So far, Kevin Wilke has provided a general overview of Quattro and how it integrates into the Blueprint System. This includes discussion of the Empty Box Principle of building your online business. Great to see how all of the pieces of the puzzle fit together. Not sure what type of info product will come out of this event (probably video, audio, and a manual), but Quattro certainly is the next step to complement the Blueprint System.

What’s kind of cool is that both I (as an attorney who practices Internet law) and my 12-year-old son (who started a dog niche site this year) are both able to apply the System to our websites.

Kevin also covered how to create an irresistible front end product — the best description of it I’ve seen over the years.

Looking forward to this afternoon when upsells are covered.

Understand that Matt Gill will be presenting tomorrow. My hunch is that he will be dealing with more of the technical issues. Stay tuned. Will post more. In the interim, be sure to check out the Nitro Blueprint System if you haven’t already done so. I own it, use it, and love it.

If you’re doing word-of-mouth marketing, you should be concerned with the directive and the regulations promulgated to enforce it.

Why?

Your new duties include not to treat consumers “unfairly.” And if you do treat them unfairly, you can end up paying fines or even going to prison.

Here’s one unfair practice that is going to land many Internet marketers in hot water:

“Falsely claiming or creating the impression that the trader is not acting for purposes relating to his trade, business, craft or profession, or falsely representing oneself as a consumer.”

Do you think that creating consumer review sites without disclosing affiliate status will be considered unfair under this provision? I do.

Here’s another one.

“the commercial practice fails to identify its commercial intent, unless this is already apparent from the context”

How many e-mails sent to Internet marketing lists would violate this provision? Every day, you get swamped with affiliate e-mails piking the latest guru product or service but never disclosing that the recommendations are made at least in part because of the affiliate commissions the sender hopes to receive.

You might think that you have nothing to worry about because you don’t live in the United Kingdom.

However, do any of the consumers who visit your website live there? What about those on your e-mail list? Chances are you’ve got United Kingdom visitors who are protected by these new regulations. And more importantly, you have no idea whether you’ll be prosecuted for violating the law.

You can also expect the U.S. Congress and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) within the next few years to create new laws and implement similar regulations as part of cleaning up Internet marketing under the guise of protecting consumers.

You can learn more about the United Kingdom regulations by reading the Draft Statutory Instrument: Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008.

So your Internet business isn’t as big as Amazon’s (yet)? You might be thinking “What’s the big deal?”

Whether you’re a Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, or Independent, you should be concerned.

Here’s why it is important to you.

The underlying theory behind the tax collection is that sales online make you the tax collector for the welfare state even in states where you don’t have a physical presence. Imagine the chaos if you had to collect and remit sales taxes to all 50 states, taxes up north to Canada, and across the Atlantic pond as a VAT tax for the European Union coffers. 99.9% of today’s Internet marketers would either be guilty of tax evasion or go out of business trying to comply.

This is exactly what’s in store if these politicians and bureaucrats get the chance to make you an involuntary tax collector to pay for their bridges to nowhere and other pork barrel projects.

Fortunately, there are the Amazon’s of ecommerce who have the deep pockets to fight the government.

Note that this is not a unique situation. For years, the National Governors Association, its county and municipal counterparts have been arguing that they should have the right to tax the Hades out of Internet transactions to pay for excessive spending habits. Ayn Rand referred to these types as “second-handers.”

That’s being polite.

What can you do to fight them?

1. Post your support for Amazon’s fight against New York on your blog and encourage others to do so.

2. Let your elected politicians at the local, state, and federal level know that you’ll do everything in your power to ensure their opponents are elected if they so much as think about trying to turn you into a tax collector.

3. Order a copy of Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” or Harry Browne’s “How I Found Freedom In An Unfree World” via Amazon and ship it to the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance.

You may distribute this checklist to others without modifying it.

If you find this checklist helpful, please let me know.

Fortin’s post is worth reading at least twice because you will miss some of it the first time through. I recommend reading it once, taking a 15-minute break to analyze what you just read, and then come back for a second look.

Some key things to note from Fortin’s advice are:

• Trading time for dollars is not the optimal way to make money.
• Fortin applies his copywriting skills to boost the returns on his own products rather than simply working for flat fees to produce copy for others.
• Joint ventures (JVs) can be financially rewarding.
• A supportive spouse or significant other contributes to success (the converse is true too).
• Once there’s a proven system in place, use it rather reinvent the wheel.

After you’ve read Fortin’s post, I’d be interested in your thoughts on it.

Do you agree with what he wrote?

Mark Cuban

Don’t get me wrong. I like a good game and enjoyed watching the Mavericks beat the Golden State Warriors. But I’d love to have clients wearing my colors and showing the same team fanaticism for my business.

How about you?

And whose brand do you wear in public?

I can understand Mark Cuban, Dirk Nowitzki, and Jason Kidd wearing Mavericks’ clothing last night. Each has a monetary incentive to promote their own team. Yet the typical fan decked out the same way last night wasn’t supporting “his” team — he was supporting someone else’s team. What a lost opportunity cost.

Always looking for new business relationships, I’d have been thrilled if the person sitting next to me wore a shirt or cap letting me know he was a certified public accountant (CPA) because it is tax time, or an orthodontist because my kid needs braces.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s a time and a place to promote other brands. For example, I often promote products and services sold by my clients (you’ll see promotion for some of them on this blog). But that’s because of a real world relationship that exists between us. Until Mark Cuban hires me to be his Internet lawyer, there’s simply no incentive for me to promote his team because I’m not part of it.

To be part of a team is a great feeling. But let’s stick to reality. Unless you’re doing business with your favorite sports team or its owner, there’s really not a relationship there for you to promote. Far better for you to show up wearing a shirt with your business logo and one of your customer’s ball caps at the next event than to pay to wear the jersey of a team that doesn’t really know you even exist (whether or not you show up with your face painted in team colors).

What are your thoughts?

Do you promote your brand everywhere you go?

How about promoting your customers’ brands?

If so, how do you do it?

As a preliminary matter, you should be very careful to distinguish between hiring employees and outsourcing to independent contractors. Many business owners who are non-lawyers will refer to “hiring” an independent contractor. That’s a mistake. If you’re going to outsource to an independent contractor, nothing you say or put in writing should suggest that the person doing the work on a freelance basis is actually an employee.

From a taxes and benefits standpoint, employees are a costly pain in the @ss. Unless you want to be responsible for Social Security contributions, workers compensation, and unemployment compensation, don’t hire employees.

In contrast, independent contractors are generally responsible for all of their own taxes (caveat - there may be a gray area in California and other states where some deadbeat independent contractor can file an unemployment comp or workers comp claim against your business).

What’s the down side to independent contractors? Lack of control that you have with employees.

Yet if you carefully pre-screen the contractors you outsource work to, you should be okay. When in doubt, favor outsourcing to an independent contractor instead of hiring a new employee.

Take a look at Troy White’s post at the link above but do so with these legal issues in mind.

45 Ways to Power Up Your Blog

If you’re serious about blogging, you’ll read John’s post and apply his recommendations.

It appears that USCR has harvested contact information for domain name registrants from the WHOIS registry. The information is plugged into the official-looking notice to add credibility to the sales pitch.

I have nothing against a company earning a buck or even clever copywriting. However, I do object to spam, particularly when it is designed to fool Internet business owners into thinking they should pay money to this company as part of complying with U.S. law as the company goes out of its way to make itself look like a government agency in its sales pitch.

Here’s a sample e-mail from USCR. Read it for yourself and warn others.

For information on how to protect your website’s content using U.S. copyright law, consult with your Internet lawyer to address specific legal issues. If you want to do-it-yourself, go to the U.S. Copyright Office’s website and learn more.

Tony’s been around direct marketing since before Al Gore invented the Internet. If you want an example of some of his older work, check out this video.

This is NOT a sales pitch. Registration at the new site is free.

You’ll find how-to videos and a bunch of other stuff there worth viewing. Tony’s put together a great team of marketing experts covering virtually every topic you need information about when doing business online.
FYI - I’ll be the resident Internet law expert on Blake’s new forum. After you’ve registered, be sure to scroll down to the legal section and check it out. There’s links to some cool resources there plus an interesting discussion on how you can approach a cyber squatter and reduce the price for a domain name that you want.

Note that Tony is giving away more content than you’ll find in many fee-based membership sites. Take advantage of it and grow your business.

Just click this link check out the new site any time after 12 p.m. Pacific/3 p.m. Eastern today when it launches.