I found a fantastic quote recently about procrastination - you know, when you defer something until later, like making a decision..

In any moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.

Theodore Roosevelt

Why is this important for internet or small business marketers? Because it emphasises the importance of taking action. Marketing requires a continuous drip feed approach to develop momentum, therefore making decisions and taking action regularly is very important.

The next time you put off a decision until tomorrow, just remember those wise words from Teddy.

Every month I will be adding a new reader poll to my blog. In the last month I asked the question:

What would you like me to write about on this blog?

The answers, in order of popularity, were:

37.5% Internet marketing

25% Blogging

12.5% WordPress plugins

12.5% Small business marketing

12.5% Making money online

You can guarantee that I’ll be writing a lot more on internet marketing topics from now on, with a little less on making money online, WordPress plugins and small business marketing.

I’ve added this month’s poll - you can find it on the right hand side bar - which asks which internet marketing tactics work best for you. Please make your choices now and feel free to add a comment if there are tactics I haven’t added that are working for you.

I was sent an amusing model today to explain international economics and the challenges of international business. I can only apologise to the original author for not crediting this writing to you. Please feel free to drop me a line so you can bask in the glory of such entertaining writing. For me it’s a great way of explaining why marketing is different for each and every market in the world. There is no one size fits all model that works for everyone. This is one of the great pleasures of living and working in a world with such a variety of people, cultures, religions, food and so much more.

(NB JohnTP, one of the best parts of being in another country is trying out the food, even if it is scorpion…)

AN AMERICAN CORPORATION

You have two cows.
You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows.
Later, you hire a consultant to analyse why the cow has dropped dead.

A FRENCH CORPORATION

You have two cows.
You go on strike, organise a riot, and block the roads, because you
want three cows.

A JAPANESE CORPORATION

You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk.
You then create a clever cow cartoon image called ‘Cowkimon’ and market it worldwide.

A GERMAN CORPORATION

You have two cows.
You re-engineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves.

AN ITALIAN CORPORATION

You have two cows, but you don’t know where they are.
You decide to have lunch.

A RUSSIAN CORPORATION

You have two cows.
You count them and learn you have five cows.
You count them again and learn you have 42 cows.
You count them again and learn you have 2 cows.
You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka.

A SWISS CORPORATION

You have 5000 cows. None of them belong to you.
You charge the owners for storing them.

A CHINESE CORPORATION

You have two cows.
You have 300 people milking them.
You claim that you have full employment, and high bovine productivity.
You arrest the newsman who reported the real situation.

AN INDIAN CORPORATION

You have two cows.
You worship them.

A BRITISH CORPORATION

You have two cows.
Both are mad.

AN IRAQI CORPORATION

Everyone thinks you have lots of cows.
You tell them that you have none.
No-one believes you, so they bomb the sh1t out of you and invade your country.
You still have no cows, but at least now you are a Democracy.

AN AUSTRALIAN CORPORATION

You have two cows.
The one on the left looks very attractive.

OK, it’s been a few weeks since my last post, but I have good reason for this lack of attention - I just got married!

It was a fantastic day (Friday 1st June) and I’m now a very proud and happy husband. We held a great party afterwards to celebrate and of course we went on our honeymoon - to Bali, Indonesia. What a great place Bali is, although an awfully long way from the UK. We flew via Singapore, just missing the World Internet Summit.

I must admit, I managed to check in a couple of times to check for comments whilst I was away (shh, don’t tell my wife..)

Well, once I get some photos I’ll post a few up here for all to see. In the mean time, expect normal service to be resumed, with 2-3 posts every week on small business and internet marketing and more. Please feel free to contribute and comment on any of the posts.

The next 6 months are set to be very interesting and I have some exciting internet and small business marketing projects already on the go. I also plan to keep up my quest to name the good and the bad in the web hosting world. Hopefully this will be a useful resource for internet marketers everywhere.

Don’t forget to keep coming back.