Archive for January 2008

In my article 4 keys to success, I mentioned that creating your own products and services was a critical part. Let me go into a little more detail on this subject here.

Lots of people tell me that you can make money as an affiliate marketer. That is true. I am not going to argue that fact. However, let’s look at it logically. Suppose the next big product comes out and you decide you’re going to promote it. Do you think you’re the only one? Of course not. And not only aren’t you the only one, but many of the people promoting this product are going to be some of the biggest names around. You’re competing with people who have lists in the hundreds of thousands. So your share of the pie is going to be relatively very small.

Now, let’s look at the opposite. You have your own product. Not only do you have no competition but if you set up an affiliate program, you will have other people promoting your product as well. Now you not only make sales off of your own efforts but from the efforts of others. My personal income increased by four times when I released my first product.

Okay, a lot of people ask me if it’s hard to create your own product. The answer is no. It’s so easy it’s a joke. With the technology available to us today, you can create a product virtually at no cost at all. A digital information product can be created using Open Office, which is a totally free download. With just that, you can make your own ebook. It’s that easy.

Okay, but then what about the sales page? Well, I won’t lie. If you’re not a great copywriter, you should probably have somebody do it for you. But there are many excellent copywriters out there, myself included, who don’t charge astronomical fees. Plus, there are some excellent books on the subject, including my Basic Copywriting In Plain English, that will give you enough of the basics so that you should have no trouble writing copy that sells.

Creating your own products is not hard and it doesn’t have to cost a lot of money either.

It’s certainly the way to go if you want your business to grow significantly.

Categories Make Money Online
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In a previous article, I discussed the 4 keys to success, one of them being organization. In this article, I’m going to share with you some of the things I do to get and stay organized. I can’t say that these tips will work for everybody, but they have worked for me and I’ve been doing this for over 5 years now.

The first thing I do is sit down and actually write out exactly what it is that I want to accomplish and give myself a time frame for getting it done. For example, let’s say I want to create a new informational product. I’ll first decide on the topic, how much information I want to put into it, and how long I think it’s going to take me to finish it.

The next thing I will do is sit down and actually write out a schedule. Normally I don’t work on just one thing at a time as I have many businesses to run and many products to support. Therefore, I have to allow time for items that are currently in existence. So I will allot a certain time during the day to work on my info product.

Now, this is the hard part. Once the amount of time that I have allotted to work on that project has elapsed, I am done for the day. I don’t work one second more on it until the next day. I then either move onto my next project or, if it’s the end of my work day, I call it a night. I am very rigid in this area. If you’re not, what happens is you end up spending more time on things than you should.

In addition to time management, I also keep spreadsheets with each item I need to take care of. If things come up during the day, such as emergencies (emails from customers) then I will jot these down in a column called “emergencies” and take care of each one until they are taken care of. As each one is crossed off, I remove it from the spreadsheet.

This becomes increasingly more difficult the more things you do. If you saw my daily schedule, you’d faint. It’s part of the reason why I work long hours as I am into a lot of things.

But for somebody first starting out, getting organized should be very easy. You have only one business, one project and no customer support to take care of. So if you get into a routine early, it will carry you through to the times when things start to get a little crazy.

Categories Make Money Online
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Many times I get asked the following question…”What’s the most important ingredient to succeeding online?” Picking just one thing is hard to say the least. So instead, I’ve come up with a list of my 4 top keys to success and the reason why they are on my list. This is not to say that there aren’t other factors, but these are the deal breakers in my opinion. They are presented in no special order.

One key to success is being organized and disciplined. It doesn’t matter how much actual knowledge or skills you have. If you can’t sit down and do a day’s work, you could be the smartest person on the planet and it won’t matter. So many bright individuals get nowhere in their lives because they don’t have the discipline and the organization skills to put anything together. My mother was a perfect example of this. She was the most talented pianist and opera singer of her time, but because of poor organizational skills, she never could get her career on track. Yeah, this is a real killer this one.

Another key to success is creating your own products and services. Yes, you can make money online as an affiliate marketer promoting other people’s products. But as an affiliate marketer, you’re always going to compete with other marketers selling the same product. As a creator of your own products and services, not only don’t you have the added competition, but you also have the advantage of other affiliates promoting YOUR products. I quadrupled my income in one year once I created my own products online.

Advertising is pretty much the whole ball game when it comes to seeing any kind of success at all. You can have the greatest site on the Internet but if nobody knows it exists, forget it. You won’t make a dime. I’m not going to get into the explanation of how just putting a site up online is meaningless without promotion. I’ll save that for another article. Point is, unless you actively promote your site using methods that have been proven to work, your chances of success are slim to none.

Finally, there’s communication…more specifically, writing. If you think about most tasks that you will perform in your business, they all involve some form or writing. You have your sales pages. You have the actual content that you create. You have your email autoresponder messages. You even have your return emails to customer inquiries. If you can’t effectively communicate to your target market, you’re not going to capture their attention. Sure, you can outsource all of this. I hope you have some deep pockets to do it.

These are my 4 keys to success. Yes, there are many others…but these are at the very top as far as I’m concerned.

Categories Affiliate Marketing
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I know you’re probably reading this because you have been struggling to make money online or you want to make more money online than you’re already making. The sad truth though is that there is a gold mine right under your nose that you probably aren’t paying any attention to. I know a lot of beginners that have at least one website but they aren’t making any money. Wouldn’t you prefer to get paid every time that you put up a web page instead of waiting for affiliate commission or Adsense checks to come in?

Do you know that small to medium sized business owners will pay you more than you can earn from one affiliate program in one year in only a few hours time. It’s ridiculous how many business owners I talk to that know they need a website but they don’t know who to talk to. I can’t possibly make a website or promote for every business owner out there so I think you should take a real serious look into this if you want to start making money online.

I can already hear your excuses so let me just stop you before you even get started. If this is your first time online and you don’t have any experience, it’ll only take you a few weeks to learn how to create a descent looking blog. After that you’ve already learned a valuable skill that you can sell to business owners. Once you talk to a few business owners you’ll see how easy it really is to get paid for your services. Then you can learn how to set up autoresponders for businesses, do pay per click advertising for them, search engine optimization , etc..

What you’ll notice is that it will be easier to promote a business in your town than it will be to promote a business opportunity that may not be around next year, or sell a product that 1000 other people on the internet are selling. To test this all out you should go and talk to three business owner in your area and see what they think. You can use the script below if you don’t know what to say:

THIS IS JUST AN EXAMPLE, BUT IT WORKS….TRUST ME

Step 1- Call some businesses in your area and see if the owner is there or just stop by some businesses that you pass by everyday. If yes go there and look around( Like you wanna buy something ).

Step 2- Ask the business owner about his product, e.g. “do you sell these red shoes in size 10?” or “are you open on holidays?”

Step 3- Ask him or her how business is going, then stop and listen to every word they say. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT. They may say something like “it’s going well, but I could always use more customers”, etc..

Step 4- You should say: “I hear that a lot, but in my business there’s probably more customers than I can handle”. The business owner will ask you what you do.

Step 5- You say: “I help businesses make more money my putting them all over the internet” It’s important to say it like this because they can understand what you mean, even though we don’t talk like that.

Step 6- Then you say: “as a matter of fact, i have a few slots open to set this up for some businesses in this area, do you have any friends that own their own business?” IMPORTANT- Get referrals first because they may be one of those people that say, “Yeah, sounds like a great idea but i think the internet thing is the devil”. So you want to get as many referrals as you can before you EVEN ASK HIM OR HER if they would be interested. Sometimes if they’re interested they’ll stop you and even beg you to set something up for them. But if they don’t you’ll have 2 or 3 referrals before you even get the that point.

Step 7- Tell them: “You know what I know that this internet set up will probably give you a lot more business, do you think you’d be able to handle that?” If yes, say “Well, let’s get you set up, is there anything special you want me to put up for you besides your business info? Do you have any special coupons? Once you finish writing down all their info, tell them your price and ask and that since you only have a limited amount of time you need to know if they want the basic level or whatever your more advanced marketing package would be. Tell them the prices and just stand there and wait….because they’ll either ask you more questions or ask how they can pay.

If you can do the above ten times a week, you’ll have more business than you know what to do with.

Here’s an example of what some one else said that tried this for the first time:

Mike Said:

There is a local pet store here that specializes in pure-bred “pocket” dogs. You know…the cutesy kind that Paris Hilton wannabes stuff in their Gucci bags and walk around in the mall with. I think these dogs look like rats and gerbils, but to each their own. These things sell for 1300.00 dollars and up.

The other day, after reading this thread, I found the website of said dog store and almost had to throw up at how terrible it is. It is absolutely doing nothing for this persons business. It is the type of site that a business has made up just to say that they have a website and aren’t stuck in the 17th century.

So today I walked in and chatted up the owners, who also mind the store. I asked them how business was doing and they indicated it was lukewarm, mostly because we are in the post-holiday season. I then inquired what marketing they were doing: they have a yellow pages ad and do some local coupon ads twice a year or so.

I then asked how many people come in the store, look around a little bit, and then claim that they’ll come back at a later time when they see a dog they like (their “inventory” of ugly dogs changes weekly). They said probably 95%. Of these 95% about half take a business card or flyer. Of those half, only about 5% come back and actually end up buying something. I said not bad but I can improve it, and spent the next hour explaining how…and then signing them up for a 3000 dollar complete site overhaul (I’ll use xsite pro) and 250 monthly fee for hosting and monthly update.

I snatched the monthly fee by offering this service:

They have their customers and potential customers sign up for a monthly e-mail update on what they have in stock. Customers can also go the website and opt-in, of course.

I come in once a month and film their new inventory (using a Flip Video recorder). I will record about 90 seconds of video footage per mutt (they usually have around 12-15). Each dog’s video clip gets uploaded to youtube. The monthly email gets put together, with a two or three paragraph blurb about the new dogs they have available and the 12-15 videos embedded in the email.

The effect of this is twofold: customers that have already purchased a dog, will probably check out a video, fall in love with one of the dogs, and rush in to buy it. Customers who walk in, but don’t like any of the dogs they currently have, can get a monthly audio/visual update on the stores inventory from the comfort of their home or workplace. So instead of losing a potential buying customer, the store can now put its product in the face of prospects once a month with ease.

I estimate that it will be about 2 or 3 hours of actual labor per month. If I start getting too busy I know someone who I can pay 50 bucks to do it for me. So 200 bucks a month for sitting on my ass. Nice.

250 a month is probably cheap. But it’s my first client and I’m learning. BTW I walked out of the store with a check for 1500$. Always get half up front, and wait until it clears before you fire up XSITEPRO. Peace.

NOTE: This was the first time he ever did this and he got a check for $1500, so the only thing that’s stopping you from making money is you if you don’t try this out.

Post your comment below before it’s too late. Let me know what you learned from Steven’s ebook. And to make the deal even better you’ll also receive $50 for the best comment. Don’t be shy, post your comment now.

If you didn’t read the shocking article yet you can read it by CLICKING HERE then coming back to this page to make a comment because you could be the winner.

Categories Make Money Online
Comments (270)

Most people who want to begin a home business have no idea where to even start. They look at their PC screen and if it isn’t blank, it might as well be for all the good it’s going to do them. They’re lost in a world where the only thing they know for certain is that they are totally clueless. So where the heck DO you start? Well, this article is going to give you some basic building blocks for starting your home based business.

The first step is to sit down and think about what you already know and like to do. Everybody, no matter how dull they are, has interests. Most interests, believe it or not, can be easily monetized, unless your hobby is underwater pole vaulting, in which case you probably won’t find much of a demand. But if you’re a typical normal person, there’s a very good chance that one of your interests can be turned into a part time or even full time income.

The second step is to list these interests and go to the Internet to see if you can find anything on them. For example, let’s say that your interest is playing the guitar. Maybe you’re even a very good guitar player. Maybe you even have a method for teaching the guitar that you think is quite unique and may be something that you could teach to others. What you would do is go online and see if there are already guitar courses being sold. If there are, then there is certainly a market for this niche.

The third step is to see how much competition you’re going to have. I’m not suggesting that if there is a lot of competition that you should give up the idea, but at least know what you’re getting yourself into before you get into it. An easy way to find out how much competition you have is to go back to the search engines (Google will be fine) and see how many web sites there are for guitar courses. If there are millions, you’re going to have your work cut out for you. If there are thousands, not so much.

The fourth step is to actually start planning how you’re going to monetize this niche. Are you going to write an ebook on playing the guitar? Maybe you’ll put together a course on DVD with actual videos. Video courses are very big today and people will pay more for them depending on the niche. Point is, you need to sit down and decide just how you’re going to present your product to the market, assuming there is one.

This is a very basic starting point that we’ll expand on in future articles. For now though, this should give you something to think about.