Today’s been a bit of a rubbish day – my back has been really painful all day, so I’ve been mostly laid up – it’s 4am here and it’s the first time I been on this today! I’m concious I haven’t posted since my database disaster, so wanted to give you an update.

My book’s about half ready – tomorrow (Thursday) is when it’s supposed to be ready for but I think It’ll be closer to Saturday providing I can sit at this chair tomorrow…

I’ve been experimenting quite a bit more on Squidoo, trying out different modules and developing a few pages… of the 6 that I’ve started this week, only one is published – as they’ve had to take a back seat to my book completion, but you can see that at http://www.Squidoo.com/freshbooks – leave a comment there and let me know what you think. Remember to leave your comment in my debate and vote in the poll.

Do you already know and use Squidoo? Leave a comment with your lens address, and I’ll go look at them and give you stars.

Through my research I’ve come into contact with lots of web applications with fantastic benefits for the users – some will grow to be very useful, but others are already there… They’ll all be in my book – even the ones that are still in beta if they’re next-gen functional and useful for building your business and increasing your subscribers. I’ve been privileged to help test some really excellent stuff, and I’ll tell you all about it.

I didn’t win the TV in the Phase 1 Video Contest for my DotComSecrets challenge, but the winner and his family were very deserving of the award as their video was mint! I’m just really pleased to have been in the top 10, I hate being on film -but the people who voted for me obviously don’t hate me on video, and that feels good.

Right back to bed now – pain stops play!

Rob

thanks to Elvis for providing today’s headline (although Mark James actually wrote the song!)

A few days working nose to the grindstone have resulted in lots of progress with various projects. One of the projects has given me some headaches though – as my intentions were called into question, very unnecessarily in my opinion.

Previous readers will know about my research project into Internet Marketing, where I’m asking people to submit their single biggest question about Internet Marketing at Ask Rob Bell

This is an important project to me, one I’ve already invested over 1 hundred hours in, so I was a little put out, as you might imagine, when it was suggested to me that it was a transparent trick to harvest email addresses – I mean, what the heck?!?!

I have several ways to increase my subscribers and get people onto my lists, several of which are working very very well, but the ‘Ask Rob Bell’ project is not one of them. I simply want to find out and understand what people in Internet Marketing actually want to know – and asked for email addresses so I could send a copy of the upcoming book to the people with the best questions.

So to allow people who don’t want to leave any contact details to submit their questions, I’ve started a version of the page that only requires the question – no other details needed. Anyone who uses this form won’t be able to get a copy of the book as I’ll have no email address to send it to, but it should make paranoid people feel safer about submitting their best question!

I’m aware of general themes and sub-niches within the industry, but I’m not a psychic – I wouldn’t ever presume to know what other people want to know without asking them first. It seems rather arrogant to think I know so much that I can tell people what they want to know without asking them – am I able to read minds or something?!?!?! Well actually… that’s a tale for another time!

A cornerstone of any successful marketing project has to involve research – without which, how can anyone hope to understand their market fully?

“There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after” is a quote from J.R.R.Tolkien – author of the Hobbit and epic fantasy, The Lord of the Rings trilogy