Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
The Importance of Staying Focused on Your Goals
May 23rd, 2010 | 
Author: 
Let’s face it. The more blogs get started up every day, the more businesses begun online every week, the more competition we find ourselves in. For those who are just trying to get focused on one niche and get making some money, this can be a discouraging aspect when fighting to remain committed.
I have been working online now for about six years. It was not until my third year online when I turned to offering services that I even began to see a steady income every month. I have had over 10 blogs that I have trashed over the last few years, each time trying to save what useful information I had gathered over time to re-purpose into a report to sell or articles to publish in directories.
If you do find yourself wanting to go on to something new, ask yourself a few questions first.
1. Have you made any money with this niche/project?
2.If the answer to question one is no, then question why. Did you not explore all possibilities for marketing or just try one way and when it didn’t work convinced yourself that it was a dead horse? Did you put in the proper time for keyword search to see if the niche was something popular?
If you have answered yes to all of these questions and are still not making any money. Try to look into deeper reasons. Do you just slap up posts that are poorly written or thought out, with no real feeling or energy put into them? People will not stick around to read if you are boring or they can tell you do not really have an interest in your own subject. Do you care to get involved with your readers? Are you always just after money and not trying to build up a reputation, and solid foundation for a business?
If you need extra help, try going to forums and asking for opinions or suggestion from other internet marketers. You can join http://selfstartersweeklytips.com/forum or http://warriorforum.com or http://wahm.com/forum or just do a Google search for internet marketing forums. I have found a ton of useful information, received some great advice and met some awesome, caring people from these forums. I have also found that when I am feeling down and discouraged that these places have the power to help me turn my focus back to where it needs to be.
Running a business online and making money is not always an easy prospect in the beginning. It requires a lot of testing and tweaking with trial and error. If you are not willing to do this and take each experience as a lesson to build on, then maybe you should just go look for another offline job.
Once you have found the system that works for you, keep repeating the same steps over and over again and you should soon find that you will have money coming in on a steady basis. Also keep your goals realistic. If you have a dream of making $150k a year online but can barely make $5 a day then, maybe you should be setting smaller goals such as $3000 a month by the end of the year, $6000k by the end of 2011 and $10k every month by the end of 2012. This will help you from getting discouraged on your low income days and keep you plugging away knowing that success is only around the corner.
It can be done. There are successful marketers all over the net. But there are also marketers that drop off the internet because they couldn’t stay focused on their goals.
One thing I read from one of my favorite marketers Jimmy D. Brown the other day was something I struggle with still today. I am always wanting to be a jack of all trades. I want to get into info product creation, then do services, then flip websites, then do niche blogging, etc. But if you scatter yourself all over like that, you do not have enough energy or resources to become a true success at one main thing that could bring you in the money. Find either your passion, or your top skill and pursue that.
If you are a people person, then a service business would be good for you if you have graphic design skills or networking skills, office/administration/customer service skills, or writing. I have made the most money from my services business online but I have also created information products to sell since I am a writer by trade.
I only have a few steady clients I prefer to work with and this frees me up for writing for my own business pursuits. I have written reports that have had no response from the masses because I based it off of something I was interested in and not widely searched for. But you just put your head down, do some keyword research and make sure you choose a better choice next time. But by staying focused on one thing, you will still have multiple opportunities to expand your business.
AND one other IMPORTANT thing to remember is: DON’T FORGET TO MARKET! Build a brand, and market yourself always!
12 Videos Show You How to Set Up Resell Rights Packs for Sale
Have you ever been excited to start something new, only to end up frustrated in the end because you can’t figure it out? Well, that is the way it goes with a lot of new internet marketers. It is nice to get your hands on an affordable resell rights product you can start making money from selling to your own customers, but what good does it do you if you can’t figure out how to unpack the contents, edit all the files as you need them, and then upload all of the images and files into the right folders on your server so they will be available for others to visit?
Well, I know how that feels because when I first started with resell rights products, I had the same problem. I wondered how other marketers could get this all figured out and online ready for sales. I had to learn the hard way with a lot of research, trial and error and some help from some fellow techies at my favorite business forums.
But now today there is a 12 set video pack that you can purchase for an awesomely low price of just $17 that shows you step by step the actual unpacking and setting up of a resell rights package. If I had known Ben Brooks was going to start offering this package for such a low price instead of his usual $97, I would have hunted him down a long time ago when I needed it most.
Now you have the opportunity to save yourself some time and stress and just follow along with these easy to follow videos that Ben has created to help you.
I’d say go check them out now before he puts the price back up! Think of all the money you could be making with all of those resell rights products you have just sitting on your desktop. Cha Ching! You can earn your money back in no time.
He shows you how to do all those tricky steps like adding and linking the payment button to your paypal account, and how to insert your autoresponder code into the sales page if you want to capture a visitors email for the ability to remind them later of the benefits of the products you are selling.
So, go now and at least read over the sales page and then think about it for awhile if you need to, but don’t think too long, or you could be losing out on the opportunity to be bringing in money for your business.
Resell Rights Videos
It’s Time for Another Giveaway Event!
I know, I know…It seems like I just like to post about giveaway events based on all of my posts.
The thing is, if you set things up properly and were on a good update/notice list of all the big events, you could be gaining subscribers every month with a new event.
Imagine growing your list from 200-2000 or more, in a year just by submitting your gifts, posting some promotional links, blasting out an email to your list or a safelist, twittering on your twitter profile, throwing up a splash page for the traffic exchanges, or chatting on any forums. You can reach tons of people, and really see your list grow.
One thing I found over time though, is you really do need to build up a strong relationship with your list. Treat them like friends more than wanna be customers. If you offer solid information and advice with little pushy sales, you will soon see your sales/commissions will increase. Be patient. Sometimes it can be discouraging when you blast out an email to your whole list and only 2% of the people even open or pay attention to your email. But as you grow, so will your response rate.
Anyways, on with the show! The latest giveaway event, once again offers new and exciting ebooks and software. You need to join me and see what goodies you can find. These events are great for getting PLR content you can use to create your own products, post on your blog, create new articles to submit for directories, or any use you can find for marketing your business.
Here is the link to join! Just click on the banner below.
3 Necessary Tools For the Super Affiliate Marketer
Have you ever wondered how some of the top affiliates can do it? What does it take to become a successful Affiliate Marketer? What must you do to gain an advantage?It may be true that Affiliate Marketing is one of the easiest and most effective ways to make money online, but there is still a plan that needs to be followed. For those who are just starting out trying making a business with Affiliate Marketing, there are a few tools you must first acquire to make the best of your efforts for maximum results.
Tool #1 Creating Your Own Website
Although some may argue that you do not need a website to sell other people’s products,it is the best way to present a professional presence online. This website will be the jump off point for all your marketing efforts. You need to make your website clean, clear and user friendly, thus encouraging your visitors to click around and buy your products or services. Therefore, you must create a website that will cater to your prospects needs.
As most people start surfing online to find information to a problem or need, they are not necessarily ready to buy at that time. Providing useful, relevant content will help build your credibility branding you as an expert, please the search engines,and satisfy the readers who come to your site. The more your readers can trust you, the more they will listen when you recommend a product they should buy.
Tool #2 Offering Incentives
With the increase in websites and businesses starting up online every day, you need to be able to offer something of interest and use to your potential customers. If you are promoting other people’s products and services, you will want to build a list of potential
customers so you can build a relationship with these prospects. You can offer free ebooks, software, an e course, a newsletter, or free services to get these prospects to sign up and stay with you. As you contact them at regular intervals providing them information and free
offers, they will learn to trust you and in time you will see that more of them will begin to buy the products or services you recommend to them as well.
Tool #3 Link Popularity
The importance of driving highly targeted traffic to your website cannot be emphasized enough. Getting people to your site should be one of the main goals you work on. You should be doing everything you can to acheive a high search engine ranking. Link Popularity is one of the factors that search engines use to determine search engine
rankings.There are several ways that you can do this.
One of the best ways to get reciprocal links, is by article writing. You can submit these articles to multiple article directories and ezines. You will not only gain exposure, you will also have the opportunity to advertise for free, just include a link back to your site. The more sites you submit your articles to, the better your link popularity is.
Make your articles original, relevant and useful so that more websites will pick it up and post it.
There are many other useful tools you can use to become a super affiliate. These are just a few of the ways that are cost effective and efficient. Use you imagination, creativity, resourcefulness and determination and you will be a Super Affiliate making great money in
no time.
Getting Ready for Taxes
The time is coming for taxes to be done. Whether you can be excited because you will actually see some money returned, or you will have to pay the government their piece of the pie, it needs to be done.
There are many programs online or that you can buy now that will help you complete your taxes yourself. If you are not inclined to play around with the figures, there are also services such as H & R Block that are well known for their expertise and abilities. It is better to pay a few dollars out to someone who is an expert than try to make heads or tails out of something that drives you nuts.
I have decided to devote more time this year to my parenting blog with affiliate programs/products. It seems that this make money online niche is being well used by many people online now and I am having a harder time staying motivated enough to learn a new marketing tip or trick. Time to refocus and narrow things down. I am hoping to be able to get more ghostwriting jobs this year as well so next year when I do my taxes, I will want to brag instead of be embarassed. Maybe I won’t feel so ripped off when I have to pay out my percentage to the government.
Here’s to a good year in 2009. May we all reach closer to our dreams and find ourselves one step closer to our own financial freedom.
Happy Holidays
I realize that the holidays are a busy time of year. We may not have much time for browsing around and reading other people’s blogs.
Most of us are busy running around and getting last minute presents, last minute dinner ingredients, baking those yummy holiday treats, and cleaning the house for all your guests.
If you are one of the lucky ones that get to visit a relative instead of host, you will still want to make sure that you pick up a special thank you treat for your family member to let them know that you appreciate all of their hard work.
Children may be on their best behaviour waiting for Santa or they may not due to being to anxious for the day to arrive. My 21 month old does not understand yet, so is busy just being a terrible toddler.
I have a toothache now from all of the goodies I have baked and needed to test over the last week or so. I hope it goes away. A dentist at Christmas is not my idea of a good holiday.
I know this is not business related and I didn’t leave you with any new information you could use. I just thought I would reach out to you on a personal level since it is the holidays, and I have been spending more time with my family than on my business right now.
I hope you have a wonderful holiday and I will be back soon to share some more business tips as I find them.
Melanie
Don’t let Discouragement get you down
We all have days where we want to just pack it all in, or throw the computer in the trash. We can’t let these days stay with us.
If you are building a list, you may find yourself getting discouraged as you see people unsubscribing from your list. If you have received these subscribers from free giveaways, you will always have the people who only signed up for the freebie. Do not let yourself get discouraged. These people would most likely have either never purchased anything from you, or never opened your email even if they stayed on your list. It is better to have a smaller list of responsive people than not.
I was feeling a little on the down side this week. A little of it being that I am now 32 weeks pregnant and want this over, and a little because I was hitting a wall when it came to marketing, and new products to create that others could use. Sometimes finding your target market in such a big world with so much other competition, makes me feel like a little fish being swallowed by a shark. Either that or I feel like I am not as talented as some of my competition and feel like I am wasting my time.
We can not allow those types of thoughts to permeate our thinking. Find something to make yourself feel better. Change your perspective. There are still many levels of new beginners out there trying to make money online, learn to create a website, blog, or any of the other things you can do online these days. Just because someone else has created an ebook or course on a topic you may have as well, doesn’t mean that they are going to steal your customers from you. Although they will if you allow your negative thoughts to rule and you sit on your hands when you should be finding ways to market and get yourself out there.(Don’t forget there is also the offline world you can reach out to as well when appropriate).
As my business partner was telling me the other day, she has read many products and watched several videos from other marketers who had products not as well written or created as some of mine and these people were well on their way to making some serious money anyways. It was because they never gave up. They did whatever they could to get out there and show people what they can offer. They are convincing because they believe in themselves and their product. You need that to succeed.
Some of the richest affiliate marketers have made millions selling trash, only because they were good at convincing people that they needed this product and it could help them. You can get your piece of the pie if you stay focused, positive and believe you deserve it.
Another Day, Another Dollar
I was going through some of my files and links the other day when I was finishing up my latest report/ebook I wrote. I found that some of the old blogs I thought I lost are still ranked on Google, although I can no longer post on them anymore since it has been over a year and I have no idea what the login and password are now. If anyone is interested in reading old posts about psychology, business, weight loss or writing tips, you can read them here http://theloserslocality.blogspot.com http://passionforwriting.blogspot.com http://thephilosopherszone.blogspot.com
So much has changed since I first started out with my first site in 2001. We are able to see what the fads were, what the good business sites are that are still in demand now, and what sites never made it past the first domain name renewal.
You really do have to stick to this business and market in as many ways as you can to get known out there. I realize how little marketing I have done with my business ventures and why I moved on to other things when after a year or so I did not acheive my goals. I have learned alot over the years and have now amassed a product line for myself of my own products. Affiliate marketing is good money but it has a different feeling being able to make money off of products that you have created yourself.
I would like to give you a free ebook that I just finished writing. I have the hopes that this book will be able to give a little bit of inspiration and encouragement to those people who are just starting out or wanting to start. Feel free to pass this download around to anyone you feel would enjoy and benefit from it.
Premade websites for business?
Good day. Today we will go more into depth about the premade websites I briefly mentioned the other day. I left the link for the Zlio shop for anyone to take a look. That is a good store idea for anyone who is just starting off and doesn’t really know what direction they want to take.
Zlio provides the software,templates, and monthly web hosting needed for you to setup your own shop for free. All you need to do is find the products you desire from the list available, click on the “add product to store” button and that is it.
Zlio is in affilliation with numerous stores that have agreed to pay anywhere from 3-14% commissions on anything sold. There are around 3 million products to choose from in almost every category you could think to need or want. Zlio makes a deal with these companies, takes their own cut(hence being able to give you the website creation and hosting for free), and then there is still enough for your commission.
There is also a community setup there so you could create a profile, look around at other people’s stores and link with them to help exchange traffic and profits. Zlio offers promotional tools and options for you, to help you market and promote your store as much as possible. There are several templates to choose from to create the look and feel of your storefront as you would like it to appear so it will be uniquely yours and not a generic website just like everyone elses.
You can make money from commissions off of your own chosen products in your store. When you get more adept at it you could always open up another store for another niche idea( a chosen specialized product or group of people to market to). There is no limit to the amount of stores they allow you to have for free. Just remember though it is up to you to market and promote so the more stores you have, the less time and money you will have to promote the best for each store.
You also have a personalized affiliate link to promote to get others to sign up and make a store to sell things themselves. For everyone you sign up you get 10% of their commissions, and then5% of everyone they sign up afterwards. Now if a commission is only $5.00 and you get 5o cents it may seem pretty pointless to try since the 5% would then be only 25 cents, but remember when it comes down to that level it will be all about the amount of people signed up underneath. Since that won’t be your main focus of income anyways, it is not really a concern, just call it a little extra bonus.
I hate to mention the cons as well as the pros when trying to promote a business opportunity, but I must. It is not a big concern, just merely a mention. Right now, this option is only available to sell products to the USA and France customers, but Zlio is in the process of getting it setup to be able to expand their sales and shipping to worldwide. So I stillrecommend this idea since there are still millions of shoppers out there, and more to come in the near future.
So if you enjoy shopping, are pretty up on the current trends in todays market, and think you would like to try your hand out in this type of business, it is a legitimate business that is cheap to start up and get going. You can purchase your own domain name later on and provide yourself with a more professional front. If you have any questions you can email me at melanie@bestdeals4ushop.com or melaniebremner@bargainbin4kids.com
Changing business plans
Some of you who may have been reading my past posts from last year may be wondering what has happened to me and my other business.
I have changed the direction of my business. I am still KDB Business Services, but I decided to research and learn about internet marketing and focus mostly on the best start up businesses for people who have not much startup capital but still want to stay home and have a career.
I started to talk to some mothers and hold a weekly meeting to see what interested mothers and how much time they would have to invest. Since most mothers dcn’t have much time or money to invest due to having to watch children, and clean home, I decided to dig around and see what I could recommend that would be the most for the least investment but still manage to reap enough rewards and not be a scam.
There are alot of scams out there in the internet world, alot of so called “gurus” prey on the fact they know so many people are out there trying to find work at home solutions.
90% of the programs and ideas marketed out there are scams. And even if they are not necessarily scams, persay, they are misrepresented to the point, that they might as well be.
First off, anything promised to be a complete business in a box, where all you have to do is buy the product and then put it on a web host service, and the money will come rolling in, is all fake.
The majority of all online business work is in the day to day marketing that goes along with it. The internet is so vast, the competition is so intense, that you need to do as much marketing to get yourself out there as is humanly possible.
You can get discouraged, alot of people give up before they start to see anything because it takes a long time. If you do not have at least a year to invest without needing money, then this type of business is not for you.
That is why stay at home moms are perfect for this type of business, they are going to be home with the children not working anyways. With all the options for marketing and advertising that require lots of work, but are free, it is a viable option. There are ways to spend money for different advertising, such as adwords(we will discuss this at another time), but I personally think until some revenue is noticed from all the hard work being done manually, don’t invest anything yet.
You need to do the manual advertising in order to learn the ropes. Once you are secure in knowing how things are done, and what makes a difference, then money can be spent more freely on pay per click options, paying for email optin subscribers, paying for targetted traffic or whatever if there is still more traffic needed to your site.
I know you need to spend some money to make some more money, but there is the smart way and the blind way. Learn the ropes first, research options, try all the free sources first, then when you have developed a nice sounding advertisement/sales copy you can promote through all available sources.
I will discuss with you various business opportunities out there that I recommend, I will try to help you with any concerns you may have. If I do not readily know the answer to something, just let me know,and I will go find an answer from some trusted internet professionals that I know do have the answers.
The first thing we will be discussing is affiliate programs. I have researched hundreds and hundreds and have narrowed it down to some I will take the time to discuss with you over the next little while.
if you would like more info, just email me with a comment or concern in the subject line, and I will research anything needed and get back to you. melanie@bestdeals4ushop.com
Anyone interested in building an online retail shop can take a look at the 3 shops that I am presently running, we will discuss how to set one up and all the factors for interested parties.
http://bestdeals4ushop.com, http://bargainbin4kids.com, http://everything4moms.zlio.com,
Tomorrow we will discuss affiliate websites, that are premade for you, these are often what some people like to get into because they have no technological skills. These do require some form of monthly payment, but any business you start will cost for web hosting monthly charges and a domain name.
Until tomorrow.
