Nancy Hendrickson

I use Google alerts all the time to keep track of topics of interest; right now I have alerts set to deliver the latest news on Amazon’s Kindle, best practices for website design, and copywriting (of course).

If you run an online business, Google alert is the best (free) notification service around.  Using it, you can track topics in The other day I discovered a Google-alert type service for those of us who Tweet (you DO tweet, don’t you?) using Twitter.

The service is TweetBeep and here’s how it works. First, set up a free account by picking a username and password. Then, choose the keyword alerts you want to track, i.e. your name, company name, topic of interest. Unlike Google alerts, don’t use quote marks for exact phrase matches.  You can exact phrase match by ticking the box on your alert. Pick how often you want to receive alerts, and that’s it.

Oh yes – you can also set up your TweetBeep to only receive alerts from specific Twitter accounts – a convenience I like when I’m tracking conversations from a specific individual.

A popular post from last year

Would you buy your own products?

I heard something yesterday that really got me thinking about this.

Someone called into A Way With Words–the National Public Radio show that discusses language, as in regional dialects, slang, word origins, grammar, and weird expressions–and asked about the use of “dog food” as a verb.

Apparently the term had its birth in the software/tech industry, and was used as a way of saying that software developers should actually use the products they were developing. Dog food (the verb) has evolved to mean “to use a product or service that was created by you.”

My good friend, and fellow online entrepreneur, Lou Bortone (the OnlineVideoGuy) told me about a new service that is launching today at 11:00 am Pacific (1 Central, 2 Eastern).  The service, Prfessor, allows non-techie people to set up their own "university", and teach the things they know – - and of course generate passive income while doing so. Think about that – getting paid from here til the end of time to share your knowledge with other people.

There’s an excellent video on the Prfessor site right now that shows you the basics, with launch scheduled as noted above.

I don’t know about you, but there are MANY things I can teach and I can’t wait to sign up for my own account.  At this point, I don’t know what the charge will be, but I’m betting it’s going to be a monthly subscription. Lou told me he thought it was under $50, and if that’s the case, I’ll be first in line.

My "what I can teach" list right now includes:

1. Internet genealogy
2. Non-fiction book proposal writing
3. Non-fiction book writing
4. How to become a freelance writer
5. How to promote your book online
6. Basics of social media marketing

How about you?

This is the most excited I’ve been about a product launch in eons.  Prfessor is THE system for anyone who wants to teach, earn extra income or at-home income, and doesn’t want to mess around with all the technical stuff.