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Residual Income

Posted by admin On March - 20 - 2010

Once upon a time, there was a man who lived his life like most others. He went to college and had a series of good jobs. At times, he was a bit foolish with his money and did not save as well as he should. As he got older, he got wiser. His spending habits became more conservative; he bought things he needed, not what he wanted. Learning the difference between what he needed as opposed to wanted, was a valuable lesson.

This man always enjoyed helping others. As he grew older, his desire to help others grew. Unfortunately, as his knowledge and desire strengthened, the economy weakened. He worked part-time jobs; full-time work became elusive. Money became scarce.

Lessons are learned during tough times. Challenges and adversity can be great teachers. He saw a pattern in his life. He took jobs that allowed him to earn money doing the things that he enjoyed doing. He enjoyed writing and teaching and so that was what he did. It made sense. His father and other family members worked at jobs they enjoyed. It was the way that many worked. He followed the advice that said, “go to college, study hard, get a good job, earn a pension and retire.”

He thought about this. Was this the best way to live? Maybe there was a different approach to life. Maybe it would make more sense to work an enjoyable job that provided the cash flow he needed to do the things that he enjoyed instead of working at the things he enjoyed. Maybe there was a way that he could make enough money to write and teach.

He liked the idea of residual earnings. This type of earnings allowed him to earn a continuous cash flow on not only current work but past worked. He learned about residual earnings from some writing he did online. Each month he earned royalties for both current articles he wrote and past articles. He even earned money when a month went by where he did not write.

The more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea about residual income. It gave him more control over his finances. There was less worry about layoffs, downsizings, and other events the he could not control.

How could he earn enough residual income?

The man thought. Writing was a nice way to make some residual income but he didn’t think it would generate enough to meet his financial responsibilities. He decided to explore selling. Selling had caught his interest a long time ago. The skill set was interesting. You talk with people, explain the product, and guide them to make the purchase, to close the sale.

“I can sell.” he thought. “Since I’ve been teaching, I’ve become very comfortable talking and joking in front of small and large crowds. There is nothing wrong with selling. Everyone buys products. As long as the products do what they are suppose to do, as long as the price is reasonable, and as long as the company is honest, I see nothing wrong with selling. Everybody buys things.”

The more he thought about selling, the more he liked the idea. As he reviewed this idea, he thought, “Everyone sells. People sell their job skills when they interview; people sell an image by the way they dress; yes, everybody sells.”

The man thought, “What shall I sell? Where shall I sell?”

He decided that he didn’t want to work for a company in the 9 to 5 sense. That wouldn’t resolve the issue of layoffs and downsizing. It wasn’t that he didn’t like working for others; he wanted to start his own business; he wanted financial security.

He knew starting a business was not easy. Starting a business in the traditional sense was expensive and extremely risky. Risk didn’t scare him but he didn’t want to incur debt. He began thinking and wrote down on paper the “wants” and “not wants” of his business.

“ I don’t want a business that requires that I purchase inventory.”

“I want a business that allows me to run it from anywhere. If I decide to relocate, I don’t want to have to close and restart my business.”

“I don’t want a business where I collect the money, pay a distributor, and have to ship and receive the products.”

“I want a business that sells quality products and a business where I can help people.”

He continued thinking, remembering how business was done in the past and how many people still do business. When he was growing up, neighbors would ask each other for referrals when they needed to buy something. “Who sells good televisions. I want to buy a portable television for my bedroom.” “I don’t like my grocer. His prices are too high! Where do you buy your groceries.”

“Times change.” he thought, “but business is still a people to people activity. Referrals are valuable. People trust people more than they trust marketing ads.”

The more he thought, the more he liked this idea. He would look into referral or individual-to-individual marketing. That would be the basis for his business.

“To sell, I need to think like a sales person. To use a Zen-like thought, ‘he needed to become the sales person.’” he thought. This sounded obvious, but as he thought about his own behavior, it wasn’t. When people asked him what he did, he said that he was a teacher, writer, and did some selling. Not exactly a strong sales opening. He had to change his behavior. He quickly learned to say that he sold environmentally-friendly cleaning and health-related products. He presented the person with his business card. He may have taught part-time and written part-time, but now he was a sales person. If he couldn’t say that comfortably and with confidence, he wouldn’t sell anything.

He also learned to be teachable. Network marketing or direct sales companies have a set of procedures that work. If they didn’t they wouldn’t be in business. Some of these procedures may have seemed uncomfortable to him, but they needed to be learned. He had to remember that he was new, a beginner.

Learning and doing were the key to success. He read books about selling and marketing. He read books about lead generation. He read books about closing sales. Like any profession, it needed to be learned and practiced. If he didn’t treat the sales profession with respect, if he didn’t learn to sell, he would fail.

He was a sales person. He sold environmentally-friendly cleaning and health-related products. He had his business card ready, in hand.

The man was sitting in a coffee shop enjoying a good cup of coffee and the free wireless internet.

“I see you working on your laptop. What type of work do you do?” said the lady sitting next to him.

“I sell environmentally-friendly house cleaners and wellness products.” he replied.

“Which brand?”

“He told the lady the brand name.”

“I’ve never heard of them.”

“He explained that the products were sold online.” She wasn’t interested. He thanked the lady for her time and continued working on his laptop.

Another customer sat next to him. They exchanged greetings and they began talking about his business.

“Sounds interesting.” replied the customer.

“I’d like to show you a product presentation.” The man agreed.

Taking advantage of the free wireless internet, he showed the customer the company-crafted presentation. He had practiced that presentation many times and felt comfortable with it.

“Nice, but I’m not interested.” the customer replied.

“I understand.” replied the man. “Do you have any questions or concerns?”

“No, just not interested.” He thanked the customer for his time.

This routine continued a few more times while he was in the coffee shop. No takers. He was not discouraged, he knew selling took time. He also reviewed his presentation to see if he thought he could reword it. He also made a mental note to watch the facial expressions of his potential customers to see if there was a point where they zoned out or where he said something that didn’t go over well. It seemed like a lot to remember, but he was determined to master the selling craft.

He went to the local playground. Many mothers gathered there. He knew mothers did more of the household cleaning than their “lazy” husbands. Mothers also showed more interest in environmentally-friendly and wellness products. He chatted with the ladies. Some expressed interest. He handed them his business card. Some gave him their email addresses while others agreed to send him an email. Others weren’t interested.

He made no sales that day but generated a few potential leads. He didn’t feel discouraged. Awhile back, he read a true story about a famous hair salon products entrepreneur. That entrepreneur was homeless, selling encyclopedias by day and sleeping in his car at night. He related his experiences of knocking on 50 or 60 doors before somebody would even listen to his sales pitch.

“How many doors do you knock on before you quit? 50? 100? 500? You keep knocking until you start making sales and then you continue knocking to make more sales.” he said. “The difference between successful and unsuccessful people is that successful people do the things that unsuccessful people don’t.”

Tomorrow is a new day. He would continue his sales pitch with more enthusiasm.

Social Networking SEO Tips and Techniques

Posted by admin On March - 14 - 2010

The popularity of social networking sites on the Internet offers not only opportunities for friends to meet again online, or get in touch with your old classmates and office mates, but a new opportunity in the field of search engine optimization strategy. This article illustrates several ways an SEO practitioner can use social networking to increase rankings, build trust and authority within a selected niche.
Because there might be thousands of social networking sites on the Internet, this article primarily focuses on the top four most popular social networking sites. They are Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and Linkedin.

Source: http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/social-bookmarking-websites

The home page URLS of these four biggest social networking sites are:

1. Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/

2. MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/

3. Twitter: http://twitter.com/

4. Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/

Before you dig more deeply into this tutorial, I suggest that you secure an account on each of those social networking sites. This will help you to understand the methods discussed in this article more quickly.

Getting links on social networking sites

Getting links using the targeted anchor text pointing to your websites, or at least earning a link, is one of the most important search engine ranking factors. That’s not only true for Google, but also for other big search engines, like Bing and Yahoo.

The good thing is that you can earn a link from social networking sites pointing to your website. However, below are the important points to note before you get started:

Do not sign up for an account for the sole purpose of search engine optimization. You need to abide by the site terms and conditions, and follow the intended purpose of the website.

Spamming and copying content from other websites and posting it on the social networking websites’ blogging platform (yes, some have blogging features, like MySpace) is not recommended, and will result in your account being terminated.

Be an active member of each of the social networking sites on which you have chosen to participate. Get friends, contact old friends and make new contacts on a periodic basis. This is one of the best things you can do with your account, in addition to adding updated content.
Okay, now that you’ve taken note of these important reminders of how you are going to use these social networking websites, let’s start looking at how you can get links pointing to your website.

 

Facebook link building opportunities 

You create a page in Facebook by going through the following steps:

1. Go to http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php 

2. Fill it up and create your own Facebook page.

3. The most important thing that you need to fill in is your website URL.

Now that you have a link from Facebook pointing to your website, you can do several important things. First, you can attract visitors to your Facebook page. Read these tips for developing your Facebook page to naturally attract visitors.

It is important to attract a lot of Facebook page visitors, because some of these targeted visitors might click on your website link.

Second, since Facebook puts the rel=nofollow tag on their links, does that mean you cannot get search engine credit? Yes and no. There are sites like Google Profile and YouTube that put a rel=nofollow tag in the early stages of a page. Once the page has earned some trust and reputation, the rel=nofollow attribute is removed. It is very possible that Facebook will adopt this kind of approach in the future.

This is why you should continually update your Facebook page, as well as get new contacts on a periodic basis, because these might be the basis on which Facebook considers removing rel=nofollow links in the future.

Do not underestimate referral traffic from rel=nofollowed links. If you have a lot of traffic for your Facebook pages, then a lot of the visitors landing in your page might purchase products or avail themselves of your services, so aside from getting a link, the referral traffic contributes to your website conversion rate, which in some instances is more important than getting a link.

MySpace link building opportunities

When I used MySpace a couple of years ago, it did have dofollow links on the profile pages. To get backlinks pointing to your website, you need to add your website to your MySpace profile. For example, if you are promoting an artist’s website, MySpace offers one of the best places from which to get links, because they allow creation of musician/artist profiles.

All you need to do is create the artist profile in MySpace, and in the space for the band’s website, put the URL. For example, check out this screen shot:

 

Again, using the same techniques you used in Facebook , you can attract many visitors, followers or fans in MySpace. The key is adding useful content, continually networking within your targeted niche.  

Getting links from Twitter  

Although we know that links in Twitter pointing to other websites receive a rel=nofollow attribute, you can get substantial referral traffic from your Twitter profile if you attract lots of followers. This type of referral traffic is targeted and might buy or subscribe to your services.

This is why a lot of companies, personalities and even freelance individuals are working hard to make their Twitter profile popular, because their Twitter followers can become customers, clients or even fans.

You can read these tips on how you can grow your Twitter followers

LinkedIn link building opportunities

The last but not certainly the least are the links from Linkedin. The good thing about LinkedIn is that the main page profile (the one that will be indexed and shown by search engines like Google) does not use rel=nofollow attribute. This means that if your page is completely relevant to your website (and most of the time it will be), you can get a link credit.

One of the best ways you can develop a great LinkedIn profile that increases the value of the link is to ensure that your profile is as complete as possible. In your profile, put substantial content which is relevant or related to your website. This will avoid an off-topic issue which might affect the value of the link.  

Aside from the big four social networking websites, there are places on the Internet where you can put your profile and get some links. One of these places is Google Profile.  

All you need to do to create your own Google profile is go to http://www.google.com/profiles, and then add your websites. Of course at first (based on my observation), Google will put a rel=nofollow attribute on the links. After some time, however, they will remove it.  

Your next step is to build a useful Google profile. You will want to get some quality photos to add to your profile. You will also want to add detailed and original biographical content, which is related to your website. You will also need a verified email address or profile for one of your websites, which will be added to your Google Profile. You can read some tips here.  

Your Google Profile will be shown high in the search results if someone searches for your name. This is one of the reasons you need to write a quality bio and have your profile/account verified.

You can also make that profile official, so you can provide it to your friends and contacts. They will click on the link leading to your sites, which can help encourage conversion or give you a chance to use it in link baiting. 

You can also do the same with YouTube. If you add your website URL in your YouTube channel, after some time it will become dofollow. However, make your channel useful and interesting; make sure it contains content related to your website. In this case, you can add videos on a periodic basis and do the marketing to attract a lot of subscribers. You can read an article and the commenter’s interaction for increasing YouTube subscribers.

Passion and Profits

Posted by admin On March - 12 - 2010

The next step after figuring out what type of business you want to build is figuring out what business you should be in. Even though very few people cover it, it’s important to take the steps outlined in that post, because you might find some businesses just don’t fit the mold you want. For example, on the next few posts you’ll see that I like to research my market first and see what the competitors are doing.

What if I have an idea for a business, but when I look in the top ten of the Google results (both free and paid) and notice every single one of them has a phone sales process? They collect leads and have people follow-up in a long series to make the sale. If I have a growth maven personality, that’s fine. I’ll build up my in house sales team and build that business.

But if I’m the lifestyle guru type, that means I’ll likely have to team up with an outside call center. More than likely I’d need to partner with a call center to go deeper in this project. If I don’t have a contact to help me set this up, this likely isn’t a business concept I’ll pursue on day one.

The business model needed in that market is important to what you choose. When you look at your competition (top ten in Google and then on the Adwords side), whatever you see is likely what you will have to build to be successful in this field. Of course you can innovate and bring in new ideas, but consider your future business by what you see today. It’s the most practical and honest way to look at what your future holds.

In addition, are you passionate about the subject? Notice I didn’t ask if you’re a premier expert on the subject.

You don’t have to be “the expert” today, because your expertise will grow in anything you focus on for years. And that’s the key, remember you will be dealing with this subject for years to come. This means more than anything else that you must have a native curiosity about the subject. You’re curious and want to keep digging.

Let’s say you want to create an information product in the subject (my favorite business model). You don’t have to be the expert to create the product. You could find a collection of experts and do an interview series.

I’ve done many products as interviews both in doing a group of different experts and also digging in deep with one expert. For example I did an 4 hour interview with Fred Gleeck on how to do interviews.

Was I the expert there? No. But I was very curious about the subject. I wanted to find out how to improve my interviewing skills, and he has done over 700 products based on interviews.

That means he is a premier expert on that subject. And I wanted to know more. So I took advantage of my curiosity for the subject and really dug in deep to find out every step in the process. Now I sell that as one of my products (he does also).

But doing a one off product and studying a subject for years are two different things. What subjects have ALREADY interested you for years or will you stay interested in the future? Make a list of work experience, hobbies, and interests.

Make a list of what you’d love to be able to study intensively for years…such as if you were going to college on the subject. Although your school is going to be the school of life here the commitment is very similar. What is it you want to “major in” for your business?

Unless you’ve already chosen your subject, make your list now. This report will be waiting for you until you get back. Pull out a blank sheet of paper and write all your ideas down. DON’T judge them yet. Nothing should be marked out at this point. Just let all the ideas flow using your work experience, hobbies, and interests as guides. Use the judge of curiosity as the road map. Do it now.

OK. You’re back now. Hopefully you did your first assignment and you have a list of possibilities (none of which have been marked off yet). Next you’ll ask yourself the question, “What value can I add to the world?”

Add Value to the World

“When I chased after money, I never had enough. When I got my life on purpose and focused on giving of myself and everything that arrived into my life, then I was prosperous.”
Wayne Dyer

How can you best add value to the world? You’re a unique person. There is no one else just like you. You have skills and gifts no one else has. You have passion and energy that is unique to you. There are things that get you fired up that don’t excite others around you.

And you’re here for a purpose…not just to make money. Working night and day to build the momentum in your business won’t be worth it if it’s only about the money. It has to be about something deeper if you want to last. It has to be not just about what you can produce for yourself and your family, but also what you can do for your customers and clients.

What unique value can you offer the world? That’s what makes the internet so exciting. Your business isn’t limited just to your local area. It is a worldwide business you can run from your kitchen table. And there are people out there searching for the value you can provide.

Have you heard about all the “Google slaps?” People call it a Google slap when Google goes through and eliminates a group of advertisers by raising their bid prices to a ridiculous level like $10 per visitor. Usually when Google does this, they do it to a whole series of advertisers at once. For example, several times they seem to have targeted affiliates.

Was it all affiliates who were targeted? Nope. They targeted all those affiliates who Google feels were NOT adding value to the transaction. If the affiliate simply linked over to their merchant, they didn’t see that as adding value to the transaction. What did Google want? They wanted affiliates who added their own unique slants, content, and value before the click.

Their goal isn’t just to have advertisers. It’s to have advertisers who help their searchers find what they’re looking for. Google has a long-term view that we need to model in our own businesses. They could have continued taking those advertiser’s money and kept the bid prices higher.

Instead they canceled all those advertisers because in the long-term the best course of action is helping the end searcher find what they want. They’re looking for value. You’re the one to give it to them.

What knowledge in your life can you share with others? What curiosity can you build on to empower the world? What is that you’re passionate to talk about to all your friends? What value has been put into your life that is the key to your online business?

Here’s another exercise. Contact 5 to 20 of your friends/coworkers. Ask them what skills they see as coming naturally to you. Ask them what they rely on you for. You can send them over an email so it’s a little less scary to ask for this response. You’ll find that often other people are better at spotting your strengths than you are.

The majority of us are “too humble” to see our strengths. You’ll find as you start marketing whatever products and services you choose that one of the biggest motivators in almost every market is low self-esteem.

People buy products to feel good about themselves. The beauty product makes them feel beautiful again. The “make money online” manual gives them hope and confidence in themselves. Even the video game manual helps them pawn the noobs (win the game). I guess I could write it, “pwn da noobs.”

Your lack of self-esteem will get in the way here also. So ask your friends and co-workers. Let them describe to you what value you can provide the world. The likelihood is they won’t give you the complete solution, but they will give you some direction and a few clues to what you can follow.

I’m not someone who says, “Do what you love and the money will follow.” I’d really like to say that, but it’s not always true. What I found is what you love often becomes a PORTION of your business, not the whole thing. Sometimes you still have to do some things you don’t enjoy – at least until you can afford to outsource it.

You have to balance all these principles together. Will it fit your personality and business style? Do you have a natural curiosity toward the subject? What value can you provide to others? And are others making money from it today? For example, a lot of people love to be artists. But what if you don’t have the talent (value you provide to others) or what if you do have the talent but you just love painting? If I told you to do what you love (paint), and the money would follow.

That would mean you don’t have to market. Most people who love art don’t love to market, yet that’s a requirement if you want to be profitable.

Accept the facts. You can build a business around a subject you have passion for and something you enjoy doing, but it’s likely you’ll have aspects to the business you don’t enjoy. Some of those aspects like bookkeeping can be outsourced (or hired) from day one. Other aspects like the marketing will often require your participation at least during the initial growth phase.

Now onto to profitability. I don’t ever like being the pioneer in a brand new market. Several times while researching a market I was extremely excited when I found there weren’t any Google Adwords ads. The market was “wide open.” What I later learned in both of these situations is there was a reason there wasn’t anyone advertising there. The visitors wouldn’t buy. They wouldn’t subscribe. And they were a waste of money.

That’s why I told you earlier that you need to figure out what business models are succeeding in a field. If your goal is simply to sell low cost ebooks (maybe you love writing those) but you can’t find any ebooks that can afford to advertise on Google Adwords or aren’t listed well in the Clickbank marketplace, then you might be in the danger zone.

I like to spend some time looking to see what’s already selling. Here’s where you go to do your homework:

1. https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

2. http://www.clickbank.com/marketplace.htm

3. https://www.paypal.com/shops

4. http://pulse.ebay.com/

5. http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books/

All the above links help you find what is ALREADY selling. On the Google keyword tool, you can find out what people are searching for. When you’re searching for potential keyword phrases, also try adding in a few modifiers like review, buy, purchase, shop, or even ebook. All of those phrases mean someone is looking for purchase something.

For example, if I sell camcorders (or am an affiliate for camcorders), I might look for a keyword phrase such as “Canon HV40 review” because it definitely means someone is considering buying this camcorder soon. Or someone could be looking for “online video ebook” which means they’re looking to spend money to learn how to do online video.

The Clickbank marketplace allows you to search in categories and by keyword phrase to find what digital products are being sold. In addition, they allow you to search by gravity score. While Clickbank uses a complex scoring system for their gravity score (basically each separate affiliate making a sale counts as a point but those points degrade over time), on average higher gravity scores means more affiliates are making sales for those products. So when I’m researching the market I like to look for higher gravity scores as proof those products are selling well.

Paypal Shops allows you to see how many Paypal sales a store has made. So if you go to a website selling fishing lures and it shows that they have 5,000+ transactions, you know they’re doing a lot of sales (as Paypal can’t track other sales if they use other payment processors or have their own merchant account). Again look for subjects that have a good amount of sales to prove that the business model is effective.

On eBay you can find out what the hot items are. A majority of these products will be physical products with a very small margin on them (eBay attracts bargain shoppers), but even if you’re planning on a doing an information product you can still see what industries and subjects are hot sellers on eBay. In addition you will find some information products that make it into this list. Choose category “Books” and then “Nonfiction” to find out what big nonfiction books are selling.

Over on Amazon you can find the bestsellers in any category. Normally I start in the book section to see what book sellers are hot (if people are buying one book they will buy others). I also will search other categories for potential ideas. For example if I had a site about camcorders I’d definitely be looking in the best sellers for electronics to find out what I should cover. You can find out a LOT about what people are really buying online by spending a good amount of time in the Amazon best sellers section. Even if you don’t sell any products of your own, you will still sell affiliate products from others and need to know what’s selling.

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