This is our PearlMaker Member Bulletins blog

We’re using it because it’s easy to read, easy to archive and easy to search for specific bulletins and comments.

It’s interactive, so members — including you — can comment and ask questions. Everyone can read everything, so it means fewer Help Desk requests, too. But it’s only available to current members, so there’s a degree of privacy and confidentiality, too.

I hope you find it useful.

Sign up to receive email or RSS notifications, too. That way you can stay up-to-date. And if you haven’t received any email bulletins in a while, you can log in and check, just in case.

Please note that only recent Bulletins are being published, due to the changes about to be announced in the structure and delivery of the PearlMaker Sponsoring System, which make previous Bulletins irrelevant or obsolete.

An urgent request:

Our mailing list of PearlMaker members has been corrupted. We’re already working on recreating it, but we still need you to register as a Member of this site. (Copy and paste your PayPal receipt for your purchase of PearlMaker Module One. in the required PayPal Receipt field. If you can’t locate it, please make a note to that effect in the PayPal Receipt field.)

All registrations are checked and approved manually. Registrations without PayPal Receipt details may take longer to process.

John Counsel
CEO, The Profit Clinic

This blog replaces the PearlMaker Member Bulletins mailing archives. It’s available only to  current, registered Members of the PearlMaker Sponsoring System.

It’s way past time for another update.

You’ll find it at http://johncounsel.biz/updates/

Work is progressing well on the PearlMaker System and a progressive launch is expected from late next week.

Just a quick update:

1. Final testing of the new delivery system is going well so far, with another week to go.

2. Testing of a new approach to personalizing the PDF Insight Report has been problematic, so we’re looking at a couple of alternatives. I have to say that I’m not confident that they’ll work, either — our publications tend to be much more complex in their structure than the usual MS Word documents used to create the vast majority of PDF ebooks and reports. We use high-end publishing software that’s more demanding on PDF modification software created for use with source documents created in word processing applications.

We do have a couple of ways around this. It will probably come down to a choice between speed and appearance in the end.

More next week.

I won’t bore you with the details of what’s been happening at this end. (If you’re genuinely interested, you can stay reasonably up-to-date at http://johncounsel.biz/updates/.)

Suffice to say that April was mostly wiped out due to swelling of the tumour (neurofibroma) in my neck, which became badly inflamed and required professional pain management plus long and unpleasant testing to identify the cause. It’s looking increasingly like the cause of the inflammation and swelling isn’t physical aggravation as first thought (just coincidental) but dietary. Since eliminating the suspected culprit over the past week, recovery has been rapid, so we’re hoping this is accurate and not merely coincidental with anything else. So far, so good.

I’m now cleared to resume work from Thursday 12 May 2011, and I’ll be focusing for the immediate future on the backlog of incomplete projects on my plate.

Despite my limited ability to function over recent weeks (vertigo, pain, blackouts, tests, treatment, etc) I’ve been able to pursue a number of things, with help and support (I was unable to sustain cogent thought for much of the time, or else unconscious). One of these has been a long-awaited breakthrough in the delivery components for the PearlMaker System. Since this impacts directly on the structure and format of the content components, we’ve been unable to finalize Modules One and Two until Module Three was resolved satisfactorily.

There have been two major concerns in all of this:

Concern #1: Last Things First

Finding the right supplier of the required technology and tech support services has been like trying to find the proverbial needle in a haystack. Candidate after candidate has failed to deliver on their promised benefits. If the strategic aspects driving their systems worked, the technology and/or tech support wasn’t up to the job, and vice versa.

So we decided to bite the bullet and create our own… and promptly hit a wall when my health nose-dived. So the DIY option died a swift, silent death.

We needed a reliable, capable, committed technology partner to work with, not a new technology-based business to add to our already-overstretched-list of projects, so the search began. It’s been a slow and frustrating process. Some prospective partners looked very promising, only to fail one or more critical tests. Others simply failed or went out of business.

Concern #2: Balancing Income and Expenses

When you’re working with people just starting out in business, including network marketing, especially in tough economic times, it’s critically important to find a workable balance between maximizing income and minimizing expenses. Yes, the more your income grows the more you can afford to spend on expanding your resources and commitments, especially on variables like technology and promotion. But you need to be able to control and contain your initial costs while waiting for your income to become sustainable, then expandable.

So whatever system we chose for delivering our content and your promotional efforts, had to be dependable and scalable… with a low entry cost, features and functions that were adequate for the tasks required — plus the scope to expand to meet growing demand.

On top of this, the system chosen should also satisfy our underlying program philosophy of becoming self-funding almost immediately.

Long story short:

We believe we’ve found what we’ve been looking for and, now that I’m well enough to provide the necessary direction and support, testing begins from tomorrow to ensure that expectations can be met in reality. It will take 3-5 weeks to complete and make any adjustments needed on both sides. In the meantime, we can begin finalizing the formatting and publication of the content.

We expect to begin delivering the first components in June, with completion of all content modules within three months.

In a couple of days I’ll post an outline of the changes we’re making to the different PearlMaker modules, and why and how those changes will make it even better — and every bit as unique.

John