Thursday, April 30, 2009

Live Talent Video Promo

Buy a Live Talent Video and Get a $177 Custom Video Free

Hi,

It’s Thursday, spring has definitely arrived, and I’m feeling like we need to give you an added incentive to try our live talent video service, since it’s the ONLY live talent service on the market that includes script writing by me, distribution to over 20 video websites, and a SUPER COOL stable of talented models to choose from.

Buy ANY number of live talent videos this week and get a FREE basic video with submission to over 20 video websites!

You save a whopping $177 when you take us up on this super deal.

You can check out our Live Talent Video service here:

http://www.livetalentvideos.com/

You can check out details on what the basic video that you get free with any Live Talent order here:

http://www.articlesubs.com/video.html

You have till Friday 5/1 at 11:59 pm EST to take advantage of this awesome deal.

All you have to do is sign up for your video at the link below before the deadline:

http://www.livetalentvideos.com/

Best,

Clark

www.ClarkCovington.com

Follow me on Twitter at www.Twitter.com/clarkcovington

Awesome Episode of Livin’ Venti From DMB


Livin' Venti: Episode 4 - DMB in the CLT from Wesley Donehue on Vimeo.

Me X Wes Donehue X Michael Rentiers talking about internet business, and my truck getting hit.

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

For All Those People Emailing Me Asking for Work

www.WorkWithClark.com

Is It Just Me?

Is it just me, or is everyone doing the “sharing” thing on Twitter. How many people do I need to tell me about how I can get thousands of followers overnight, or how to make money on the web, or even the latest CNN headline? It’s like there is a digital echo on my computer.

I know we grow up being taught to share, but damn, let’s just keep a few things to ourselves, I mean a link is a link, and with each link more precious time is wasted, unless of course the link leads to a time machine.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Is This Too Blunt?

Thanks for stopping by, I sincerely appreciate it. Chances are you are looking to work with our company if you’ve come by this site intentionally. I’ve got good news and bad news, the good news is we’re hiring, the bad news is the job isn’t easy.

Our niche is creating affordable website content for small business owners. We write articles for clients in quantities as small as 1 and as large as 2,000. We have over 400 writers on our staff, all of whom work tirelessly to make sure the content we produce is original, well written, to the point, and of course delivered on time.

The pay isn’t very high since we don’t charge our clients very much, the deadlines are tight, and we insist all our writers live in the U.S.A.

To get an idea about what we do visit www.ClarkCovington.com, please do not use any of our live chat features for job inquires, or contact info on other sites, the only way to get a job with us is to fill out the form below.

We are looking for people that have a passion for writing, are good with deadlines, and enjoy working in a fast paced environment.

If we haven’t scared you away yet, feel free to fill out the application form below, we get a lot of these so you will most likely only hear from us if you are being considered for employment. We will do our best to get back to you if that is the case in a timely manner.

What is your first name?

Last name?

Do you live in the United States?

Are you a native English speaker?

Do you have a link for any writing you have completed online?

What is your email address?

Monday, April 27, 2009

Blog Populator Email

Hi,

In my tireless effort to create affordable SEO services I stumbled upon a simple concept that just might help you gain more traction in the search engines. Truth be told I did not need to think of this service, many of our wonderful clients already had requested that we do it. It was just a matter of putting the idea into an affordable package and offering it to you, the almighty customer.

Enter BlogPopulator.com, the cheapest service we’ve ever created. For just $5 with no minimum order we’ll write compelling blog comments on your blog, and as an added bonus we’ll social bookmark your blog on Digg, Technocrati, and Stumble Upon.

You can buy as many or as few blog comments as you like, it’s that simple.

www.BlogPopulator.com

Do blog comments really help with your search rank? Yes! They help build community, engage readers, and as the domain name hints, they populate in the search engines. Sometimes the blog comments seem to rank higher than the posts themselves.

Get in on this for the price of a Subway sandwich, it’s truly one of the cheapest internet marketing services ever created…And it works!

www.BlogPopulator.com

Happy Monday!

Clark

P.S. Follow me on Twitter and I’ll follow you www.Twitter.com/clarkcovington

Internet Marketers Don’t Summer

New York Stiff A- “Hey Bill, where are you summering this year?”

New York Stiff B- “It’s looking like Montauk, or Nantucket, I’ll know when my $10,000 deposit is accepted which one we’ll land, I’ll be sure to keep you posted.”

Growing up in a affluent suburb of New York City it’s impossible not to learn about the term summer as an action rather than a season.

It’s mentioned in passing throughout the winter and spring at schools, workplaces, and even church. I’ve lived in South Carolina since May 2002, and haven’t heard the word used a single time in the New York context.

For the uninitiated summering goes something like this, to summer is to go somewhere posh, most likely the beach, around 3 months time. Kids typically stay the whole time, parents as much as humanly possible, if they have to work in the city, you can bet they’ll be out at the house every weekend, and call in as much as possible to get those coveted long weekends.

This concept of taking time off is wonderful for all involved except the company the summering person works for. How can your mind NOT drift when thinking of that lush barbeque on a private South Hampton strip of beach complete with Kobe beef, lobster tail, and caviar drenched French bread? Of course it does, and just as quick as you go into summer mode so does your productivity. It’s tough to snap out of a heavenly mix of relaxation and comfort.

I’m not kidding when I tell you growing up I knew more than a few families that literally didn’t work at all in the summer. That includes kids, parents, and in some cases friends of the kids.

Fresh off doing our corporate taxes for the past year I can give a resounding yes to the question, do you know when the busiest month of your business was for fiscal year 2008? Here’s a hint, ours was not in October, nor was it in January. Our busiest month in terms of both net sales and gross profit was in the month of May.

May will come knocking later this week, thus this timely blog post. I want you to know internet marketers don’t summer. They don’t stop what they’re doing just because it’s the weekend and those baby blue swim trunks with the crab claws on them just arrived in the mail.

Serious internet marketers realize that to many companies the prime time to do experimental marketing is the dog days of summer.

I’m willing to bet many social network ad buys will occur this summer, as will a record number of new online brand management campaigns, and dare I propose, Twitter management deals will become the new fad service among internet marketing consultancies, like the one I run.

The summer is the fourth quarter of the football game, the ninth inning of the world series, the summer is when businesses are built, at least that’s when mine seems to grow the most.

So be forewarned, those that work hard in the summer are the ones that are smiling the brightest come Christmas time, come the real fiscal fourth quarter, come the time when the dealer calls, and you show royal flush.

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Blog Populator Now Live

After an adventurous day perusing the aisles of IKEA in Charlotte, my web guy has finished updating Blog Populator. At $5 per blog comment this is the absolute cheapest service we’ve ever offered.

Check it out at www.BlogPopulator.com

Friday, April 24, 2009

What Kind of World Is This?

We exist to be criticized. Sneered at, snickered to, pushed, pulled, shoved, and shaken. We are a human cup of ice, juggled around in disrupting fashion by anyone with hands.

We live in a world where a beauty pageant contestant can’t answer a question honestly, bad behaving celebrities are celebrated instead of scorned, and those that can get on TV frequently enough become experts by virtue of the fact that they can, well, get on TV.

What happened to being patient with each other, what happened to spending time with family, and friends, what happened to a simple life where we were less interested in kicking someone that was down, than we were in helping pick them up?

Life has become a perpetual series of distractions, with the absurd phrase coming out of our mouths all too often, I’m sorry we don’t spend more time together, it’s just life is so hectic.

The root of it all I’m afraid is the same thing that affords me a life of bosslessness pleasure, the internet.

Everyone has gone online, which in a way has taken us all offline. We are off the social grid. No more water cooler conversation, everyone is in a stare off with their boysenberry iphonetastic device that might as well come in the color crutch tan, since after all that is it’s most frequent purpose.

Information sharing should lead to better understanding, not divisive meaningless distractions. Think gossip sites and time wasting social networks.

Are we more interested in snooping through 50 pictures of a person online than we are at being part of those pictures?

Here’s to getting in the picture more, and snooping less, to letting the human cup sit and bathe in the glory of God’s great sun, the domain nameless, Twitterless, no-Facebook-having sun.

I’m Off The Handle

I’m starting a new series of blog posts, to arrive at any given time, on any given day, that have next to nothing to do with anything. Think of it as a poetic op-ed, or creative garbage, or a rant. Call it what you want, but I think it’s good every once and again to clear my head of what’s been stewing around in it.

I’m posting my first OTH today, I hope you enjoy it.image

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Coming in 2 Weeks: IM Rockstar Rewards

Inspired by the rewards card I purchased at Starbucks that allows me to save 10% on everything I buy for a year, I’ve created our own blanket discount card. Buy this card once, and save 10% on everything we offer for an entire year.

If you order from us on a regular basis this thing pays for itself in literally no time!

The first 50 people that buy our rewards card get a limited edition Internet Marketing Rockstar package as a thank you for their patronage.

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Everything is just about in from the factory, the t-shirts should be here in about 2 weeks, and that’s when this site launches.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Screw Twitter Ratios

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I saw the coolest thing on Mike Filsaime’s Blog yesterday, it said in big quoted letters, follow me and I’ll follow you. That’s the spirit of the internet last time I checked, do unto others as you’d want them to do to you. Well that’s the golden rule, but you get the idea. It’s always good to think of others first.

So to prove a point I let my follower number get to 200 people, partly to show people you don’t have to follow to get attention, and now I’m going to pretty much follow anybody that follows me.

Yes, you can have a huge clip of followers without following anybody, but that kills the interaction, I don’t want a one way line of communication, if I did I’d just keep using email, instead I want it to be a two way street.

Last time I checked that method for Mike Filsaime was working pretty well…

Follow me by clicking HERE and I’ll follow you!

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

First Look: Blog Populator

I rarely ever do Flash sites, but every once and again you’ve got to get your digital shave on and clean things up a bit. This is our new blog commenting service, intelligent comments for a reasonable rate with social bookmarking done for no extra cost…

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Monday, April 20, 2009

Livin’ Venti Episode 3


Livin' Venti: Episode 3 - Rub Me On Your Butt from Wesley Donehue on Vimeo.

I’m getting over a cold and the audio isn’t great, my apologizes for both of those things. I’m hoping when we broadcast from the DMB concert Friday it’ll be a bit better, at least the audio aspect.

Twitter Email

Follow Me on Twitter for Secret Sale & Swag

You should just want to follow me because we’re cool like that. But I’m not afraid to bribe you with a few special perks to spend the 10 seconds it takes to click Follow on the link below.

http://twitter.com/clarkcovington

I’ll be giving away some stuff this week via Twitter as I’m moving from one ranch home to another and have way too much stuff to take with me. Goodies include a stack of $5 BP gas cards, random promotional t-shirts, and of course a healthy portion of free books.

Adding to the allure of following me on Twitter is our first twitastic promotion, where I’ll be giving a healthy discount off one of our more popular services this week via Twitter only.

http://twitter.com/clarkcovington

Tweet Tweet,

Clark

Need some internet marketing help? Visit www.ClarkCovington.com

P.S. Those that know me realize I am crossing over on this one, I still think Twitter is kind of silly, but once I saw Oprah get on it, I had to do it, call me a sellout, but I know a popular web app when I see one, and apparently so does the rest of the world.

P.P.S. Going to the beach this summer? Why not get your education on with Strange Business, available at www.StrangeBusinessBook.com so when you come home you’re both bronzed and IM savvy.

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Blogger.com Founded by Twitter Dude

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Awesome interview in the Wall Street Journal today with Twitter founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone. Read it HERE.

Friday, April 17, 2009

DVD Robots Take Over Local Walgreens

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From everything I’ve read redbox DVD rental kiosks are kicking some serious recession butt with record profits.  McDonalds started the company back in ‘03, and still owns a good piece of it. Coinstar (think big green coin eating machine) recently purchased nearly 50% of the company last year for 20 mil. Apparently they make a good chunk of change off $1 new release DVD rentals. They brand spanking new machine is tough to miss at my local Walgreens, where pedestrians had to move swiftly around it for fear of being eaten and resold for a dollar.

My question for you then is this, what can you vend?

Internet Tax to Hit Out-Of-State Buyers

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Really disturbing concept if you ask me…Read more about it HERE.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Read This Now: Getting Real by 37signals

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Hands down one of the best business books I’ve ever read. Buy it now, devour it, and thank me later. Getting Real is not just about building web apps online, it’s about running a business as lean as you possibly can, and exploiting the endless advantages of being a small company to turn a profit.

Download the entire thing free here, or be like me and buy the paperback so you can read it in bed.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Bribe bloggers & the press with free swag for exposure

Just one of the many insights I share in my new business book Strange Business. image

Sunday, April 12, 2009

A Sure Sign of Spring

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USC Spring Game 2009, I have a good feeling about the upcoming season, and more friend pickles at pawley’s Front Porch.

Saturday, April 11, 2009

1,249 Articles Sold This Week

Our annual $8 article sale is over, and we sold a whopping 1,249 custom SEO articles in just 5 days time.  If you knew how many people ordered less than 10 articles you’d realize just how awesome that figure is.

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Our $8 article sale was a success by any standards, the fact that it did what it did in this down economy is even more remarkable. 

Thanks to our wonderful customers, old and new, many of whom hadn’t ordered since the last sale nearly a year ago. We appreciate your business no matter how often you order from us.

Also this year a new twist to our marketing was an updated AdWords ad that interestingly enough helped our conversions increase by nearly 30% over last week. I guess even people that have never tried us appreciate a sale.

I’m exhausted.

Friday, April 10, 2009

Wow that coffee tasted good

Just had a large cup of Green Mountain Coffee’s Island Coconut, which is one of the best tasting flavored coffees I’ve ever had.

I’m not a big fan of flavored coffees, I usually like the flavor to come directly from the place the beans were harvested, ala Kona, but this tastes really smooth.

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This coffee is sold at Bruegger's, hopefully you can grab a cup before they take it off the shelves, or click the link above to buy a bag of this Bahamian vacation in your mouth.

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Livin’ Venti: Episode 2 Me + Wesley Donehue


Livin' Venti: Episode 2 - Pallet of Panties from Wesley Donehue on Vimeo.

Freelance Writing Book Hits #3 on Amazon

Search the term freelance writing when you visit Amazon and my book is now the #3 result! When I started out I was on page 10 or something like that. For the past year or so I was hovering around result 5 or 6. Being at #3 is awesome, and the fact the book is in a 4th printing is also a thrill.

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A huge thanks goes out to all those that supported my writing effort and purchased this book, if I could, you know I would give you a hug, or at least slap you five, or at the very least smile and nod.

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

New Strange Business Badge

This is going on my top 3 sites later today. I thought about doing a widget, but a simple jpeg with a link seems to do the trick just fine.

SBbadgeF

The idea is simple, leverage the large amounts of traffic I get on those other sites to help promote what has to be the best internet marketing book to date.

Health Insurance People Know How to Predict Death

I was filling out some paperwork for a health insurance policy yesterday, and a single question really stuck out.

1.       During the next two years does anyone applying for coverage participate or plan to participate in any of the following activities:

    * Bungee Jumping
    * Private Aviation
    * Motorized Vehicle Racing
    * Rock Climbing
    * Rodeo Events
    * Scuba Diving or
    * Sky Diving?

Since these people are in the business of assessing the probability that someone could die or be severely injured, I suppose  the list above clearly shows the most dangerous stuff you can do in life.

In case you do any of the above, you might want to think twice before your next outdoor excursion!

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Value The New Must-Have Commodity

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When discussing the financial crisis over fajitas a few months ago my father told me something profound, the main reason these mortgage backed securities failed can directly be attributed to the value of them, which was obviously zero. Not value in monetary terms, this group of stocks is worth $29.99 as of Tuesday, not that type of value, but value as in what does this thing do for the person buying it? What purpose does it serve? What value does it create? In the financial meltdown value was absent from the proposition, only money, and blind greed existed when it came to analyzing these career killing assets.

Want to sell something on the internet, it must offer true value to all parties involved. If you aren’t getting yours, it won’t be sustainable. Conversely, if the customer isn’t getting the absolute best product or service for the most reasonable price they will inevitably keep looking for a better deal. Some things trump this theory; a celebrity for example can sell a t-shirt with their name on it for more than you could. A politician with little to no writing ability is much more likely to land a book deal than most of us citizens. But for the most part, if it’s average Joe versus average Joe, the Joe that offers more value wins.

Value is a somewhat ambiguous term, so let’s take a minute to define it.

Value is what someone gets for their money, value is only increased when more of what a customer wants is added at no additional cost to the customer.

Buy a bottle of Gatorade at most gas station convenience stores and that’s all you get. Buy it at Jimmy’s and get a free snickers bar with your purchase. If you were driving, Jimmy’s on the left, a typical convenience store to the right, which place are you going to buy your thirst quencher from?

The same theory can be applied to internet business, value counts.

You don’t have to be the cheapest of the lot, that often comes with a far less flattering stigma in its own right, but you surely want to offer the most value of the bunch.

When building a website, what is it that you want to sell? Take whatever it is, think of everything else people could use when purchasing this thing, and add it on for free. Yes, free.

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Just one of the millions of online business examples would be Zappos, and the use of free overnight shipping. Other merchants were already doing free shipping, Zappos thought about what a shoe buying customer on the internet might want besides just free shipping, and poof, free overnight shipping was born on their website. Further, if you want to return the shoes for any reason, that’s free too. I promise you more than a few people shop the site for these reasons alone, I know I do. I often don’t buy shoes until I need them urgently, as in, well, overnight.

As much as you might see adding on extras for free as profit lost, or a major sacrifice, it often times is the difference between someone buying from you, instead of the other average Joe.

A lesson I learned when I had a not-so-profitable retail business is that your customers do not associate your feelings with your business. They don’t know how much you spent building the website, how many people you had to beg for favors to get it up, how much you have riding on the success of the business, and so on. All they know is they need whatever you’re selling and if you don’t have the most value focused offer, they’ll go with the Joe that does. Would you not do the same if the tables were reversed?

Monday, April 6, 2009

$8 Article Sale Email

Hi,

Once a year we knock our already low prices down a whopping 20% and have a HUGE $8 article sale. That time of year is NOW. Last year we sold 832 articles in ONE DAY! This sale goes on all week, so we expect it to be awesome, because frankly, who doesn’t like to save money on something that’s already DIRT CHEAP?

Enter the $8 article sale. It’s here, ALL WEEK LONG, the $8 custom SEO article sale has arrived.

Why is this such a big deal, well for starters you can view the savings list below to see how much cash you can save during this sale, but also it is because we actually have to negotiate with our writing team to do this promotion.

Our margins are so thin we actually have to ask our writers to share the burden of a discount with us to create this awesome sale, because of this we only run it ONCE A YEAR, and it is now LIVE.

Get $8 custom SEO articles by visiting the site below for this week only, the sale ends Friday 4/10 at 11:59pm!

http://www.seoarticlewritingservice.com/check.html

How much can you save by buying $8 articles?

Buy 10 articles save $20

Buy 100 articles save $200

Buy 500 articles save $1,000

Buy 1,000 articles save $2,000

Buy 5,000 articles save $10,000

Buy 10,000 articles save $20,000

You get the idea, the more you buy, the more you save. Sign up today BEFORE you miss it!

http://www.seoarticlewritingservice.com/check.html

Thanks,
Clark

FINE PRINT-

This sale is not applicable to monthly content packages. If you have bought articles in the past you cannot have more credit because we are now discounting for the week. The sale is good till Friday April 10 2009 at 11:59 pm EST. If you order over 500 articles expect 10 to 14 days for completion. If the content does not meet your expectations for any reason we will revise it until it is up to snuff. All articles will be between 300 and 500 words in length and be 100% completely original. You can use the $8 articles with our regular priced submissions, i.e. $8 article + $10 ezine submission would be $18. If you are still reading you should have gone to law school, you are very detail oriented, and that’s cool in a lot of situations, including this one. My Pomeranian got a lion cut this weekend and posted a pic of it on my blog, if you can find my blog, you can see the lion, how’s that for fine print?

Chloe The Pom’s Lion Cut

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Friday, April 3, 2009

More on Livin’ Venti

I’m headed to NYC for the weekend, but felt like blogging from the airport. That’s better than just sitting in my chair staring at these people chewing pizza slices like bubble gum next to me, right? So here is more info on the LV web show, Wes really profiled what the show is all about, check it out HERE. I’m off to have my second venti for the day, that makes me pretty much an addict.

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Thursday, April 2, 2009

New Web Show Me and Wesley Donehue

Livin' Venti: Episode 1 - The Warehouse Experiment


Livin' Venti: Episode 1 - The Warehouse Experiment from Wesley Donehue on Vimeo.

My Favorite NBA Player is Renaldo Balkman

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Jeff Bezos on Charlie Rose

Interesting video on the past, present, and future of the Kindle. Last night I pondered while laying in my bed how many people in this world have access to the Kindle marketplace now that the iPhone application allows anyone with the device to buy and download books? It surely increased the marketplace by a multiple of 10, if not 100.

The idea of a million people having access to a clean and easy to use e-book marketplace like the Kindle offers is astounding. I made about $37 last month in books sales from the Kindle, my last monthly royalty check was for $152. It is my firm belief a year from now I will post statistics that show my digital sales outweighing my print sales, unless of course Random House snaps up my publishing imprint. Cough cough, hint hint.

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