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How to be more effective in your online business

Having an online or ‘work from home’ business can be incredibly rewarding but it can also be very frustrating. To be effective in what you are doing your need to set some goals and prioritise your time.

One success principle which has stood the test of time is Pareto’s principle: the 80/20 rule. Successful people spend 80% of their time doing the things which are most important in moving towards their main goals. Of the things which you do in your daily routine only 20% of really matter in terms of your results. So the trick is to spend 80% of your time doing those things.

Unsuccessful people spend most of their time doing the things which they enjoy the most and give them the most amount of pleasure in the moment. In effect they are spending their time doing unproductive activities. It is a habit which tends towards instant gratification. Successful people know how to delay gratification and work on their goals first before rewarding themselves.

Prioritising your time is a successful principle which when put into effect will begin to make dramatic differences to your life over time.

‘To Do’ lists

One way to immediately springboard your success rate is to prioritize your ‘to do’ list. This is something which has been discovered in big business as a way to immediately improve production and performance. Rather than simply creating a random to do list with a huge amount of items which can lead to overwhelm and indifference, create only a list of 6 or less items – more than this becomes unmanageable.

For each item arrange it into order of priority giving priority to those items which will make a massive difference to your business and giving the lesser tasks a lower importance. Never move on to another item on your list without doing the more important item first. If something comes up which often it does, place it into your list in terms of its priority. That way you don’t become distracted and put others’ needs in front of your own. This strategy will help you to avoid the temptation to only do those things which you are good at and enjoy. This can be a problem when working for yourself from home as you have no-one to answer to but yourself. Rather than moving your business forwards you can simply fall into the habit of just having a ‘nice day’! You avoid the ‘difficult’ tasks for the easier or more enjoyable ones. As a result your business doesn’t move forwards.

Prioritizing your to do list on a daily basis will massively improve your productiveness and you will find your time is much better spent doing the most important tasks first which will have a greater impact on your business.

Don’t do list

If there is something on your list which, if you don’t do it, it will make no difference to your business, cross it off. Operate a ‘won’t do’ list and you will free up more of your time to do those things which have a massive impact on your business. Ask yourself regularly ‘Am I doing the necessary or am I simply distracting myself with the unimportant’.

Having a worthy goal

If you are indifferent about your list then you need to come up with a more worthy goal. You goal needs to be something large enough to get you out of bed in the morning but not so large that you don’t believe it is achievable. Without goals it is very difficult to generate momentum in your business and give yourself a meaningful direction.

If you are working on an online business by yourself and you don’t have goals you will most likely fail! It sounds harsh but how do you expect to get somewhere when you don’t know where that somewhere is! How can you hit a target when you can’t see it.

Goal setting is an important topic which is covered in Jay and Stuart’s course on The Six Figure Mentors. Check out this free bootcamp videos course which includes some inspiring videos on building your online business.

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10 Mistakes Newbie Online Business Owners Make

When I started out online I spent far too much time and effort doing things which didn’t produce any results. Over the years I have leaned through my own mistakes to concentrate on the activities which produce the greatest results. So here I have complied a list of the top 10 things to avoid when starting out online.

1. Creating your own product

10 mistakes newbie online business owners make

I spent weeks and months building my own e-books and downloads to put on my website thinking I was going to become rich from the sales. After spending several weeks building the book, converting it to a pdf, copyrighting it, uploading it to my website, building articles on my website, guess how many sales I made? Yes none!

I wasted all that time and made no money at all. The main problem was I was a no-body. No-one will buy from someone they don’t know or trust. Trust is the number one commodity on the internet and if you can build trust you are much more likely to be able to sell a product. If you don’t have any customers or traffic to your websites you can have the best product in the world but you still won’t make any sales.

Using someone else’s product like Stuart and Jay’s SFM will free up all that time you could have spent creating your own product and already has been developed with all the systems in place.

2. Getting distracted

There are so many people and companies in the online world who are telling you how to make an online business work that it becomes impossible to discern the good ones from the bad ones. I jumped from one course to another always looking for the ‘magic bullet’ of internet income and wasted valuable time.

You need to stick it out long enough to see the results but choose a company whom you can believe in. Believe in yourself and that you can make it work, whatever your ‘results’ look like at any given time. Don’t expect miracles straight away but once you have chosen a path, believe in it and stick to it.

Making an internet income is absolutely a possibility and you need to hold onto your belief without becoming disillusioned. It was my lack of belief in some of the ‘systems’ I bought into which made me lose interest and get drawn into another ‘fast buck’ idea without seeing the previous one through. If you keep doing this you will never gain any momentum in any direction.

3. Thinking you need to be an expert

There are plenty of ‘experts’ on the internet and for a while I tried to be one of them. The problem is people know if you don’t know what you’re talking about! It is better to be your genuine self and be ‘real’ than to try and be something you’re not. People don’t buy products from websites or people they don’t trust. If you are a ‘real’ person then people will trust you and are more likely to buy from you or believe in your products. If you try and fake it people will know. Instead of trying to be an expert just be yourself and build trust.

4. Thinking you need to do everything yourself

When I first started out I thought I was going to make a huge amount of money just by writing articles and building a few websites. The truth soon dawned on me that it wasn’t going to happen. I leaned lots of new skills but the work I put in was certainly far greater than my financial reward. I built site after site, watched hours after hours of instructional videos over and over, learning how to build websites, back link, create content and email capture pages.

The problem was I was on my own. I was piling my time into learning skills and tools for a business and not looking at the business itself. As a business owner it is your job to see the wider picture. Don’t get caught up in the details as I did – and wasted a huge amount of time.

5. Not developing yourself as business owner.

As a newcomer to the affiliate marketing industry I thought I could learn quickly and profit from an easy ‘quick fix’ solution. I obtained a small amount of knowledge and then piled my time and energy into implementing what I knew. I thought I knew enough to move things forwards and to make money online but my knowledge was flawed and all my activity was based on this knowledge. You need to continue to look at what you are doing and focus on your most productive activities.

Initially of course you will need guidance but your work as an online entrepreneur is to continually self assess. It is very easy when you are the boss to fall into unproductive habits and spend your time checking emails and browsing social network sites. Before you can even see any results, focus on your activity – the one thing you can control. Don’t look for results but your regular productive habits.

As the owner of a business you need to be more aware of yourself as a limitation in the business. As Stuart and Jay highlight in their course, you can’t grow beyond your self image.

The internet offers a means to hugely impact your income potential. However if you only see yourself as a small earner or as unsuccessful or incapable, your business cannot grow beyond this limiting belief. Beliefs are invisible but are a huge part of the results you are capable of. Ultimately they determine what is possible for you. You need to become more aware of your beliefs and question them in order to change.

6. Working all the time

how to get more leads from your website

The whole point of an internet business is to allow you to free up your time to pursue a better and more enjoyable lifestyle – in my humble opinion anyway! I got so lost in the pursuit of making an internet business work that it took over my life to the detriment of my personal and social life.

Despite the total flexibility an internet business allows you, this can also be a danger as you can find yourself working continuously without a break, taking your laptop everywhere you go and neglecting other aspects of your life! Particularly if you have become accustomed to a working environment where your breaks and lunches are set, it can be difficult to give yourself the structure needed to operate in a productive and balanced manner, taking other commitments, work and social life into account.

It is a good idea if you are new to working for yourself from home to set aside some working hours and a proper desk space in which you can get into a good working frame of mind. Make sure you are actually working in this space so you build a productive ‘anchor’ to this setting. That way when you sit down you will automatically trigger your working frame of mind. Should you get distracted or need a break move away from your work station.

7. Allowing interruptions

Working for yourself brings with it some extra distractions which you won’t find in the workplace. Especially now with the increasing number of people using social media, work places are clamping down on these distractions because they know it can reduce productivity.

When you begin to work for yourself things like friends calling round, social media sites, messenger and mobile phones will all help to distract you from building your online business. If you permit it to happen this can eat up much of your day. Make a point of only checking your emails twice a day at the most and avoiding social media unless it is business related and you will get a lot more done.

8. Being a ‘busy fool’

Ask yourself if you are concentrating on the important and necessary things for your business or simply distracting yourself with activity to avoid the important. If so you are being a ‘busy fool’! Make a list of your top 3 most important activities for every day and make sure you do them before you do anything else.

It is easy to become distracted when working on the internet – especially when you are your own boss. Keep asking yourself ‘is what I am doing at this moment helping my business or simply entertaining me?‘. Make sure you are not just entertaining yourself on the internet because your time will slip away and you will have achieved nothing.

9. Building Rome in a day

When I first started building websites and creating content I thought that by rushing at it I could earn money faster. Is was in quite a lot of debt at one point and desperate to make it work for me. The trouble is I was only becoming more agitated and out of balance with the other aspects of my life.

It takes time to learn how to build an internet income and then it takes time to implement that knowledge. If you rush at it there are greater chances of making mistakes and of burnout. If you spend 12 hours staring at the computer one day you might find you simply can’t tolerate doing another 12 the next. I often would work day and night when I was inspired to but then would be exhausted and burnt out for the rest of the week. Keep your life in balance and don’t let your business take over.

It is after all just a business and it will take some time. Don’t rush but enjoy the process and you will find you are more productive over the longer term.

10. Not setting goals

Goal setting is a hugely important part of moving your business forward and by not setting them you are wandering off into a vague land of the unknown! Not having them means you are unclear about where you are going and you are likely to find yourself working on a whim, following your gut instincts and getting distracted and drawn into your most enjoyable activities – which probably are not your most productive ones!

Worse still you can easily become dismayed and disheartened when things are not going as (un)planned! By setting a goal for your business you are creating something concrete which you wish to obtain at a certain time. It should be a desirable and achievable goal which you truly wish to obtain within a set time-frame. You should also be in control of the steps needed to obtain the goal and be able to break everything down into achievable smaller steps.

Probably the best book I have read on this topic is Stuart Lichtman’s How to get lots of money for anything fast which is recommended in Stuart and Jay’s course and offered at discount through their site.

 

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Split testing your advertising and tracking

If you are using a form of advertising on the internet such as Facebook or Google’s  Adwords it is important to split test them in order to lower your advertising spend per conversion in the long term. You can do this by creating two similar adverts which target the same demographic but with one variable which is different. Track your leads or conversions with ad tracking and if one of your adverts is performing better, pause the other one and split test again by creating another advert which is similar to your best performing advert but with another single variable which is different.

For example let’s say you create an advert which targets people who are interested in fitness in the UK between the ages 35-45. Your advert title reads : “Get fit for the summer with this 1 weight loss tip” and the advert clicks through to your website or product. To split test it you simply need to create the same advert targeting the same demographic and with a different title: “Lose weight fast with this 1 weight loss tip”. You could have the same title also and change the age range for example. This would tell you which single variable performs better over a certain period. You should run your advert long enough and get enough clicks to give a true reading.

By doing this several times you will learn how to create the best performing advert for your product. You can continue to split test and each time look at a different variable until all variables are covered. Once you have done this you can continue to ‘fine tune’ your advert by split testing again with a slightly different title, over different demographics and in different areas etc. Make sure you are tracking which advert produces the best results (sales/conversions) as well as the most clicks through to your website.

Facebook automatically detects your best performing advert out of your chosen pictures within a campaign and gives it a preference over the others. The problem here is that you cannot effectively split test and see results for yourself (within the same campaign) so you will need to create separate adverts in order to test them effectively for yourself.

Tracking your adverts

If you have many adverts set up bringing in customers from different sources then it is important to track where they are coming from so that you can optimize your time and also the websites which are producing the best results. Keeping a track on where your customers are coming from allows you to clearly see which campaigns are working and which ones are not – or which ones are producing the best results. You can then target your best performers and delete the ones which are not working. Your cost per conversion is therefore cheaper the more you do this. By tracking and split testing effectively you are reducing your cost of advertising in the long run.

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Why now is the best time to start an online business

As Eckhart Tolle says there is no time like the present but this is even more true of an internet business. Before the internet came along and allowed the average person to gain access and connect to a large portion of  the population, it was only big businesses which had the potential, financial resources and power to reach a global audience. Now it is within the reach of any small business simply due to the power of the internet to connect to the entire planet. Before the internet came along in order to create a a business which runs 24 hours a day 7 days a week and 365 days a year you would have needed to purchase or rented  a physical business, employed staff and spent vast quantities on advertising it.  Most businesses failed within their first year and in order to build a business which could compete with the reach now available through the internet you would have had to have spent hundreds of thousands on it.

We can do things now which were impossible for the average person 20 years ago and a business can be started online for only a fraction of the cost of a  physical business and with a far greater customer reach than was previously possible. Almost all businesses have a website now and internet marketing has allowed many people to build a lifestyle of freedom which was only available for the super rich just a few years ago.

Not only has the internet got the capacity to far outreach the traditional business model in terms of advertising and customer connectivity but it also provides the means to facilitate a full time working business model which runs day and night without fail delivering products and making money even without the business owner being physically present. Very few opportunities exist today which allow the total flexibility of an internet based business. We can now operate an internet business from almost anywhere in the world and all that is needed is an internet connection and a laptop computer.

In terms of lifestyle choice the internet is providing a means to live anywhere in the world you choose and earn potentially an unlimited amount of income. This is true because of how the internet can serve many people at the same instant. In a traditional business there is a counter and a shop. The customer comes in the shop and buys over the counter. If many people come in at the same time a queue develops and only one customer can be served at any one time. With the internet many customers can be served instantaneously and automatically through a checkout system which allows multiple users to purchase items at the same time. No-one even has to be there once the systems are set up. The products are sent out automatically and the money is taken over a secure checkout – all completely on autopilot.

Once the systems are set up an in place online you have what is effectively an automated shop which can take multiple purchases at the same time. Your only job then is to direct customers to your shop.

With more and more people taking advantage of buying over the internet it is a growing industry and with the ease and speed of internet purchasing this trend is only going to continue.

The information age has grown faster than we have. People are still working from an archaic mentality and ‘stuck’ in an old fashioned thought process of trading time for money. What we can achieve in our lives is only limited by our current thought processes as the information age has surpassed current thinking. To learn how to implement the basic tools and strategies needed to implement an online income strategy, enter your email here for a free boot camp course. You can unsubscribe at any time and the course is totally free.

 

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Empower yourself by taking full responsibility

The one reason that we should take 100% responsibility or our lives is self empowerment. If we blame others or put anything which occurs in our lives down to chance, luck or coincidence, we are taking less than 100% responsibility for it. There are things which are out of our control but there are also many things which we fail to notice are within our control. We consider those things outside of our parameter of control because we either have handed over responsibility for those elements to someone else or have not yet learned how to take positive action in those areas of our lives.

For example think about something which you are particularly good at. You might have a  hobby or focus of your life of which you are particularly proud. You will have spent a lot of time on this hobby, you talk about it often and mix with people who share this same interest. If you don’t have a particular hobby your interest may lie in another area of life in which you consider yourself particularly good. It may be in the area of relationships or something less tangible which you haven’t considered. You are good at this area of your life simply because you have given your attention to it for long enough and been passionate about it.

Now consider an area of your life which you feel you could do with some work. Is there something in your life which you are not entirely happy about? How much time and attention have you given to this topic? Chances are that you have not fully thrown yourself into this area or yet found the opportunity to develop yourself to your fullest potential within this area. Once we realise and accept this we can empower ourselves to change and give ourselves permission to achieve that which we truly desire to happen in our lives.

Unless we accept that it is us who are totally responsible for the events and circumstances in our lives we will continue to blame our background, lack of education, bad luck, lack of opportunity or whatever other reason we choose to blame for the results in our lives. When we accept that those very results are the outcome of our attitudes, choices, decisions and either our action or lack of action, then we can begin to take charge and focus our minds on what we need to do to make the appropriate changes in our lives. Unless we do this we will continue to blame outside circumstances and remain ‘stuck’ in our present situation. This is a self fulfilling prophecy and our attitudes about life and how we see the world reflect on our situation, status and environment. If we are cynical of life our life situation reflects this cynicism. We don’t value the very things we really want and excuse ourselves from taking action due to our cynicism.

One way to find the main areas of our lives which are posing a problem to our moving forwards in our development is to begin with a list of things you would like in your life that you currently feel is missing or a problem for you. Often it is financially related or it might be in terms of relationships or love. Write down exactly what you want as if anything were possible. Next to that goal write down your objections or reasons why you have not obtained this yet. These reasons are your excuses or beliefs which are preventing you from even trying for the things you want. If we stop ourselves by believing we are not worth it or our dreams are unobtainable, we dis-empower ourselves from even starting down the path to our individual successes.

Just by becoming aware of our limiting beliefs we can shift our inner blockages which prevent us from obtaining our deepest wishes. Once we have discovered these limiting beliefs we can work towards removing them from our consciousness.

1. Write down the limiting belief. It may be in the form of a statement about your self worth. e.g “I’m not smart enough”

2. Write the opposite belief next to it. “I am smart enough”

3. Notice how you feel about the opposite belief. Chances are you will have a fair amount of resistance to it.

4. Write it out again in a way in which it is more possible for you e.g. “I can learn to be smart enough” or “I just need to learn some new skills”. Whatever is believable for you.

5. Keep doing this until you can read out the new sentence about your belief but without encountering any internal resistance.

6. Write this down and repeat it to yourself over and over.

7. Whenever your limiting belief comes up either within your own self talk or in conversation, use your new belief instead of the old one.

This is a powerful technique to change your internal model of the world. We keep getting the same results in life because we keep telling ourselves and others the same story. It becomes our identity or self image. Once we identify with this self image we cling to it as if our lives depend on it! We protect it from criticism and hold on to our inner beliefs even if they don’t serve us. Let go of your self image and create a new you!

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t–you’re right.” Henry Ford

 

 

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Why digital marketing is the best job for the new age of diversification

There is a multitude of possibilities when facing a career change and having more than one job is becoming more of the norm. Job security is becoming a thing of the past and many people are having to diversify their skills and turn to a portfolio career in order to survive. Even with several jobs people are still struggling to make ends meet.

Employers are cutting back on full time wages and instead are employing workers on a self employed basis, or  hiring in contractors on short term contracts. This trend is giving the employer more flexibility and they can hire and fire as they please with less people on long term contracts and less rights for their workers. What it means ultimately is that there is less long term security in many jobs that there was 20 years ago.

Whether considering a career change or topping up your income with another job, digital marketing offers a flexible and convenient alternative to the arbitrary working hours of 9-5 and can be fitted around any other job. Working from home or anywhere with a laptop and internet connection, digital marketers simply create website content and market other peoples products. There is no buying or direct selling and no dealing with customers or having to make lengthy phone calls. You don’t even need to handle a product.

Often when presented with a new way of doing things people react with fear. It is really fear of the unknown. However difficult it may be to overcome this it is well worth the effort. The rise in consumerism over the internet shows a clear progression towards spending habits worldwide. Fewer people now  drive out to stores and wait in queues for their items. Why should they when they can get them by clicking buttons on their computer for the same price or often cheaper and have them delivered to their door?

Most people now have a computer and an internet connection in their home which means they have the ability to make an income which is independent of their employer. Not only does the internet provide a means to make an income from home but it can do so in such a way as to completely free up your time and free you from the archaic 9-5 humdrum mentality.

Nothing beats the internet affiliate model for ease of use and automation. The internet allows you to build content and put in place systems which run whether you are there at the computer or not. Providing you have visitors to your site, you have a way of generating income 24 hours a day and 7 days a week on complete autopilot. No other business offers the same flexibility and income potential as does digital marketing.

In an normal job you are expected to turn up at a certain time and leave at a certain time. Usually it is 9-5. You wait in traffic with all the other people who also go to work at exactly the same time as you therefore it generally takes much longer to arrive than at any other time. As you leave so do all the other workers, and so you have at least another hour in traffic on your return home.

With digital marketing you work where and when you want so there is no commute. You can work from home of from your sun lounger by the pool! It doesn’t matter where. No more commuting to work and no more traffic jams!

Even if you love your job you can use your laptop to top up your income and work it around anything your want. I personally have had many jobs doing various things and affiliate marketing offers something that very few jobs do. Certainly passive income is one of the best features of an internet based income.

For more information and to learn how to build your very own laptop lifestyle enter your email on this page for a free course of boot camp videos explaining the nuts and bolts of digital marketing.

 

 

 

 

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How To Empower Yourself With Positive Self Talk

We are all aware of how our words can affect others either positively or negatively and this has a great bearing on the quality of our relationships. If we are scathing and belittling of others then we eventually spoil our relationships or at the very least create a conflict in them. If we are loving and caring with others we build good strong relationships based on mutual trust and understanding.

We often take care to talk someone up when they are down and to listen to them and encourage them, and we hope that they would do the same for us. However how often do we belittle ourselves and talk ourselves down when the very thing we need is encouragement? Our self talk is something that we carry with us throughout our lives. Think about how you talk to yourself when you are feeling discouraged or depressed. Is it positive and upbeat or is it harsh and destructive? We often care less for ourselves than we do for others and although we would be kind and supportive to a friend in need, when our own need arises we can be overly critical and condemning of ourselves in our inner minds.

Our self talk is massively important in our lives and if we are using it to destroy our confidence and belittle ourselves, our self image suffers and we lose our confidence. We talk of our failures and short comings with others which goes to further re-enforce this self created reality. Our actions follow our beliefs about ourselves and soon we prove ourselves right by acting in a way that is congruent with our beliefs. The end result is the conditions of our lives.

On the other hand if we can talk ourselves up and tell ourselves all the things which we need to hear instead, being compassionate and loving to ourselves, we will achieve a very different outcome . Imagine the difference in your life had you learned only to create positive self talk from the moment you learned to talk.  How often do you find yourself belittling yourself or undermining your confidence with your thoughts?

If we choose to only think in terms of positive self confidence and self assuring thoughts which build us up and improve our self confidence and self image, soon we begin to change our language in line with our new self image. We talk to others differently and instead of talking in terms of self depreciation and limitation we begin to talk ourselves up instead. Our actions are empowered by our thinking process and the knock on effect brings better results in our lives.

Our limitations come from our self image and not from external factors such as location, upbringing and opportunity. Of course these things help us to achieve our self image but ultimately we can change. How we see ourselves is massively important particularly when striving to attain something which appears out of our reach. Success comes from a success consciousness much like failure comes from a failure consciousness. In Stuart and Jay’s course in SFM something really jumped out at me. It was something in the material which said that the conditions of your life can’t change beyond your self image.  This was massive for me and I realised that this is what had been holding me back in my life more than anything.

Your self image is something which you can’t run away from. It follows you wherever you go! If you are just reading this and haven’t thought about this before you might think that changing the way you talk to yourself is not possible – you have always been like that and that’s just you! But you are in control of how you choose to think and you can ultimately decide which thoughts to give your energy to.

One of the first steps in gaining greater control over your negative self talk is simply by noticing your inner chatter. What do you tell yourself when you are feeling upset? Is it positive and compassionate? How about when you feel happy and joyful? Once you notice your self talk and become more aware of it you are in a position to change it. Whenever you notice you are telling yourself something negative, stop, and think of something that makes you feel positive. Be compassionate with it at first as it will have become a habit which has developed over many years.

Meditation is a great for exercising power over your inner thoughts too and simply sitting quietly and watching our thoughts for 5-10 minutes each day will give us an awareness of what is going on with our self talk.

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How to start an affiliate marketing business for free

If you’re on a tight budget and looking to start an internet business, you can do it at low cost. When I started out online I had very little money to invest and started with a couple of how to videos which I found on YouTube. The first ever product I bought was Robert Evan’s Rich Monkey’s guide to making money online. The reason I bought his product was that he had already given massive value to me in the form of free videos which taught basic money making techniques using the internet and selling products. This is the very same principle taught by Stuart and Jay in their course the Six Figure Mentors - give massive value and over deliver, in effect give first before getting, something Stuart Ross calls attraction marketing.

What is affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is simply selling other people’s products for a commission. As an internet marketer we send our visitors to another website where they can buy a product. The product can be a physical product or a digital product such as an online video course or a downloaded file. It can literally be anything. As an affiliate your job is to create content or list adverts which bring visitors to a website where the customer finds the product which meets their needs.

Do  I need to sell?

You can earn from a website in another way too from either using Google’s adsense program or letting other advertisers place banners on your website or blog.

Your biggest problem as a start out business is to attract visitors to your site. You can do this through advertising if you have a budget but to do it for free you will need to rank your site on Google or find visitors through your blog. Ranking a new website on Google is becoming much harder since there are literally millions of websites competing for any and every keyword available. You can still find the niches and slip through the gaps however but it can be time consuming and it will take time before you start earning.

Starting a blog

Starting a blog is the quickest way to develop a free source of traffic from the internet. Sites like hubpages.com, ezinearticles.com, goarticles.com and squidoo.com allow you to write articles and create content to generate visitors. You can join Google’s adsense program and place adverts on your blog to generate revenue. Hubpages.com allows you to then place your adsense code within your account platform and adverts are shown automatically on your content. You then need to write interesting and informative content to bring visitors to your blog. You will only earn a few pence for every time someone clicks on the adverts but if you have enough visitors this can turn into a nice income trickle which is completely automated. Enough of theses and you have a stream!

I spent weeks writing articles and placing adsense on my blogs and it took a long, long time before seeing any results – and even then the results were very small amounts into my adsense account. If you want to earn money from using adsense you will need to have either a lot of websites or a huge following. You need thousands of visitors every day to your website or videos to make a reasonable amount from them.

Adsense is a great program, don’t get me wrong, but it is a different tactic to affiliate marketing and it can be difficult to get enough visitors unless you really know what you’re doing. Added to which you are at the mercy of Google and if they decide you have broken their guidelines for some reason they can ban you for life from using adsense. So if you decide to go down this path carefully read their terms and conditions. I know of people that this has happened to and it can be very upsetting when one week you are earning hundreds or even thousands in passive income and then it all stops permanently. One friend of mine was earning a regular passive income from having created film reviews on YouTube. It all stopped when Google decided they didn’t like something and disabled his account.

Recommended Strategy

One of my early successes from writing a blog was advertising Xsitepro – a website building platform which I had used. They had an affiliate program so I joined it and wrote an article recommending their product. I placed their banner with my affiliate link within my article on the free blogging site – I think it was hubpages.com. Someone bought the program after reading my article and I got a commission. I earned more from this than I had done with months of adsense earnings.

In fact one of the best tactics to start earning from the internet is to recommend products you yourself have bought and which you would genuinely recommend. Write an honest review of the product and link to the product within your review. Make sure you put your affiliate link to the product so that you will get credit for a sale.

If you have a hobby or interest which you are passionate about it is well worth writing or creating videos about this topic. People are far more likely to be interested in a topic if they catch a sense of your enthusiasm about it. If you can then find a related product to review or promote which also has an affiliate program, you can link to it through your blog or website and start earning commissions from it.

The downside to this is that you will need to sell many of these products in order to create a sustainable business model, depending on the price of the item and your average commission from a sale. One of the things that Stuart Ross and Jay Kubassek teach in their course is to find affiliate products with a high ticket sale value. What this means is that for each sale you stand to make a far larger amount and so you are gaining a greater reward for the same efforts.

If you want to find out more about The Six Figure Mentors and how to generate an affiliate income from home take a look at this no obligation course which offers a free video boot camp series. You can unsubscribe at any time and there is no obligation to buy anything.

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Why An Online Business Model Beats A Traditional Business Model

Why an online business model beats a traditional business model? Just yesterday I decided to buy a book recommended by a friend called ‘The Art of Strategy’ by R I Wing. It is a modern interpretation of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War.

I was drinking a cup of coffee and managed to buy it on my mobile with one hand; while drinking coffee with my other hand! It occurred to me that that simple action would have been impossible only a few years ago. That is how far technology has moved on in the last 10 years. I found the item, clicked through to the checkout page and bought it with my card details which were already on the account.

I remember buying a book from the same online store years ago from my computer. Back then, I had a dial up connection which kept cutting out. I had to enter my details, open an account and upload my debit/credit card details. The whole process must have taken the best part of an hour to do from start to finish. Yesterday it took less than 5 minutes to order the book. It was to be delivered straight to my house. And, at a  fraction of the cost that it would be from a physical shop.

Why An Online Business Model Beats A Traditional Business Model

The internet makes buying faster,  more convenient and cheaper than going to the shops. Surely this is going to catch on!

“Despite online growth of non-food items having increased at its lowest rate since July 2013, the proportion of online sales keeps increasing,” said Helen Dickinson, director general at the British Retail Consortium. “This is due to the enhanced online shopping experience which retailers have worked hard to provide for their customers.

Retailers’ sophisticated multichannel propositions are especially convenient for shoppers who do not want to brave busy stores during the summer sale season. This means people can browse leisurely for goods online, through their mobiles, desktops or tablets, in the comfort of their own home or on the move.”

Source: http://internetretailing.net/2014/07/online-sales-growth-at-its-weakest-for-almost-a-year-in-june-brc/

The trend in online shopping is leading business owners to diversify their portfolio to at least include an internet based side to their businesses. In terms of having a shop online it is becoming almost a necessity in order for traditional businesses to stay afloat. So what does this mean for online marketers?

Why An Online Business Model Beats A Traditional Business Model

The online business model of an affiliate marketer is to simply send customers to these kinds of shops, of which there is a growing number. If you own a website of any kind, chances are that there is an appropriate product which you can promote from your website simply by adding a banner or link of some kind directing would-be consumers to a related product in your niche. What this means is that you can earn a passive income from your stand alone website without actually touching a product or dealing with a customer. In addition, the online business model allows you to build many of these ’24/7  automated shops’ to your portfolio, allowing you to create hands off income trickles which can work day and night for years to come.

the laptop lifestyle!

The ability to create a ‘hands off’ business which works whether you do or not far out performs, in the long run, the traditional business model of charging for your time. In a traditional business model if you fail to turn up for work, you don’t earn any money, and soon you will lose your job if you keep it up for long enough! Or if you are the owner you will soon be out of customers. You trade your time for money and so there is a strict limit on how much you can earn.

Why An Online Business Model Beats A Traditional Business Model

In the internet model you can use the power of the internet to create leverage in your business. You set up your ‘virtual shop’ and create multiple income streams from each one. Sales are made on autopilot from the work you have done previously. You are no longer trading your time for money. As you create more income streams on an ongoing basis, you can eventually scale up your business with advertising and ultimately free up more of your time while your income continues to grow.

Not only can you scale up your business efforts with an internet business through the power of advertising, marketing and by building a list of subscribers, but your business model works the same for one customer as it does for one thousands customers – or one hundred thousand.

Why An Online Business Model Beats A Traditional Business Model

In a traditional business you can only deal with one customer at a time. You need to be present to deliver your service and therefore there is a limited number of people you can reach at any one time. As you scale your business you need to employ more people to provide a larger customer base and to serve each one. With an internet based business model you can provide an automated service to thousands of customers at the same time without even being there!

The system in place on the internet takes the money, processes the order and delivers the product/s all on autopilot. Your only job as an internet marketer once the system is in place is to direct customers towards your ‘virtual shop’ or product. The rest is automated. Provided you can do this at a lower cost than you make with your commission, you can simply scale up by increasing your advertising budget once you have proved a profitable business model.

Another great feature of an internet business is that you have a completely portable office! You can work from anywhere in the world providing you have a laptop computer and an internet connection.

To learn more about creating automated income streams from your computer and  building leverage into your business model, enter your details into this page for a series of free ‘bootcamp’ training videos. The training videos are free and you can unsubscribe at any time.