Income Assurance Blog

Skype Conference calls are limited to 25 people.

There are different ways of starting a conference call depending on where you want to start a call from.

• If you want to start a conference call with random contacts on your contact list, click on “conference” Just above your list of contacts.
• If you want to start a conference call from a Public Chat Room, go to “Options” and click on “Conference Call”

A new window will open with a list of your contacts - either all your contacts, or the Public Chat Room Contacts, depending on where you are starting the call from.  When you double click on the names of the contacts you want to add, their names will appear in the right hand window next to your contact list. If you accidentally added an incorrect name, click on the name and then click “REMOVE”, and the name will be removed from the list.

When you have added everyone who wants to participate, click on “START” below the list of contacts to start calling everyone. It will take a while for everyone to answer. During the call you can use the same options as in any other Skype-to-Skype call. (E.g. You can click on a contact to view their profile, see your chat history, or send a file.) You can add more people while you are busy on the call up to the limit of 25 in total.

Unlike in another Conference Room situation, where you need to click on the talk button to be able to speak, anyone may talk at any time on a Skype Conference Call.

TIP: All background noises can be heard on a Skype Call, so if you are in a place with a lot of noise (like kids crying or construction work going on) you can mute your microphone by clicking on the mic sign in the lower left corner of your main Skype window that appears when the call is started. You can see that it is muted by a notification that appears above the microphone sign  - “Microphone Muted”. To un-mute, click on the same picture of the microphone again and you will be able to talk. This action is merely to prevent background noise being a distraction to others.

To end the conference click the big red button. A confirmation window will open first, so you can’t end the call by accident.

Today we had 2 webinars with Grant Andrews the owner of Message Magic, which is a Skype Add on. He gave a live demo of the software download, specially how to get a new version, vs 1.12 is coming soon… (including how to remove the old version) and also how to use the search function and send a message to a group.

I made an audio of both sessions but the 2nd one only tells you what we demonstrated (very short) . Both are below. And I tried doing a video both times but we will see how those came out. Grant also answered questions about sending to relevant groups and how to respond with too many people who want to talk to you; as well as other questions people had.

The 2nd session was about if Message Magic could help you search and find regionally, leads in a certain location. We discussed how Skype uses local server banks and search engines to help you do a search… and how only what is in a contacts Skype Profile can be used for them to be found.

I found it interesting that while Skype text is not searchable in Search engines, filling out your Skype profile could make keyword research useful on Skype… at least to help you get found by Message Magic users for relevant topics.

Here is the audio for the first session:

Here is the very short description of the 2nd demo:

Relevant Links:

• Learn more about Message Magic and my Skype Support rooms here.
• Skype Profile Tips

Communicating on Skype….

Skype is an excellent communication tool, but as in any Social Networking site, Skype also has certain guidelines one should always follow. There are no hard and fast written rules set out for “Skype Etiquette” but one should remember never to treat your contacts in a manner which could be offensive or considered to be spam. Treat them in a manner that you would like to be treated yourself.

To ensure that you will have contacts who have the same interest as you, you should be careful when requesting or accepting contacts. Firstly I suggest that you make a definite decision about your purpose for using Skype, and base your Skype Search accordingly. If you simply want to socialize you may want people from a certain country, region or city. From this search, look at people’s profile to see if their interests fit your own. If the profile does not tell you enough to make an informed decision you could send them a message with your request to exchange contact details telling them what your interests are and what your intentions are for making contact.

If you want to network and build business relationships, look for people who will fit your own business plans.

NEVER LEAD WITH THE PROMOTION even if your intentions are to build business relationships. Always build the relationship and become friends BEFORE you start promoting to a contact.This is how Skype helps you… you have the opportunity of making many friends from all over the world as long as you don’t abuse this privilege. Nobody likes having a link pushed under your nose when you don’t even know the sender. Whenever I get a request to be added as a contact, and at the same time they send me a promotional link, I always decline on principal.

The fact that Skype allows us to voice-chat free of charge to and from anywhere in the world is an unbelievable feature, and I love it. There is, however, an unwritten rule of Skype Etiquette - one should never call someone for a voice chat unless you first ask in a text message if you may. It may not be convenient at the time or the other person may not have a microphone - there are many reasons why they may not be in a position to talk to you at that time.

The secret is to ALWAYS think before you do anything that may be offensive or off-putting. You may loose a very good potential business partner by being too impulsive. How would you like to be treated….. Treat potential contacts in exactly the same way.

Related Resources:

• Follow My Twitter Tips on Twips
• Video on How to Do a Skype Profile
  
• Follow My Twittered Skype Tips
  
• Join my Skype Tips Chat Room
• Read this Skype Tips Lens

In my opinion Public chats are better than Group Chats as they give you more options, such as …..

A Public Chat Room Belongs to the creator of the room and can be controlled with guidelines.

• Set the Topic when you create the room - for example:  Skype Room for cat lovers.
• Set the guidelines to tell people exactly what they can expect in the room as well as giving them “rules and regulations” to go by. You may want to ban any kind of promotions, limit it to certain days. If you have regular meetings you want your members to attend, this can be put in the guidelines. These are only a few examples of what the guidelines can be used for. You can put anything in the guidelines that you want to communicate to the members of the room on a permanent basis without the need to post it in the chat regularly.
• Set the Moderation Rules for the room…..

There are 3 options for these:

1. Anyone can post messages in the chat.
2. Participants need your permission to start posting messages (This puts them on a “read only” setting when they enter the room and needs to be given permission before they can type a message)
3. Participants need your permission to start reading and posting messages. On this setting they will not be given access to anything that is written in the chat until you give them permission. It would be best if you add them to the room personally.

In a public chat room anyone who does not conform to the guidelines can be ejected and banned from the room.

You can appoint “hosts” to help regulate what happens in the room like giving permission for reading or writing and ejecting and banning undesirables. The hosts can guide new people to read the guidelines and remind others about them when they are guilty of breaking the rules set up in the guidelines.

You can promote your Public Chat Room.

Skype gives three ways you can promote your Public Skype Room.

1. You can obtain HTML code for a banner to use on a website, blog, social networks etc…. in other words, any place where you can add HTML code.
2. You can copy the link and give it to your contacts in Skype or in emails etc.
3. You can also show the link in your Skype Mood.

All your setting options are found when you click the “Options” button at the top of your Public Skype Room.

If you have Group Chat, on the other hand, there is little to no control over what happens in the chat. None of the above settings or functions are available for Group Chats in Skype.

Related Resources:

• Follow My Twitter Tips on Twips
• Video on How to Do a Skype Profile
  
• Follow My Twittered Skype Tips
  
• Join my Skype Tips Chat Room
• Read this Skype Tips Lens

Yesterday I had a request to exchange contact details in Skype. Because the other person’s profile did not have much in to tell me who he is and what he does, I explained to him that I use Skype for communicating with business contacts, and asked him to tell me a little more about himself and what his line of business is. I also asked him how I can help him. This is standard procedure for me when I receive a request from somebody that I have not been introduced to by someone else. I never reject an invitation outright just because their profile is not properly set up. This could be due to ignorance and I may be of some assistance to them.

His reply to me came in upper case block letters and most of us know by now what that means - he was yelling at me!!! I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt as I thought that he may just be ignorant in Skype etiquette. I explained to him the meaning of chatting in upper case, and he apologized explaining that due to weak eye sight he uses upper case as he finds it difficult to read the small font in lower case.

Fortunately I could help him with his problem by explaining that he can set the font size in his Skype window to suit him.

You can change the Font, Font Style (Italic, Bold etc) as well as the Font Size.

Open any chat window and look in the text box (the one where you type your message). There are three icons - “Emoticons”, “Video” and “A Set Font”. Click on the one that reads “A Set Font” and choose the options you prefer. My settings were on Tahoma / Regular / 8 - I changed the size to 9 as I find that easier to read, especially at night. You can test and see which suit you best, but I suggest you keep it on Tahoma and Regular as those are the settings that read easy, but it is a matter of choice - your choice.

I hope that this will help make your Skype experience even more enjoyable.

Related Resources:

• Follow My Twitter Tips on Twips
• Video on How to Do a Skype Profile
  
• Follow My Twittered Skype Tips
  
• Join my Skype Tips Chat Room
• Read this Skype Tips Lens

We had the following question from a potential MessageMagic user……

“I’m just trying to figure out how I would use this to get leads without spamming… I don’t want to spam people so I am not sure this is something I should try…”

Grant Andrews, owner and developer of MessageMagic set his mind at ease with the following reply:

The way we teach people to use the software is to build their warm market contact list without spamming. As a company we do not encourage or promote spamming.

We talk at length in our training materials, our written materials, and also recorded calls about how to use the software properly, and also point out to people why they should NOT use it as a spamming tool.

We will also be talking on the same issues in our training videos which will start rolling soon.

Just so everyone understands clearly, we provide the exact same features as Skype, except we remove some barriers to effective communication. For instance…

Skype allows you to add one contact at a time with a custom message. So do we except we removed the one at a time restriction - you can add multiple contacts at once. This is only ONE of the examples.

That is why when the Skype legal team reviewed what our software does they did not complain too much…

Their only REAL complaint, and it was a valid one, was that when we rolled out we used the name “Skype” in our name… that was a no-no so we changed from being called SkypeAssist to be called MessageMagic. Now they have no outstanding issues with us.

I cannot stress enough that we have a lot of training materials to enable all our members to use MessageMagic effectively without spamming. The responsibilty, however, must lie with the individual user and I trust that all members are responsible and sensible people. Anything can be either USED or ABUSED. It is within each member’s power to make sure that MessageMagic will always be used correctly and responsibly!!

Further, while there is no doubt the temptation will be there for some people to use the tool I’ve provided in a way that will leave many plugging their nose, going “whew!” what a smell, but I think those folks will learn pretty fast that certainly isn’t the way to go. Remember this. As users of the Skype product we are all bound by Skype’s terms and conditions, right? And Skype will not hesitate to shut abusers down pretty fast, no different than an ISP would shut down email spammers..

Here are some Skype terms passed along to me by the Skype legal team located in the USA:

Skype End User License Agreement.

Skype Terms of Service.

More Skype Terms of Service.

Skype Service Provider Agreement.

.
I also talk in our FAQ about some technical reasons why a person shouldn’t simply broadcast messages all over the place… and encourage all people to read those FAQ.

I believe the vast majority of people will use the tool responsibly, in the overall fashion it is intended, which I thought had been pretty clear, but if there is a way to make it more clear we will… After all it would be a simple change to tighten the abilities even more than Skype itself. We could easily restrict the software to allow people to only send broadcasts to existing contacts.

This is a very powerful tool and can help all members achieve success in communicating their message to the masses! Use it don’t abuse it!!

More Related Links:
Skype Plugin Message Magic Webinar Q&A with Grant Andrews from today
Message Magic Webinar with an Audio

Aweber has a new feature that makes your webform even better.

You can now add a footer to your AWeber webform. This gives you the opportunity to add more information to the webform. It is not always advisable to clutter the header with too much, so the footer can be used to add that little extra information. Do be careful, though, not to confuse your potential subscriber with too much. It is ideal to add your privacy policy or to announce a special bonus in the footer.

When you create your webform you will see the option to add the footer just below the “submit” button. The footer may also be added above the submit” button, by dragging it and dropping it above the button.

Julie Wolf and Grant Andrews hosted this second Message Magic webinar again and there was a good turnout both in the room as well as on the phone in line. Grant supplied us with plenty of good information and answered questions from members.

One of the very important bits of information Grant gave us is a technical reason why NOT to do broadcasting via MM to strangers.

Here are a few snippets of what will happen

Skype, as everyone knows, is a communication system which monitors activity between you and those people you send messages to.
So….let’s say you send 10 messages to 10 people. Skype stores those messages in an internal database which is stored on your computer, and starts to look to see if the recipient is online and can receive it, and also if you are online at the same time. Remember, Skype delivers when you are BOTH online at the same time…..
So there it is, checking back and forth, back and forth, are these 10 people online at the same time I am online, and if so then deliver and if not then skip to the next check.
Imagine you send 100 or 1,000 or 1,000,000 messages… how big do you think the database is getting and how busy do you think Skype is getting?
In other words, system resources start to get busier and busier….That is ONE side to it.

Here is another side to it that

Yes, that preamble was just to paint the picture… and the picture is a busy one on Skypes part. You have a very busy system which is hogging resources, but not just any type of resources…

There are 2 parts to it :

1. Internal processing and
2. Internet communications.

Now here is the interesting part. If you have a firewall in the picture, let’s say ZoneAlarm for example, what do you think it (ZoneAlarm) will do when it sees one of the programs that have been granted access to the internet start to do a polling type algorithm which is flooding your internet connection?
It will shut your internet transmissions down!!! It won’t just shut down Skype. It will shut down your entire internet connection.

NONE of your programs will be able to access the internet. You will go dark.

Pretty, isn’t it? Why does it do that? I’m not sure exactly but I can make an educated guess. I think it gets confused over the fact you gave permission to a program to access the internet at will and then that program floods the bandwidth… it gets confused and doesn’t know what to do so it shuts EVERYTHING down thinking that there MUST be a flaw somewhere and in it’s role of BIG PROTECTOR it makes the decisions that their programmers are incapable of determining and dealing with.

So beware!!! Broadcasting to strangers and ZoneAlarm are incompatible…..and ZoneAlarm is one of the more robust products on the market… there are many pretenders… and if anyone can actually still access the internet and share their experiences I will in turn share your scary stories with others.

This is only one of the many great tips Grant shared with us.

Listen to the recording to hear it all - it certainly is worth it!!

If you have not signed up for the updates yet, do so now.

Here is the audio replay of the first of two meetings with Grant about Message Magic. If any one would like to listen and make comments on the most interesting parts to you (Reply below) … and it will be appreciated.

Ask questions here also… as well as the Skype Support Room.

What was most interesting to you in the above webinar?

Thursdays we answer your questions more in-depth and give you links to more info to help you with your question. On Thursdays we also give you a brief summary of each day’s lesson and link to the last week’s live trainings plus archive links for each of the seven (7) daily topics.

1. Friday Archive - Aweber Autoresponders, Pre-written Shared Campaigns, Custom Global Fields, Automation Rules and more

   
   

2. Saturday Archive - List Building, Lead Capture Squeeze Page & MMG Tips

3. Sunday Archive - Advertising & Traffic Tips and 5 Day Marketing Plan

4. Monday Archive - Blogging Tips
   We are taking a summer break from the Weekly Women’s Mindset Motivation and Marketing Meetings, and we will advise the date when we will resume again.
5. Tuesday Archive - Sales Funnel Secrets Tips - Sales Funnels Secrets Setup Steps & Bonuses and Sales Funnel Secrets Ezine News.
   Tuesday July 15 Summary: Priority Partners Party. Click here to read this post and listen to the audios.
6. Wednesday Archive - New Resources, New Ways to Earn, AllMyLinks Excel Lessons, All Kinds of Tips for online Marketers and List Builders.

   Wednesday July 16 Summary: Launch of Message Magic (aka Skype Assist) - Webinar with Audios Click here to read this post
   

   
   

7. Thursday Archive - Q&A - Weekly Summaries - Archives - Links. If we missed your question, and you do not see it below, please send it again either via text chat in the room with a moderator present or via Skype ask for a Support Skype in the Room.. Read below about the Live & Recorded Support and How This Works. Then come to the room and ask for help and if you are an Elite Member, ask our moderators for a Support Skype too.

   Thursday July 17 Summary: Here is this week’s Questions and Answers.

Learn about the Seven Daily Topics, Support Skype & How This Works.

To learn more about the Seven Daily Training Topics, Support Skype rooms, Weekly Updates, Sales Funnel Secrets Marketing System and this Sales Funnel Secrets Blog … and … how all this works together for you, click here.

Lets make this very practical where you can actually get things done!

July 17

Q1

Q: How do I get to the Skype Announcement Room

A: Click on this link.

Archive of all Julie’s Q & A Trainings.