Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2010 Willie Crawford
All online marketers eventually realize that a steady flow of targeted traffic is the very life's blood of their online business.
At that point some decide to focus on generating free traffic via methods such as article marketing and search engine optimization. That's how I generated most of my website traffic for many years.
Other marketers look at the time and effort involved, and decide that using traffic from paid sources is more cost-effective. Given that I now manage dozens of my own, and clients projects, and a dozen virtual employees, I've evolved to where buying traffic often makes more sense.
While most people think of pay-per-click traffic such as Google AdWords, I actually focus on MUCH cheaper paid traffic which offers a much higher return-on-investment. That's what I'd like to teach you to do today.
Before we get into a few simple and easy methods, let's establish a few rules that you should always follow. They are:
1) Make sure that the traffic you buy is targeted. These should be individuals actively looking for what you have to sell. They should be in a buying mode.
2) You should know your source. Do your due diligence and actually check them out. Google their name or their company name and see what is being said about them. Contact people who gave them testimonials and see how satisfied they are with that buying decision today. Look their site up on "The Way Back Machine" at http://Archive.org and see how their business has evolved over the years and get a feel for how long they have actually been in business.
3) Know specifically how this traffic is generated. You want to know both the methodology and the general demographics of the traffic.
Several years ago, one of my subscribers who violated all three of the above rules, lost $4000 in about a month. He was promoting a network marketing "opportunity," and was advised to buy leads. So he went to an online company and plopped down $4000 of his retirement fund for some guaranteed traffic.
He did indeed get the guaranteed visitors (several thousand) of them but not a single one of them converted (joined his team). Some did fill in his opt-in form for more information but they were just curious.
It turns out that the way the company he purchased the leads from, delivered that was traffic via pop-unders. A person would visit a site pertaining to something they were marginally interested in, and while they were reading a page, another pay would load underneath. When the surfer closed the top page, he saw my subscriber's page.
The problem was that most of these surfers had absolutely no interest in what my subscriber was offering. The curiosity seekers who filled out the form basically sent my subscriber on a wild goose chase as he followed up with all of those who left a phone number. NONE of them proved to be really interested.
Now that you know not to fall for that or similar scams, let me tell you FIVE ways that I generate a flood of highly-target website traffic, often for less than a penny per click.
1) I buy keyword-rich domain names to capture type-in traffic. These can be brand new domains or they can be aged domains that may even be still indexed in the major search engines. Even if they are not still indexed, some search engines seem to favor aged domains which are readily available.
Many surfer, looking to buy a product, mistakenly type their search term into the browser bar rather than the search box. If you happen to own that term (as a domain name) the traffic will often be redirected to your site. Even if the surfer enters the search term in the search box, your site will often be shown in the results provided your site is properly optimized and indexed.
If you use this method and average a mere 10 visitors per day, that's 3650 targeted visitors per year. Assuming these visitors are searching on a term that you'd have to pay $1 for at the pay-per-click search engines, and that the domain name and a full year of hosting cost you $25, you've just saved ($3650 - $25 = $3625). I do get my domain names and hosting that cheaply :-)
Imagine having a dozen domains each targeting a different keywords, and I'm sure you'll understand why I personally love this traffic generation method so much.
2) Offering a free gift to get the visitor to your site and then requiring them to join your mailing list before they can access the gift. After they opt-in, you give them the gift but also tell them about some other product that you want to call their attention to.
I find this method very effective when posted on social networking sites, or even run as ezine solo ads.
Done properly you not only generate traffic, but by building a list, you also build-in a way to call them back to your site periodically.
3. Buying links from other sites. In many niches, there are webmasters who haven't figured out how to monetize their sites yet. You can approach them offering to pay for a prominently displayed link pointing back to your site, and many will sell you these links very inexpensively.
You do need to shop around, and since there is a rumor that the major search engines MAY frown upon this practice, I do it in a way that it's not so obvious.
4) Funnel traffic via "mini-nets." In a mini-net, you have one main site that you really want to funnel traffic to. That's often referred to as your "money site." You build other sites on domains that you purchase, web 2.0 sites, and what are often referred to as "parasite sites." These are sites offered by companies that will give you free hosting on their network.
You have links from most of the domains that you purchased, the web 2.0 sites, and the parasite sites, all pointing to your money site. Some people build a network of sites pointing to their peripheral sites. The idea there is that if you can get the peripheral sites to rank higher in the search engines they will command more respect and boost the ranking of your money site too.
There are many complex linking patterns that you can use - as many as there are people who consider themselves experts on the topic. I personally keep things as simple as possible, and often rely upon the experience and expertise of webmasters that I often outsource the mind-numbing, tedious tasks to.
5) Build backlinks and RSS feeds by bookmarking. Many of my WordPress blogs are configured so that every post is bookmarked. I also use software to bookmark every page on some of my content sites and mini-sites. This both pushes them up in the search engines, and places links that highly-qualified visitors can follow back to my sites from all over cyber-space.
There are many other techniques that I use to generate an absolute flood of traffic to my websites and those of my clients. I'll share more in future articles.
About the Author:
Willie Crawford is an online marketing and website traffic generation expert. Over the past 14 years he's developed tactics and techniques that allow him to generate more than 1 million hits to some of his sites. Get him to send you highly targeted, buying website traffic for as little as a penny per visitor at: http://cheapverytargetedtraffic.com/
Follow @WillieCrawford on Twitter.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
How to Evaluate the Quality of a Dietary Supplement
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2010 Norm Howe
So, you've found a Dietary Supplement that exactly fits your special need. The information on the supplier's website appears to be consistent with everything that you've read and heard, and now you're ready to buy.
But there are questions on your mind. "What is the quality of this product that I'm buying?" you ask. "Can I really trust this supplier?"
With the globalization of the Dietary Supplement market, these are valid questions. When you look at the retailer's website, or even the label on the bottle, you can't tell anything about the product. You can't tell who actually made it. You can't tell where it was made. And you can't tell whether the product is a quality product, or not.
What's a consumer to do? I can give you a few answers, but you don't have an easy task ahead of you. Here's why.
First you need to understand the structure of the Dietary Supplement industry. Hold on because this is a little complicated.
There are many levels in the Dietary Supplement supply chain. Some of the companies may function in more than one level in the supply chain but most don't. They only do one part of the process. For instance, the company that you buy your Dietary Supplement from will usually be only a distributor. Here is a list of those levels:
Dietary Ingredient Manufacturers. These are the companies that manufacture the individual ingredients that you see listed on the labels of the Dietary Supplements that you buy. Some examples would be St. John's Wort, Echanacea, or Glucosamine. These products are sourced from all over the globe.
Dietary Supplement Manufacturers. These companies mix Dietary Ingredients together.
Tabletters and encapsulators. These companies convert the mixed Dietary Supplement into tablets or capsules.
Packagers. These companies package the tablets, capsules, powders, or liquid Dietary Supplements and apply labels.
Distributors. These are the companies that actually market the finished Dietary Supplement to consumers.
Herein lies your first big problem. The companies that perform these functions are not visible to you. The retailer that you buy your Dietary Supplement from may perform one or more of these functions. However, the chances are that your retailer does not do all of it. In fact there's a good chance that your retailer is only a distributor and contracts out ALL of the manufacturing operations.
Any Dietary Supplement that is offered for sale in the United States must comply with regulations of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The Dietary Supplements that we buy are the safest in the world.
The FDA has enacted new regulations to improve the quality of Dietary Supplement manufacturing and FDA inspects all of the levels in the supply chain. However, those new regulations have only recently gone into effect and FDA has not inspected all the suppliers under the new regulations.
FDA does not give companies a certification, nor do they approve them after they have been inspected. So there is no stamp of approval from FDA that you could find on your retailer's website or in their literature that would define them as "FDA approved".
On the other hand, if FDA inspects a facility and finds problems, it can issue a Warning Letter. The Warning Letter will be published on FDA's website, www.fda.gov. The link is visible on the lower right side of the home page. If you want to investigate a company, go to the Warning Letter page and search for the company.
Unfortunately the retailer is unlikely to be the manufacturer of the dietary supplement. But if you find that your supplier has a recent Warning Letter, find someone else to buy your dietary supplements from.
There are non-governmental organizations that inspect and certify Dietary Supplement manufacturers. These organizations will then allow the Dietary Supplement manufacturer to display their certificate or logo. The certificate will usually say something like "GMP Certified". GMP stands for Good Manufacturing Practices. These organizations inspect Dietary Supplement manufacturers to make sure that they follow Good Manufacturing Practices and to ensure that the manufacturer has GMP training in place for all of their employees.
The bottom line is that if you want an extra measure of safety when you look for a Dietary Supplement supplier, look for a GMP certification logo on the website or on the label of the product you buy. But don't stop there. Go to the website of the certifying organization and check to make sure that the Dietary Supplement supplier is listed as a certified company.
About the Author:
Norm Howe, Senior Partner at Validation and Compliance Institute, consultants for the pharmaceutical and medical device industries. He got his BS at UC, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in chemistry at UCLA. He has held many management positions in FDA regulated industries, most at BASF. http://www.vcillc.com/
Read more of Norm Howe's articles.
Copyright © 2010 Norm Howe
So, you've found a Dietary Supplement that exactly fits your special need. The information on the supplier's website appears to be consistent with everything that you've read and heard, and now you're ready to buy.
But there are questions on your mind. "What is the quality of this product that I'm buying?" you ask. "Can I really trust this supplier?"
With the globalization of the Dietary Supplement market, these are valid questions. When you look at the retailer's website, or even the label on the bottle, you can't tell anything about the product. You can't tell who actually made it. You can't tell where it was made. And you can't tell whether the product is a quality product, or not.
What's a consumer to do? I can give you a few answers, but you don't have an easy task ahead of you. Here's why.
First you need to understand the structure of the Dietary Supplement industry. Hold on because this is a little complicated.
There are many levels in the Dietary Supplement supply chain. Some of the companies may function in more than one level in the supply chain but most don't. They only do one part of the process. For instance, the company that you buy your Dietary Supplement from will usually be only a distributor. Here is a list of those levels:
Dietary Ingredient Manufacturers. These are the companies that manufacture the individual ingredients that you see listed on the labels of the Dietary Supplements that you buy. Some examples would be St. John's Wort, Echanacea, or Glucosamine. These products are sourced from all over the globe.
Dietary Supplement Manufacturers. These companies mix Dietary Ingredients together.
Tabletters and encapsulators. These companies convert the mixed Dietary Supplement into tablets or capsules.
Packagers. These companies package the tablets, capsules, powders, or liquid Dietary Supplements and apply labels.
Distributors. These are the companies that actually market the finished Dietary Supplement to consumers.
Herein lies your first big problem. The companies that perform these functions are not visible to you. The retailer that you buy your Dietary Supplement from may perform one or more of these functions. However, the chances are that your retailer does not do all of it. In fact there's a good chance that your retailer is only a distributor and contracts out ALL of the manufacturing operations.
Any Dietary Supplement that is offered for sale in the United States must comply with regulations of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The Dietary Supplements that we buy are the safest in the world.
The FDA has enacted new regulations to improve the quality of Dietary Supplement manufacturing and FDA inspects all of the levels in the supply chain. However, those new regulations have only recently gone into effect and FDA has not inspected all the suppliers under the new regulations.
FDA does not give companies a certification, nor do they approve them after they have been inspected. So there is no stamp of approval from FDA that you could find on your retailer's website or in their literature that would define them as "FDA approved".
On the other hand, if FDA inspects a facility and finds problems, it can issue a Warning Letter. The Warning Letter will be published on FDA's website, www.fda.gov. The link is visible on the lower right side of the home page. If you want to investigate a company, go to the Warning Letter page and search for the company.
Unfortunately the retailer is unlikely to be the manufacturer of the dietary supplement. But if you find that your supplier has a recent Warning Letter, find someone else to buy your dietary supplements from.
There are non-governmental organizations that inspect and certify Dietary Supplement manufacturers. These organizations will then allow the Dietary Supplement manufacturer to display their certificate or logo. The certificate will usually say something like "GMP Certified". GMP stands for Good Manufacturing Practices. These organizations inspect Dietary Supplement manufacturers to make sure that they follow Good Manufacturing Practices and to ensure that the manufacturer has GMP training in place for all of their employees.
The bottom line is that if you want an extra measure of safety when you look for a Dietary Supplement supplier, look for a GMP certification logo on the website or on the label of the product you buy. But don't stop there. Go to the website of the certifying organization and check to make sure that the Dietary Supplement supplier is listed as a certified company.
About the Author:
Norm Howe, Senior Partner at Validation and Compliance Institute, consultants for the pharmaceutical and medical device industries. He got his BS at UC, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in chemistry at UCLA. He has held many management positions in FDA regulated industries, most at BASF. http://www.vcillc.com/
Read more of Norm Howe's articles.
5 Reasons to Hire a Ghost Producer for Your Video Content
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2010 Enzo F. Cesario
The principle known as the division of labor argues that when people have sufficient resources available, they begin to specialize in different tasks, allowing more complex and profitable work to be done. The industrial revolution was based on this principle - as machines were provided that reduced the number of farmhands needed to grow crops, jobs requiring mechanics for the maintenance of these machines arose. More people were available to work in factories, which became increasingly specialized, and technology rocketed forward as a result.
In the branding world, the importance of dividing labor among various staff cannot be stressed highly enough. There are specialties for every conceivable task out there, and it is rare that you find someone who can competently handle all of them, much less excel. Further, since excellence sets a good brand apart from others, we must seek out the best specialists whenever possible.
When it comes to producing an online video component, such as a webisode series or informational campaign, it's time to hire such an expert to ghost-produce your materials. Ghost-production is the development of materials that will go out solely under the brand name, without necessarily attributing the creator in the process. As will be discussed shortly, there are many advantages in this approach for all involved.
Advantage #1 - Specialization
As mentioned above, the power to specialize is a unique and effective thing. It frees one of the need to focus in many directions, allowing him to devote more time and energy to the tasks most needing his exact expertise. S0 the advantage in hiring someone specifically trained to work on the video produced becomes self-evident.
What's more, video is a process that requires a specialized touch. There are concerns about lighting, quality of image versus likelihood of users' Internet speeds, issues about the exact perfect length of a video, and so on. While it is true that just about anyone can make and distribute a video with a half-decent digital camera and a YouTube account, there is no argument but that those most familiar and capable with the medium can achieve the greatest results.
Advantage #2 - External Perspective
As in all cases of hiring outside personnel to handle projects related to a brand, the value of a close but still external perspective cannot be overestimated. A ghost producer typically is not an employee of the brand company, but a contractor. They don't have the intimate personal involvement with the brand, yet they do care for its success because they want to get paid and be recognized as a good partner. So they can make objective assessments that might escape those more directly immersed in the program.
It's said that no one is a harsher critic than oneself; however, at the same time, no one can deceive like oneself, either. Many people have the tendency to focus on what they perceive as exciting and vital about their brand without noticing the discomfiting facts about it. A ghost producer can provide a bit of perspective and open up fresh ideas that may not otherwise present themselves.
Advantage #3 - Expense Control
Another advantage of the specialization effect is that many professional video producers have their own equipment, or at least access to some. With some careful research, a brand can contract with such a talent and alleviate the need to acquire equipment directly.
Additionally, if the video project is intended to be a short-term effort within the larger context of the brand, it means that the company can acquire talent for the duration of the project and no longer. Rather than hiring someone and going through all the routines required to bring them into employ, the brand can contract their services and then cheerfully part ways at the end with all parties satisfied.
Advantage #4 - Flexibility
There is one concern that is always raised about the ghostwriting or ghost producing process: Why would any creative sort surrender the rights to his work? The answer is for career training and flexibility.
Particularly in the early stages of a producer's career, anonymity can be a great asset. It allows the creator to gain on-the-job experience without risking his reputations early. Additionally, while he may be justifiably proud of his work when he produces it, he may have a different view later in his career and be more comfortable if those early efforts did not gain as much notice as later ones. Ghost productions therefore allow a comfortable period of adjustment to this career of choice.
Advantage #5 - The Sly Aside
Just as a ghost-producing effort could be a trial run for a budding artist's career efforts, it can serve equally as a trial run for a hiring process. Hiring several producers over time to make different branding campaigns can save the brand the money of retaining them full time, while allowing the brand to find the style it is most comfortable with before sending that artist an offer of employ. None of this need be stated outright during the campaign, but it is often understood that this might well be the case, and a strong brand will take advantage of the effect.
About the Author:
Enzo F. Cesario is an online branding specialist and co-founder of Brandsplat, a digital content agency. Brandsplat creates blogs, articles, videos and social media in the "voice" of our client's brand. It makes sites more findable and brands more recognizable. For the free Brandcasting Report go to http://www.BrandSplat.com/ or visit our blog at http://www.iBrandCasting.com/
Read more of Enzo F. Cesario's articles.
Copyright © 2010 Enzo F. Cesario
The principle known as the division of labor argues that when people have sufficient resources available, they begin to specialize in different tasks, allowing more complex and profitable work to be done. The industrial revolution was based on this principle - as machines were provided that reduced the number of farmhands needed to grow crops, jobs requiring mechanics for the maintenance of these machines arose. More people were available to work in factories, which became increasingly specialized, and technology rocketed forward as a result.
In the branding world, the importance of dividing labor among various staff cannot be stressed highly enough. There are specialties for every conceivable task out there, and it is rare that you find someone who can competently handle all of them, much less excel. Further, since excellence sets a good brand apart from others, we must seek out the best specialists whenever possible.
When it comes to producing an online video component, such as a webisode series or informational campaign, it's time to hire such an expert to ghost-produce your materials. Ghost-production is the development of materials that will go out solely under the brand name, without necessarily attributing the creator in the process. As will be discussed shortly, there are many advantages in this approach for all involved.
Advantage #1 - Specialization
As mentioned above, the power to specialize is a unique and effective thing. It frees one of the need to focus in many directions, allowing him to devote more time and energy to the tasks most needing his exact expertise. S0 the advantage in hiring someone specifically trained to work on the video produced becomes self-evident.
What's more, video is a process that requires a specialized touch. There are concerns about lighting, quality of image versus likelihood of users' Internet speeds, issues about the exact perfect length of a video, and so on. While it is true that just about anyone can make and distribute a video with a half-decent digital camera and a YouTube account, there is no argument but that those most familiar and capable with the medium can achieve the greatest results.
Advantage #2 - External Perspective
As in all cases of hiring outside personnel to handle projects related to a brand, the value of a close but still external perspective cannot be overestimated. A ghost producer typically is not an employee of the brand company, but a contractor. They don't have the intimate personal involvement with the brand, yet they do care for its success because they want to get paid and be recognized as a good partner. So they can make objective assessments that might escape those more directly immersed in the program.
It's said that no one is a harsher critic than oneself; however, at the same time, no one can deceive like oneself, either. Many people have the tendency to focus on what they perceive as exciting and vital about their brand without noticing the discomfiting facts about it. A ghost producer can provide a bit of perspective and open up fresh ideas that may not otherwise present themselves.
Advantage #3 - Expense Control
Another advantage of the specialization effect is that many professional video producers have their own equipment, or at least access to some. With some careful research, a brand can contract with such a talent and alleviate the need to acquire equipment directly.
Additionally, if the video project is intended to be a short-term effort within the larger context of the brand, it means that the company can acquire talent for the duration of the project and no longer. Rather than hiring someone and going through all the routines required to bring them into employ, the brand can contract their services and then cheerfully part ways at the end with all parties satisfied.
Advantage #4 - Flexibility
There is one concern that is always raised about the ghostwriting or ghost producing process: Why would any creative sort surrender the rights to his work? The answer is for career training and flexibility.
Particularly in the early stages of a producer's career, anonymity can be a great asset. It allows the creator to gain on-the-job experience without risking his reputations early. Additionally, while he may be justifiably proud of his work when he produces it, he may have a different view later in his career and be more comfortable if those early efforts did not gain as much notice as later ones. Ghost productions therefore allow a comfortable period of adjustment to this career of choice.
Advantage #5 - The Sly Aside
Just as a ghost-producing effort could be a trial run for a budding artist's career efforts, it can serve equally as a trial run for a hiring process. Hiring several producers over time to make different branding campaigns can save the brand the money of retaining them full time, while allowing the brand to find the style it is most comfortable with before sending that artist an offer of employ. None of this need be stated outright during the campaign, but it is often understood that this might well be the case, and a strong brand will take advantage of the effect.
About the Author:
Enzo F. Cesario is an online branding specialist and co-founder of Brandsplat, a digital content agency. Brandsplat creates blogs, articles, videos and social media in the "voice" of our client's brand. It makes sites more findable and brands more recognizable. For the free Brandcasting Report go to http://www.BrandSplat.com/ or visit our blog at http://www.iBrandCasting.com/
Read more of Enzo F. Cesario's articles.
Friday, October 29, 2010
4 Step Checklist For Online Marketing Success
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2010 Bill Platt
Many online business owners want to make the process of developing a successful online business harder than it needs to be...
The truth is that a simple 4-step checklist can lead anyone to online profits:
1. Create or Tweak your Offers;
2. Get Traffic -- Attract Targeted Visitors;
3. Analyze Results; and
4. Repeat Steps 1-3.
Create Or Tweak Your Offers
There are literally hundreds of business models that you can use in this step...
The four business models undertaken by the majority of online marketers are:
1. Service Creation and Marketing;
2. Affiliate Marketing;
3. Buying Wholesale and Selling Retail;
4. Product Creation and Marketing.
The first two are the easiest for the new online marketer to get started...
Service Creation and Marketing
I got my start by creating services and selling services... I started out as an article ghost writer, and over the years, I have ghost written for some very famous people...
Eventually, I got involved in Article Syndication to make my ghost writing more attractive, and eventually, Article Syndication became my primary business...
Affiliate Marketing
With Affiliate Marketing, there are several affiliate networks that bring together product vendors with affiliate sellers. Those networks include: ClickBank.com, CJ.com (Commission Junction), PayDotCom.com, RapBank.com, ShareASale.com and Amazon.com
As an affiliate marketer, it is your job to sell products and services from other companies, for a commission on the sale...
Buying Wholesale and Selling Retail
When it comes to Buying Wholesale and Selling Retail, most people go to sites like WorldWideBrands.com or Doba.com... However, I lost interest in those services when a lot of the companies I contacted could not sell the products I wanted -- at prices better than Wal-Mart...
Forgive me if my thinking is backwards on this, but if I can get products cheaper at Wal-Mart than I can get them for at the wholesale distributors, then I find it hard to believe that they were offering me wholesale prices...
However, I met a fellow online who deals in real wholesale buying, and he recently made his knowledge available in a report called the Holiday Goldmine. I have read his report -- it is very good at sharing details I was not able to find elsewhere. You can buy his report here: HolidayGoldMine.com
Product Creation and Marketing
When you can start creating your own information products, you can pretty much build a solid future, selling yourself and your knowledge...
When you find that you possess a solid selling product, then you can explore becoming a product vendor on any of the Affiliate Network sites... Solid products can make a lot of money, when other marketers want to help you sell them...
Kevin Riley teaches people how to create and sell their own products at his website here: ProductCreationLabs.com
Get Traffic -- Attract Targeted Visitors
I used to get so mad when people told me that getting traffic is the easy part...
I just wanted to reach through the computer and strangle them when they said that...
Why?
If it was so darn easy to get traffic, why did I have to work so darn hard to get it?
Of course, after a decade of learning about how to get traffic, I can agree that getting traffic is the easy part... DON'T try to reach through your computer to try to strangle me!!
Hear me out...
There are dozens of methods to bring traffic to your website, through free and paid methods, and there are hundreds of thousands of websites from which you can derive that traffic!
When you begin to understand the methods and the strategies used by professional online marketers to deliver traffic to their websites, then you are on the road to being able to deliver as much traffic as you want to your website as well...
If you want to learn more on this subject, consider my report shown at the end of this article that outlines 35 Proven Traffic Generation Strategies... The report has received tremendous reviews and is titled, "Multiple Traffic Streams: The Magic of Attracting Buyers"...
It also teaches how to better target your Traffic Generation activities to ensure that you are spending your resources only on strongly-targeted visitors -- the people who are most likely to buy what you are selling...
Analyze Results
I am constantly amazed at the number of new online marketers who have yet to understand that THEY can analyze their results as easily as the professional marketers can...
Your Traffic Statistics are perhaps the most important business intelliegence that you have in your possession...
If your website has a cPanel login, as is common at most of the major web hosting companies, then you will also have access to AW Stats... In the absense of everything else, AW Stats is a pretty good program for determining the quality and sources of your websites' traffic...
If you have the money to invest, a better website analysis software is the one found at HTTP-Analyze.org
While HTTP-Analyze is perhaps the best, most professional webmasters rely heavily on Google Analytics to track their results and conversion rates on specific sources of traffic... www.google.com/analytics/
What you want to learn from this process is: where your traffic comes from, how the traffic was derived from those locations (if you don't already know), how much traffic came to your website from that source, and how many people bought from you and came from a specific traffic source...
Once you understand how many people came from one traffic source and how many of those people bought from you, then you can calculate your conversion rate for each traffic source... This information will assist you in making good decisions about where to invest your advertising resources in the future...
Repeat Steps 1-3
With your analytics in hand, you can make intelligent decisions about how to tweak your offer to get better results on the next pass...
At a certain point, you will want to introduce split testing, so that you can take a proper measure of two sales pages or squeeze pages side-by-side to see which one will produce better conversion rates for you...
All great success stories were founded upon minor improvements made over and over...
It is said that Howard Hughes helped his dad's company go from a small dsitributor of canning for the food industry to one of the top canning companies in his day, by making one simple change to the processes they used...
Howard Hughes is said to have made one minor change to the way that his company closed the cans used to package food, and that change reduced the cost of cans by 2/3rds of one penny. Hughes gave 1/3rd of the savings to his customers and kept the other 1/3rd of a penny for himself...
This one minor adjustment in his processes helped make Howard Hughes the richest man on the planet during his lifetime -- 1/3rd of one penny at a time...
Closing Thoughts
The simple concepts outlined in this article will help anyone, who has the ambition to do so, to become successful selling products or services online...
The 4-step method defined in this article will very literally work with any business model used online...
Too many people get lost in methodologies, and this only serves to short-circuit their success...
For example, I am an article marketer, but article marketing isn't the only thing I do to promote my online businesses...
I am also pretty good at SEO, but I would never invest all of my resources into Google or any other third-party website... When your business model relies only upon Google, you will find yourself only one algorithm change away from bankruptcy...
In my Multiple Traffic Streams report, I define 35 Time-Tested Strategies for Traffic Generation, and of those, I use 12 of them regularly... My top-performing website gets one-quarter million unique visitors and 1.25 million page views per year...
The point in this article is to show you know how you can accomplish the same or better results, if only you have the ambition to do so...
About the Author:
Get your copy of the "Multiple Traffic Streams: The Magic of Attracting Buyers" Traffic Strategies Report at: http://thephantomwriters.com/multiple-traffic-streams/ Written by Bill Platt, owner of http://thePhantomWriters.com/
Read more of Bill Platt's articles.
Copyright © 2010 Bill Platt
Many online business owners want to make the process of developing a successful online business harder than it needs to be...
The truth is that a simple 4-step checklist can lead anyone to online profits:
1. Create or Tweak your Offers;
2. Get Traffic -- Attract Targeted Visitors;
3. Analyze Results; and
4. Repeat Steps 1-3.
Create Or Tweak Your Offers
There are literally hundreds of business models that you can use in this step...
The four business models undertaken by the majority of online marketers are:
1. Service Creation and Marketing;
2. Affiliate Marketing;
3. Buying Wholesale and Selling Retail;
4. Product Creation and Marketing.
The first two are the easiest for the new online marketer to get started...
I got my start by creating services and selling services... I started out as an article ghost writer, and over the years, I have ghost written for some very famous people...
Eventually, I got involved in Article Syndication to make my ghost writing more attractive, and eventually, Article Syndication became my primary business...
With Affiliate Marketing, there are several affiliate networks that bring together product vendors with affiliate sellers. Those networks include: ClickBank.com, CJ.com (Commission Junction), PayDotCom.com, RapBank.com, ShareASale.com and Amazon.com
As an affiliate marketer, it is your job to sell products and services from other companies, for a commission on the sale...
When it comes to Buying Wholesale and Selling Retail, most people go to sites like WorldWideBrands.com or Doba.com... However, I lost interest in those services when a lot of the companies I contacted could not sell the products I wanted -- at prices better than Wal-Mart...
Forgive me if my thinking is backwards on this, but if I can get products cheaper at Wal-Mart than I can get them for at the wholesale distributors, then I find it hard to believe that they were offering me wholesale prices...
However, I met a fellow online who deals in real wholesale buying, and he recently made his knowledge available in a report called the Holiday Goldmine. I have read his report -- it is very good at sharing details I was not able to find elsewhere. You can buy his report here: HolidayGoldMine.com
When you can start creating your own information products, you can pretty much build a solid future, selling yourself and your knowledge...
When you find that you possess a solid selling product, then you can explore becoming a product vendor on any of the Affiliate Network sites... Solid products can make a lot of money, when other marketers want to help you sell them...
Kevin Riley teaches people how to create and sell their own products at his website here: ProductCreationLabs.com
Get Traffic -- Attract Targeted Visitors
I used to get so mad when people told me that getting traffic is the easy part...
I just wanted to reach through the computer and strangle them when they said that...
Why?
If it was so darn easy to get traffic, why did I have to work so darn hard to get it?
Of course, after a decade of learning about how to get traffic, I can agree that getting traffic is the easy part... DON'T try to reach through your computer to try to strangle me!!
Hear me out...
There are dozens of methods to bring traffic to your website, through free and paid methods, and there are hundreds of thousands of websites from which you can derive that traffic!
When you begin to understand the methods and the strategies used by professional online marketers to deliver traffic to their websites, then you are on the road to being able to deliver as much traffic as you want to your website as well...
If you want to learn more on this subject, consider my report shown at the end of this article that outlines 35 Proven Traffic Generation Strategies... The report has received tremendous reviews and is titled, "Multiple Traffic Streams: The Magic of Attracting Buyers"...
It also teaches how to better target your Traffic Generation activities to ensure that you are spending your resources only on strongly-targeted visitors -- the people who are most likely to buy what you are selling...
Analyze Results
I am constantly amazed at the number of new online marketers who have yet to understand that THEY can analyze their results as easily as the professional marketers can...
Your Traffic Statistics are perhaps the most important business intelliegence that you have in your possession...
If your website has a cPanel login, as is common at most of the major web hosting companies, then you will also have access to AW Stats... In the absense of everything else, AW Stats is a pretty good program for determining the quality and sources of your websites' traffic...
If you have the money to invest, a better website analysis software is the one found at HTTP-Analyze.org
While HTTP-Analyze is perhaps the best, most professional webmasters rely heavily on Google Analytics to track their results and conversion rates on specific sources of traffic... www.google.com/analytics/
What you want to learn from this process is: where your traffic comes from, how the traffic was derived from those locations (if you don't already know), how much traffic came to your website from that source, and how many people bought from you and came from a specific traffic source...
Once you understand how many people came from one traffic source and how many of those people bought from you, then you can calculate your conversion rate for each traffic source... This information will assist you in making good decisions about where to invest your advertising resources in the future...
Repeat Steps 1-3
With your analytics in hand, you can make intelligent decisions about how to tweak your offer to get better results on the next pass...
At a certain point, you will want to introduce split testing, so that you can take a proper measure of two sales pages or squeeze pages side-by-side to see which one will produce better conversion rates for you...
All great success stories were founded upon minor improvements made over and over...
It is said that Howard Hughes helped his dad's company go from a small dsitributor of canning for the food industry to one of the top canning companies in his day, by making one simple change to the processes they used...
Howard Hughes is said to have made one minor change to the way that his company closed the cans used to package food, and that change reduced the cost of cans by 2/3rds of one penny. Hughes gave 1/3rd of the savings to his customers and kept the other 1/3rd of a penny for himself...
This one minor adjustment in his processes helped make Howard Hughes the richest man on the planet during his lifetime -- 1/3rd of one penny at a time...
Closing Thoughts
The simple concepts outlined in this article will help anyone, who has the ambition to do so, to become successful selling products or services online...
The 4-step method defined in this article will very literally work with any business model used online...
Too many people get lost in methodologies, and this only serves to short-circuit their success...
For example, I am an article marketer, but article marketing isn't the only thing I do to promote my online businesses...
I am also pretty good at SEO, but I would never invest all of my resources into Google or any other third-party website... When your business model relies only upon Google, you will find yourself only one algorithm change away from bankruptcy...
In my Multiple Traffic Streams report, I define 35 Time-Tested Strategies for Traffic Generation, and of those, I use 12 of them regularly... My top-performing website gets one-quarter million unique visitors and 1.25 million page views per year...
The point in this article is to show you know how you can accomplish the same or better results, if only you have the ambition to do so...
About the Author:
Get your copy of the "Multiple Traffic Streams: The Magic of Attracting Buyers" Traffic Strategies Report at: http://thephantomwriters.com/multiple-traffic-streams/ Written by Bill Platt, owner of http://thePhantomWriters.com/
Read more of Bill Platt's articles.
Retire From Your Full Time Job With The Best Internet Business To Start
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2010 Ryan Parenti
Do you know how many people are quietly earning a six or seven figure income from information publishing?
People like you who are earning it from the comfort of their spare room, with no employees, no overhead and almost pure profit?
Without a doubt the best way to make money online is to sell information products. Why?
You don't have any costs to produce products, it is easy to do, and you can get started today. The trick to building an internet business is to have the right frame work in place.
Here Are The 4 Steps To Building A Cash Pulling Information Empire
1. First you need to develop a product to give away for people to join your mailing list. You can create an ebook, and audio, or video solving your markets biggest problem.
You give this to them as an ethical bribe in exchange for them to sign up for your mailing list.
This is important because you need to follow up with your prospects for long term success.
2. You need to develop a product to sell. I highly recommend a high quality product that you sell for less than it is worth.
You see... the goal is to build life long customers and have a wide range of information products to sell. You want to "get them hooked" with a nice low priced product that gives them more value than they expected.
3. Give your customers a chance to buy another product at a reduced price during the order process. Similar to how McDonald's has "would you like fries with that?" You need to add an upsell in the order flow.
This will easily increase your income by 30%!
After they purchase give them the chance to buy closely related products for a deep discount. Many times they will buy and you will increase your profits with this one simple step.
You can also downsell your upsell if they don't buy. Here is how to do that.
If they do not take the upsell you can give them a chance to buy the same thing at a lower price. This will increase your income even more.
BUT WAIT!? Why would I sell my products for a lower price? Well, when you are selling a digital download it is OK to sell it at whatever price you want. That is why information marketing is king.
4. After they have consumed your product you simply create and sell more closely related products to your growing base of raving fans.
It is important that every customer turns into a raving fan. You do that by giving them an insane value for a low low price.
Well, it doesn't have to be a low price but it should be an amazing value - an irresistible offer. It is very important that you have a high quality product that over deliverers.
Here Is The Easy Way To Create Raving Fan Customer Who Buy Everything You Have To Sell!
Simply take your prospects from where they are to where they want to be.
Every step of your marketing should take them one step further to their desires end result. When you get people closer to their desired end result not only does their trust in you increase but also their desire for your products. Here is an example:
Let's say you work in the dating market selling information products teaching men to get over their fears when approaching women and teach them how to build a real quality life long relationship.
An ethical bribe to get someone to join your mailing list would be something like "10 Easy Ways To Talk To A Women And Get Her Phone Number."
Your prospect comes to your site downloads your report and joins your mailing list then goes out and gets a girls phone number. He is excited and but has NO IDEA what to do next.
Luckily 2 days later you send him a message in your mailing list sequence telling him what to say on the phone to get her to go on the first date.
He uses the technique and is one step closer to his desired end result.
Not only does he now trust you be he also has increased his desire for your product!
Now your prospect has gotten results in advance and instantly goes to your website and buys your training course on "How To Create The Fairy-tail 1st Date That Will Leave Them Wanting More."
That is how you build an internet business :)
The only question is are you ready to start generating your own cash windfalls?
About the Author:
Want to know more about creating cash on demand? Simply listen to this free audio and hear a real step-by-step case study of how to go from zero to internet cash machine immediately: http://BuildOnlineWealth.com/crazyfreeoffer/ Written by: Ryan Parenti
Read more of Ryan Parenti 's articles.
Copyright © 2010 Ryan Parenti
Do you know how many people are quietly earning a six or seven figure income from information publishing?
People like you who are earning it from the comfort of their spare room, with no employees, no overhead and almost pure profit?
Without a doubt the best way to make money online is to sell information products. Why?
You don't have any costs to produce products, it is easy to do, and you can get started today. The trick to building an internet business is to have the right frame work in place.
Here Are The 4 Steps To Building A Cash Pulling Information Empire
1. First you need to develop a product to give away for people to join your mailing list. You can create an ebook, and audio, or video solving your markets biggest problem.
You give this to them as an ethical bribe in exchange for them to sign up for your mailing list.
This is important because you need to follow up with your prospects for long term success.
2. You need to develop a product to sell. I highly recommend a high quality product that you sell for less than it is worth.
You see... the goal is to build life long customers and have a wide range of information products to sell. You want to "get them hooked" with a nice low priced product that gives them more value than they expected.
3. Give your customers a chance to buy another product at a reduced price during the order process. Similar to how McDonald's has "would you like fries with that?" You need to add an upsell in the order flow.
This will easily increase your income by 30%!
After they purchase give them the chance to buy closely related products for a deep discount. Many times they will buy and you will increase your profits with this one simple step.
You can also downsell your upsell if they don't buy. Here is how to do that.
If they do not take the upsell you can give them a chance to buy the same thing at a lower price. This will increase your income even more.
BUT WAIT!? Why would I sell my products for a lower price? Well, when you are selling a digital download it is OK to sell it at whatever price you want. That is why information marketing is king.
4. After they have consumed your product you simply create and sell more closely related products to your growing base of raving fans.
It is important that every customer turns into a raving fan. You do that by giving them an insane value for a low low price.
Well, it doesn't have to be a low price but it should be an amazing value - an irresistible offer. It is very important that you have a high quality product that over deliverers.
Here Is The Easy Way To Create Raving Fan Customer Who Buy Everything You Have To Sell!
Simply take your prospects from where they are to where they want to be.
Every step of your marketing should take them one step further to their desires end result. When you get people closer to their desired end result not only does their trust in you increase but also their desire for your products. Here is an example:
Let's say you work in the dating market selling information products teaching men to get over their fears when approaching women and teach them how to build a real quality life long relationship.
An ethical bribe to get someone to join your mailing list would be something like "10 Easy Ways To Talk To A Women And Get Her Phone Number."
Your prospect comes to your site downloads your report and joins your mailing list then goes out and gets a girls phone number. He is excited and but has NO IDEA what to do next.
Luckily 2 days later you send him a message in your mailing list sequence telling him what to say on the phone to get her to go on the first date.
He uses the technique and is one step closer to his desired end result.
Not only does he now trust you be he also has increased his desire for your product!
Now your prospect has gotten results in advance and instantly goes to your website and buys your training course on "How To Create The Fairy-tail 1st Date That Will Leave Them Wanting More."
That is how you build an internet business :)
The only question is are you ready to start generating your own cash windfalls?
About the Author:
Want to know more about creating cash on demand? Simply listen to this free audio and hear a real step-by-step case study of how to go from zero to internet cash machine immediately: http://BuildOnlineWealth.com/crazyfreeoffer/ Written by: Ryan Parenti
Read more of Ryan Parenti 's articles.
Do Nice Guys Fail In Internet Marketing For Online Businesses?
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2010 Ryan Parenti
Todd was in trouble. Our internet marketing training for online business was selling like crazy. Orders were coming from everywhere. We were able to get outside help, but it wasn't enough.
We stopped advertising, but the orders still kept coming and we were in way over our head.
OK, I know what you're thinking "how is that a bad thing?" but we didn't have any system step up for product fulfillment and we under estimated the impact our marketing would have.
The truth is if you want to build a real business, it needs to be scalable. Here are the lessons learned from that fatal day and the take aways you can use to build your business the right way.
1. You Need To Figure Out Yourself Before You Grow A Business
You need to know yourself and exactly what your good at. This is important because if you are not good a HTML then you do not want to build and grow your business by doing HTML.
Instead you should clearly define, understand, and build a business around your strengths.
2. You Need To Find The Big Money Opportunity (The Market)
Look at the market to find out what to sell. The goal is to determine what they want then go out and give it to them.
The market will show you where the big money opportunities are.
The money is in developing a clear vision of the biggest opportunity in your target market then developing an action plan to take advantage of it.
3. You Need A Compelling Offer
Your offer (what your trying to sell) must be of high value and provide a high return on investment. It almost must be positioned in a way that compels people to take action and purchase your offer.
You want to create an irresistible offer that provides a solid benefit and deliver it in a believable fashion.
4. Develop A Marketing System
Marketing your product or service is the way you get the word out.
Advertisements, SEO and email marketing are all effective ways to find and retain new prospects.
Discover which avenue of marketing you will take, then execute it masterfully.
5. Build YOUR Business With Help
You need to scale your business by determining profitable actions then turning them into automated systems of duplicate-able and unmanaged creation through the help of smart, dedicated and qualified employees.
I am telling you to discover what actions make you money then train and employ others to complete these actions on a daily or weekly basis (if possible).
Make sure your team members carry the same vision of business that you have.
You are paying more for their mind and creative thinking than any brute work, so it is essential that they understand where you want to go so they can help you get there.
First a quick word of caution: When many people think of hiring help then they of getting the cheapest labor when the truth is you need to find and hire the right people, then do what it takes to keep them.
Good people are very hard to find and you need these people if you want to have a successful business.
6. Everything Should Be Reduced Down To A Number
You can and should measure every aspect of your business so you can determine what is working and what isn't.
Track sales conversions, employee performance, how you're doing, and the level of success you are achieving towards your goals.
You can't improve anything you can't measure.
So track everything you can so you can make incremental improvements to your operational systems like marketing, sales conversation and lifetime customer value.
7. Alliance Partners Increase Growth Rapidly
The easiest way to grow your business is by leveraging other people's resources. You can do this by developing relationships with other related businesses.
There are many advantages of joint ventures and having an affiliate program can easily increase your income times 10.
Structure your business to allow other people to sell and grow your business with you, by creating and promoting an affiliate program and developing joint venture relationships.
8. Develop Product Creation Systems
Set up a team of people to create your products. Perhaps you might need one person to do the market research to see what people are buying and to do keyword research.
Once completed they can then hand over the information to a person who creates graphics and a sales page. Then they can forward the information to a ghost writer who completes the product. This can all happen seamlessly once you develop the system.
Identify which types of products you will create, then develop a team (or a system) to create and market you product for you.
9. Build a Business That Your Completely Free From
Develop systems within the business that make sure profitable steps are taken without you having to do them. Try to set up your business so the business will build without you.
This was the mistake Todd and I made. The day to day operational issues, like product fulfillment, needed to be delegated.
If I only I knew then what I knew now we could have avoided the horror of a business that does too well - like a train going too fast and running off the track.
So the answer is "Yes!" nice guys finish last... if they don't have the proper system set up.
The only question is are you ready to improve your system?
About the Author:
If you are serious about increasing sales, traffic and affiliates on autopilot without spending a small fortune setting it all up go ahead and download this free audio and learn the exact steps you need for increased internet profits: http://BuildOnlineWealth.com/crazyfreeoffer/ Written by: Ryan Parenti
Read more of Ryan Parenti 's articles.
Copyright © 2010 Ryan Parenti
Todd was in trouble. Our internet marketing training for online business was selling like crazy. Orders were coming from everywhere. We were able to get outside help, but it wasn't enough.
We stopped advertising, but the orders still kept coming and we were in way over our head.
OK, I know what you're thinking "how is that a bad thing?" but we didn't have any system step up for product fulfillment and we under estimated the impact our marketing would have.
The truth is if you want to build a real business, it needs to be scalable. Here are the lessons learned from that fatal day and the take aways you can use to build your business the right way.
1. You Need To Figure Out Yourself Before You Grow A Business
You need to know yourself and exactly what your good at. This is important because if you are not good a HTML then you do not want to build and grow your business by doing HTML.
Instead you should clearly define, understand, and build a business around your strengths.
2. You Need To Find The Big Money Opportunity (The Market)
Look at the market to find out what to sell. The goal is to determine what they want then go out and give it to them.
The market will show you where the big money opportunities are.
The money is in developing a clear vision of the biggest opportunity in your target market then developing an action plan to take advantage of it.
3. You Need A Compelling Offer
Your offer (what your trying to sell) must be of high value and provide a high return on investment. It almost must be positioned in a way that compels people to take action and purchase your offer.
You want to create an irresistible offer that provides a solid benefit and deliver it in a believable fashion.
4. Develop A Marketing System
Marketing your product or service is the way you get the word out.
Advertisements, SEO and email marketing are all effective ways to find and retain new prospects.
Discover which avenue of marketing you will take, then execute it masterfully.
5. Build YOUR Business With Help
You need to scale your business by determining profitable actions then turning them into automated systems of duplicate-able and unmanaged creation through the help of smart, dedicated and qualified employees.
I am telling you to discover what actions make you money then train and employ others to complete these actions on a daily or weekly basis (if possible).
Make sure your team members carry the same vision of business that you have.
You are paying more for their mind and creative thinking than any brute work, so it is essential that they understand where you want to go so they can help you get there.
First a quick word of caution: When many people think of hiring help then they of getting the cheapest labor when the truth is you need to find and hire the right people, then do what it takes to keep them.
Good people are very hard to find and you need these people if you want to have a successful business.
6. Everything Should Be Reduced Down To A Number
You can and should measure every aspect of your business so you can determine what is working and what isn't.
Track sales conversions, employee performance, how you're doing, and the level of success you are achieving towards your goals.
You can't improve anything you can't measure.
So track everything you can so you can make incremental improvements to your operational systems like marketing, sales conversation and lifetime customer value.
7. Alliance Partners Increase Growth Rapidly
The easiest way to grow your business is by leveraging other people's resources. You can do this by developing relationships with other related businesses.
There are many advantages of joint ventures and having an affiliate program can easily increase your income times 10.
Structure your business to allow other people to sell and grow your business with you, by creating and promoting an affiliate program and developing joint venture relationships.
8. Develop Product Creation Systems
Set up a team of people to create your products. Perhaps you might need one person to do the market research to see what people are buying and to do keyword research.
Once completed they can then hand over the information to a person who creates graphics and a sales page. Then they can forward the information to a ghost writer who completes the product. This can all happen seamlessly once you develop the system.
Identify which types of products you will create, then develop a team (or a system) to create and market you product for you.
9. Build a Business That Your Completely Free From
Develop systems within the business that make sure profitable steps are taken without you having to do them. Try to set up your business so the business will build without you.
This was the mistake Todd and I made. The day to day operational issues, like product fulfillment, needed to be delegated.
If I only I knew then what I knew now we could have avoided the horror of a business that does too well - like a train going too fast and running off the track.
So the answer is "Yes!" nice guys finish last... if they don't have the proper system set up.
The only question is are you ready to improve your system?
About the Author:
If you are serious about increasing sales, traffic and affiliates on autopilot without spending a small fortune setting it all up go ahead and download this free audio and learn the exact steps you need for increased internet profits: http://BuildOnlineWealth.com/crazyfreeoffer/ Written by: Ryan Parenti
Read more of Ryan Parenti 's articles.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Success in Business is Easier – if You Can Live Without This
Article Presented by:
Copyright © 2010 Scott Bywater
It's no secret that acknowledgement is something we crave more than anything else.
In fact, I've heard that acknowledgement is sometimes more important than money when it comes to running a team.
So by all means, we should all do everything we can to acknowledge those around us.
It is important.
And we all like to get acknowledged as well.
But be careful here...
Because if you NEED acknowledgement from the outside then you are putting yourself in danger of relying on an outside force for your motivation and happiness.
I can remember one of my first jobs selling cleaning chemicals door to door...
I got verbally abused... I got thrown out of places... and I got virtually no acknowledgement.
I also sucked at the job.
And my boss didn't acknowledge me either.
And while I left after a couple of months, it taught me to be inner directed. And to rely only on myself for acknowledgment.
In the next job I became a star after being mentored in a telemarketing office I worked with...
And I went to an office in Sydney where I thrived, thanks to a guy called Adam Rosewarne who was very good at acknowledging my talents.
Don't get me wrong - if you can find people who acknowledge your skills and talents you are far better off.
But don't depend on it.
If I had depended on it when I started my business, I never would have got off the ground.
For a year or two I went around selling ads with little credibility, cold calling, etc...
... and hardly ever got acknowledged.
Even when I hit home runs for a client.
But I got good at acknowledging myself... when I wrote a good ad... when I made a sale... when I received a referral...
You see, acknowledgment is like anything else.
If you need ANYTHING from outside of you, you are depending on a force you cannot control for your happiness.
Far better to be inner directed and depend only on meeting your own demands.
And a funny thing happens once you start acknowledging yourself - eventually others start acknowledging you too.
One thing you might like to do is to start an acknowledgement list and start tabulating everything you do on an excel document or something that you are proud of yourself for.
Things like phone calls made, marketing campaigns implemented, critical action steps taken, and stuff you have learnt.
In fact, you might like to start learning something right now that you can acknowledge yourself for. Just hop along to http://www.scottbywater.com/internetsecrets/ and learn how to actually make a dollar out of the internet.
About the Author:
Scott Bywater is a direct mail copywriter and the author of Cash-Flow Advertising. To get access to his highly prized complimentary copy of "7 Ways To Get More Customers" (valued at $29.95) and to join his controversial and insighful "Copywriting Selling Secrets" newsletter where you'll uncover the truth about why most ads and sales letters don't work (and how to make yours stand out from the rest) head on over to his web site at http://www.copywritingthatsells.com.au/
Read more of Scott Bywater's articles.
Copyright © 2010 Scott Bywater
It's no secret that acknowledgement is something we crave more than anything else.
In fact, I've heard that acknowledgement is sometimes more important than money when it comes to running a team.
So by all means, we should all do everything we can to acknowledge those around us.
It is important.
And we all like to get acknowledged as well.
But be careful here...
Because if you NEED acknowledgement from the outside then you are putting yourself in danger of relying on an outside force for your motivation and happiness.
I can remember one of my first jobs selling cleaning chemicals door to door...
I got verbally abused... I got thrown out of places... and I got virtually no acknowledgement.
I also sucked at the job.
And my boss didn't acknowledge me either.
And while I left after a couple of months, it taught me to be inner directed. And to rely only on myself for acknowledgment.
In the next job I became a star after being mentored in a telemarketing office I worked with...
And I went to an office in Sydney where I thrived, thanks to a guy called Adam Rosewarne who was very good at acknowledging my talents.
Don't get me wrong - if you can find people who acknowledge your skills and talents you are far better off.
But don't depend on it.
If I had depended on it when I started my business, I never would have got off the ground.
For a year or two I went around selling ads with little credibility, cold calling, etc...
... and hardly ever got acknowledged.
Even when I hit home runs for a client.
But I got good at acknowledging myself... when I wrote a good ad... when I made a sale... when I received a referral...
You see, acknowledgment is like anything else.
If you need ANYTHING from outside of you, you are depending on a force you cannot control for your happiness.
Far better to be inner directed and depend only on meeting your own demands.
And a funny thing happens once you start acknowledging yourself - eventually others start acknowledging you too.
One thing you might like to do is to start an acknowledgement list and start tabulating everything you do on an excel document or something that you are proud of yourself for.
Things like phone calls made, marketing campaigns implemented, critical action steps taken, and stuff you have learnt.
In fact, you might like to start learning something right now that you can acknowledge yourself for. Just hop along to http://www.scottbywater.com/internetsecrets/ and learn how to actually make a dollar out of the internet.
About the Author:
Scott Bywater is a direct mail copywriter and the author of Cash-Flow Advertising. To get access to his highly prized complimentary copy of "7 Ways To Get More Customers" (valued at $29.95) and to join his controversial and insighful "Copywriting Selling Secrets" newsletter where you'll uncover the truth about why most ads and sales letters don't work (and how to make yours stand out from the rest) head on over to his web site at http://www.copywritingthatsells.com.au/
Read more of Scott Bywater's articles.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)