Sounds like a strange question. I mean, how does one know whether or not they need a mentor? Some people say that those who really need a mentor don’t know enough to know that they need a mentor. If that’s true, then this article probably couldn’t come at a better time. I am going to tell you, in no uncertain terms when you do and when you DON’T need a mentor. Once you understand this, you’ll be able to figure out, instantly, when you need to reach out to somebody for mentorship.

Okay, first a true story. When I first started out, I had no idea what I was doing. I finally found some books on traffic generation and started to have success. So at that point in time, I didn’t need a mentor…not yet. But then as time went by, I discovered that I wasn’t making any progress. I was still making money, but I wasn’t making a lot of money. So I realized that I needed more help. I just didn’t know where to go for it.So I sought out a mentor.

I got the help I needed from a guy by the name of Juan Walker. He gave me, in just one conversation, all the information that I needed. Notice I didn’t say I needed months of mentoring. I just needed a little direction, which I got. My income then increased by four times because of his mentoring. But that wasn’t the end of it, because again, after a while, my income stagnated and I couldn’t make it to the next level. I didn’t know where to go from there. I was truly stuck.

Okay, do you see the common pattern? I needed a mentor when I couldn’t think of how to do something on my own…when the information I needed was not something I was going to get from a book because I didn’t know what book to turn to. I didn’t have any direction as to where to look. So I needed somebody to give me direction. That’s when I needed a mentor.

If your problem is you’re trying to decide what book to get on traffic generation, or even if you’re having trouble understanding the book you got, that’s not a time for you to get a mentor. The time is when you have exhausted every avenue and you literally don’t know where to turn. It has nothing to do with what you don’t understand but EVERYTHING to do with what you don’t even know exists…when the void in front of you is so wide that you’re literally clueless and without hope. That’s when you need a mentor.

If you keep these guidelines in mind, you should have no trouble when deciding on getting a mentor or not.

I hear this so often. “I got a really great website and I advertise the heck out of it, but I can’t get anybody to buy anything.” And then they scratch their virtual head and wonder what went wrong. Well, I’m going to try to shed a little light on the situation so that you understand why so many people have trouble making a living online. Hopefully, by the time you’re done reading this, you’ll have the answers that you need.

We live in a skeptical world. This is a fact. The reasons don’t really matter, though you can probably look to the dot com bust of years ago. Companies were built on nothing more than a dream and many people lost their shirts. Since that time, those who hit the Internet in search of a business opportunity or information that will help them run their business, are very cautious. As well they should be. The result is that it’s more difficult to make sales than ever before.

In order to overcome this, a marketer needs credibility and needs to gain trust. Easy to say…hard to do. When it comes to income earning opportunities, credibility comes in the form of actually being able to show others that you have been successful with your business. This is where many home business owners make their first mistake. They attempt to sell a money making scheme to some poor sap when they haven’t made enough to rub two nickels together. Where is the credibility?

As a result, there is no trust. How can you trust somebody who sells you a bill of goods on an opportunity that hasn’t made you squat? I know that there are a lot of people right now who are not enjoying reading this, but it needed to be said. Whether or not YOU want to admit it, this is the way the outside world looks upon snake oil salesmen. That isn’t going to change just because we don’t want to admit it.

So what’s the solution? It’s really very simple. Develop some credibility for yourself. Make some money with your “methods” by promoting a real product…something that regular people can actually use. The Internet is filled with them. Find one. Then come back and tell people how you did it. Give them a free report that might actually help them out. If they want to progress further, then you can sell them something. At least then you’ll have some credibility and maybe gain the trust of a few people.

It’s not rocket science and it just might help you start your way to a successful and honest business.

I get requests from many people to mentor them. I turn down more people than I take on, even though I charge a nice fee for my services. Buy why? Why is it that I turn people away? It’s very simple. It’s because some of these people want to sell oxygen to a dead man and quite frankly, I tell them that they are wasting their time and until they are willing to come up with something better, there is no point in me working with them.

So just what do I mean by selling oxygen to a dead man? Well, the saying itself should be obvious as far as its meaning. A dead man has no need for oxygen. So what’s that have to do with Internet marketing? It is the whole foundation of Internet marketing…finding a hungry market and giving them what they want. The problem is, many marketers don’t know what a hungry market is.

Some people think that a hungry market is that nice little old lady who plants radishes in her garden and wants to know the best way to do that. While this might be a product that will get you a sale here or there, it is not what I call a product that caters to a hungry market. Let’s face it, growing radishes is not a burning life problem.

Okay, so what is? How about the poor middle aged guy suffering from high blood pressure who is a walking ticking time bomb? Think he wouldn’t like to find a way to lower his blood pressure without taking drugs that make him feel worse than he did before he took them? What about the poor family who is so in debt that they’re about to lose their home? Don’t you think they’d love to find an easy and legal way to get out of debt? What about the poor teen who’s dying to ask out the girl sitting across the way from him but he’s too embarrassed because he suffers from terrible acne? Think he wouldn’t give anything to get rid of the zits on his face and keep them off…permanently?

These are just a few of the many life problems that are really serious problems. These are the type of markets that marketers should be tapping into instead of this BS “How To Make A Custom Kite.” Trust me, nobody cares…not enough to pay for the information. And that’s really what it comes down to because there is a lot of free info out there.

In other words…you can’t sell oxygen to a dead man.

I get asked this a lot. “How important really is the niche you choose? Can’t you make money in just about any niche at all?” Okay, there are two answers to that question, the technically correct answer and the real answer. I’m going to explain both of these answers in this article so that you can understand specifically why it is or isn’t important as far as what niche you choose.

The technical answer is yes. You can make money from just about any niche. If you work hard enough at it and put out an offer that people in that niche will respond to, yes, you can make money. However, that answer is a half truth at best and the reason why is also the reason why 95% of niche marketers don’t make a dime from their efforts.

Okay, so what’s the real answer? The real answer is no. Here is why. See, the world is a funny place. Each person only has so much disposable income. Yes, there are those of us who are pretty well off and can afford just about anything. But for the most part, you’re not going to be reaching many of them anyway unless it’s for something that is a pressing problem that they’re having. And yes, even rich people have problems.

But getting back to your average Joe. If it’s a choice between putting food on the table and getting a book on how to have a greener garden, no offense, but the garden is going to take a back seat. Some things are just not pressing enough. Now, not every niche idea has to be a matter of life and death such as cancer cures, diets, stop smoking products, debt relief and so on. But the product has to at least be something that a person in that niche is going to find attractive enough and desirable enough to want.

For example, somebody who is looking to go to France later in the year and would like to be able to speak the language well enough to communicate, might just be interested enough in a learn to speak French product to go and buy it. No, it’s not life and death, but it’s something that’s important to that person and maybe to a lot of other people.

The key to niche research is to find out if enough people are interested in the niche and then, if they are, do they have money to spend? More importantly, are they WILLING to spend it? If there is a lot of free info on the subject, maybe not.

So yes, it is important to pick a niche that has a demand and lots of hungry buyers willing to dig into their wallets.

Otherwise, we’re just in this for the fun of it.

Making a living online is hard enough without making it even harder on yourself by leaving your fate in the hands of others. This article is going to explain why this is just a bad idea and how to avoid having your business shut down because of things out of your control.

This is a true story. A friend of mine set up a WordPress blog about a year ago. He had worked it up to a nice PR and it was really bringing him some nice traffic. And then one day, WordPress decided it didn’t like his blog anymore for whatever reason and shut it down. He was unable to get access to it to even transfer it over to his own hosting account. This seriously hurt his business.

And these stories are not uncommon. Too many times, marketers end up having parts of their business shut down because the site hosting their content has a TOS change and decides that they no longer want your business. This can happen with WordPress, Squidoo, Blogger or any site that is essentially not your real estate. And when this happens, it can be devistating.

There are plenty of things online that we have very little control over. For example, if we want to use pay per click advertising, we’re at the mercy of the pay per click sites, such as Adwords. So if Google doesn’t like your campaign, either because of your landing page or the product itself, they can shut you down without any notice at all and your advertising campaign goes down in flames. This is why it’s not good to put all your eggs in one basket.

But when it comes to real estate, or your own sites, that’s where you have to use as few third party sites as possible. So if you’re planning on putting up a blog, host it on your own server. Don’t host it with a third party site because if they change their TOS, there is nothing you can do about it and you end up losing all your hard work.

The important thing is to look at your options and choose the one that is going to benefit you the most in the long run. It’s never a good thing to depend on others for your business. This is no more critical than when you’re creating content. It’s always best to put as much as you can on your own site and not somebody else’s.

The last thing you want to be is at the mercy of others.

My friend learned that the hard way.

Something very interesting happened to me the other day. No, I am not going to mention any names because that’s just tacky. However, I discovered something that really surprised me. And that’s when I realized that even successful people don’t know it all. There is a point to this and I’m going to make it at the end of this article, but I want you to read the story first.

I was asked to review a product the other day. It was one made by a very successful marketer. I was actually honored to be asked. Anyway, I went through the videos and the book and when I was done with everything, while the content was excellent, I realized that there was stuff missing. How did I know this? Because I was very familiar with the subject. I couldn’t imagine how this person could have left these things out.

Well, I contacted him, told him what I thought about the material that I did read and then asked him why he had not put certain things into the book and videos. His answer surprised me. He said it was because he wasn’t really that familiar with those areas and rather than lecture on something he didn’t know a lot about, he just left them out.

Now, having said this, the areas he did leave out were not critical to the product being useful. And therein lies my point. See, you don’t really have to know everything about a subject to know it well enough to make it work for you. I certainly don’t know everything about a lot of subjects, but I know enough about them to be able to use them efficiently. That is the key…knowing just enough to make it work.

Point is, you don’t have to be an expert at anything. You just have to know your material well enough to be able to use it and profit from it. If you can do that, there is no reason why you can’t make a decent living online.

Even if you don’t know it all.

A lot of people ask me if it matters if they have a pretty ecover or graphic on their sales page. They want to know, for that matter, how important it is to have a fancy looking sales page in the first place. And what about the actual product? Does it have to be formatted like a King’s palace? Well, the short answer is no. However, if you want to get the most out of all your promotions, appearance is going to make a difference.

Let’s start with something as simple as an ecover for your info product. Many people, even today, still don’t bother creating ecovers for their info product. Some of them actually still make a decent number of sales. However, studies show that ecovers, if they are nice looking, increase the conversion of your sales page. Now, an ecover that looks like garbage is most likely going to hurt your conversions because you are then seen as unprofessional, something not having an ecover doesn’t do.

What about the sales page itself? Well, again, some people have very simple and basic sales pages and do quite nicely with them. However, studies show that the better a sales page looks, the better it converts. Now, if you’re going to make a simple sales page and it looks professionally done, you should be okay. However, if you are just going to throw something together that looks like garbage, this is going to hurt your sales. There is no way around this. Simple is one thing. Ugly is something else.

What about your info product? Do you have to have a fancy clickable table of contents? Do you have to have graphics in the product itself? Do you need page numbers and headers and footers? Do you need a resource section? Well, no. You can leave all that stuff out if you like. But again, studies show that the perceived value of an info product that has all the bells and whistles is much greater.

What I’m trying to get across in this very straight forward article is that perception is everything and the perception of others is going to be greatly affected by the appearance of your graphics, sales page and product. The better these things look, the more people will like them…regardless of the actual content inside.

It may not be fair…but it is the truth.

Appearance is everything.

I constantly tell people that the best way to make money online is by creating their own products. The problem is, not everybody has the ability to do this from scratch, whether it be that they don’t have enough knowledge of the subject or they simply don’t have the time to do all the research and writing that’s required. Well, if that’s the case, then I have a solution to your problem. This article is going to give you a great shortcut for creating your own info products. As a matter of fact, it’s so good, you can have a product created in a matter of days.

What am I talking about? Private Label Rights, or PLR. PLR is probably one of the biggest lifesavers in the product creation world. The reason is because with PLR, you purchase the rights to the product to do with it anything you like…including selling it as your own product. This is certainly a shortcut method to product creation if there is one. However, there are some things about using PLR material to create your own product that you need to be aware of.

For starters, and this is the biggest mistake that people make, you can’t just purchase PLR material and pass it off as your own right out of the box. I mean you could, but then your product is no different from all the other PLR products out there coming from your particular material. To make your product unique, you do need to modify it slightly, which includes giving it a new ecover, modifying the sales page slightly and rewriting some of the content.

Now, you’re probably thinking to yourself, “If I’m going to go through all that work, why don’t I just create the product from scratch?” The answer goes back to what I said about the research part. Researching a topic to write about could take days if not weeks. By getting a good PLR package and reworking it slightly, you will save tons of time in research. Plus, by not having to research your topic, you can sell products in areas where you have absolutely no knowledge. This opens up a world of opportunities for you.

If you want to discover everything, and I mean EVERYTHING that you’ll need to know about using PLR material to create your own products, check out the link in my signature. You’ll save yourself tons of time and money and have products cranked out so fast it will literally make your head spin.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim
PLR Exploitation – Everything You Need To Know To Sell Your Own PLR Products

http://floshow25.plr2008.hop.clickbank.net