Thanks for being patient with me. I haven’t posted in a while because of something that happened last week.

You see, my blog was hacked (not by a person but with malicious code that creeped into my blog), and as a result I was blocked by Google. I’m sure you’ve heard about it, as people talked about the news.

How did it get blocked?

Whenever my site(s) came up in Google, there was a “this site may harm your computer” warning. And when people clicked on my link, it lead them to a Google error page preventing people from accessing my site.

Apparently, Google checks its indexed pages against a database of “known offenders” (at StopBadware.org, which is similar to many IP blacklists for spam), and turned all my listings on Google to unreachable.

So my site wasn’t banned. But the worse part was, Google not only blocked my site but also displayed a dire warning that my site was malicious! (You can only imagine what kind of damage this can cause to someone’s reputation.)

But that’s not all…

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Part of my job as a copywriter includes, from time to time, creating names for businesses, products, and services. Choosing a name may be the single, most important business decision you will ever make.

We are constantly bombarded with marketing messages. Limited by people’s very short attention span, your marketing message has to be effective to the degree that it must communicate its essence and create top-of-mind awareness within an extremely short amount of time.

Names are often the best tools — and sometimes the only ones — for accomplishing this efficiently.

In the game of positioning, your name has to stick firmly in the mind of the marketplace and must do so instantly. While uniqueness is an important factor, there are many other elements that can help the anchoring process — elements that help a name become memorable as well as chosen when a customer experiences a specific need or desire.

So, here are some simple rules to follow when choosing a name for your company or product.

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Long before I wrote my “Death of the Salesletter” report, my friend Jim Edwards has pioneered the use of audio and video to sell online.

He is not only the expert in mini-sites (salesletter-driven websites), but also the publisher of Internet marketing’s first multimedia newsletter using audio and video, entitled “I Gotta Tell Ya!”

(And this was before YouTube or Google Video even existed.)

He may be laid-back, brash, and opinionated. But like him or not, his advice has made countless millionaires. And now he is giving my members, subscribers and clients an opportunity to learn some of his advanced techniques using another one of many strengths: the online “webinar.”

And it’s absolutely free!

This is a chance for you to learn from both of us, as we use the Internet to show you, live and in real-time, some the hottest trends online right now. (And all you need is an Internet connection!)

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