I had to call on a potential new advertising partner for one of my forums yesterday. I have never spoken to before, although I have talked to some of his co-workers before, but never to him personally.

So hear are a couple of tips that I have learned and use when making a cold call.

Always be positive, remember that cold calling is a powerful business strategy. First be positive with yourself. You must have some enthusiasm in your voice that the person your calling can feel it right away.

One of the things I do is to prepare a list of whom to be called and how the introduction should be done. Things may not go the way you want them to, so have always have some type of backup plan in place. Being well prepared can turn a simple cold call into real business.

Anticipate that you’ll be declined, that’s it! It’s really hard, but never ever take it personally it just may not be the right time.

Be patient and learn from your mistakes it will all work out in the end. If you’re rejected, ask them with “May I call you back in 3-6 months?” Always leave the door open.

Oh and I did get a deal done with him and look forward to a lasting partnership.

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First off, I haven’t run Shopping Ads on any of my sites for awhile, due to all the problems they were having. But I thought I would look into them again since I was sitting right under the payout point the last time I looked, no need to have free money just sitting.

So I headed over to the site yesterday and noticed that their “Live Ad” wasn’t showing, but I thought well I will check it out anyway. So I signed in and took a look around grab some code and placed it on one of my sites, not by surprise my ad wasn’t displaying either, even gave it about 10 hours and still nothing.

I figured I would look to see what if they had posted any problems they were having, nothing. They had problems on May 3rd, who knows maybe it’s just a continuation of the last outage.

Well even though it’s not that much money, but it’s the principle. I know people are going to say, why are you even looking into to Shopping Ads again? Well like I said, it’s free money just sitting there.

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Media Business is publishing a special report on the “10 Great Media Web Sites”. The issue will be in the June 9th edition.

They are looking for nominations in the following categories, IT, trade (non-tech), business news, new launch, relaunch, b-to-b media pure play, subscription and portal, as well as the use of multimedia/video and Web2.0/community.

You can send your nominations as well a short explanation on what makes it a great site to ebooker [at] crain.com. (of course, replace the [at] with the @ sign)

The deadline for nominations is May 15th.

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I have taken up the “1 for Charity Blogger Challenge” that was started by Chad over at CDF Networks. He has challenged bloggers out there to give up a spot for charity or use an empty space reserved for advertisers. Either way it’s a great thing.

The charity he has chosen to start with is the Lance Armstrong Foundation. I couldn’t think of a more deserving charity to donate to. I will also do them same.

Chad, Great job for starting this

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There are going to be some new changes on all networks about affiliates promoting ringtones. Those networks that haven’t change the compliance guidelines yet, I am sure will be changing them shortly.

Copeac sent out an e-mail yesterday stated some of the new guidelines:

Effective Immediately all pages marketing ringtone offers must contain necessary compliance information. You must now display, price point, terms and conditions, and a disclaimer that the user must be over 18 or have the subscribers permission to participate. These changes are being done in an effort to show more consistency and provide more clarity to the consumers as they sign up for premium ringtone or text services. As responsible marketers it is all of our responsibility to ensure that the marketing messages are clear and consistent throughout.

In the e-mail they included the terms and conditions that must be placed on your site for each of the offers they currently have. At least everyone will be playing by the same rules and not sliding under the radar without the new terms.

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