Godek’s theory is that when someone tries to buy the book (and it doesn’t show up in the store’s inventory) they will note that the book sold and will order replacement copies. While he can’t document how many books he has sold with this sneaky strategy, Godek has sold more than 1.7 million books.

There are two lessons you can take from this. First, freely give away samples. When Godek “donates” books to bookstores, the cost to him is minimal. But, it exposes the book to readers (and retailers) who might not have found it otherwise.

Second, don’t be afraid to try something a little “odd” if the risk is low and it might work. Don’t do something unethical, illegal or nasty. However, being creative can help you find ways to promote yourself which are inexpensive and fun. Just because no one has done it before doesn’t mean it is a bad idea. It just means you’re more clever than those other folks!

Oh, and a third lesson: I’m telling you about Greg Godek (and his book) because he not only created “reverse shoplifting,” but he told people about it. If you come up with an unusual way to promote yourself, tell others about it. You may get additional attention as your strategy is shared.

Unlike traditional direct mail packages, which may include a multi-page letter, brochure, return envelope and more, a postcard is simple. Recipients are almost forced to read it, because the copy is right there in front of them–not buried in text hidden in an envelope. Costs can be much less, too.

There are many four-color printers which can produce beautiful postcards cost effectively. You can have a postcard made from a photo of you, your store, your products or another good image. Or, get postcards made of your bookcover, your website, your logo, etc.

For the do-it-yourselfers, one simple method is to design a card which fits on one quarter of an 8-1/2″ x 11″ page. Take it to your printer or copy shop, and have them print in black on brightly colored card stock, then cut the pages in quarters. (You may save a few dollars by supplying the card stock. Astrobright or something similar works well.) Total cost for 1,000 postcards should be just over $20. In the U.S., a 28 cent stamp will get the card to its U.S. destination.

Keep your message short and simple when using postcards. You can’t tell a long story, so pique their interest, then tell them what action to take to order or to learn more, such as visiting a special landing page you have set up at your website. This is a good way to promote your website, an upcoming event, a sale, a new product, etc.

Keep it short, keep it simple, and make it easy for customers to get, read and act on your message.

Learning can take the form of reading books, researching on the web, attending seminars and workshops, completing a home study course, listening to audio books and teleseminars, watching webinars and videos, signing up for courses at colleges and other institutions, etc. There is a massive amount of information available that can help you to become more successful or enrich your life in other ways.

The danger in learning is that you can spend all of your time learning and not take the time to apply what you have learned. I know I can be guilty of this. I get excited about something new, dig in to learn all I can about it, then I want to move on to the next thing.

Learning is important, but it is more important to do something with the knowledge you acquire. Here is how you can put your knowledge to work:

Even before you tackle a new topic, ask yourself how you plan to use the information. You may not have a solid, actionable plan when you do not yet grasp the subject, but you should at least have a general idea of how the new knowledge will help you.

Choose your best way to learn. Some people learn best by reading or attending a class. Others like to listen to audio or watch video. And some simply dive in and learn by doing. I use each of these methods at times. My choice may depend on what I am trying to learn, or simply what resources are available to me. Be aware of your learning style so you can get information in the way that is best for you.

Do not wait until you know “everything” to put your new expertise to work. There will always be one more book to read, one more class to take, one more website to explore, etc. As you learn new things, put your knowledge to work right away.

Watch for actionable tips. Many times, the most valuable information I get is in the form of little steps I can take to make a difference. Sometimes these tips take only minutes to implement, but have long-lasting effects on my productivity and profits. When you discover an action you want to take, make a note and put a giant star next to it. Then put it in place as soon as you can.

Reinforce what you learn. Take notes, do a review or whatever works best for you to help you retain what you learned. Many people find that the act of taking notes helps them learn more effectively, because restating the lesson causes them to internalize the information. If you are studying with a buddy, take the time to discuss what you are learning.

Know when to quit. If as you learn you determine that what you are learning is not useful to you, quit. You do not have to finish everything you start. Find something that will work better for you.

When we stop learning, we stop growing. Follow your curiosity to discover ways to make your business and your life better.

Of course, one factor that can influence how long it takes to acquire a new habit is the difficulty of a habit. The harder the task, the longer it may take to become a habit.

That means that making a good behavior a habit takes commitment. You need to consciously repeat an action again and again until it becomes nearly automatic. Although missing a day won’t completely derail your new habit, consistency is important.

With that in mind, my question for you is: How to you maintain your dedication and keep working toward your goal of establishing a new habit? How do you motivate yourself to keep doing something, day after day, until it becomes a habit?

I find that doing something around the same time every day works. One habit I have been working on is walking my dog every day. It hasn’t always been easy, especially in the hot and humid Houston summer, but I have been doing it. Because of the heat, we walk in the evening. Some days we may only walk for 15 minutes, but we walk (nearly) every day. This new habit has helped me to lose some weight and keep it off, a nice reward for a good habit.

An alternative to doing something at the same time every day is to make an appointment with yourself and keep it. For example, if you want to get in the habit of writing every day, but can’t always do it at the same time, block out time in your schedule to write and treat that appointment as something you must do.

Add your answer in the comments and let us know what works for you!

Marketing scares a lot of people. It is scary to pick up the phone and call someone, or approach them and ask for an order. What if they say no? Well, what if they say YES? You won’t know until you ask.

Or maybe you’re afraid to speak in public, attend a networking function, invest in advertising, write an article for your professional association newsletter, volunteer for a committee, or send a press release. Whatever scares you, promise yourself that you will try it if it is something that will benefit you and your business.

If you’re still thinking about starting a business, but scared to take that first step, take it now. Sign up for a class at your local Small Business Development Center, register the name of your business and get cards made, put up a website…whatever it takes to get started.

Then, keep scaring yourself. Take the chances that will lead to success. And let me know about it. Tell me how you took my challenge to scare yourself, and what you accomplished as a result.

Traditionally, PR firms have charged a monthly retainer. That means clients pay the monthly fee—usually in the thousands of dollars—every month, whether or not the PR firm has gotten any results. Often, there is a minimum commitment of six months or more.

Spending thousands of dollars a month is scary, especially when there is no guarantee that there will be any media coverage to show for it. When a firm comes along offering to charge only for the media placements they get, it can look awfully attractive. But is it really?

The obvious advantage of pay per placement is that if you do not get any publicity, you do not spend any money. There are some disadvantages, though, that may not seem obvious at first.

What you get for the monthly retainer is a firm actively working for you. That means that they are looking for opportunities to pitch you all the time. When the firm is being paid by the placement, they can not afford to be building campaigns and actively pitching you in any coordinated way. It is more likely that they will simply try to match clients to publicity opportunities they uncover. When you get publicity, it can be scattershot, rather than as part of a planned campaign implemented over time.

Here is one that often surprises PR clients: Pay per placement can be more expensive. Because of the way fees are set, getting one national feature can end up costing more than months of having a PR firm on retainer. Retainers are usually based on the hourly rates of the staff working on the client’s account. Pay per placement has no relationship to the time the PR firm spends working for you. They may learn about an opportunity for a national TV feature, pitch a few of their clients and have one used in the story. Total time: maybe a few hours. Total fees: probably in the thousands.

If you are conducting regular PR campaigns in-house, supplementing them with a pay per placement deal with an outside firm might be a good choice. That means that you regularly send out press releases, seek out publicity opportunities, and follow up with the media contacts you have cultivated, only using the PR firm for the occasional hit that you would not have found on your own. However, if you will only get publicity based on the efforts of a PR firm, a pay per placement arrangement may make you a one-hit wonder rather than a long-term success.

If you’re a coach or consultant, you probably have an endless supply of free teleseminars hogging space on your computer, just waiting to be played one day. But that day never comes because you feel overwhelmed by all the files you’ve attracted.

Here’s how to make the most of listening to teleseminars and still getting your work done.

Here’s the story. You sign up for a free teleseminar but you can’t attend because of another meeting. Lord knows there are so many free teleseminars being offered today that you can’t attend every one of them, even though there is good information to be gleaned from them. So you download the MP3 file with every intention of listening to it.

Most coaches and consultants who offer teleseminars will let you download the MP3 so you can listen at your conv enience. After all, they want to build their brand and it doesn’t matter to them if you listen live or on a recording. So it is a win-win situation for everyone – if you listen to the call.

But many people don’t listen to teleseminar recordings because they get busy, they forget they have the recording or they don’t have time to devote a full hour to listening to a teleseminar.

And let’s face it. Some teleseminars contain more content then others. That’s a nice way of saying that some teleseminars have little content and lots of sales pitches so you feel you are wasting your time.

So before you open any teleseminar recording, you always wonder: “Will this be a good use of my time?”

Six Ways to Get the Most Productivity and Information from Teleseminars.

I listen to teleseminars nearly every day and I’m more knowledgeable as a resu lt. I’ve also listened to a few turkeys as well. But I’ve gotten the most from teleseminars by using a few techniques to make the best use of my time. Here are six ways you can be more productive.

1.     Multitask. This is the first rule of getting the most from teleseminars. All the other rules pale in comparison to this. You cannot devote one hour to listening to one teleseminar and doing nothing else. I know some people might disagree with this, but there is so much filler and fluff and sales in teleseminars, that if you listen and do nothing else, you will have wasted 25 percent of the hour.

2.     Acknowledge that there will be sales and bio and material you already know. Don’t get upset or disappointed. There’s a reason the teleseminar is free. The speaker and host want to make sales. They also want to help people and they know they won’t make sales unless they offer good content. So get over any irritation you might have when you hear the sales pitch. You can tune out if you like. But don’t throw out a perfectly good batch of information just because you don’t want to invest in the speaker’s services.

3.     Listen with one ear on the teleseminar for good information, new perspectives and even reminders of info that you know. It reinforces good habits. But with the rest of your body, do the mindless work you know you need to do but doesn’t require any brainpower. For example, it’s a great time to clean up your office, sort files, enter bookkeeping records, do your nails or lift weights. It isn’t a good time to do complicated tasks like balancing your checkbook or writing a proposal or reading a book.

4.     Keep a notepad handy. You will want to take notes on new info or reminders that pop into your head.

5.    You might also want to write the time code of an interesting discussion in case you want to listen to that segment again. Sometimes speakers offer a meditation sequence that is helpful and you might want to listen to it again. Having the time code will save you time in finding that segment.

6.     Accept invitations to any teleseminar that comes your way, even ones that might be a bit “woo woo.” You never know what you will learn. If it’s too far off the cliff, you can always delete the file.

If you follow these tips, you might find that you are smarter than you were before you listened to the teleseminar – and you’ll have more space on your computer!

If you want to market yourself better as a coach, listen to these 10 free teleseminars of interviews with 6- and 7-figure coaches conducted by Dan Janal. Go to http://www.prleads.com/coach-master.htm to download the free recordings. Dan Janal is a very successful entrepreneur, professional speaker and marketing coach who helps clients build their businesses by improving their strategy for using publicity, marketing, Internet marketing, e-commerce and sales. For more information, go to http://www.prleadsplus.com

Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any. - Orson Scott Card

Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats. – Howard Aiken

If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word. – Margaret Atwood

Nighttime is really the best time to work. All the ideas are there to be yours because everyone else is asleep. -  Catherine O’Hara

Don’t get it right, just get it written. – James Thurber

If you’re going to be a writer, the first essential is just to write. Do not wait for an idea. Start writing something and the ideas will come. You have to turn the faucet on before the water starts to flow. – Louis L’Amour

The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair. – Mary Heaton Vorse

Lower your standards and keep writing. – William Stafford

I only write when I am inspired. Fortunately I am inspired at 9 o’clock every morning. – William Faulkner

Do you have a favorite quotation that motivates or inspires you to write?

So my question to you is: How do you reward yourself when you have completed a project, landed a new client or had another success?

Add your answer in the comments and share your favorite reward with us!

If you are not familiar with article spinning software, it will take one article and do a search and replace on words you specify, replacing them with synonyms. By replacing several words in the article with many alternative words it is possible to create hundreds of “unique” articles from one original.

For example, you might choose the word “car” and tell the software to replace it with auto, automobile, vehicle, truck, coupe, sedan or motorcar. In another place in the article, you might want to replace the word “gas” with gasoline, fuel, petrol or juice. The software will go through the article, randomly selecting one of the chosen synonyms for each word you told it to replace. The more words for which you provide synonyms, and the more alternatives you list, the more different versions of the article the spinning software will create.

There is one problem with this: Most of the articles created by spinning software are unreadable. Of course, the so-called marketers using this garbage don’t care, because their purpose is to spam as many article directories and blogs as they can with links to their crummy sites. Or to create junk content they can post on their spammy blogs in order to try to make money from AdSense or affiliate programs.

Don’t believe it is that bad? After all, they are only replacing some words with synonyms. Because the new words mean the same thing as the words they replaced, it should be fine, right? You be the judge. Here is a paragraph from an article I wrote about using your car to promote your business:

You can turn your vehicle into a rolling advertisement. Costs start at just a few dollars, and you can put your business name, slogan, phone number and web site URL in front of thousands of potential customers while you are driving along the freeway, stuck in traffic or even while you are parked. Here are some of the best ways to use your vehicle as a marketing tool.

This is how it read after a splogger (spam blogger) stole it, ran it through an article spinner and posted it on his crummy site:

You can about-face your car into a rolling advertisement. Costs alpha at just a few dollars, and you can put your business name, slogan, buzz amount and web website URL in foreground of bags of abeyant barter while you are active forth the freeway, ashore in cartage or even while you are parked. Actuality are some of the best means to use your car as a business tool.

This splogger was kind enough to leave my name on the article as the author, so if anyone actually reads it, they may come to the conclusion that I am an illiterate moron. Thanks, splogger!

Although it is not possibleto stop sploggers from posting this junk, or sometimes even from stealing your content, do not ever become part of the problem by using article spinning software to create garbage content of your own.

Just say no to Internet pollution!

This article will help you find out if you have been plagiarized online. The resources listed there will not necessarily help you find your stolen content if the thief has spun it into new articles. I found the example I gave here because I have a Google Alert for my name. Google notifies me when they find my name online.

If you do find that content of yours was stolen, this article tells you what to do about online plagiarism.