Archive for February, 2009

There are so many things that need to be done when starting to build a business online.  Create your own product, step by step list building , get some affiliate products to promote seem simple in the chaos of learning HTML, figuring out FTP, blogs, Wordpress, graphics, squeeze pages, copywriting etc.  So how do you get a successful business online before the men in white coats take you away to the funny farm?

Focus.  

And to do that, you need to get some online discipline.  This is my list to supercharge your online efficiency:

1.     STOP buying “the latest thing”.  It may well be a “must have” to supercharge your business but until you have a business to supercharge, you’ve wasted your money.  And when you do have a business in need of supercharging, there WILL be another “latest thing” – trust me!

2.     Work in 60-90 minute power working blocks followed by a 10-30 min break.  Aim to work for at least two power-working blocks per day – three if you have time.

3.     Close your email.  You don’t need the distraction.

4.     Sign out of Skype.  Sign out of Yahoo IM.  These are the biggest distractions on the internet and should only be left open when your kids using your computer to play games on!

5.     Tell the family that you’re working and do not want to be disturbed.  (Ask politely!)

6.     Decide which tasks you are going to tackle.  Maybe you want to write 2 blog posts, add comments in 5 forums, start the copy for your sales letter, learn about blog optimisation, spend time on your auto responder sequence emails etc.

7.     Write a To Do List in detail.  Plan how long you are going to spend on each task and STICK to it.

8.     Check off items on your To-Do List as you complete them.

9.     Use a journal to jot down anything unrelated that you need to get out your head.

10.   Set the clock.

11.   Focus on ONE task at a time.

12.   Work for 60-90 minutes and then take your 10-30 min break.  Do something totally different.  Leave the computer.

13.   Work on the tasks in one project in rotation until you have finished that project.  Use consecutive power working blocks to schedule different tasks within the same project.

14.  Get your project online and start driving traffic.

Feel free to leave me a comment below if I’ve missed anything out!

Actually I’ve decided to take my own advice and I’m actively working on product development right now.  If you’re interested in knowing what, please sign up at the pop-in hover form or just go to HotNicheResaleRights.com and sign up there.

It is widely touted that you can get targeted traffic to your blog just by making useful and valuable comments on others’ blogs.   However, like everything else in life, there is a right way and a wrong way to go about it.  And getting it wrong can cost you traffic that would otherwise have flowed to your site. 

So how do you get it right?  Here’s the lowdown to building your online presence and maximising your comment love!

Comment Early

Most blogs are set up to show the comments on a post in chronological order ie the first comment is directly unsderneath the post, the second comment underneath that and so forth.  It stand to reason therefore that to get most viewings of your comment therefore, you have to comment as quickly after the blog posts as possible.  This is obviously easier if the timezone works in your favour.  UK bloggers will find it virtually impossible to post early on US blogs which often “overnight”.  On the other hand, commenting first on Australian blogs should be possible. 

Add Value

Easily said than done?  No, but it does require you to think.  Easy ways for you to add value are:

1. Extend the List  – where the blog post is a list of points describing something, add another that was missed out in your opinion and explain why you would include it;
2. Add an example – Agree with the blog post and show why by giving a real life example;
3. Be contraversial – Disagree with the blog post and explain why.

Be Human

These days blog posting can be automated, especially on the larger high PR blogs, as people post comment solely with a view to getting a quality backlink to their own website.  Whilst these comments invariably get deleted when they are spotted, it will attract a much larger audience (and so more traffic following to see who is behind the post) if you fill your comment with your personality.

1. Be passionate about what you write
2. Be witty and funny
3. Ask questions
4. Be different – if all the posts are long and wordy, be concise and if they’re all two sentences long, be more descriptive.
5. Use bullet points that stand out and are different from those used by others
6. Add a helpful link – but ONLY if it IS helpful – do NOT just link back to your blog for the sake of it in your post.

Do NOT Add a Signature Link in Your Comment

Your name (or keyword phase) will be automatically lined back to your blog or website.  Adding another signature in your comment can be seen as spammy.  It will not get you comment love and may even get your comment deleted/unapproved.

A Word Of Caution:

Beware of posting too often and always early on any one blog – the blog is the property of the blogger and posting too often/early can be seen as “blog hogging” which can actually damage your online “brand” presence.

Follow these tips and you’ll get traffic from your comments and eventually be noticed by the big bloggers themselves, who may also follow your links and comment on your blog too.  And isn’t that what we all really want after all?

Most people venture online with the dream of building an online income which will free them from their real life jobs.  And for many people, it stays as just that… a dream.  Why?  After all, sitting at a computer just across the hall, in pyjamas, no commuting, loads of money, more leisure time to spend how and with whom you like, is truly the easy life.  So why doesn’t it happen like that?

Well because for a keen, fresh faced newbie, the lure of “easy money” is just too strong.  Many online newbies fall for the well-peddled myths that surround internet working and building a business online.  And who can blame them?  These myths are peddled by just about everyone out there it seems.  And the sheer amount of money that many people spend buying into these myths, and becoming disillusioned by them, is what makes many people give up – sometimes even when they are on the verge of making a break through.

The truth is making money online is NOT easy.

Running a business online is the same as for any business.  You need to do research, build foundations, advertise, draw traffic, make sales, etc.  However, because many of the gurus use very strong and emotive language in their sales letters, it is too easy for newbies to think that it is actually possible to earn thousands of dollars within a week of getting online, with no prior experience or the necessary skills.

What is true is that there is a lot of money to be made online, and you can become very rich doing it, but it will take effort, dedication and the right mix of learning and taking action to get there.  

There is NO Magic Key

How many times have you read that this particular guru delivers the “real deal”, “no holds barred”, “reveals all”?  This sort of hype suggests that somehow all the others reveal everything EXCEPT the secret step which you must have to be able to make money online.  This is not true.  There is no Magic Key.

But before you buy into your next coaching program, ebook, course or membership site (and I admit it’s tough advice I struggle with too!), PLEASE bear in mind, that there are countless ways to make money online.  However, to build a successful business online you must choose what direction you’re going to go in, follow it with dogged persistence, and be patient. 

This last point is worth stressing.

It takes between 6-8 years to bring a plan from initial conception to full fruition in the real world.  And that is a useful rule of thumb.  Use it for your internet business.  Do NOT expect to become rich overnight.  Oh SURE some people probably do do it, but most don’t and the vast majority NEVER do.  Would you rather “make it” in 6-8 years or never?  Me too.

The internet has changed.  What worked in 1996 does not work today.  If you set up a website or blog, chances are no-one will ever see it unless you promote it and that takes money and effort.  You can do it without money, but then it takes lots of effort and lots of patience.  

If you are going to build an online business, you need to set yourself clear targets and plan to reach them or you will waste a lot of time and effort.  

And you need to take the time to learn the right skillset.

Building an online business is the same as building an offline business.  You wouldn’t rush to open a bar/restaurant AND a used car dealership AND a kindergarten all at the same time without ANY knowledge of any of them AND without taking time to learn about them AND expect to MAKE MONEY QUICKLY would you?  Well it is the same online. 

Decide whether you’re going to go into MLM, affiliate marketing, selling your own products etc; Decide what your niche and target audience will be; Decide how you will reach them, PPC, articles, forum, email etc; Find out where your target group hangs out (it’s no good spending a lot of time on MySpace if your target group is active on a specialised social network). Focus. Building a business is about satisfying a need with a good product or service. 

You can NOT start with one hour a week

Be realistic about just how much hard work you will need to put in at the beginning!  Building a business takes time and effort.  In the early stages it will seem as if you’ve never worked as hard in all your life!  But once it is fully automated, maintaining it may take only a few hours a week.   

Most people reading this will probably already have all the skills necessary to make a succesful business online.  You just need to take consistent action in one direction at a time and be patient enough to see it through.  Can you do that?

One big mistake people make is to make the tell Twitter that you’ve made a new blog post – this does not engage your audience in the discussion.  So instead of telling them all the time, why not

• ASK Your Twitter Audience For Their Opinion On A Topic You’ve Covered

I recently opened a discussion about whether it was possible for a 50 year-old grandad to sell successfully to the hippychick teen prom queen.  I got some very interesting posts I can tell you, including two from widely respected “gurus”.

• Alert Your Twitter Followers To heated Blog Debates

Post your blog posts to Twitter - especially when a specific post has generated several remarks.  If you alert your Twitter followers to a heated debate on your blog, you will get more traffic to it!

• Ask Your Twitter Followers To Share Their Experiences 

Encourage people who follow you on any and all social networks to participate on your blog by asking them to share their experiences.  Generally people love to talk about themselves so this is a good way to get them to visit your blog.   

• Make Sure You’re Moving Along The Twitter Experience Curve

I came across this slide presentation, which I think is worth sharing!

Please feel free to comment on your Twitter experiences.

Twitter is widely regarded as “the next big thing” in social marketing “Must Dos” and everyone is saying that the way forward is to have a huge following on Twitter… 

Well here’s a site that shows you a way of getting thousands of new followers on twitter, virally.

Check it out http://tinyurl.com/ald76r

It’s a simple concept, you retweet a message and start following the 6 people in front of you in the system.

A message posted on your twitter will automatically be formated with your unique link so that people following will follow you in position 1 to use the system themselves.  Their new followers will also follow you in position 2 and so on for five levels deep. 

Importantly for me, it’s totally “white hat”, 100% free and simple to set up.  All of this means that it’s likely to be followed up by a lot of people – and increase your following by hundreds if not thousands of people you would never had had the opportunity to meet.  Even the die-hard skeptics will realise that at least some of these will be responsive to your tweets.

This is brand new, so you’ll benefit if you are an early adopter.  I just started using it, so I expect to see a hike in my “follower” stats anytime soon!  Why not see if it’s for you?

As you will know if you are a regular reader, I have been struggling with the idea of creating my own product.  I am a student of Alex Jeffreys and his methods certainly work, and now I want to apply them to my own products in my own particular profitable niche areas.

For a while now, I have been considering two other coaching courses, specifically targeted at product development with a view to building a sustainable online business.  Both courses are being run by people I’ve been following online for a while, feel comfortable with, have learnt a lot from and trust.  The two courses are priced at exactly the same level (no surprises there!) and both have payment plans in easy installments.  Both promise quality content, videos, webinars and step-by-step hand holding through the process of getting the students up and running with their own products and their own businesses.  Both promise to show step-by-tiny-step how to develop a product. In fact John Thornhill’s actually includes a real time watching over his shoulder as he develops a product live on the course with his students. Liz Tomey’s includes detailed tutoring on how to set up different product formats including membership sites.

Neither product development course pulls any punches about the work effort required.  They both insist that the system WORKS IF you follow it and work at it. 

In the end I joined John Thornhill’s Marketing Masterclass over Liz Tomey’s 1-in-90 mentoring simply because I personally know of two people who have been through John’s course and are online running successful businesses.  But I loved the idea that Liz was prepared to stick around for a full year after the initial 90 days to ensure that the business her students set up went to the “next level”. 

John is taking his course a bit slower, covering the course in 36 weeks.  But from what I gather, he’s in the habit of “sticking around” too!  I am very excited that I will have my own product and be able to combine it with the tactics learned from the Alex Jeffreys Coaching program.

First a confession – I am a relative newbie on Twitter.  I’ve only been tweeting about twelve weeks but it’s long enough to realise that some people (most people?) just don’t “get” social media like Twitter.

I decided to find out just how to use this red hot social medium properly.  I’ve done a bit of research and compiled my own list of Social Media Do’s and Don’ts. This is not intended to be exhaustive, so please feel free to comment!

DOs

• Do keep it personal: Twitter is all about one-to-one contact so posts should be sociable.  Having said that, one-on-one DM Tweets work best if you actually want to talk to someone.
• Do use your own name: Although if people know your website really well, using your website name on social media sites might make people more likely to follow you (NB - there is an argument that Google gives greater link-love if it continually sees the name of your website on social media sites like Twitter).
• Do balance personal tweets and dialogues with others with content posts
• Do be unique, contraversial, opinionated, noteworthy – great qualities on social media sites. 
• Do use your personality to get noticed.
• Do become a Real Member of the Social Media community - a resource, provide value, answer questions, retweet others useful posts.
• Do spend REAL TIME developing your social media profile – TweetLater is useful but Tweeting NOW is essential. 
• Do take time to build a loyal following – social media moves quickly but people take time to trust you.
• Do follow People – you’ll get more friends in a year by being interested in them than in a lifetime trying to get them interested in you
• Do engage in conversations
• Do take time to BUILD Relationships - this will NOT “happen” overnight
• Do syndicate your RSS feed across all social media platforms
• Do keep control – 10:10:10 rule – 10 mins three times a day only
• Do create an attractive, unique and professional profile – use the Twitter background to get more unique information about yourself out there
• Do upload an avatar/picture – Many people do not follow people using the default avatar
• Do build brand recognitions by using the SAME avatar for each social media service
• Do take time to find out which social media platform your target niche uses most
• Do learn the unwritten laws of the social media community
• Do be interesting – if you’re funny great.  If you’re not, be yourself.

DON’Ts

• Don’t hard sell
• Don’t publish press releases to the exclusion of all else
• Don’t over-automate – social media is about being sociable
• Don’t get verbal diahorrhea
• Don’t stalk – if the gurus don’t want to talk to you, hassling them across every social media site will NOT help your cause.

Well, that’s my two cent’s worth! Feel free to follow me on Twitter!  And feel free to comment!  Over to you!

When building a successful online business, you hear “the money’s in the list” a LOT (and if you want to grab my free ebook on listbuilding just fill in your details in the form on this page). 

However, people (and probably the same people!) also say ”you need your own product” and “find a profitable niche”.  How to do this has got to be THE biggest sticking point for people starting out online.  So I decided to revisit a few product development and niche market keyword products I have collecting dust on my hard drive in a view to understanding the first action in developing your own product  – Finding Profitable Niche Markets – I hope this precis is useful to more than me.  Let me know what you think!

There are three or four main ways you can go about identifying potentially profitable niche markets -   

Market First Approach – This is useful for people who feel they are short of product ideas and how feel they have no idea how to start to find a niche market.  Visit bookstores, browse magazine racks etc and check out what is published in which niche markets – these are the profitable niches.  Also visit online resources, such as Amazon and eBay and browse their “Best sellers”, “Categories” etc as these are good indications of which niches are profitable.  These are the ones you should target your product at.

Idea First Approach – This approach is useful if you’ve got lots of ideas.  It involves brainstorming to see what you’re interested in and then evaluating those niche markets.  To make sure you don’t miss any obvious profitable market areas, brainstorm around targeted questions: “What do I enjoy doing? (hobbies, interests, business, sports, family etc)”, “What am I good at?”, “What do other people come to me for help with?”, “What do I like learning about?”, “What problems or issues frustrate me?” 

Keyword Driven Approach - Another way to find a profitable niche market area is to enter keywords that people use when they’re searching for a solution into Google’s free Keyword Tool eg, Type ”How To”, ”Tips”, ”Tutorial” etc to highlight other areas where people are looking for help.

Keep Your Eyes and Ears Open – Be open to recognise any profitable niches wherever they crop up.  Hot products often sell out at Christmas, or are talked about in your kids’ playgrounds etc.  These areas are good candidates for a profitable targeted niche product.

This all takes a huge amount of time – but if you need a short cut, I can recommend Proven Online Niches as something I personally use. It lists out 241 of the best hot niche markets that are PROVEN to be successful, including the keyword lists for those markets!  

Write down your ALL your ideas in a notebook, consider each one individually – what interests you most AND what you’d be most good at - (use a spreadsheet to rate each idea) and narrow the list down to the TOP one that fits what you want to do. 

And don’t forget when making the final decision your niche that you check it’s likely to be profitable – are there products already targeted at your niche? Are people paying for ads in your niche? (Both essential indicators of a profitable niche) And make sure you can reach your target market online (forums, targeted blogs etc).  (Proven Online Niches takes all the pain out of this by doing the work for you!) After all, if your target market is UNLIKELY to be reachable online (retired, 70 year old golfers) there is no point targeting an online product at them!

Now all you need to do is sketch out your targeted niche product!