241 – Bar Codes on steroids: Tom talks QR Codes

Episode 241 – QR Codes
[00:00:09] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey, everybody, it's Tom here with Episode 241 of Screw the Commute podcast. Today, we're going to have a short episode, but extremely, extremely powerful. You need to do this. It won't cost you anything to do. It's a great marketing thing that I'm going to tell you about today. Now we're going to talk about QR codes. These are a free way to get your info directly into someone's smartphone, to get them to do what you want them to do. Now, there's fancier ones I'll tell you about, too. But you can do this all for free right now. Now, I hope you did miss episode 240. Warren Carlyle, one of the most brilliant people I know on earth. He's a community building expert. He had super tips on building authority online. That was episode 240. Make sure you grab a copy of our automation e-book. It's at screwthecommute.com/automatefree and it's stuff that I've used for years and years. It just saves me millions and millions of keystrokes and takes care of customers really fast. So check that out for free. We sell it for twenty seven bucks, but you get it free at screwthecommute.com/automatefree and while you're over there, get yourself a copy of our podcast app at screwthecommute.com/app and very soon, it may be up there when you hear this, we'll have a video showing you how to use the app. We already have screen captures there at screwthecommute.com/app and you'll be able to take us with you on the road and use all the fancy features. Now our sponsor's the Internet Marketing Training Center of Virginia it's a Distance Learning School, which teaches legitimate techniques to make a great living, either working for someone else or starting your own online business or both. Why not do both? What the heck? So check it out at IMTCVA.org. That is, of course, in the show notes. And anytime you want to go to the show notes, you can go to screwthecommute.com slash, in this case, 241. That's the episode number. Screwthecommute.com/241. Check out the school. And also, we have a quiz over there. All right. It's IMTCVA.org/quiz. And oh, you'll be you'll just be really mad when you take this two minute quiz to see how colleges are ripping people off students and cause an enormous debt and just ripping them off. So take that quiz.

[00:03:06] All right. Let's get into the main event. QR code stands for Quick Response Code, and it's a series of dots or other graphics and it's called machine readable or in our case, most people would read our QR codes with their cell phones. I guess that's a machine. You can think of it as a barcode kind of on steroids. How about that? Now, QR codes aren't new. They just never caught on because in the early days you had to download an app to read them. So nobody really got excited about it. Now, both iPhones and Androids can read them just by looking at them with their camera. And it's already built into your phone. And I'm going to have a whole bunch of examples in the show notes that you can try out episode 241 so you can just hold your phone over it with your camera app open and then you'll get a little notification and you click on it. It will take you to one of my Web sites or I'm going to tell you all the things that I'll do here in a minute.

[00:04:12] Now people use them for all kinds of things. I mean, they can be read on a computer screen, but many are printed on brochures and flyers. When you generate these, you can generate high resolution for print on your brochures and flyers and business cards or low resolution for to be seen on the screen. Now, there's two types of QR codes. One is called static and the other is called dynamic. Now, with a static QR code, a piece of information can be conveyed, and I'm going to tell you all about the different things you can do with them in a minute. But but on a static one, whatever piece of information that you're trying to convey, like go to a Web site or something. It can't be changed once the QR code is generated. For instance, if the QR code sends people to a different Web site like kickstartcart.com, I would have to generate a completely new code if I wanted to send those people to screwthecommute.com. There's no problem doing this. But if you have printed the QR code on a brochure or even the side of your car, you're stuck or you have to reprint the brochure or repaint your car. Now, with a dynamic QR code, you can change the destination where the QR code goes. So if I had printed a brochure with a QR code going to screwthecommute.com and I wanted to change where the QR code goes, let's say to kickstartcart.com. All I have to do is log in to my QR code generator and swap out the link. I don't have to reprint the brochure or repaint the car. Now, when someone scans the code with their phone, it will take him to the new destination.

[00:06:13] So what can you do with these codes? It's I mean, it's really amazing. I mean, wait till you hear this list. So here's a bunch of things you can do with QR codes. All right. Your business card can be in the form of a QR code. You can show a YouTube or other video. You can show a Facebook page. You can send them to your Instagram feed or LinkedIn account.

[00:06:38] Check this out. A QR code can open up the person who's scanning your QR codes. It can open up their e-mail with your e-mail address already pre populated in their email program. OK, so they can send you an e-mail very easily. And with the email, you can also pre populate the body of the email with a message to you. That's crazy. You can have it say have your email address and have the subject line. Say, Hey, I want information on your school. And Tom, I heard your school is great. Please send me the catalog or something like that. All pre populated. All you have to do is click send crazy. You can send people to your podcast and check this out. You can send them to pay pal, with an amount of money pre populated where they can pay you for a product right from their phone. Just after scanning the code. And is another thing. You can send people through your code to a Google map of your location. The person scanning your code has the full power of Google Maps at their fingertips to navigate right to your location, to buy your stuff or attend your event or I mean, people are using this to tell people were parties are OK.

[00:08:01] So what do you need to create these codes? Well, you need a QR code generator. And there are tons of free ones that work just fine. The problem is, is that most of the free ones can't make fancy looking codes and most of them are of the static type where you can't change where they take a person. All you have to do is type in free QR code generator and give anyone you find to try. Also, they're mostly ad supported. You know, the free ones, so wherever you send them will most likely have an ad or their name on top of where you're sending them. So, you know, they've got to make money somehow. Now, with dynamic generators, you pretty much have to use a paid service if you want the dynamic code to have all the features that a dynamic code has. Now you'll pay a monthly or yearly fee for one of these services. Now having a good paid service can give you lots of information and capability that the free services don't have. At least I haven't found any free ones that have. Now, remember, a dynamic code lets you change the destination of the code without regenerating it and reprinting it.

[00:09:19] And also a good QR code service has very extensive statistics of how many people scanned your code and some can tell you where the person was when they did scan your code. Now you can also make really fancy codes with a paid service with your own logo embedded or as a background. And you can use all kinds of motifs on the code and use more than one color on the code. So so it's it it can do a lot of things that the free ones usually can't. Now, if you quit the paid service, the code will lose most, if not all of its functionality and statistics. And that may be just fine if you were using the code for, let's say, a one time event and didn't need it after the event.

[00:10:10] Now, I'm not recommending the following service, but I have tried it out. I haven't made my final decision on a paid service yet. The one I tried is called Scanova and it has lots of nice features, but I'm a little skeptical because it only gives you 20 codes for the price and the unlimited service is kind of expensive and it's really packed full of features. But another reason I'm skeptical is that I emailed them twice over a period of two weeks with a question and never heard back from their support. So that that worries me. Now to scan the codes, you just go to the camera app on your smartphone and hold it there for a few seconds over the QR code and a notification box appears and when you tap it, it does whatever the code was programmed to do. I want you to check out all the ones in the show notes and you'll just be amazed that all the things it'll do.

[00:11:11] Now, I really want you to go over to my school Web site and take that college rip off quiz I was telling you about earlier. It only takes about two minutes. And even if you aren't considering going to college or sending your kids to college, I'm virtually certain you know someone who is so. Pass it on to them. I mean, it's a new era. And I know it's hard to overcome a hundred years of brainwashing where you had to get a college degree. But guess what? Only 20 percent of college graduates get a job in the field they went to college for. There's I mean, there's tons of things I could tell you that would really make you mad at colleges. But just take the quiz. It's IMTCVA.org/quiz. It's in the show notes and carefully watch the quiz and and think about how using quizzes could help your business. Now, in fact. Yeah, I think I got a QR code in the show notes that that'll take it to the quiz. So check it out.

[00:12:11] This was a relatively short episode, but very powerful episode. There's no reason to delay using these codes, even if you're only using the free ones to start. They are modern and many people are used to using them now and they make it very easy for people to do what you want them to do. So check out the show notes for a bunch of the static ones I created and this is episode 241. So I go to screwthecommute.com/241 and I'll catch you on the next episode. See ya later.

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