Free Glide

Almost everyone has been fired from a job, and just about everyone has a story to go along with it. Annabelle Gurwitch, the actor and screen writer, decided to capitalize on this fact by compiling and editing a collection of humorous “down-sizing” stories in her book Fired! Tales of the Canned, Canceled, Downsized & Dismissed. After being fired by the media icon (and consequently her idol) Woody Allen, Annabelle decided to take her story to the publishers- along with several other tales from well known actors and media personal, including Bill Maher, Tim Allen, Tate Donovan (actor and director in The O.C.), Harry Shearer (actor in This is Spinal Tap), Dana Gould (writer for The Simpsons), Bob Saget and more.

The book is divided into five chapters: The Job So Terrible You Can Only Hope to Be Fired, The Firing You Didn’t See Coming, The Time You Deserved to be Fired, The Time Getting Fired Leads You to Something Better, and The Time You Had to Fire Yourself. Each chapter is as witty as the last, and will keep you reading and laughing through till the next. And with over a dozen “tales of the canned” in each chapter, you will have plenty of laughing to enjoy.

Many of the true stories found in this book are so funny, they will have you laughing out loud. The story of Paul Feig (director of Arrested Development and The Office) losing his Ronald McDonald gig because of a magical comparison between a rubber chicken and Chicken McNuggets he made to a group of school kids while wearing the clown suit will probably remain with me for the rest of my life. In another favorite story, Jeff Garlin (actor in Curb Your Enthusiasm) explains how he was fired for throwing a bowl of Fruity-Pebbles at a hotel wall… and all just because they stuck. Larry Charles (writer for Senifeld) reminds us that Taxi companies should never offer employment to a teen-age kid who has just acquired his license that very day; wrecking his cab before he even got it out of the parking lot. Stories like these are worth the price of this book alone.

To round each story off, the book also includes “Fired Facts”: brief and amusing factoids about being fired, and the workplace in general. For example: “Increased risk of heart attack faced by employer firing an employee in the week after wielding the ax: 100%”. What a great way to end your career - with your former boss in the hospital!

While Fired! Tales of the Canned, Canceled, Downsized & Dismissed is entertaining (being fired with the line “Take that hanger off your head, you idiot!” may be the best thing that has ever happened to me), it completely fails to connect with the reader. Each story falls into one of two major camps: meaningless high school jobs that no one regrets losing, and glamorous Hollywood jobs that, while interesting, are entirely foreign to the average reader.

In the introduction to this book, Annabelle Gurwitch concludes “So you were fired. Welcome to the club. We’ve been waiting for you.” However, this book fails to present any “club” you or I are ever likely to be a member of. While almost anyone can related with being fired from a job, the stories in this book are quite different from any workplace axing I have experienced. And unless you have felt the horror of losing a job because your character was shot in the last episode, you will probably be unable to relate as well.

If you are looking for a light, entertaining read to get you through the work week, I would recommend Fired! Tales of the Canned, Canceled, Downsized & Dismissed. Though the book will probably not help you reminisce about jobs long past, that may be for the best. What better way to forget about your own “down-sizing” experiences that to hear the stories of a celebrity with their head on the chopping block.

Jeff Beck is an entrepreneur and founder of several notable companies, including the Book Price Comparison website CompareBook.com. As a student of the world around him, Jeff seeks understanding through history and reasoning.

Visit CompareBook.com to read reviews, find similar titles, and search for the lowest possible price for Fired! Tales of the Canned, Canceled, Downsized, & Dismissed and other great books.

I do not recommend that you create your own ebooks until you have successfully mastered selling affiliate and resale rights products.

The reasons I say this are:

* If you can’t sell affiliate or resale rights products you won’t be able sell your own products any more successfully.

* Creating your own ebooks will either take up a lot of your time or cost you money to get someone to write it for you.

* To create an ebook to professional standards you will need to learn a whole new set of skills, unless you want to spend more money and outsource this work.

I am not saying that you should not create your own ebooks, just the opposite, but you must get your timing right before embarking on a project like this. Would you want to get bogged down for a few months to produce an ebook before you even knew how to market it? If you never made many sales, you would never know why it flopped!

Did you fail because of:

* No demand for the product

* Poor quality of the product

* Product priced incorrectly

* Sales page was badly written

Many beginners give up at this stage, because they have fallen into this trap. You can eliminate all these unknowns by carefully selecting an appropriate affiliate product to promote, before going on to create your own products.

Ok, so the timing’s right, you have successfully marketed at least one affiliate program and now you’re ready to take the next step and create your own products.

Benefits Of Selling Your Own Products

* You get to keep 100% of the profits for all the products you sell

* Your product is unique and you have total control on how you market it

* Can start your own affiliate program and get others to sell your products

How Do I Go About Creating Content For My Own Ebook

Before you can even begin the creation process, you need to do your market research to confirm that there is a viable market for your product. I can’t teach you all about market research in this article, but here are some guidelines to help you on your way:

* Find out what’s already popular in your niche

* Go to Clickbank and see what’s selling and for how much

* Visit Amazon and see what their best sellers or movers are

* Don’t try and do something totally different, it’s far too risky

* What can you do with your product that will make it better than your competitors products

The first thing you need to do is get some help in the form of step by step instructions and coaching videos designed specifically for newbies.

Crab Cake & Pepper is more than a folksy yarn about a boy and his dog. It digs deeply into a ten-year-old boy’s psyche and brings us along for the ride of a lifetime, replete with family, a struggling friendship, rousing adventures, and a surplus of belly laughs.

Set in the rural backwoods of Pennsylvania in April, 1951, Crab Cake & Pepper sings with the love of nature and family. Jack “Pepper” Whelan Jr., one of five children, anticipates the opening of trout season with the glee found only in childhood. Along with his best friend, a bright, spirited border collie named Crab Cake, Pepper prepares for the big day by digging for nightcrawlers with the help of his mom’s soapy dishwater, and paying off his siblings to do his early morning barn chores. He’s ready to rise at dawn to beat the other anglers to his secret fishing hole, where he hopes to land the legendary monster trout known as Ol’ Uncle Louie.

Meanwhile, recently escaped convicts, “Crazy Eyes” Zitoulleo and “Tattoo” MacGrew, navigate toward the same fishing hole. Tipped off in prison, the bumbling duo overhears a tale of a metal box filled with stolen loot that rests at the bottom of the cold stream. To make matters worse, Pepper runs into Thursy Patterson, a boy with whom he’s shared an uneasy friendship. Thursy is quick to anger and ready to fight with little provocation. When he asks Pepper to join him for the big fishing event, Pepper squirms, unwilling to reveal his choice fishing spot.

A series of unfortunate events propel Pepper, Thursy, and Crab Cake into the midst of a manhunt, particularly after they witness the attempted drowning of a game warden. Their luck deteriorates as the boys are kidnapped by the desperate villains. These experiences draw Pepper and Thursy closer, where true friendship glimmers. Meanwhile, Crab Cake is bitten by a copperhead. The canine’s life hangs in the balance for days, threatening in the backdrop during the final thrilling fight between the foul buffoons and the plucky boys.

Mr. Weaver has a knack for creating believable, humorous, and endearing characters. His grasp of the backwoods dialect is adroitly captured. Childhood memories will float to the surface of readers’ minds as they follow through the woods and fields while the delightful border collie frolics in the background. The scenes between the boy and his dog are beautifully portrayed and emotive. When Crab Cake nears death, emotions not unlike those felt during Lassie Come Home will clog the throat of the most sophisticated reader.

Crab Cake & Pepper offers universal appeal for the adventure of a lifetime. Children of all ages will enjoy the ride.

Aaron Paul Lazar resides in Upstate New York with his wife, three daughters, two grandsons, mother-in- law, two dogs, and three cats. After writing in the early morning hours, he works as an electrophotographic engineer at NexPress Solutions Inc., part of Kodak’s Graphic Communications Group, in Rochester, New York. Additional passions include vegetable, fruit, and flower gardening; preparing large family feasts; photographing his family, gardens, and the breathtakingly beautiful Genesee Valley; cross-country skiing across the rolling hills; playing a distinctly amateur level of piano, and spending “time” with the French Impressionists whenever possible.

Although he adored raising his three delightful daughters, Mr. Lazar finds grandfathering his “two little buddies” to be one of the finest experiences of his life. Double Forte’, the first in the series, was published in January 2005. Upstaged, number two, is in production. With eight books under his belt, Mr. Lazar is currently working on the ninth, which features Gus LeGarde and his family. http://www.legardemysteries.com

It’s not true that everything that has been said has
already been written. Since that unfortunate axiom
came into use, the whole universe has changed.
Technology has changed, ideas have changed, and the
mindsets of entire nations have changed.

The fact is that this is the perfect time to write an
ebook. What the publishing industry needs are people
who can tap into the world as it is today - innovative
thinkers who can make the leap into the new millennium
and figure out how to solve old problems in a new way.
Ebooks are a new and powerful tool for original
thinkers with fresh ideas to disseminate information
to the millions of people who are struggling to figure
out how to do a plethora of different things.

Let’s say you already have a brilliant idea, and the
knowledge to back it up that will enable you to write
an exceptional ebook. You may be sitting at your
computer staring at a blank screen wondering, “Why?
Why should I go through all the trouble of writing my
ebook when it’s so impossible to get anything
published these days?

Well, let me assure you that publishing an ebook is
entirely different than publishing a book in print.
Let’s look at the specifics of how the print and cyber
publishing industry differ, and the many reasons why
you should take the plunge and get your fingers
tapping across those keyboards!

Submitting a print book to conventional publishing
houses or to agents is similar to wearing a hair shirt
24/7. No matter how good your book actually is, or how
many critique services and mentor writers have told
you that “you’ve got what it takes,” your submitted
manuscript keeps coming back to you as if it is a
boomerang instead of a valuable mine of information.

Perhaps, in desperation, you’ve checked out
self-publishing and found out just how expensive a
venture it can be. Most “vanity presses” require
minimal print runs of at least 500 copies, and even
that amount will cost you thousands of dollars. Some
presses’ minimal run starts at 1,000 to 2,000 copies.
And that’s just for the printing and binding. Add in
distribution, shipping, and promotional costs and -
well, you do the math. Even if you wanted to go this
route, you may not have that kind of money to risk.

Let’s say you already have an Internet business with a
quality website and a quality product. An ebook is one
of the most powerful ways to promote your business
while educating people with the knowledge you already
possess as a business owner of a specific product or
service.

For example, let’s say that you’ve spent the last
twenty-five years growing and training bonsai trees,
and now you’re ready to share your knowledge and
experience. An ebook is the perfect way to reach the
largest audience of bonsai enthusiasts.

Ebooks will not only promote your business - they will
help you make a name for yourself and your company,
and establish you as an expert in your field. You may
even find that you have enough to say to warrant a
series of ebooks. Specific businesses are complicated
and often require the different aspects to be divided
in order for the reader to get the full story.

Perhaps your goals are more finely tuned in terms of
the ebook scene. You may want to build a whole
business around writing and publishing ebooks.
Essentially, you want to start an e-business. You are
thinking of setting up a website to promote and market
your ebooks. Maybe you’re even thinking of producing
an ezine.

One of the most prevalent reasons people read ebooks
is to find information about how to turn their
Internet businesses into a profit-making machine. And
these people are looking to the writers of ebooks to
provide them with new ideas and strategies because
writers of ebooks are usually people who understand
the new cyberspace world we now live in. Ebook writers
are experts in Internet marketing campaigns and the
strategies of promoting and distributing ebooks. The
cyberspace community needs its ebooks to be successful
so that more and more ebooks will be written.

You may want to create affiliate programs that will
also market your ebook. Affiliates can be people or
businesses worldwide that will all be working to sell
your ebooks. Think about this? Do you see a formula
for success here?

Figure out what your subject matter is, and then
narrow it down. Your goal is to aim for specificity.
Research what’s out there already, and try to find a
void that your ebook might fill.

What about an ebook about a wedding cake business? Or
an ebook about caring for elderly pets? How about the
fine points of collecting ancient pottery?

You don’t have to have three masters degrees to write
about your subject. People need advice that is easy to
read and easily understood. Parents need advice for
dealing with their teenagers. College students need to
learn good study skills - quickly. The possibilities
are endless.

After you’ve writtten your ebook

Getting your ebook out is going to be your focus once
you’ve finished writing it, just as it is with print
books. People will hesitate to buy any book from an
author they’ve never heard of. Wouldn’t you?

The answer is simple: give it away! You will see
profits in the form of promoting your own business and
getting your name out. You will find affiliates who
will ask you to place their links within your ebook,
and these affiliates will in turn go out and make your
name known. Almost every single famous ebook author
has started out this way.

Another powerful tool to attract people to your ebook
is to make it interactive. Invent something for them
to do within the book rather than just producing pages
that contain static text. Let your readers fill out
questionnaires, forms, even crossword puzzles geared
to testing their knowledge on a particular subject.
Have your readers hit a link that will allow them to
recommend your book to their friends and associates.
Or include an actual order form so at the end of their
reading journey, they can eagerly buy your product.

When people interact with books, they become a part of
the world of that book. The fact is just as true for
books in print as it is for ebooks.

That’s why ebooks are so essential. Not only do they
provide a forum for people to learn and make sense of
their own thoughts, but they can also serve to promote
your business at the same time.

“Dotcomology” is The Science of Making Money Online!
GET IT FREE!

http://www.home-biz-profits.blogspot.com/

Check out my blog

Not long ago, I didn’t know ANYTHING about Internet marketing…However, within just 2 weeks, I launched my own website AND learned how to profit from an opt-in list, pull in sales with ezines, make money with Google Adwords and set up my own BLOG!

What does it really take to package your knowledge for profit into your own Special Report, ebook, hard-copy book or even audio product?

Amazingly enough, its not about the writing or packaging skills, and its not about being the smartest in your market, but rather, its all about understanding 3 critical skills of information product marketing.

OK, you may wonder, why not just let your fingers do the tapping and belt out 20 pages of content each night and voila, you’ll have your own ebook.

Not quite, this approach often leads to failure, frustration and ultimately a waste of your valuable time.

Great ebooks and information publishing businesses require some initial planning to set the stage for really significant sales.

YOU, AN ELITE 100K EBOOK PUBLISHER?

Yes, generating a full-time income publising your own ebooks and informational “how to” products is not only a viable home business option, but a very powerful option indeed.

Understanding what a given market wants and quickly turning that desire for information into ebooks is a very lucrative, long-term business that continues to roll along nicely after you have released your products.

Here are 3 steps great ebook writers use to produce high value, hot selling information products:

1. Uncover Passionate Markets. Did you know that there is a highly active, large adult Lego society that spend small fortunes on Lego and Lego information? How about BBQ owners, I know more than a few passionate grillers. Golfers, now don’t even get me started!

Passionate markets are extremely important because it gives you a very clear target of individuals who have been proven to purchase based entirely on emotion.

How do you find them?

Look around you. Passionate markets exist everywhere - its a matter of becoming more alert to them. Musicians, iPodders, Blackberry crazies, bloggers, wine lovers, just to name a few.

2. Understand What They Want. Before you can write an ebook that will generate huge demand and publicity, you need to pick a topic that really excites your chosen market. Here are a few ways to discover what they want:

- how do they get more out of their passion (ex. list of top iPod podcasts for aspiring entrepreneurs)

- locate most common questions your market has, you’ll find signals by talking with your market, tapping into online discussion forums, reading magazines, etc…

- offer a minicourse and build a list of a few hundred subscribers which you can then survey to get their opinion on information they want.

- use keyword analysis tools to look for combinations of keywords that give clues as to what information your market is looking for

Organizing your information product to address a specific desire within your target market is an essential step to achieving your own 100K information publishing business.

3. Develop A Highly Effective Infoproduct Outline. The highly effective formula outlined by Steve Manning in his “How You Can Write Your Book On Anything In 14 Days Or Less…Guaranteed!” over at: http://www.highertrustmarketing.com/part/14days/ is based on organizing your outline in bite-sized blocks that completely erase writer’s block, and make it drop-dead simple to fit your writing into 10 or 15-minute blocks for those who lead busy lives.

This is critical to speed writing, turning your information product development into an easily achievable objective that you can fit into a regular day without giving up your friends, family or second career.

You may have the best idea for a product in the world, if you can’t get it out quickly, you’ll never realize your dreams.

After all…spending a few weeks writing an ebook that sells hundreds of copies per month is not a bad investment - especially when you are still earning leveraged income from that week’s effort a year from now.

IT’S YOUR TURN - PUTTING YOUR PLAN INTO ACTION

Of course, the best advice in the world means nothing if not put into practice, but becoming an information publishing entrepreneur is much easier than you may have first thought.

By preparing your information publishing business for success through identifying hot markets, uncovering what they want, and structuring your writing to be fast and simple, you will have a truly unfair advantage over your competition.

Better yet, you are now only weeks away from earning your own online fortune with information products - if you take action now.

Copyright 2006 Jeff Smith

Become A Wealthy Information Product Marketer - You Call The Shots In Your New Business. Discover The System We Used To Build Our Information Product Marketing Empire - At The InfoMarketersZone Right Here:
http://www.infomarketerszone.com

In his ebook “Affiliate Mistakes Special Report,” Chuck McCullough teaches you how to spot and avoid or correct ten simple, yet costly errors that can seriously damage your efforts to promote affiliate programs successfully. Instead of writing about the broad based generalities of affiliate marketing, Chuck takes you by the hand and teaches you why most affiliates never make a dime in commission. Then using a detailed and systematic approach, he provides you with an effective, easy to implement solution to correct these mistakes.

The ebook prints out to about 151 pages and although some of the information may seem pretty basic to some advanced affiliate marketers, it does cover in detail how to avoid the mistakes that 95% of all affiliate marketers are making. Most of this ebook delivers rock solid information that both beginning and intermediate affiliate marketers can put to use.

Chuck McCullough is the owner of AffiliateMatch.com one of the most visited affiliate program directories on the internet today. Chuck also owns FindSticky.com and publishes the Affiliate Informer Newsletter. Chucks’ experience in affiliate marketing along with his unique perspective and boundless enthusiasm, make him very qualified to write a report on affiliate program marketing.

In “Affiliate Mistakes Special Report,” Chuck doesn’t just tell you what the most common affiliate mistakes are, he provides you with a very clear and concise solution to each of the mistakes. Chuck has divided up each of the mistakes into a chapter of its own.

Chapter 1 on why you should actually own the products you promote, and Chapter 2 about trying to promote too many programs at once were two dynamite chapters. They were 100% right on the mark. McCullough must not believe in appetizers, because he gives you the meat and potatoes right off the bat in this report!

Chapter 5 which provides a glimpse into Chuck’s “unconventional wisdom” which proved to me that Chuck was holding nothing back in this report. There is also an additonal chapter on Advanced Topics and two other bonus chapters. One of the bonus chapters provides you with a nifty “secret”. I will be adding this “secret” to my site.

Though Chuck’s expertise in affiliate marketing is clearly evident throughout the book, I thought a section in chapter 7 about calculating the worth of a visitor when you are purchasing traffic from pay-per-click search engines was a bit confusing. However, after my 13 year old son explained it to me, it became crystal clear. So, maybe this initial confusion on my part should be attributed more to my mathematical dysfunction and less to Chuck’s formula.

In his sales copy, McCullough asserts that anyone can learn the exact methods necessary to have a profitable online business. Now, I am the world’s leading skeptic when a person says “anyone”. However, after reading this report, I can see how he can actually back up this claim.

Chuck takes the high road in his report and tells you right up front that making money on the internet is hard work. He deserves high marks for his honesty. Making Money on the internet is certainly not as easy as some of the “gurus” would have you believe. What makes this report different in my opinion is that McCullough’s approach is not only about affiliate marketing it’s also about business building.

If you are interested in promoting affiliate programs and building your online business the correct way, then I give “Affiliate Mistakes Special Report” my highest recommendation and a 9 on a scale of 1 to 10.

For more information on Chuck McCullough’s ebook, “Affiliate Mistakes Special Report,” please visit http://www.affiliatemistakes.com/c.pl/coopsd

Hopefully Chuck will produce another ebook that will teach us another important aspect of internet marketing in the same well-written manner.

About The Author

David Cooper is the owner of http://www.1source-webmarketing.com and the publisher of the 1Source-WebMarketing Newsletter. Subscribe to his FREE Newsletter at http://www.1source-webmarketing.com

dave@1source-webmarketing.com