Categories: Uncategorized | March 19th, 2008 | by admin | no comments
www.askboyd.com is now fully operational with all respective sections functioning. The best part is that it is being well received by homeowners and like minded contractors.
This is great news. You never know how things might turn out. Just because a set of thoughts and ideas that come from my head seem to make sense, it does not always mean that the intended audience will see my same point of view. I am so very happy with content and message that www.askboyd.com portrays.
Please take a look and go to the contact form and leave some feedback. I never want to stop improving. The most important thing that you can do, is if you have had your own experience with an HVAC professional, be it good or bad, leave a comment to that effect with the story and I will try to add it to the site. You can become famous :-)
Also, if you find www.askboyd.comto be helpful, a testimonial would be greatly appreciated. Again, just go to the contact form and I will be sure to add your comments.
Make sure and sign-up for the updates. It is simple and will make sure that you are alerted when important information is added.
Finally, get ready for www.homeairdirect.com We are currently building this site/store that will be offering residential HVAC systems, products and education. This is another good reason to go to www.askboyd.comand sign up for the email alerts. When www.homeairdirect.com is launched, you will be notified.
Thanks again.
Categories: Uncategorized | February 27th, 2008 | by admin | no comments
On February 18th I posted an article called “A TURNING POINT”. In that article I told a story about an event that recently took place that was paramount in helping me make a decision to create a website that would help homeowners sift through the BS or Dark Side if you will of residential HVAC and the pitfalls associated with dealing with the less then honorable contractor.
As promised, www.askboyd.com has been launched. My IM mentor and now partner Debbie Songster, the creator of www.themarketingeducator.com/class and I have been working feverishly on this project. It has not been uncommon for us to be emailing each other and communicating on an open source project management platform at 1:00am in the morning.
Please take a look around and feel free to comment. The site is laid out to inform the consumer/homeowner in areas related to finding and working with HVAC contractors. Let’s face it. Heating and Air Conditioning is one of those things that we rarely plan for and usually, like a shoe lace, breaks when we really don’t need it to.
There are resources on the site that allow you to get professional quotes for your HVAC installation. By clicking on QualitySmith , qualified local contractors will come to you. That’s pretty cool. There is a link to an awesome hardware store that has EVERYTHING! Make sure and check out Hechinger.com .
There is also a great book offer on the site called “Contractors Secrets Revealed”. Just Click Here! to learn the ins and outs of the contracting world.
So, to sum up, http://askboyd.com is an awesome site if I do say so myself. But I am a bit biased J
Check us out and spread the word. If you know someone who could benefit from this information. Pass it along and Thanks.
Categories: Uncategorized | February 20th, 2008 | by admin | no comments
Wow! Posting two days in a row. A new record for me.
OK, a couple of posts down this page, you will see a post that I did called “Resources I Have Discovered”. One of the subjects of that post is a group called My Silent Team . MST is owned and operated by a guy named Jim Cockrum. Jim along with a huge list of experts are the driving force and brain trust of MST. Also, if you look just to your left, you will see a banner for My Silent Team . MST is a great resource if you are considering getting into Internet Marketing.
Anyway, Jim Cockrum has a free weekly newsletter that he sends out and this week Jim gave his views on the eBay Boycott that is supposed to be taking place this week. I thought it was very interesting and wanted to share it with you. Do not take Jim lightly, he is one of the most successful eBay authorities and his newsletter has a mailing of over 100,000. If you click on the banner to the left you too can sign up for the free newsletter.
Alright enough promotion of Jim. Below is his recent comments on eBay and the proposed boycott. This boycott is in response to eBay’s recent raising of it’s selling fees and new policies. Jim has an interesting twist on it. Enjoy.
How an eBay Boycott will put money in our pocket
=====================================
Did you hear about the eBay seller boycott?
If you haven’t seen it yet you are likely to catch wind of
it over the next few days.
Many eBay sellers are seeing eBay as “mean”, “evil” and
“just out to make a profit” and they plan to do something
about it! You can watch my sarcastic video here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60LFgyzXSL8
The story has been on CNN and in newspapers around the
world. The guy that came up with the idea is getting a ton
of publicity out of it (good for him - enjoy your 15 minutes
of fame my friend)!
The big plan is to “Boycott” eBay into submission. No
selling on eBay for a week…that’ll teach ‘em!
This may come as a surprise to many of you…but…
I SUPPORT THE BOYCOTT!
(Stupid eBay sellers should stop reading right here and go
boycott eBay - instead of a week, go for a year…that’ll
really teach ‘em)
As a fellow eBay seller I have some advice though…if you
are smart you won’t participate in this or any other such
silly effort to “control” eBay. The fewer sellers there are
the better the seller/buyer ratio will tip in our favor!
My perspective:
Everyone should stop whining about eBay doing what it takes
to attract MORE CUSTOMERS boost their profits. Yep - you
heard me right. The changes eBay is making are aimed at
ATTRACTING AND RETAINING CUSTOMERS. These are the SAME
CUSTOMERS that buy things from us as sellers!
What about those fee increases?
The fact is eBay.com is still WAY UNDER PRICED as a
marketing tool IF you know how to use it correctly.
We should all be USING eBay as a marketing tool because
it’s the best deal on the web.
EXAMPLE: I just showed you a couple weeks ago a video about
using cheap classified ads on eBay to attract TONS of
traffic and leads. Compared to Google Adwords or
any other paid traffic system eBay is a BARGAIN. One
reader made over a hundred dollars the first day he set up
his ten dollar eBay classified ad with a simple affiliate
link selling someone else’s ebook. Still feel like boycotting?
Didn’t think so…here’s a link to my video if you missed it:
http://www.silentsalesmachine.com/video/clad/ebc1.html
I DO honestly feel sorry for traditional eBay sellers that
haven’t “seen the light” yet, but it’s different for those
of us that have the knowledge on how to “USE” ebay instead
of “RELYING” on eBay. Those of us in the know should be
giddy to see “weak” eBay sellers running for the hills each
time a fee increases.
Note to angry sellers: Go boycott eBay as much as you’d
like! Note to eBay: Keep raising fees and keep protecting
and attracting customers!
Categories: Uncategorized | February 18th, 2008 | by admin | no comments
If you read my last post, I made a reference to leaving my “Day Job”. I thought I would elaborate on that and the reasons that I made this major critical life change. Why would anyone do that? Was the job hard? No! Was my employer unfair? No! Then why?
For most of the past decade I have been involved in the HVAC industry. For those that don’t know, that is “Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning”. My roll has always been within the structure of wholesale distribution for that industry. In recent history I was a TM (Territory Manager) for a local distributor. Prior to that, a Vice President for a regional distributor. Regardless of title, I have always worked directly with customers, Heating & Air Contractors. The same guys that come to your house to fix your furnace or A/C.
Now I’ll get to the first part. Why did I leave this industry? About a week before I made the decision to leave, I was sitting in the office of one of my customers, a very large, high profile contractor. The kind you would find with a large ad in your Yellow Pages with a big presence in the area. Trucks, billboards, spots on local TV. The weather had been very cold and we were discussing the recent surge of business due to the weather. The contractor, knowing where I lived, said; “We just did a nice job in your hometown.” He said that his service tech found a bad compressor on a heat pump and they sold the customer a complete system change-out. He went on to brag about the circumstances of the sale. Because of the extremely cold weather, the family that bought this system was backed into a corner. This particular contractor uses a time based fear tactic sales approach. He went to explain. “I told the homeowner, that if they made the decision today, we could start this afternoon with the change-out and have them heat again by tomorrow. If he could not make the decision today, I told him it would be at least a week before we could get back to him due to the weather.” Since the homeowner had two small children, he made the decision, as most do, to go ahead.
Now comes the hard part. The contractor told me what work they performed and then gave me the price tag. $8,200. I asked him who the customer was. When he told me I was stunned. I know these folks (it’s a small town) and I know that they can not afford this. Then to top it all off, (and I wish he had not) he said that when they got the bad unit back tot he shop, they found a $14.00 capacitor was burned and they were able to repair the unit and will now sell this system to …. “someone who can’t afford new.”
So, why did I leave my job? Well, this story is not that unusual. Over my near decade of this industry I have consistently seen this happen. Let me say that it is not the norm, but there is what I believe to be a growing level of this type of heavy handed, less then honest sales tactics. Having seen this time and again, I guess I finally snapped. I know that everyone has to make a living, but I live by a very simple rule. I believe that there is good and bad with very little grey in between. This type of behavior is BAD! Oh!, I left out something. The cost of that $8,200 HVAC system that went into the home of that family that could not afford it, was $$2,300.
So, I have been considering doing this for a long time and this was the crowning blow. I am launching a series of websites that will address this issue. These sites will help train homeowners on how to deal with their contractors and how to get the best value. There will be constant reviews of products and advice on how to make this very large purchase as positive as possible. Oh!, and as a therapeutic exercise for myself, I will be uncovering some of the ‘Darkside” of this industry.
Thanks for letting me share. I feel better already 
Stay tuned for: http://www.askboyd.com http://www.acsecrets.com & http://www.homeairdirect.com
Categories: Uncategorized | February 8th, 2008 | by admin | no comments
Recently, on behalf of my friend and Internet marketing mentor Debbie Songster, I wrote a testimonial and published it on a popular marketing forum called “The Warrior Forum”. I did this because she has been instrumental in my rapid learning spike of Internet marketing and website creation.
Well, it just dawned on me that this would make a great post for this site as well. Funny how sometimes we get to close to the trees and can’t see the forest.
So, here it is:
“Last fall I took the leap to get involved in Internet marketing. Up until this point, email, web surfing and the everyday office related computer processes were the extent of my abilities. I was very lucky to meet Debbie Songster in my first few weeks. I joined “The Marketing Educator” http://www.themarketingeducator.com/ and made personal contact with Debbie. We decided to take an approach of personal coaching.
Within five weeks, I launched my first website and had it monetized and climbed to the 4th page of Google for my primary keywords. Three weeks later, I launched my 2nd site and saw similar success as well.
Since then I have launched a 3rd site and have used the instructional information and videos from TME to facilitate these processes. Debbie has laid out almost every website development situation imaginable within TME. When you are stuck and need a little boost, just go to that section of TME and the answer will be there.
I am now building a very complex site and with Debbie’s help, I am confident that this is going to be huge. So confident that I have recently left my JOB to pursue this venture full-time.
Thank you Debbie for all of your help and support. I am so excited about this new project. Great things are just ahead.”
Jay Boyd
http://decadesix.com/
http://basketcollectibles.com/
http://thatspecialpurse.com/
And coming soon, http://askboyd.com/
Categories: Uncategorized | December 6th, 2007 | by admin | no comments
So far through this journey into the world of Internet marketing, I have made a discovery. Here it is: There is so much crap out there to sift through that it is a miracle that anyone is able to ever really make a go of it.
The good news though, is that if you really stick with it and keep on plugging along, from time to time you discover nuggets of information and resources that are REAL. I think it would be of value, as I find these honest to goodness real life resources of value to report them here as I go along.
On the left and right sidebars of this page you will see a couple of banners. On the left is an information site called “My Silent Team”. I can’t say enough good about this group. Everything I have learned so far has been from this resource or from contacts that I have made there. Below on the right, you will see a banner for WorldWide Brands. WWB is the most trusted source for wholesale and dropship suppliers on the Internet today, Period!
These are tools and resources that I have personally experienced and recommend. I promise that if I recommend anything or anyone here, it is because I have experienced the real value of these resources. If you are interested in Internet Marketing, do not fail to look into either of these.
Categories: Uncategorized | November 21st, 2007 | by admin | no comments
Since my November 4th launch of www.thatspecialpurse.com I have been tweaking it while preparing to put together the next site.
Today, November 20th, was the launch of www.basketcollectibles.com This is a very similar site offering information about products specific to collecting baskets. Currently, this is a blog page. I plan on adding the links to it that will make it a very usable search engine for Longaberger Basket collectors to find Second Market Longaberger Basket auctions on eBay. I expect that addition by week end.
Again, if you have any comment or suggestions, please feel free share on this post, or you may email me at admin@decadesix.com Also, if you know someone who would enjoy this site, again please by all means, pass it along. Thank you.
Categories: Uncategorized | November 21st, 2007 | by admin | no comments
On November 4th I launched my first website. http://thatspecialpurse.com/ Once you open this site, please look at the sidebar and notice the designer’s names. Clicking on those will give you a better idea of the purpose of this site. I would be honored if you would check it out. If this site would be of interest to anyone that you know, please pass it along. Thanks!
With the help of a mentor, I was able to put together a functional blog page that links to a sectional BANS site that offers eBay auctions related to the sites content. Whew!
I am very excited about this venture. As hard as it was, it is impossible to explain the feeling seeing it launched for the first time. Even harder to express the feeling when it actually started making a little money in it’s first week :-) WooHoo!
Internet Marketing Is Fun.
Categories: Uncategorized | November 1st, 2007 | by admin | one comments
An entry into the world of Internet Marketing.
Here we go. Head First.
Wheee!!!
Categories: Uncategorized | October 31st, 2007 | by admin | one comments
I’m in!
