) to the site’s services.

Just something to think about.

But, the question does need to be asked:

What does happen when I press the button?

Popularity: 72% [?]

I’m in the tech scene as far as figuring out how to use technology for better and more effective marketing goes… I’m not much of a "techie" when it comes to digging into code to figure things out.

I like to know a bit about the technology I’m working with whenever I use it for marketing purposes… simply for the reason that when you know something and how it works… you might be able to take it to another level with just a few changes or additions that you wouldn’t have thought about if you didn’t know how the thing worked in the first place.

Anyhow, today I was doing a bit of research on flash video because I want to start using branded flash players on my own sites… and on the sites of my clients so we can provide a better user experience for our viewers and to get a few more capabilities out of the video that simply posting on Youtube /Revver /Viddler , etc. don’t let me do.

Well, I came across the next evolution in online video…

AND IT’S COMPLETELY AMAZING!

This technology is truly crazy as heck… and my head is spinning with ways to use it for marketing purposes (once it gets a bit more mainstream… and less expensive!).

Interactive 360 Immersive Full Motion Video

Check out the video below of this stuff. Once the video starts and loads… you can use your mouse to move around the video (360 degrees spherical) while the video is IN MOTION. That means you can look around… but also up, down, diagonal… any direction just like you are IN the video.

This is big time "Immersive video" that gives a whole new meaning to "user experience". This technology is by the same guys who created the Google Street View technology.

There are a bunch of other videos like these that are amazing. Check ‘em out and let me know your thoughts on how this technology will change the online video game for marketing and user experience.

Popularity: 86% [?]

Wow!

Today has been a real pain in the @ss.

I woke up this morning to see probably about 15 emails showing "comments" for one of my websites . Usually this is a good thing… but this time it was 100% comment spam for online casinos and poker sites.

Comment spam on Wordpress isn’t a new problem. On a usual day my sites will probably get one or two spam comments that make it to the moderation cue through Askimet.

But…

This morning all of these got through into the moderation cue and of course I got emails notifying me to "moderate the comment".

Okay, that was this morning when I deleted 15-20 emails from Gmail about the comments and marked them as spam in my Wordpress 2.5.1 install.

Fast forward to this afternoon.

Here’s a screen shot I took a few minutes ago of my gmail account (after I’ve probably deleted 30-50 spam comments for online casinos that made it into the moderation cue).

Of course, after I took the screen shot I deleted those and went into WP admin to see what I could find out about the damn comment spammers.

• Every comment is from a different IP
• Every comment is for online gambling of some sort (except one that is for free ringtones)
• Every comment is in the same format (of course done by a spam bot)
• And… every comment is a real pain in my ass right now until I get my Wordpress install to screen spam comments a little tighter

Anyhow, I got to looking at the comments to see why they aren’t getting screened by Askimet and saw a few interesting things… that are spurring on a bit more thinking on my part as far as if they’ve gotten into my WP code or not (I’ll let you know).

Here’s an example of what the comments are looking like:

video poker strategies
http://url | 206.255.14.39

casino gratuites en francais…

Play casino no deposit play free baccarat…

They are all in that same format but with different verbage and in different languages.  The interesting thing is that the comments aren’t leading to a URL other than the "http://url" which does take you to www.url.com which then pops up an ad or two.

What’s Interesting Is…

I know, I’m wasting my time writing a post about this… but it’s really interesting from an SEO standpoint… and whether or not they have gotten into my code and placed hidden links somewhere.

Hey, have you seen this recently?  If so, what’s your take on this format of Wordpress comment spam which is simply banking on bold keyword phrases with no link back to a site… except the http://url site??

I’d love to hear your comments… in the mean time I better check out my Wordpress code to make sure there isn’t any spammy code sneaked into my them.

Damn spammers… I’d love to see what this person is making per day off of this campaign… and how they are making their money.

Oh, by the way… there’s now another 24 spam comments since I started writing this post (about 15 minutes ago).

Popularity: 41% [?]

I’ve heard the term “lifestyle entrepreneurship” chatted about quite a bit recently. Namely, from great entrepreneurs and bloggers like:

• Tim Ferris
• AnyWired
• Yanik Silver
• etc.

To me, “lifestyle entrepreneurship” is all about creating a business (or businesses) that allows you to truly lead the life you want to live.

For me, that life is one where I’m able to make enough income to make it so I don’t HAVE to work everyday (although, us entrepreneurs tend to love what we do… so it’s not work), where I can spend more time traveling with my wife and family, where I can technically not work for a week and still have that income coming in whether I work or not, where I’m able to golf during the week anytime I want, and where I’m truly making a difference in other people’s lives.

That’s me. That’s why I am an entrepreneur and do what I do.

Am I In My Ideal “Lifestyle Entrepreneur” Position Yet?

Right now… probably not. I DO believe that I’m on my way and will be there pretty damn soon… but I’m still trying to work my way out of my previous mindset of what it is to be an “entrepreneur”.

I graduated from college with degrees in Marketing and Entrepreneurship (yes… that’s a real degree). In college we were taught what it is like to run a traditional company… with the “entrepreneur” working tirelessly for the rest of his/her life to have that “freedom” we all look for as entrepreneurs.

After college I carried that mindset forward… and even worse… I carried the mindset that “If I can do it… I’ll just do it myself… heck, it’ll save me a ton of money”. After 2 years of “entrepreneurship” doing it “myself”… I began to look at what I had created.

Here’s what my “entrepreneurial” efforts created me:

• 15 hour+ days (no biggie… I love what I do so it’s not USUALLY work)
• A decent income… but not all that much
• Trading time for dollars
• Burn out just around the corner… I was doing EVERYTHING myself… EVERYTHING
• A devalued impression of what my time was worth to myself and my clients
• Lack of clarity on what I really wanted out of life

Wow… sounds like quite the “entrepreneurs lifestyle” huh?

We As Entrepreneurs Need To Do One Thing…

I’m trying to keep this post on the shorter side… so I’ll sum up what the heck I’m getting at.

We as entrepreneurs need to figure out why we are entrepreneurs… and what we really want out of our businesses deep down in our core beings. More work, less free time, and less value on your time isn’t what I wanted out of entrepreneurship. That’s a load of crap that I for some reason let take over my brain.

So, to get what we really want… we need to go after “lifestyle entrepreneurship” rather than the “entrepreneur lifestyle”. To me, the “entrepreneur lifestyle” almost has a bad connotation to it right off the bat. When I think of that term, I picture what I had been doing for the last 2 years… not much of a lifestyle.

However, “lifestyle entrepreneurship” on the other hand is just that… you form your entrepreneurship efforts based off of the lifestyle you want. Your lifestyle isn’t directed by your entrepreneurship efforts. Thin line… but in my mind it’s quite a big difference.

For me, I’m not quite where I want to be yet… but I know I’m on the verge. One of my favorite things to do is hear fellow entrepreneurs tell their stories of when they finally created their reality “lifestyle entrepreneurship” goal.

Let’s hear it… are you after “lifestyle entrepreneurship”? If so, have you reached it… when did you finally realize that you reached it?

One Last Thought…

Money is cool… but lifestyle is better. My goal in life is to use entrepreneurship to help me live the best lifestyle possible in this one life we get here on Earth… and to meet the most amazing people I can. That’s it. Pretty simple really…

A Collection of Great Articles on The Subject…

• Check out the article over at AnyWired … excellent collection of articles and resources on the topic.

Popularity: 83% [?]