Home Business Work – How To Grow The Efficiency

Basically the online home business work is simple. You learn to promote the internet business and you will not even need a site or blog. And this is a skill, which you can always transfer into new businesses.
But what about the quality of your business ideas? The home business work competition will be solved between the know how levels of the competing marketers, not between the amount of material, they produce. If you read the work at home business reviews you will certainly agree.
Do You Have A Clear Idea For Your Business Work?
The main target of every business is to be able to stand out from the crowd. It is a waste of time to offer the same as thousands of others do, there is just no personality. So what makes you special? What is your expertise?
Even with the smartest promotional tricks, it is not possible to reach the success, if the ability to offer unique benefits is lacking. If you wait that I can give you these secrets, you are wrong, that is the privilege of yours only. So I go to the promotional techniques and tools.
1. Study, Study And Study.
As said many times to do the home business work online, the know how is needed. You have to study a lot even after you have found out a special area for yourself, like the article marketing. The Internet marketing just includes a lot of details, which you have to master. Knowing the latest details help you to make the work more efficient. For instance the search engines publish new algorithms quite often and if you will follow the old ones, your ranking power will decrease.
2. Automate Your Home Business Work.
Most home business opportunities are one man operations, and this means that the resources of the marketer are limited. What you can do to solve this problem and bottleneck? You can use effective tools and you can outsource parts of the business.
Let us take another example.When you are in the process to select an affiliate program, for instance, you can pick the one, which will pay residual income and uses the multilevel marketing system, meaning that you can earn from the affiliates of your affiliates
The conclusion: it is the quality and only the quality, which will determine how your business work brings results. The high quality needs, that you study a lot and will follow, what the marketing forums are talking and what the main marketers are doing.

How to Start Your Own Cleaning Business Cleaning Houses for Money

Cleaning houses for money is one of the easiest home businesses to start up because all you really need is some elbow grease and a few cleaning supplies. Well, there are a few more things you need to know about it in order to be really successful. But, the main thing is that you can clean homes on a part-time basis and make great money once you get rolling.

While cleaning involves a lot of physical work, it's not anything complicated. The major things you'll need to think about before you start is how you're going to market your services, what hours you wish to work, and what, if any, specialized services you want to offer your clients.

In order to answer these questions, you need a sample business plan for cleaning business that gives you information on how to get set up, what kind of fees you can charge and tips on how to land your first clients. Having a business plan to follow makes things a lot easier. Even though, it's just cleaning, you'll find that there are insider things you need to know that help you avoid making simple mistakes.

For instance, many people who are just starting out with their own cleaning service often think that charging lower rates will bring in the business. While this may be true to some extent, lower rates can quickly trap you into a cycle of doing lots of physical work, and not making enough to cover your expenses when you need to expand. So, how much should you charge?

Another thing to consider is that when you're offering a new service, nobody knows what the quality of your work is. You have no referrals yet because you haven't had a paying client. How are you going to get clients to trust that you can do a better job than another similar service?

And, what about those troublesome clients that you take on because you need the money, but can't stand working with? How do you deal with these types of clients, or should you just dump them?

What type of cleaning supplies should you buy and how much of it do you need in the beginning?

These are all questions that need to be researched and answered so that you can put together a workable business plan that fits your particular needs. Cleaning houses for money can be very rewarding once you understand how to give your clients great service – they will reward you with their loyalty and plenty of referrals.

You can find out more information about running a successful cleaning business from home by visiting the site below. A cleaning service business is one of the top ways to earn fantastic money by working only part-time.

How To Write Great Articles

All the hype nowadays in web-based industries is the pioneering concept called article marketing. Article marketing is one type of Internet advertising that has proven to be both instructive and effective, because Internet users are being given useful information on their related searches, through short but helpful articles with an accompanying link to the author's site at the bottom part of the article. Website owners are now given a new way to market their goods and services, where they can post their articles in a number of directories in exchange for potential views and increased website traffic.
So how do you write such articles? Article writing encompasses initially mass print media like magazines, newspapers, and the like. The articles written in these media are usually long winded and detailed, and very often command longer attention spans from the readers. Newspapers and magazines pay their writers to write such long articles because their readership depend on how wide range the topics are, and how up to trend the issues are. But the articles employed in Internet article marketing should not be in parallel with the articles written in print. The web is a never-ending source of research material and if the readers do not get what they want instantly by reading the articles published in directories, they could turn to other sources because the choices are endless. Therefore the articles have to be written in such a way that the attentions of the Internet users are utilized to the fullest degree.


Short articles of about 600-800 words are most ideal. This way, all the important elements of a subject matter is tightly woven into the article, thus creating less risk of boring the readers with unnecessary matters. Imagine an article that has too much introduction, an incoherent body, and a hanging conclusion- no one would take the effort to have to analyze what is written, because people want straight up facts. They want to read and to understand each sentence, and ideally to be more informed about the given issue, period.
For example, an article that deals with the benefits of water therapy would want to consider including highlights on how the consumption of water could help in eradicating toxins built up by faulty eating. And then this could be explained further by noting specific studies that have dealt with natural remedies alongside the use of conventional commercial medicine. The advantages of utilizing natural therapies would be that there are less possibilities of side effects and a less overworked liver, as this essential body organ is primarily responsible in the flushing out of unwanted toxins from overeating, unnatural diets, and of course modern pills and medicines

Search BOX

<form action="http://getrichcity.blogspot.com" id="cse-search-box">

<div>

<input type="hidden" name="cx" value="partner-pub-7328009142598671:o0fczc-fjo1" />

<input type="hidden" name="cof" value="FORID:10" />

<input type="hidden" name="ie" value="ISO-8859-1" />

<input type="text" name="q" size="31" />

<input type="submit" name="sa" value="Search" />

</div>

</form>

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.google.com/cse/brand?form=cse-search-box&lang=en"></script>

 

<div id="cse-search-results"></div>

<script type="text/javascript">

var googleSearchIframeName = "cse-search-results";

var googleSearchFormName = "cse-search-box";

var googleSearchFrameWidth = 800;

var googleSearchDomain = "www.google.com";

var googleSearchPath = "/cse";

</script>

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.google.com/afsonline/show_afs_search.js"></script>

Google Ad

<script type="text/javascript"><!--


google_ad_client = "pub-7328009142598671";

/* 336x280, created 8/28/10 */

google_ad_slot = "5993581241";

google_ad_width = 336;

google_ad_height = 280;

//-->

</script>

<script type="text/javascript"

src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">

</script>

Looking at a Franchise Website

When you are looking at a franchise website you will see a lot of different information. Of course this depends on what franchise website you went looking for. There are websites that give definitions of what a franchise is. There are websites that list various franchises for sale. There are franchise websites that give you all of the aspects of the Franchise Disclosure Document or it might give a summary of what to expect to find in a Financial Disclosure Document.

There is a lot of information about franchises including advice on reasons for investing in a franchise. What a website can't do is assist you in deciding which the best franchise is. It can't help you make that personal decision as to whether you have enough funds to wait for the franchise to be profitable. It certainly can't give you accounting or legal advice on any documents you may have to read before you invest.

Yes, a website can give theories as to certain aspects of investing in a franchise. They may even have templates of certain legal documents relating to a franchise. It can display people's opinions and even articles about the various aspects of franchising. But only you can make the decision as to whether you will successful at the business you chose.

After you have visited various websites, you also should get any other information you can so you can properly evaluate the prospective franchise. And even if you do get this information you will still need to evaluate it to make sure you get several points of view, not just that of the franchise you are interested in. Documents can sometimes be ambiguous and may only present one side of a story. Since you don't personally know who posted the information on the website, you really can't verify their intentions or their position. They may be employees of the company you are looking at.

People who sell franchises have to be good salespeople or they would never sell another franchise. Just like any other type of business, buyers or investors generally are not waiting in line to buy into the business. They have to be enticed there. There has to be something they want back.

Websites can give you information on expectations for a company. The writer of the article may have looked at past years growth and made some assumptions like at what percentage it will continue to grow. They can also predict what they think will happen in the future. But no one can give you a warranty or a guarantee of what will happen. Only you can take all of the information and analyze it. You may go to a franchise expert to get assistance in this regard and you may take that person's advice. But again, they can only reasonably predict what may happen.

If you are going in the direction of investing in a franchise get every piece of information you can from what ever source you can, including the internet.

Top 5 Ways to Learn Real Estate Investing In an Easy Way

There are many ways to learn the real estate market and how to begin investing, but you should start with just a few of them. Say, begin with 5 and then master them, once you have learned the first 5 steps, you may begin to further your education and learn all of the steps.  Always start out with the basics and advance your knowledge slowly, but thoroughly.

First of all...start educating yourself by way of reading, you can utilize your local library, the internet and check for any free or low cost seminars in your area.  Before getting started, you will want to think about what it is you would like to achieve from your new venture and then list everything down.  Think about what you already know about investing in real estate and start from there.  Usually we know more than we think about a topic and that makes it easier to take the first step.  Always be open to advice from friends, acquaintances and even experts you may come in contact with.

This would also be the time to consider any partners that maybe interested in beginning a new endeavor with you.  It is always good to have hand in hand support; it makes any business decision a lot more comfortable to deal with.  In addition, having someone to learn with is always easier, especially when you or your partners have the same goals in mind.  The first steps you may want to begin with are listed as follows:

1. Begin by finding a Tail seminar: This is where an expert begins to gather updated or even historical information and methods on the real estate market.  The usually gather this information from other experts, either new in the market or seasoned.  Once they have the experts of interest, they set up seminars, to allow new up and incoming agents to listen in.  Even if you are not an agent, you can attend the seminars and begin your education.

2. Find an expert for advising: Try to find an expert who is willing to be your mentor.  With a mentor, you will build up the confidence and education that is needed to begin your new trade.  Remember that an expert may have a lot of knowledge, but they too began at the bottom and they will usually train you based on that.

3. Follow a well-known system: There are many systems out there for real estate investing and some maybe very helpful in getting you started.  I am not saying to go spend a lot of money on some real estate kit for beginners, but at least check out what the systems have to offer and if it would be easier for you to purchase a kit, then do so.

4. Take advantage of the current economy: Normally this would not be listed as one of the top ways to learn real estate investing, but due to these economical times; it has become one of the main ways to invest.  Research the foreclosure market; you will be amazed how many properties have been foreclosed on and repoed.  These properties are usually placed back on the market at amazingly low rates and can even be obtained through auctioning.

5. Understand the market through locality: No what areas are hot and which areas are not.  This means property value is not always based on the structure itself, but also on the area; which the structure is located.  If the structure in near an ocean or a lake, you will have higher property value.  Most people love beautiful scenery and if a property provides that, most people will find some way to afford it.  You will even have people that purchase properties based on schools in the area or even entertainment.

Always remember there are always different ways to begin investing, but you have to start small and be smart about what you are learning and how to apply what you have learned.

How to Enter Into Real Estate Investing and Achieve Financial Freedom?

People all over the world are looking for new ways to make money, everyone has dreams and desires for a new life.  However, sometimes financial choices are based on safe decisions like just maintaining our daily jobs and only budgeting off what we make monthly.  Think about it; if you could make money another way and learn a great new trade; while you do it; would you not try?  Real Estate maybe that trade for you and with a little education, you too can learn the vast market.

The first step is to educate yourself on the Real Estate market; you need to know what types of available properties are in the areas that you would like to work.  Make yourself a list of things to do, so that you have solid guidelines to follow, such as:

    * Make a list of your assets; as well as the budget you have to work with. 
    * Make a list of available properties on the market.
    * Educate yourself fully on the properties of interest, for example what the properties is worth.
    * Have inspections completed on the property, you need to be aware of any problems, regarding the property.
    * Learn to negotiate, you must be able to work with the property owner and what they would like to accomplish with this sell.
    * Think about taking some basic certification courses; which can be completed online; if necessary.
    * Talking with an expert may also be an advantage.

These few steps will help you in getting started on your way to a prosperous career.  The real estate market can be one of the easiest ways to step into financial freedom.  Even a dummy can learn the market, due to all of the information that can be found online.   Educating yourself in real estate can be easy and fun, you just have to have the desire for a better life.  Talk with your friends and all of your acquaintances, through doing this you may find some new clients.  This will also help you with learning what people want and need; as far as a home or even a small business.  Yes, that is right; you do not have to limit yourself to residential properties, in real estate you can also deal in commercial properties.  Commercial properties usually bring in more profit and show you another aspect of the market, you should educate yourself fully.

Remember, make your list and check it twice and you will be able to stay on the road to making more money than you ever thought possible.  Utilize the free resources available to you, for educating yourself in the market of real estate, such as Public Libraries, online websites, free seminars in your area and of course seeking assistance from local experts.  Starting new endeavors can be a scary decision, but in the end you will come out on top, you will be an expert in a completely new trade and you will make money while doing it.

HOW TO MAKE MONEY WITH GOOGLE ADSENSE

HOW TO MAKE MONEY WITH GOOGLE ADSENSE


If you have a website or a blog, you should definitely sign up for Google Adsense. It’s one of the few programs you can truly ‘set and forget’ – once it’s there you don’t really need to do much else with it.

But there are ways and means to maximize your income from Google Adsense, and as you get to know more about it you can start to generate a decent income from it that will keep rolling in month after month. It’s a true passive income, which is why so many people are using it.

Most people have heard of Google Adsense, but not everyone understands exactly how to use it to its best advantage. So we’ll start with how to use it in its most basic sense and then progress to the more advanced benefits you can get from the program.

Basically if you have a website or blog you can sign up for a free account at Google Adsense and start putting contextual ads on your website. What do I mean by contextual? It means quite simply that the ads which appear on your site will be relevant to your content. So let’s say for example that your website is about tropical fish. The Google ads will then be related to tropical fish in some way. And because of the information that you give to Google, they will also display adverts that are relevant to your area. So if you are based in the UK the ads that appear will be relevant to UK buyers; if your site or business is based in Australia the ads will appeal to Australian buyers.


All of this is carefully worked out for you in order to attract the maximum click through possible for your website and your ads. Every time someone clicks on an ad you will get a few cents into your Adsense account, so it makes sense that the more attractive and relevant your ads are to your visitors, the more money you will make.

Let’s have a look at the appearance of your ads now, since this can affect the amount of click throughs you get. You can choose the color and borders of your ads to fit right in with the color scheme on your site if you wish, but it’s worth experimenting with having no borders at all around your adverts since this makes them blend in with your content more seamlessly and may encourage more click throughs in a subtle but effective manner.

However well you integrate Google Adsense into your current blog or website though, there is obviously a limit to the amount of money you can make from one site. If you get thousands of people visiting your site every day then you can expect to get a good income from it but many people don’t get this number of visitors and that’s where you need a separate strategy to try and up your numbers.

In this case you can go to the advanced level of Adsense income and think about starting several sites, all based around a different yet popular subject. You should think of these essentially as being content sites, since they are often chock full of articles and useful content which is carefully keyworded to attract plenty of search engine traffic on that particular subject. The Adsense ads are then placed in the optimum positions to achieve the best click through (the Adsense pages will give you ideas on where to position them but it’s worth experimenting to see what works best for you), and the site goes live for people to find and read through.

You can also insert affiliate links for products into these sites in order to gain even more income if you wish, but they are often known as Adsense sites simply because they are set up to attract visitors and click throughs on a specific subject.

Some people end up with dozens of sites like this, and the beauty of them is that once they are built and you have bought your domain name and hosting plan you don’t really need to do too much with them except for promote them. Updating them fairly regularly is good if you want to get to a higher position in the search engine results though, which will gain you more visitors as a result.

You can also keep your site updated more regularly (and encourage repeat visitors) by inserting RSS feeds of news stories related to the subject of your website. Anything that will get people returning to read more – and possibly click on more ads as a result – is worth a try.

One final note here – choose the subjects of your Adsense sites wisely. It’s tempting to go for whatever is in the news at the moment, but once the stories die down so will your traffic. You want something that people will always want to know about – saving money, getting a better job, earning more, and various other more personal subjects such as skin care and successful dating for example. There are plenty of options to choose from; you just need to get your thinking cap on to find them.

In short the best place to start making money from Google Adsense is to integrate it into your existing website or blog. As you gain experience and discover the best ways to use it you can start thinking about adding extra sites into the mix. You might end up being an Adsense guru and raking in plenty of money for very little work indeed. That’s the best thing about it – the ‘set and forget’ benefit that keeps on working even when you’re not.

If you enjoyed this article or have any questions or comments about it, please leave them by using the form below. Once you’ve done that it will be time to visit Google’s Adsense site to get started! Good luck.

Make Money Forex Trading – Learn How To Trade Forex

Make Money Forex Trading – Learn How To Trade Forex


Whether you’re new to trading or you are what’s considered a “seasoned” trader, there is a lot of money to be made trading Forex markets. Although instantly trading with real money is not for beginners or people that have never traded before, you can quickly learn the ropes with a little help and commitment.
If you are serious about wanting to learn how to profitably trade the Forex markets, call me on
+234 802 589 5271

What is Forex Trading?

Forex trading is the buying and selling of currencies. In much the same way that you’d buy and sell stocks on the stock market, traders exchange currencies they’ve purchased. If you’ve ever traded on the stock market, you should have no problem getting the hang of trading Forex.

The purpose of Forex trading is to exchange a currency that you’ve purchased for another with the hopes that the price of the newly purchased one will go up in value. Whether you’re new to this or consider yourself an old pro, you’ll find it very exciting and a lot of fun. The value of currencies is always quoted in pairs such as USD/JPY or GBD/USD. The reason for this is because you’re always buying one and selling another.
It is recommended, however, that until you get the hang of what you’re doing you should set up a “demo” account where you may be buying and selling currencies but they’re fake. By doing this, you’re learning how it’s done and giving yourself a chance to learn more about it without losing real money.

Signing up for an Account

Signing up for an account is very easy. You can register for one of the training courses on the Forex web site where you can “pretend” trade in a demo atmosphere or you can participate in their workshops where you’ll have real experts teaching you everything you need to know about Forex trading. You’ll also have webinars at your disposal where you can watch demonstrations of Forex trading, take part in discussions with beginners as well as experts in the field. Signing up for an account is not only fun and exciting by the best way to learn the ropes so you’ll soon be ready to begin making money trading Forex.

Getting started is Easy

You’ll find that it’s easier than you thought to get started. Banks and financial institutions have been doing it for years and now with the internet available to everyone, it’s easy for you to make money at home by trading Forex. Because there are so many different theories behind trading Forex, it’s to your advantage to talk with someone that knows what they’re doing and has participated in Forex trading in the past.



If you don’t know anyone with enough experience to help you, consider signing up for some of the online webinars and Forex workshops. They’re very helpful and will take you through any scenario you can imagine and are available to answer any questions you may have. You can continue to be part of a “demo” trading market until you’re ready to strike out on your own with real money. That’s when you’ll see how much money you can truly make trading Forex.
 
If you are interested in trading FOREX or get trained please don't esitate to call me on +234 802 589 5271

Success File - Fast Track To Promotion & Recognition

Success File - Fast Track To Promotion & Recognition


Ever wonder why some people get promotions and recognition and some don't? Or, have you considered how you might increase your chances for promotion and recognition as an excellent performer? Of course, there's no simple answer to these questions. People are promoted for a number of reasons, some fair and reasonable, and some not - that's life. Still, if you want to enhance your opportunities in your organization and want to move up the ladder and have increased responsibilities, there's one important strategy I can share with you. It's simple on the surface, but not quite as simple in practice. Here's the strategy:

Start Doing Your Boss's Job

Here's how it works. The person most helpful or harmful in terms of getting a promotion is your immediate supervisor. He or she is the person who can help or hinder. What determines which it will be? Well, certainly your performance is important. But it's all about perceptions. You can create positive and powerful perceptions on the part of your boss by making his or her life easier. It's that simple. If you can:
reduce your boss's workload
eliminate hassles the boss is concerned about
prevent problems the boss is normally responsible for
you become more useful to the boss. That's a good thing and tends to get noticed.

Of course it isn't quite so simple. While you want to be useful to the boss, you don't want to usurp the boss's responsibilities. A great way to dead-end yourself is to take on some of the boss's job when your boss doesn't want that to happen. So, you have to know your particular boss well enough to know what you can do and what your boss doesn't want you to do. We call that knowing the limits to your authority and your action.

Here as some tips to help you out:

Get to know your boss well enough to understand what drives him or her nuts about the "boss job". A good way of thinking about it is to ask yourself: "What kinds of problems nag at the boss?

Examine whether you can do anything from your position in the organization to help address the boss's "drive me crazy" problem (often there will be).

Decide whether you should do something to help or not. If you know the boss well enough, you will probably also know what the limits on your authority and actions might be. Still, it's always good to check it out, and offer the solution to the boss beforehand, and if necessary, request permission to get it done. That makes it less likely the boss will feel you are encroaching on his or her territory.

Don't do any of this so that it appears you are trying to "score points", or manipulate the boss. Do it because you want to contribute to the best of your ability and with the attitude that if nobody notices, that's fine, provided it makes people's jobs easier. (This is a mindset to prevent your being seen as a selfish, manipulative employee.

There's never any guarantees in life, so I can't provide a guarantee here. But I will say that almost ALL of the people I have seen fast-tracked in organizations exhibit the ability to make their boss look good and make the boss's life easier.

And the great thing about this? Everybody wins. The organization becomes more effective. You do a good job. And your boss's life is just a wee bit easier.

BASIC NEGOTIATING TIPS

BASIC NEGOTIATING TIPS

We all negotiate in our personal and professional lives. We negotiate when we go to a garage sale, or when we want to do something different at work, or when we are dealing with members of the public.

Sometimes its easy to negotiate, but other times, when we have a great deal at stake or we are upset, the task can be intimidating or difficult.

We are going to talk about some tips to effective negotiating that can help you work more effectively with your customers, co-workers, and boss. They are also applicable to other interpersonal situations.

OVERVIEW OF THE NEGOTIATION PROCESS

Negotiating is the process by which two or more parties with different needs and goals work to find a mutually acceptable solution to an issue. Because negotiating is an inter-personal process, each negotiating situation is different, and influenced by each party's skills, attitudes and style. We often look at negotiating as unpleasant, because it implies conflict, but negotiating need not be characterized by bad feelings, or angry behaviour. Understanding more about the negotiation process allows us to manage our negotiations with confidence increases the chance that the outcomes will be positive for both parties.

BARRIERS TO SUCCESSFUL NEGOTIATION

VIEWING NEGOTIATION AS CONFRONTATIONAL

Negotiation need not be confrontational. In fact effective negotiation is characterized by the parties working together to find a solution, rather than each party trying to WIN the contest of wills. Keep in mind that the attitude that you take in negotiation (eg. hostile, cooperative) will set the tone for the interaction. If you are confrontational, you will have a fight on your hands.

Trying To Win At All Costs

If you "win" there must be a loser, and that can create more difficulty down the road. The best perspective in negotiation is to try to find a solution where both parties "win". Try not to view negotiation as a contest that must be won.

Becoming Emotional

It's normal to become emotional during negotiation that is important. However, as we get more emotional, we are less able to channel our negotiating behaviour in constructive ways. It is important to maintain control.

Not Trying To Understand The Other Person

Since we are trying to find a solution acceptable to both parties, we need to understand the other person's needs, and wants with respect to the issue. If we don't know what the person needs or wants, we will be unable to negotiate properly. Often, when we take the time to find out about the other person, we discover that there is no significant disagreement.

Focusing On Personalities, Not Issues

Particularly with people we don't like much, we have a tendency to get off track by focusing on how difficult or obnoxious the person seems. Once this happens, effective negotiation is impossible. It is important to stick to the issues, and put aside our degree of like or dislike for the individual.

Blaming The Other Person

In any conflict or negotiation, each party contributes, for better or worse. If you blame the other person for the difficulty you will create an angry situation. If you take responsibility for the problem, you will create a spirit of cooperation.

Some Negotiation Tips

Solicit The Other's Perspective

In a negotiating situation use questions to find out what the other person's concerns and needs might be. You might try:

What do you need from me on this?

What are your concerns about what I am suggesting / asking?

When you hear the other person express their needs or concerns, use listening responses to make sure you heard correctly.

For example: So, you are saying that you are worried that you will get lost in the shuffle and we will forget about you...Is that right?

If I have this right, you want to make sure that the phones are covered over lunch?

State your Needs

The other person needs to know what you need. It is important to state not only what you need but why you need it. Often disagreement may exist regarding the method for solving an issue, but not about the overall goal.

For example:

I would like an hour on Tuesday to go to the doctor. I want to make sure I am healthy so I can contribute better to the organization.

Prepare Options Beforehand

Before entering into a negotiating session, prepare some options that you can suggest if your preferred solution is not acceptable. Anticipate why the other person may resist your suggestion, and be prepared to counter with an alternative.

Don't Argue



Negotiating is about finding solutions...Arguing is about trying to prove the other person wrong. We know that when negotiating turns into each party trying to prove the other one wrong, no progress gets made. Don't waste time arguing. If you disagree with something state your disagreement in a gentle but assertive way. Don't demean the other person or get into a power struggle.

Consider Timing

There are good times to negotiate and bad times. Bad times include those situations where there is:

. A high degree of anger on either side

. Preoccupation with something else

. A high level of stress

. Tiredness on one side or the other



Time negotiations to avoid these times. If they arise during negotiations a time-out/rest period is in order, or perhaps rescheduling to a better time.

Conclusion

Negotiating is a complex process but one worth mastering. If you keep in mind that you are responsible for the success or failure of negotiation, and if you follow the tips above, you will find the process easier.

How to Use the Power of E-mail Marketing to Bring in Business

How to Use the Power of E-mail Marketing to Bring in Business


In recent years, the complaint of people receiving unsolicited e-mails has risen to an alarming level. In fact, spamming is such a huge problem nowadays as the number of e-mail users have reached to 1.4 billion worldwide in 2009. It is comparable to about one e-mail user for every five people on earth. The question now is: is it still feasible to use e-mail marketing without violating someone’s privacy?

The answer is a resounding ‘yes!’ What I will be sharing with you today are secrets on how to use e-mail marketing to expand your online business without appearing to be a spam in someone else’s inbox. Read along as I explain each point:

Build a clean opt-in list. The success of e-mail marketing campaign relies solely on a permission-based and clean opt-in list. As an internet marketer, it is important that every single subscriber on your list has agreed to receive e-mails from you. The violation comes in when you start sending out communications to people who may not have given you explicit permission to send them e-mails. You are exactly doing the opposite. Remember your aim is to attract people, not to scare them away. When you are sending out unsolicited e-mails, you are precisely sending out spams.


Target your audience. The best way to target your market audience is to know your e-mail subscribers. This may be an added task, but sorting them out by groups is an effective method when you start sending out personalized messages for each group. Sending out a general e-mail to everyone may actually end up less effective compared to sending personalized e-mails to a particular audience at the right time. When you send e-mails to your target market, it is important that they appear professional in both subject lines and content.

E-mail marketing is all about building relationships. What is amazing about e-mail marketing is that you can build strong relationships to customers who may not personally know you. In fact, when they sign up to receive your e-mail, they are opening their doors for a possible relationship with your company as well as you because they like your products or want to know more about your company. E-mail messages, therefore, are bridges to a stronger and long lasting relationship with your subscribers.

Provide quality content and relevant information. When sending out e-mail messages, your primary objective is to educate your audience, more than tricking them to purchase your products. The best way to do this is to provide informative content enough to educate your audience regarding your products or services. When they are well-informed, they will precisely initiate further transactions. So aim at giving them quality and relevant content.

Develop a call to action. In your e-mail message, include a strong call to action. This is basically telling your readers what to do, why they should do it and how to do it. Distribute throughout your e-mail the call to action phrases, like “make a reservation,” “visit your website or store,” or “fill out a survey.” Telling your readers to “act now” and “reserve your spot today” are also an effective call to action. See to it that these phrases are clearly visible in your e-mail. Make them concise and simple

6 Fool-Proof Steps to Make More Money With Your Website

6 Fool-Proof Steps to Make More Money With Your Website

Every website has a bunch of web pages which get more search traffic than others. These pages are constantly visited daily by new visitors, people who have never seen the site in question before. I call these ‘money pages’ because they are a reliable source of immediate and future income.

But they’re not just ‘money’ because they bring in revenue: they are one of the easiest ways to grow your audience without much work. If you learn how to optimize these money pages (its not hard to do), you’ll really improve your website in so many ways. More revenue, more members, more influence and authority. Doesn’t that sound good?

I’ve talked very briefly about money pages in my previous post on analyzing your site visitors and decided to expand a little more on this topic because I think its often overlooked by webmasters. We’re always focused on creating new content and getting new visitors to these new pages that we forget about what’s going on in other parts of our website.

This is tailored towards content publishers and bloggers but the main strategies here apply to other site types as well, you just need to find the right tools to do it. So lets get started.

There are many things you can do to money pages, in order to make them better or more profitable. It’s important to decide the extent of your work according to your goals and resources. How much time do you want to spend and what’s most important to you? Do you want a bigger readership? Or are you just concerned with increasing your daily revenue?

Here are a list of things you can do for your money pages:

1. Monetize. The aim here is to get more revenue out of each page. There are various ways to achieve this and they generally involve the placement of ads both around and within content. There is also an indirect future revenue from lead capturing.

2. Capture Leads. The money page is optimized to encourage a visitor to subscribe to your mailing list, site feed or register for your website. The main aim is to find a way to continue to reach your visitors after they leave your money page. This helps to grow your site audience and is also a component of revenue generation.

3. Improve Relevance. This involves revamping the money page in order to provide up-to-date information or better content in order to accommodate visitor needs. This provides an improved user experience for all and can result a host of benefits like more referral/citation links and greater visitor loyalty/trust. Relevance is also important when your main goal is to capture leads or increase revenue.

4. Make it Rank Better. Doing on-site and off-site optmization will help specific money pages to rank better on the search engine result pages, hence driving more traffic back to your site. This increases your site reach and revenue at the same time.

Open up the web analytics program you’re using for your website. There should be a section which reveals which pages have the highest unique views per month. Extract the urls for the top 10 pages and put them somewhere for easy access. Or bookmark them on your browser. If you don’t currently use an analytics tool, I recommend setting up Google Analytics.

How many pages you choose to optimize really depends on your website and preference. If you have a lot of webpages that get solid traffic, you can do more. If you don’t have many pages that get web traffic, then you have a lesser amount to work with. I like to focus on the top 10 because if its a manageable amount of work for an acceptable returns on investment.

My personal guideline is to only work on pages with a minimum of 200 unique views everyday. It’s a basic number that’s good for some decent conversions. Adjust this figure to something you can work with, if your website is new or gets less overall traffic.

The point to remember is that not every page is hot. The goal is not to optimize every single web page you have. There has to be a limit. So learn to prioritize and work only on the pages that are currently receiving the most traffic to your website.

Visitor search queries reveal what people are looking for and what they want to get from your web page. It tells you what information they expect and is a way to understand their desires or needs. Many are ready to pay for a solution or subscribe to get knowledge in their inbox.

Better relevance = better conversions. It’s that simple. By making your website as relevant as possible to search queries, you’re making visitors more likely to stick around, opt-in or buy. Users are going to click away if they find that your web page doesn’t fulfill their info needs. So the first step is closely examine your money pages in relation to search traffic terms.

My goal is to include every search query in my money page. Every question typed into search engines by visitors who access my site must be answered. One very easy and quick way to do this is to add a simple FAQ to the page to address the visitor’s specific needs. Just phrase the same exact search query as a question. Then write an answer which responds to it.

Another method for search query relevance is to create new content and insert it into the money page. It’s important to edit your pages so that it doesn’t display content that is simply outdated or useless. You’re not going to presell anyone with stuff like that. It won’t work.

Either rewrite the entire money page or include update notes specifying new information and linking to other pages on your website with newer content. Whenever new information or changes occur, go back into the money page to make necessary adjustments. This is one reason why I asked you to keep those 10 URLs bookmarked or easily accessible.

Note that by increasing your money page’s relevance and informational value, you are also increasing its linkability: People are more likely to link to it because it is a detailed and useful reference page on the topic. Whenever possible, I try to fashion my money pages on blogs after Wikipedia in terms of comprehensiveness.

While you can monetize your money page and capture leads at the same time, I find it better to optimize for one goal instead of trying to achieve both. Because when it comes to monetization, captured leads are usually a good source for long term income anyway.

There are formats for each goal (monetize or lead capture) and you’ll get better results if you either choose to monetize fully or go all out to hook your visitors by making them sign up or subscribe to your website. If you put up too many well blended ads, the visitor can easily click away instead of subscribing to your newsletter, so either pick one goal or balance both.

Let’s talk about monetization first. This is easy if you’re using ad networks like Google Adsense. Go to your money page and insert an additional ad unit, blend it well with your content and make sure that its quite visible while not being too obtrusive.

A well placed Adsense unit can really increase your overall daily income. I’ve seen a jump of more than $20 a day for a site that I own when I took the time to test and optimize a few money pages. While you may have default ads already on every page of your site (sidebars, header etc), these may not be truly optimized for a money page.

Money pages need to be treated differently from the other pages on your website. They’re the ones that bring a lot of visitors (big sample size) so you can really use this opportunity to test the profitability of specific ad schemes. You can even remove the default ads specifically for this page so you have more room to experiment. That’s what I do for some sites.

Other ways to monetize include the use of commission-based affiliate programs which range from digital products to established eCommerce retailers like Amazon.com. Clickbank is a digital product marketplace you can use. Sign up, search through the marketplace for a product, grab your affiliate link, insert it on your money page.

You can also try CPA networks with relevant pay-per-lead or pay-per-sale programs. Commonly used CPA networks are Market Leverage, Max Bounty, NeverBlue, PepperJam, Copeac, Azoogle and Hydra Network, among many others. Affiliate programs can work well but remember to keep them related to your content.

Alternatively, you can promote your own products on your money page by including a short pitch for it and linking to a proper sales page. Or you can try to sell your visitors away from the money page by getting them to first subscribe to an email list. This brings us to the next step.

The goal is to capture not just the email of the visitor but his/her permission to allow you to reach them away from your website. For some of you, you want visitors to subscribe to your RSS feed so they’ll continue to read your content or hopefully participate on your site.

Many set up email lists and auto-responders with the aim of eventually monetizing by selling their own products or recommending those of JV partners. Their aim here is to get users to opt-in to receive newsletters or special offers. The same goes for online retail stores.

Good email marketing providers are Aweber and GetResponse, both of which charge a monthly fee that you should be able to earn back easily. There are free alternatives available but you’ll often lose out in terms of features. If this doesn’t bother you, you could try starting with any of the free email software or plugins available.

To optimize a money page to capture leads, you’ll need to do some offer customization. Look at what content/product is on the page and create a specific offer that’s relevant to it. Provide an incentive for someone to sign up: perhaps a free digital product with related or more in-depth information. Or simply the promise of future discounts or special product offers.

To get into the mind of the visitor and understand what entices them, you’ll need to go back to the search queries you’re getting. If someone is interested in ‘what causes wrinkles’, you’ll know they’ll be interested in an ebook on natural anti-aging remedies. Do up a free guide and offer it to them only if they register as a member or sign up to your email list.

How about lead capture for communities and membership sites? Apart from providing incentives you can use teasers. Restrict visitor actions by only allowing them to view a limited amount of content or interact in a limited fashion. This limit will be removed when a user registers with your community. These are methods commonly practiced by paid membership sites, forums and social media sites to entice signups.

Now that you’ve optimized your money pages for maximum conversions, you can also send over visitors from other pages of your site. You’ve already done the work to make the pages incredibly relevant and usable, they shouldn’t just be seen by search engine visitors.

If your money pages are related, by sure to interlink each one so that each visitor is funneled to another optimized page. This not only improves your bounce rate but makes sure that each visitor is given two opportunities to convert if they aren’t persuaded the first time around.

Another method is to use a script to autolink specific anchor keywords or phrases on your entire site to the specific web page. This helps with SEO and is very easy way to get more eyes on your money page. If you’re using Wordpress, try the Internal Link Building plugin or the SEO Smart Links plugin. Both help to auto-link keywords on every page of your blog. There are quite a few similar plugins out there but these two work well for me.

If you’re a blogger producing content daily, endeavor to link to the money pages whenever it’s pertinent to your post because you’re driving traffic to pages that will perform well. Alternate the links to each money page so your audience won’t get sick of seeing them all the time.

There is an alternative way to highlight your money pages: Group the ones about a similar topic together and list them all in a reference page, which will funnel traffic out to different locations. Instead of linking to each individual money page, you can just link or promote the reference page, which will then direct the visitors you get to each money page simultaneously.

A simple example of this is my reference page on social media marketing, which collects both money pages and less visited pages together under a specific theme. There’s also the option of creating special banner ads or images to link to either your money page or the reference page, it doesn’t always have to be promoted in the form of a link within content.

This is the final step in the process and should always come after you’ve optimized your money pages for maximum results and set up a method to promote it internally on your site. After you’ve done all that, it’s time to look at boosting a major factor for earning more money: your website’s ranking on the search engine results pages (SERPs).

This is an optional step because if you’re getting a lot of visitors, you’re should already be ranking quite well. But if you’re on the second page of Google or not yet in the top 3 queries for a keyword/phrase that is sending you a good amount of traffic, why not bump it up and get even more visitors per day?

You’ve already got your list of top money pages based on search queries. Now you should find what these pages are ranking for, which is something you can easily discover through your stats trackers. If you’re already using it, Google Webmaster Central is a free tool that shows you the top 20 search queries visitors use to reach your site.

Off-Site Search Engine Optimization

SEO is a pretty big topic: its hard to cover everything that needs to be done so I’m going to simplify it into one fool proof method of improving your search engine rank for Google. This is something that is unanimously agreed upon by everyone.

All you need to do is get links from other sites, especially with the specific anchor text you are trying to rank for. But not just from anywhere. You want links from quality, relevant websites.

An Essential Marketing Principle: Give Before You Try to Get

An Essential Marketing Principle: Give Before You Try to Get



Experts have talked about this before. How many times have you read about the importance of ‘adding value’ for your audience? How many times have you read about ‘building trust’ with your readers/prospects?

Many, many times. You know it well. Every marketing guru has spoken about this topic. I’m sick of hearing it. But it STILL bears repeating.

Because some people still don’t get it. What’s the underlying principle for successful online marketing, selling or networking? The art of giving before you try to get. Before you get something from someone, you need to first give them a reason for them to give it to you.

It makes sense, doesn’t it? Don’t you know that everyone has walls around them? Don’t you see them at all? They don’t like to be scammed out of their money. That’s why they’re cautious and won’t just click to buy immediately. They don’t like to waste their hard earned salary on crappy products or services. That’s why they do a thorough research online.

They don’t want to be lied to. That’s why they are hesitant to believe what you say or claim. They don’t want their feelings to be exploited. That’s why they are wary about trusting you with their true thoughts. They have been fooled before and no one wants to feel stupid again.

It’s a defense mechanism designed for self-preservation in a life that is nasty, brutish and short. Living ain’t easy. People are fed-up with hard-sells and sledge-hammer pitches. They’re sick of hustlers always running game on them. Their walls grow stronger, reinforced by the plaster of bad experiences. Once they pigeon-hole you as a ’spammer/scammer’, it’s all over. Don’t bother with getting them to take out their wallets. Won’t happen.

There is a fool-proof way to get people to lower their defenses and commit. You just need to manage their impressions of you. You need to change what they think about what you’re doing. You’re not spamming, you’re offering a product that is designed to fulfill needs. You’re not a money-hungry marketer, you’re a passionate individual who loves to help people achieve their goals. Reframing and re-adjusting the prospect’s image of your brand.

So here it comes. Here’s the part when I tell you to ‘always add value’ and ‘build trust’. But let’s refashion this proverbial tip on selling. Let’s put a spin on value or trust and combine them into a single actionable guideline: Always focus on giving before trying to get.

Give them helpful free content. Give them answers to their questions. Give them a freebie. Point them to tools they need and things they should know. Give them tips they can instantly use in their lives/business. Give them pleasant surprises. Give them interaction. Give them promises you can keep. Develop a history of giving. Be known as a giver.

How to Create Successful Product Websites that People Love

How to Create Successful Product Websites that People Love


You just launched a new product. You want people to tell others in their social network. You want word of it to spread like a virus from person to person, eventually resulting in more buzz, attention and sales.

And you want to do it using the internet. Purely online. No TV, newspapers or radio. No print ads. Assume you’ve already done all of the above (you should have) and just want an online strategy that will work.

There are many things you can do. Every experienced online marketer will agree that the first step is to set up a home base or launch pad. Some website where people can find you and your product online. Some place where you can funnel attention and traffic towards. It’s where you pitch your work. It’s what people will be sharing.

This article will talk about how to create an effective website to promote your new product (or just about anything you want).

How People Usually Promote Products Online

The most common way of promoting a new product involves the development of a new website or web page to showcase it. In both cases, the goal is to provide information about the product, capture attention, generate interest/desire and sales.

If a new webpage is built, it usually takes the form of a straightforward sales page and is hosted on an existing domain. If a new website is developed, the sales page format can be extended into an informational site with a community built around the product.

It’s impossible to say what works for every product out there. So let’s avoid generalities and assume a specific scenario. Say your product is a new book and you want to promote it. Here are some of the common methods used:

• Method One – Set up a landing page for the book on your existing personal website or blog. A product page is also often created on the publisher’s website or a distributor like Amazon.com. This is usually a page with promotional blurbs or recommendations, along with a synopsis of the book and reviews from the press.

• Method Two – Buy a new domain name exactly similar or related to the book’s name and set up a website just for the book. This will include a blog where you can share knowledge by posting essays, articles related to current events or updates/news regarding the book. Press reviews, testimonials and author bios are included too.

From what I’ve seen, all book authors or publishers take either one of the above two approaches. If you’re really savvy and smart you’ll do both method one and two: Optimize your own personal website and set up a new hub just for the book. Connect them together.

Then proceed to put up regular articles, not veiled infomercials for the book but actual content that informs and benefits the general reader. Provide value first. Sales is almost an after-thought. First thing to remember when creating successful product launch websites.

Let’s retrace our steps. You want people talking about your book and telling their friends and family. You want word-of-mouth to spread naturally and ripple outwards. Every day you want someone who has never heard of you to discover your book and tell someone else about it.

In order to do that you need to increase the value you offer to everyone who lands on your website. You need to sculpt that value until it has a laser-like focus. It should be extremely engaging and incredibly tangible.

For most book marketers, method one and two is the extent of what they will do. But it often results in a pretty boring website. And boring doesn’t help you to get word of mouth.

Here’s what I think: Method one and two do work. But they aren’t focused enough to deliver maximum impact. People can be easily distracted online. After getting to your site, they first have to orient themselves and then after that, search for the value you offer. What’s so cool about you or your book? What’s your message? Why should I care about your book?

Imagine being a visitor who lands on your website. What do they see? A bunch of testimonials and blurbs floating around somewhere to the side, a blog with content related to the book’s topic, news of a book signing in a city they don’t live in and even if they do get so far… a bio of someone they don’t know and most probably won’t care about.

Is that the best way to encourage word of mouth? Refine your website. Make it better.

How I personally got started making money online!

How I personally got started making money online!

Ok, so I’m being asked a lot lately how I got into the whole internet marketing scene, so I figured I might as well write a blog post about it. I’m not a big fan of writing… so I’m going to make this as “to the point” as possible for both my benefit and yours, since I’m assuming you probably don’t enjoy reading fluff. So here goes.

1. After I graduated college in 2001, I Worked in an IT department for a company in Batesville, IN called Batesville Casket Company. I worked there for around a year or so. As some of you probably know, working in an IT department is very much like the movie “Office Space”. I would actually work for about an hour each day and then have 7 hours to either stare at the computer screen OR surf the web. I’ve always been interested in figuring out new ways to make money, so I found myself searching online for all sorts of “make money” type ideas/programs etc.

2. I came across some eBay selling course and bought it for about 20 bucks. Read through it and it motivated me to start selling things on eBay. Instead of selling junk from home, I searched through eBay looking for small items that people were selling. Not “junk items”, but “new items”. Things that I assumed they bought wholesale from somewhere and then sold them directly on eBay. Buy low, sell high. Back then, there was a section on eBay that was free, where you could actually see what any item actually sold for. Doing this, I could get a good idea on how much I could afford to pay for something wholesale, in order to sell “high” on eBay and make a profit.

Through my research while at my day job, I came across a couple of things that people were selling for much higher than what I could get them wholesale for. I tried to look for small items like sports cards, or electronic devices etc. Stuff that could easily be shipped, but could be sold for a decent amount

I remember one of the items I sold was a diet pill called Trim Spa for around $24.95 and could buy them for like $4.95 a piece, in bulk. I sold a few computer programs as well. I could buy them in bulk somewhere and then sell for slightly higher on eBay at the time. I made a decent amount of extra money at the time, doing this. It wasn’t any crazy amount, by any means, but was enough to wet my appitite to learn more about making money online. I think I’d make an extra $200/week or something. The guys at the post office knew me by name after a few months because every day after work, I would stop by the post office to ship out the things I sold on eBay that day.

3. I eventually got tired of going to the post office, so I searched for other ways to make money online. I came across an eBook called “The Garage Sale Cookbook”. It was about a 50 page eBook on how to make money with garage sales. It sold for only $9.95 or something. I bought it. During the buying process, I was fascinated with how the author of the book did absolutely nothing and they delivered the eBook to me, AND make 10 bucks… all automatically. I thought, man, that’s much easier than listing stuff on eBay. Packaging up the stuff. Then going to the post office every single day. I contacted the lady that sold me the eBook and asked her where she learned to sell eBooks on the internet.

The next day, she actually replied to me. I was amazed that this “famous person” actually replied. I mean, she wrote an eBook! Anyway, she told me that she would recommend a course called “Internet Marketing Secrets Revealed” by Corey Rudl. I clicked on the link she gave me (which was her affiliate link. I didn’t know at the time, but I forgive her. hehe) and it directed me to the course. I read the sales page and read all of the testimonials. It sounded amazing, but the price was something like $250, which was ALOT of money for someone that had a day job, to spend on a course for anything. Later that night, I went back to the website and bought it.

It was hard for me to stomach losing $250, but I was confident that I would make it back soon. About 3 days later, I got the course. I remember getting home from work that day and sitting on our couch (which was the dorm room couch my wife had in college) and read the entire 2 binders. All in 1 sitting! I was amazed.

The next day, after work, I went straight to following the things outlined in the book. I decided to write an eBook on “weight loss”, since I knew that was a big market and something I knew a lot about. I had never struggled with losing weight, but was always into health and fitness.

With the course I bought to teach me how to make an ebook and sell it online etc, came a couple of eBooks teching internet marketing. These eBooks were really fancy. They’d been created in Flash and weren’t basic PDF eBooks. At the time, I thought that since they made their eBooks in Flash, that’s what I should do. So… I went to Barnes and Nobles and purchased a book teaching me how to program in Flash. Looking back… that was just plain stupid. But I didn’t know at the time. So, I read the book and built a Flash application that had all of my weight loss information in it. It was FAR from amazing. Not only was it ugly, but it was just plain hard to navigate through and read stuff. I feel sorry for the people that bought the eBook early on…

I eventually came to my senses and just made it a PDF eBook, which is what anyone with a sane mind should do.

I then went to Clickbank.com to see what other “weight loss” related sales pages looked like. I had no idea how to write sales copy. The #1 ranked eBook in the health and fitness category was something called “Ultimate Weight Loss Secrets”. Nice name

So, I went to the site and basically copied their overall layout (i.e. headline at the top, subhead below, the “from: brad callen” section, and so on). Ok, now that my site was up, I had to figure out how to get people to the site. The course told me about something called ‘search engine optimization’. Obviously that means get your site ranked high in the search engines by doing stuff. I had no idea at the time. So, I did what the book told me to do. One of them was to get other websites to link to yours, while you link back to them. (i.e. reciprocal linking).

I figured if I could rank at the top of Google for the term “Weight Loss”, I’d be RICH!

So, I set out to get a bazillion links from other sites. My average day would go like this. Wake up. Drive to work. Work on my real job for about an hour. Do reciprocal linking for the other 7. When I got home, I’d respond to all of the link request replies I got and would MANUALLY add these people’s links to my site, since they showed me they linked to me. This would take another 1-2 hours each night after I got home.

… and keep in mind, I’m doing all of this on a dial-up internet connection, and we only had 1 phone line! haha… Our phone was busy ALL the time.

Slowly, I started seeing my website move up in Google’s ranking for every single term I tried to optimize for. The terms were:

- weight loss

- lose weight

- lose weight fast

- weight loss program

- weight loss tips

- weight loss exercises

Basically, all I did to choose to optimize for these words was to use the Overture search term suggestion tool and I just picked the top 6 most searched words. DO NOT do that! You should be optimizing for “buyer keywords”, not “browser keywords”, which is what all 6 of those were.

Anyway, after about 6-8 months of doing this, I was #1 for every single one of those keywords! Except for “weight loss”, in which I was #2. Now, how crazy is that? I was beating out sites like jennycraig.com, lafitness.com, and all of those multi-million dollar companies, and I was doing it on a dial-up internet connection from our tiny Duplex we lived in!

Also, so I was getting a ton of traffic. I’d say it was up to close to 20,000 visitors a day JUST from Google searches. At my eBook’s peak, I was making about $7,000 every two weeks in profit from my dinky little $24.95 eBook. My weight loss eBook, titled “Ultimate Weight Loss Revealed” rose to #1 in Clickbank’s Health and Fitness category for a short period of time. By the way, I basically combined the name of the weight loss eBook I was mirroring it’s marketing, in combination with the internet marketing course I bought. I wasn’t and am still not the most creative guy in the world

My sales conversion on my site was awful, but I didn’t care. I remember sitting at our tiny kitchen table with a calculator and figuring out how many eBooks I’d have to sell to make enough money to quit my full-time job. (creating backend products never crossed my mind).

Alright, so at this point, I’m still working my full-time job in an IT department, but am basically doing link exchanges all day long from my office. I’d quickly close the link exchange program whenever my boss or someone “important” came in. I’ve never really been wired to work for someone else.

A little side note: I’d ALWAYS take anywhere from an hour and a half, to a 2 hour lunch break. I’d always get into work at 8:15 instead of 8:00, and always leave slightly before 5:00. I suppose that’s not a good thing, but I have always looked for ways to shortcut having to do something that I didn’t want to do. And I knew that working those extra minutes wouldn’t benefit my family at all. I’d still get paid the same salary, no matter how much or hard I worked. I admit, now, that’s really a very good mindset to have, but goes to show I’ve never really been cut out to be an employee.

Ok, at this point, a good friend of mine from work had moved about 3 hours away to take a new job as a consultant for another company. This made my days at my current job even longer. Several months went by and I kept on making progress in the search engines. I started getting #1 ranking in Yahoo and MSN for those same keywords mentioned earlier. I wasn’t learning much about marketing, but was learning ALOT about search engine optimization. I spent a very large amount of my time in 1 specific SEO forum (SEOChat.com). I haven’t visited that forum in a long time, but it was very helpful back in the day.

Alright, so months went by and I was getting even more sick of my current job and the area I was living in at the time. It was in a small town about 35 minutes from where I grew up. WAY too close and too familiar with where I’d been my entire life (except throughout college).

The friend that moved to the North side of Indiana gave me a call and said that the company he was working for was looking to expand and hire another person. He told me the pay would be higher and I would now be a consultant. To make a long story short, I decided to take the job. My wife and I packed our bags and moved up to the North side of Indiana. About 3 hours away from our previous home. Before we could move into our new home, we had to live in an Extended Stay America for 2 full weeks. Whew… that was a long time to live in, what is basically a hotel room with a tiny kitchen.

During this time, I used my amazing MSN dial up internet connection to run my “internet business” (i.e. my linking campaigns and sell my weight loss eBook). I’d work at my new day job during the day and then work my internet business during the evenings.

Finally, the 2 weeks were up and we were able to move into our new, 1200 square foot home. Man, it seemed HUGE at the time. And it was compared to the tiny little hotel room we’d been living in for 2 weeks. I decided to upgrade from a 56k dial up connection to a cable internet connection. It was never offered at our previous home, since we lived in such a small town.

Now with my upgraded cable access, I knew I could build the business even bigger. At this point, I honestly was pretty darn good at getting top search engine rankings. Afterall, I used absolutely no other methods of generating traffic. It was 100% SEO focused. I’d built many online friendships and/or aquaintances over the year or so I’d spent online to date.

One of these friends was someone that owned another weight loss related website that competed directly with me. We spoke a lot about helping each other out with link exchanges and cross promotions. I specifically remember one email conversation where she told me she was getting out of the “weight loss niche” and moving into something else. She told me she found a programmer to create some sort of program for her, based on her specs (i.e. her instructions). She told me the name of the website was rentacoder.com and all you had to do was post your idea and people from all over the world would “bid on” your project.

You could then select a programmer and they’d create your product for you. WOW! That opened my eyes to a whole new world of opportunities. I’d always had no problem coming up with ideas, but most were beyond my intelligence level… which was clearly evident in my attempt to create a Flash style weight loss eBook!

Ok, so armed with this new found knowledge I opened up my trusty Microsoft Word program and began writing specs for a software product that I needed created for myself. Remember, at this time I was still doing constant link exchanges with other websites… to get ranked higher in Google.

The problem was, once I got another website to link to me, I would add their link to my site… and then “hope” they never removed my link from their site later. If they removed my link from their site, I would have no way of knowing. I’d still be helping them out by linking to them from my site, but they would no longer be helping me if they removed my link. I didn’t think that was a fair deal, which it wasn’t… but I was stuck to just hoping they were honest.

So, I wrote some specs out for someone to create a program to help me monitor whether my link partners were holding up their end of the deal and keeping my link on their site forever.

After I finished writing up the specs, I set out to post the project on rentacoder.com. After about 4 days, there were a ton of people that had bid on the project. I picked the person I thought would do the best job, based on their coder rating given by the site.

Side note: This programmer is my lead programmer and is still working with me full-time to this very day (7 years later!)

Anyway, this person went on to program what I instructed them to create. A program that would keep track of and monitor whether or not my link partners were still linking back to me. I’ll never forget that first time I ran the program and found out that over 50% of the people I linked to had removed my link from their site. Sheesh…

So, what did I do? I manually removed their link from my site… and, at the time, that greatly increased my own ranking just by doing that. Very cool. My first program idea was working! Now, I thought, if this is working for me, I know it would work for others. Plus, I also wanted to move out of the “weight loss niche” and thought it was very fun and exciting to create software products.

Side note: In order to sell software products, I figured I should probably come up with a company name and get incorporated. I remember sitting at the PC, talking to my programmer and trying to come up with a company name to put inside the software product. I came up with Bryxen Software. The Br came from Brad, and I just thought the yxen sounded cool. Yeah, very professional. What do you expect from a guy that had only been online for a couple of years and had never owned a company before? hehe…

In order to sell the product I’d just created, I needed a salesletter. I also needed graphics and a way to accept payments. Over the time I sold my weight loss eBook, I learned about some important resources…

The first was who to go to for really good mini-site designs. At the time, the best person was Max Rylski at http://www.maxcovers.com . (I don’t know if he’s still taking on work these days or not. I’ve not worked with him in a long long time, but he did great work for me way back in the day).

In order for Max to create the design, I needed to tell him the name of the program.

We came up with the name: Link Proctor . Sounds so exciting, right? Remember, I’m not very creative (i.e. Ultimate Weight Loss Revealed and Bryxen Software)

So, I went to Max and he created the minisite design for me.

Next, I needed good salescopy written. I had written my own salescopy originally for my weight loss eBook, but eventually hired a copywriter to redo my crappy copy and increase conversions. The guy I used to redo my weight loss eBook salescopy was a guy named Mike Jezek. I haven’t talked to Mike in years. Probably 6+ years from the time of this writing. And that is AGES in terms of internet speed.

Anyway, I went to Mike again and asked him if he could write the salescopy for my new software product. He said yes.

Lastly, I needed to accept payments for the software. For my weight loss eBook I used Clickbank.com to accept payments. That and paypal were the only 2 ways I knew of. I went with Clickbank again and chose the clickbank username: bryxen1. I figured if I ever created more products down the road, I could just increase the number on the end.

Side note: I think we’re up to something like bryxen17 now

Alright… So, now that I had my graphics all set up. I had my sales letter written and had a way to accept payments, I could now sell the software.

I chose a price point for the software at $67. That was 3 times the price I sold my weight loss eBook for. If I could make about $14,000/month selling a weight loss eBook, I figured I could make MUCH more selling something for $67.

I figured I could try Google Adwords now that I was selling a higher priced product. I had a higher margin of money to work with and lose before I broke even.

I set up my first Adwords campaign and by the end of the day had made 2 sales! I think I spent about $10 and made over $120! Wow, I thought that was amazing. Well, that didn’t last for long because the next day I made 0 sales… and the next, 0 sales… I let the campaign run and I think I made maybe 1 sale every couple of days. I was making money from it, so I just let it run (and it’s still running to this day, 6+ years later!)

… but 1 sale every other day isn’t the kind of money that’ll let you quit your full-time job. Yes, I was making as much money online (weight loss ebook + software sales) as I was with my full-time job, but the majority of it came from free search engine traffic… and I knew I didn’t want to let my fait lie in someone else’s hands (i.e. Google).

So, I set out to learn more about Google Adwords. I knew that Adwords was a very consistent, predictable was to get traffic and make sales. I figured if I could make the bulk of my sales with Adwords, I would be more comfortable with quitting my day job.

I bought Perry Marshall’s Adwords course. I remember getting it in the mail and going through it while taking hand written notes on my legal pad. I learned a ton about Adwords. How to find profitable keywords. How to “peel and stick” and all of the other thinbgs Perry taught in the course.

I put into practice what I’d learned and it bumped my sales up. I was now making a couple of sales a day with Adwords. So, about $120 profit each day, solely from Adwords.

I then started doing some banner advertising on the SEO forum I’d become very active in over the years. Most of the people there knew me. I became fairly close acquaintances with the people in charge of selling ad space on SEOChat. She gave a me a pretty good banner rate, so I went with it. I started making pretty good sales from that 1 banner ad. I think I paid them about $2,000/month, but was bringing in atleast double that each month for several months.

Next, I tried out solo ezine ads. I got a membership to DirectoryofEzines.com and started advertising in each of the ezines. I made some more sales from there, and was building a customer list, without really even knowing it.

I think about 6 months went past and we started getting a lot of feature requests for Link Proctor. So many, in fact, that the name really wouldn’t make any sense if we added these other SEO related features. Remember, the only purpose of the software, originally, was to monitor whether your link partners were still linking back to you.

I made a post in the Warrior forum to ask for product name suggestions. One of the suggestions was a name you’re probably all familiar with: SEO Elite

I loved it. I decided to change the name. I figured that over time, people would forget Link Proctor even existed and it wouldn’t be a big deal. So… you tell me, have you ever heard of the name Link Proctor and did you know that is essentially version 1 of SEO Elite?

Time went on and I started learning more about marketing. I learned how to write good sales copy. How to properly do joint ventures. How to use all major ppc engines… Adwords, Overture, Enhance, Miva.

I can’t remember all that happened during this time, but I was reading everything I could get my hands on. Sales of SEO Elite continued to rise because we paid very close attention to our customers and actually gave them what they wanted (wow, what a novel idea).

Then something very business changing took place for me. John Reese released his Traffic Secrets course. I can’t remember exactly what year this was in, but I’m sure many of you remember it, or have heard about it. John did 1 million dollars in sales in 1 day. This was completely unheard of at the time. I bought the course. While I can honestly say that the first time I watched it, there was nothing incredibly jaw dropping in it (probably because what he teaches are extremely sound principles that will work forever. Not the flashy ‘get rich quick tactics’ many teach), I can say that one of the things I put into action from the course completely changed the way I do business.

And that was email marketing. Up to this time, I had NEVER built an email list. Just think how many people I’d have on my weight loss email list, had I collected email addresses while I was getting 20,000+ visitors per day for a year! I’m still kicking myself for that.

John taught in his course that the best way to build an email list was by giving away a free eCourse. A 7-day eCourse where you send 1 GOOD lesson per day for 7 days. Then, on the final day, it’s ok to sell whatever it is you’re wanting to sell. It’s very important to give give and give FIRST, before you ever ask for anything in return.

So, I went to work, again… and wrote a 7 day mini-course on how to optimize your website and get higher search engine rankings. I wrote them as detailed as I could, teaching exactly what I personally did to get my high Google rankings I could pretty much get whenever I wanted. Once the course was done, I had Max from maxcovers.com create me a nice looking eBook cover image.

I created a web page and put an aweber.com optin form on the page. Next, I went back to the SEO forum I’d built good repoir with and told the members there that I wrote a guide teaching people how I get my top rankings. Back then, not many people were using optin forms and people didn’t really see it as a way to build an email list. They just saw it as me giving away great information for free and that I was delivering it to them via email.

I think I built an email list of about 1,000 or so just through that single forum post! If you were to do that now, it probably wouldn’t go over too well, because people are too accustomed to these optin forms, or “namesqueeze pages” that people call them these days.

I also placed a popup on my salespage for SEO Elite where visitors could optin to get the free eCourse. If you go to the site now, you’ll still see I’m giving away a free course. Although the course has been updated over time, I’m still building an email list this way.

This 1 list building strategy has transformed my business from a “money maker” to a long term “business”, because I now have an asset. I can contact the friends (i.e. email list) I’ve built over the years and teach and help them more over time. The more I help, the more money they’ll make, and the more money they’ll have to buy more from me, to help them more. Win/win.

If you’re not building a list this way now, do it. It will change the way you do business.

Ok… now, at this point I think I’m bringing in about 2 times more money online than I am with my “real-life” job. SEO Elite is going well. Link exchanges are still very powerful and helpful.

I decided to create another product, but it would be a free product, mainly for SEO Elite users, since they had requested something like this. It was basically a website where users could find others users to do link exchanges. I had my lead programmer create the site based on my specs.

We decided to name it PageRankCity.com, because the idea was that the more links you got, the higher your page rank would be, and the higher your search engine rank would be.

Right before we launched it, I decided to change the name to something without the words “page rank”. I knew Google tended to be sticklers when it came to using their trademarked terms. So, my wife came up with the name LinkMetro.com, which I thought sounded cooler anyway

We released the site. It was a major hit. Tons of people began signing up and using it. It was a great resource for people wanting to exchange links, and it was completely free. It did involve some tedious tasks, but was much easier than doing everything without the website.

Through this, I built a bigger email list and following.

We then decided to automate the link trading process even more. We created a paid version of LinkMetro that would automate everything users previously did manually. It was a very very cool system in its day. We charged $19.95/month for access to the paid version. It was a hit.

At it’s highest point, LinkMetro was bringing in about $27,000/month on 100% complete auto-pilot. A user would pay to upgrade and would get access to everything almost instantly. I would do nothing and just receive Paypal payments each day. It was a very slick system.

At this point, I am still working my full-time day job.

Next, I decided to create another software program. Because I’d been doing a ton of keyword research, and pay per click marketing now, I knew it inside and out. There were keyword programs out there that just didn’t do anything anywhere near what I’d wanted, or had done manually for a long time.

I spent the next month writing out specs for a keyword and pay per click program. This might be my favorite part of internet marketing I love creating things that make things easier and faster. I showed the specs to my programmer(s) and about 6 months later Keyword Elite was created! I was very very proud of this product, as it was extremely unique and encapsulated everything I knew about making money with keyword research and ppc. Now that the product was created, I needed to lay out the marketing strategy and get the salescopy written and so on…

All the way up to this point, I had STILL been working my full-time day job. My day job consisted of me sitting in a cubicle working on my internet marketing business while “working for” the company that was paying me my salary. I literally did absolutely nothing for this company for a good 8 months! Seriously, they gave me absolutely no work to do and didn’t seem to mind at all. It was the strangest place I’ve ever worked. Everyone in our office just surfed the web and screwed around all day. A pretty fun job, to be honest… but not very fullfilling.

Anyway, after Keyword Elite was finished, I remember having a meeting with my boss and telling her that I’d decided to move on and work full-time on my own business. I was very nice with her and told her that the internet was my true passion and I wanted to follow my passion. She was pretty shocked, yet nice about things, and said she had no idea I had been building an internet business while working for them. So, that was my 2 week notice.

On my last official day at work, I remember sitting in my cubicle when my boss came up to me and said: “Brad, we’ve been monitoring your internet usage and your usage is 50x higher than the next highest person in the company. Would you mind kind of lowering that this last day please?” haha… That was just classic

After my final day of work, I was so incredibly excited. I no longer had a boss AND I was about to launch a product that I was extremely proud of.

The next few weeks, I’d gotten all of the marketing stuff in place and we launched Keyword Elite to the world. We did about $550,000 in gross sales from that launch. I got a 2 week pay check from Clickbank for about half of that. Pretty cool!

At this point, I had read literally thousands of online AND offline marketing books. Listened to, I don’t even know how many teleseminars, and watched so many DVDs, my brain hurt. Any spare second I had, I’d be either reading, listening or watching marketing. I’d wake up and go for a run each morning while listening to a teleseminar on my mp3 player. I’d go to Subway and eat lunch in my car while listening to some audio of something. OR, I’d bring the food back home and watch a DVD course while eating. I’d read stuff while on my PC during the day. At night, I’d listen to a teleseminar while laying in bed.

I was truly obsessed and loved it. I hadn’t met any of the big name internet marketers face to face, but could probably recite everything any of them ever said during a seminar or teleseminar There were certain teleseminars that I could literally recite almost word for word while they were playing on the mp3 player.

The next several years were full of more learning, as well as creating more software programs and writing eBooks and courses.

SEO Link Vine

Affiliate Elite

SEO Elite

Keyword Elite

Search Marketing Elite

PPC Web Spy

NicheRevolution

Article Submitter

Directory Submitter

Press Release Fire

SEO Mindset

Article Spinner

and more… (got tired of writing)

We even created our first physical product called The SEO Mindset Home Study course, which is a series of CD-Roms with video showing how I landed #1 positions in Google for a ton of popular keywords. Plus a 120+ page manual. From one of the courses I’d read, I had learned that disk.com was an excellent place to have physical products created and shipped, and we’ve been using them ever since.

And this brings us to the present day… I’m sitting here in my shorts and t-shirt, in our office directly above an Edward Jones financial office… looking out of the big window in front of me and enjoying every single day. Now, if I want to take a 2, 3, heck… 5+ hour lunch I can… and not feel guilty about it!

I can wear what I want, whenever I want.

Side note about this. The other day, the owner from the Edward Jones financial office below us came up to introduce himself. He was dressed up nicely in his full suit and had a briefcase in hand. Super nice guy. Anyway, after we spoke he said “Wow, I wish I had your job and got to wear jeans and a t-shirt to the office.” and we laughed and said, “Well, actually this is dressing up for us. We normally wear our workout clothes to the office.” It was one of those “there is no greater ‘job’ than being an internet marketer” moments.

Along with wearing whatever I want, I can come and go as I please. And I can spend as much time with my wife and daughter as I want all thanks to this wonderful thing called the World Wide Web!

Thanks for listening to my drawn out story of how I personally got started online. Hopefully it inspires you to know that (and I know you’ve heard this before) “if I can do this, anyone can!” … and I do mean that. All it takes is the dedication, passion, and the CORRECT KNOWLEDGE to spend your time learning and you’re virtually guaranteed to succeed. Never stop learning. Invest in yourself!

Have a great day!