Last Post for the 2008 year: 2009 is Mine!!!

Thought I would poke my head it while its still 2008. There's talk about resolutions, and while 9 out of ten people are talking about losing weight, my slender frame allows me to make other resolutions. So I am making them about my business.

Those of you that read all the way back to the beginning of this blog will know that I started this to document my journey from rags to riches. I'm still at the rags part after 6 years of searching, but things have changed for me drastically in the past year.

I have learned many opportunities out there that work, and I have learned many marketing techniques over the course of 2008. So why haven't I reached riches yet? Simple, I haven't fulfilled my promise of sharing it with the world.

So my resolutions are to create a step-by step marketing plan for me to follow, and to share as much information as I can with as many people as I can. Once I can get this down to a schedule, I will document for the next year how I create income, balance home life with the kids, and finally get out of my grandmothers house!!!

If you would like to follow my journey, sign up to this blog feed. Remember this still comes with an unabridged copy of Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill with the workbook as my thank you for supporting me.

Lesson 1: Just Starting Out? Why You Still May Not Be Ready Just Yet…

You’ve finally chosen the right business for you. Now it’s time to tell the world about your opportunity. But pump your brakes just a second, there’s one thing you need before you start that long road of advertising and marketing that business


Do you have a Lead Capture Page?
A certain way to a slow painful death is advertising your affiliate page. The problem with doing that is most companies don’t do a good job of presenting what they have to offer. It’s not that they can’t; that’s the reason they recruit people like you and I. We sell/recruit the product or service they supply.

Also, it’s been proven that a person has to see a product/service 7-12 times on average before they take action on that site. If you’re promoting the same affiliate page that every other member in your organization has, your chances of getting a sale/signup are pretty slim.

That’s why a lead capture page is a major key in online promotion. A lead capture page shows a few highlights about your product/service, and then offers more information about it in exchange for their name and e-mail address. People that enter their information become your leads; people that have expressed an interest in what you have to offer.

The Key to Lead Capture Pages
The best way to make a lead your consumer is to continually impress the lead with your opportunity. This is a difficult balance to achieve manually. Too much impression, the lead will get irritated and ignore you; too little, and it’s like you never existed.

This is where the Autoresponder come in to play. The form that a person fills out on your lead capture page is taken by the autoresponder, causing two things to happen:

1. 1. The lead’s information is stored and/or sent to you as an alert
2. 2. The lead is sent the information they requested.

Now the lead reads the information sent from the auto-responder, and they follow the link to sign-up/make a purchase from your site right? Nope!!! You may get a few that do that, but I wouldn’t count on it. As I said before, it takes anywhere from 7-12 exposures to your opportunity before most people will commit to an action.

The autoresponder helps you here by sending further messages about your opportunity on a schedule to each individual. You fill in the messages, you set the schedule ( the best rate to send your messages is one a week, for about two months). You can also send them broadcast messages, random e-mails about particular products/services that are related to your opportunity, from time to time.

Putting It All Together
Now that you know what you need and how it works, its time to put it all together. The first thing you will need is to create a page. That can be done using a website editor. If you aren’t familiar with html, you may want to get what is called a WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) editor. This makes things as easy as point and click. One of the best ones I’ve seen is Blue Voda . This software is spyware free, includes several templates for websites, and can give you a complete website in under thirty minutes.

With this, you want to create a site that touches on the highlights of your opportunity, and requests the viewer to sign up for more information about your product, giving you the right to e-mail them without it being considered spam.

Next, you will need an autoresponder. I will advise everyone that the best way to go is a paid autoresponder service. Most free services either advertise other opportunities along with your messages, or have deliverability issues. However, since this is a course on free resources to promote your business, I will give you one service that has minimal advertising, and great deliverability; A1eBiz. Once you go to this site and set it up, it will give you a code that you will copy and paste to your website. This will give you the form that people will fill their information in so you can e-mail them.

If you are having a tough time thinking of what to put in the follow up e-mails to your subscribers, a site that may help is InterSend. They have an e-book with several killer e-mails that you can tailor to your needs.

Now, you are ready to put your site on the internet. But there are two things that you need before you do that; a domain name, and hosting. There are plenty of services out there you can pay for, but little known are the free services.

First we will start with the hosting. Again, this is a service that you will want to purchase later when you are making some money, because with free hosting you have to adhere to the rules that the service puts forth, else your site will not be published through them. One of the best free hosting services I have ran across is Runhosting. Although they have rules in what you can and cannot upload as a site, they are the most lenient that I have seen to date.

Next, you will need a domain name. You want to pick something that is short, easy to remember, and says something about your site. A lot of sites will say that they have free domains, but the catch is that you will have to qualify for it by joining a service or purchase hosting. In the interest of the word free, I will direct you to a service that you can sign up for a free domain with no catches. Its called co.cc. You can register a domain with this extension for your website, and forward it to your website (you can find how to do that in your backoffice at runhosting.)

Finally, and now that you have a domain, you need some sort of tracking. Its important to know where the bulk of your traffic is coming from, so that you don’t waste your efforts promoting where it doesn’t work for you. Most services I’ve seen on the internet not only want you to pay, but they track through cloaking your url, meaning its stealing your page ranking. The best service I’ve seen that bypasses both problems is Stat Counter. This site allows you to create a small code to put on your website that tracks every hit to it.

After all this work, you are finally ready to promote your opportunity. Stay tuned for the next installment where we will begin to promote your website using classified ad sites. Regardless of what the gurus tell you, these sites do work, and I will tell you why!!!

Evaluating a Network/Affiliate Marketing Opportunity

In the forums I frequent I find that the most common question that is asked by beginners in internet marketing is "What business should I start?" That question is so simple, yet so complex to answer. In reality, no one can tell a person which is the best business to start. However, I have come up with a step-by-step plan outlining what a newbie should look for when entertaining the idea of starting an online business. Enjoy!

We get tons of the offers in our e-mail everyday, we may even poke around a website or two, with piqued interest. A few of us have even tried a couple. Yes, there are many opportunities to make money online; unfortunately, there are just as many scams waiting to take what little hard-earned money you have.

How do you determine the legitimate opportunities from the “get-rich quick” scams? Through trial and error, I have devised a sort of “litmus test” to hold all opportunities against to see if it’s real or a dream. Just follow this checklist, and you will be better informed of making a decision on whether you should join an opportunity or not.

First Focus: The Product/Service

This is an absolute must have in affiliate marketing. The organization should have product(s) or service(s) to sell, and it should recruit affiliates to help them in running that business. It is best to avoid organizations that have the recruitment of affiliates as their main business. Their affiliate structure is like a house of cards, waiting to crumble at the slightest negative impact, taking your money along with it.

Would you use the product/service yourself? This question is important for a number of reasons. It’s hard to get excited about a product/service if you know nothing about it. People prefer to purchase from knowledgeable sources. Finally, if you don’t see a need fro the product, it will be hard for you to connect with people that could, limiting your personal market.

Is there a market for the product/service? Who exactly would buy it? Is there a demand? Where does the demand fall on the Bell curve? The bell curve, a symmetrical curve for illustrating where a product/service lands in the sales process, slowly rises for new products, reaches a curved plateau, then spirals down, sometimes fast, sometimes at the same grade of its rise, depending on the product/service and economic market conditions. How long has the product/service been in the marketplace? Is it new, old, or overexposed?

The last thing to consider about a product/service is its pricing. Can the buying market afford the price? Where does your price stand with competitors? If your price is higher, is there value there to justify the difference? Value in the eyes of the buyer, not yours/ what is different, unique, and important enough for the buyer to purchase from you that you can’t get somewhere else for less?

Second Focus: Company Stability

Now that you have evaluated the product/service for marketability, its time to take a good look at the company the product represents. The more information you can find on a company from various resources, the more likely you have a legitimate opportunity.

The first bit of information needed is how long has the company been in business. The organization should have a proven track record of operating their programs for several years successfully. If the company doesn’t have at least a three year track record of success, they should, at least have been started by a person who is well-known in their field with good creditability. Otherwise the company has no foundation to build on. It is still in a learning phase, and you will be a guinea pig in their experimentation.

Another way to check out a company’s stability is what organizations the company is endorsed by. The first place to check is the Better Business Bureau. Although many legitimate opportunities are not listed with the BBB, if the opportunity you are researching is, it a step in the right direction. Other affiliations may be listed on the organization’s website. Click on their links and see what exactly they say about the company they are endorsing.

Most opportunities I’ve seen have testimonials from people who say they’ve tried this opportunity, and it works. The true question here is, are these testimonials verifiable? Are you given contact information (e-mail, phone number, Instant Messenger information, etc.) where you can quickly get in touch with the person who wrote the testimonial? Don’t hesitate to contact any information source in the organization you are evaluating. It is in the company’s best interest to answer all your questions quickly and thoroughly. Caution though, the original person you contacted should be the one to contact you with an answer to your question, or at least an acknowledgment before sending you to the proper source. If not, that truly gives you your answer. No response whatsoever? Drop the opportunity and move on to another.

Finally, get some feedback from independent resources. Search Engines are one of the sources which can be uses for this purpose. Simply type in the name of the organization + forums. You will be presented with several websites, forums, and blogs dedicated to objectively reviewing network/affiliate marketing opportunities.

Final Focus: Payment & Affiliate Structure

You should have a good feeling about the company, and have all your questions sufficiently answered to this point. If not, find a different opportunity and start over. The one you have probably is a scam, or just isn’t for you. But if you have, now is the time to see if you and the company are a good fit. Do you see yourself doing what it takes to succeed with this opportunity?

First, you should find out what is required of you to succeed in this opportunity. How much are the start-up fees? What tools and services are included with sign-up? What kind, and how much effort is required to perform a commissionable action? These questions give you a clear picture of what you will be required to do in order to succeed with this company. If you can’t picture yourself doing what it takes, move on to another opportunity.

Next, find out how you get paid. How much is each commissionable action worth? How long does it take to process a commissionable action? What forms of payment are available? How often are payments sent out? Is each commissionable action a one-time sale, or are there residual opportunities? Is the effort individual, or leveraged? (Leveraged meaning you get a part of your down line's sales as well) If it’s leveraged, how big a percent are you entitled to?

Once you make sure you understand the payment structure, you should determine if it is feasible to you. The website will always portray the best case scenario when listing potential earnings. Find out what you can expect to earn realistically by using this simple formula:

How many sales (S) will it take to equal your desired income (I), and how long (T) will it take to generate that number of sales

S * T= I

Make sure this is a reasonable number and time frame for you. You should also calculate how many sales it will take for you to break even on your investment. If any of these numbers look unrealistic, keep moving.

Next, you should research what types of support are available. It is in the interest of the organization to help their affiliate to succeed. The organization has been in business for a considerably longer time than the affiliate, are more knowledgeable about their market, and about the ways of promoting their product. It is marketing suicide not to have a good support system, because it leads to a high attrition rate if new sign-ups are not guided in the right direction to making money.

See what types of support is given by your opportunity of interest. Many companies offer support in the forms of live trainings, tutorials, articles, books, marketing plans, marketing tools, forums, websites, and personal, one-on-one guidance from your recruiter. The more avenues of training an organization has, the better.

If you find a company that stands up great against this checklist, then you may have a great opportunity in your hands. The only thing left to remember is persistence. Even if you have a great opportunity, you have to give it a chance to grow. You have to give your best effort of marketing the program over a specified period of time. Usually, with Network/Affiliate marketing, 90 days is a reasonable amount of time to give effort to an opportunity. If you don’t see results by then, then the program may be a dud, or not for you.

I hope this helps everyone get a good start in earning money online!!!

Stay tuned for the next post, where I will finally reveal the opportunity that have driven me to help others in their online money making journey, an opportunity that meets all the requirements listed here, the Free Online Cash System!!!

Online Earning: Put the Odds In your favor

This is an article I wrote a couple of weeks ago after re-reading the book "Think and Grow Rich" by Napoleon Hill. That book has been very helpful to me in my internet ventures, and I believe this article will be of some help to everyone that reads it and takes it to heart. Read on to the bottom to see how you can get your free copy of this book too!

Ninety-three out of every one-hundred people who make the choice to earn money from the internet fail. That’s right, for all their efforts ninety three people never get to see one thin dime.

What makes these seven people so different from the rest of the herd? Do they have more money? Better friends? Are they just smarter than everyone else?

None of these things matter when it comes to earning online. The one thing they do have is absolutely free, yet priceless if you are looking to earn money, in any venture imaginable. It’s called Definiteness of Purpose.

Through Definiteness of Purpose, these rare seven have figured out what their chief aim of the internet is. They have a clear, exact mental image of what it is they want to achieve before they even begin.

With Definiteness of Purpose, no longer are you aimlessly looking to be sold on the next gimmick that comes along. Having a picture of what you want to do will narrow your vision to only the true opportunities that will help you achieve your goals.

To develop Definiteness of Purpose is simple. Before you begin or continue your search, ask yourself these four questions, and answer them honestly

1) What do you see yourself doing/ what are you good at/ what are you interested in? This is the most important question of the four. It is imperative that the position you choose be interesting and exciting, so that you stay excited and interested! There is something for everyone on the internet, but if you go blindly picking a venture, chances are good that you won’t be interested in it, a sure path to failure.

2) How much are you willing to invest? Not every internet opportunity will cost you money; however it is best to have a number in mind should your choices take you down that road. The second biggest reason people fail is they take on ventures outside of their budget range, so be realistic with this number

3) How much time are you willing to invest/Are you looking for short term returns or a long term residual income? This question deals with time in two aspects. First, how much time per week are you willing to dedicate to an on line venture? It makes sense to choose an opportunity that you know you have the time for, and are willing to dedicate the time to as well. Second, how long are you willing to wait to see a return on your efforts? If you choose a contract position, you can see returns as soon as that particular pay cycle completes, although you can expect no more than an hourly wage at a traditional job would bring. On the other hand, with affiliate marketing, it may be a while before you see a regular income; however, if chosen and marketed correctly, affiliate marketing can earn a pretty handsome residual income down the road.

4) How much do you expect to earn? This question brings all the information you’ve discovered about yourself in the last three questions together. How much do you believe the time you are wiling to dedicate, the amount of money you are willing to invest (if any), and the service you have chosen to render are worth? Don’t sell yourself short, but also, be realistic.

The internet can be a confusing jungle if you have no idea of what you want. We are all bombarded with many “opportunities to make money" everyday, and if you don’t have any idea of what you want to do, you are setting yourself up to become a “Lead”, just another buyer of the next so-called big thing. Having Definiteness of Purpose will help you navigate through all the marketing mess, to the best opportunity for you.

I believe that no one should be without the book "Think and Grow Rich." It is the bible for getting the right mindset to go into business for yourself, whether it be online or a brick and mortar business. That's why I'm giving everyone who subscribes to my blog a free copy of the e-book, including the workbook that goes along with it!!! Sign up now so you won't be lost among everyone else. You do want to be part of the seven, right?

Also, if you have answered the questions above, and still need some guidance in finding the right business for you, or how to jump start your existing business, I teach a free e-course on the most simple plan to make you money. Just go to Free Online Cash System and read more. Sign up at the bottom and I will be in touch with you shortly!!!

Stay tuned for the next post where I will show you how to evaluate any business opportunity to make sure it's the right one for you!!!