Ever since I began teaching people how to make money online through my buying & selling websites training class, I’m starting to see why the “make money online guru market” is not a fun place to be.
When I decided to teach people how to make money online, I did so because I truly wanted to help people succeed. Since I’ve been working full time online the last 5+ years, I’ve learned a lot about what to do and what not to do.
I’ve been fortunate to make over a million dollars online during this 5 year stretch, but it wasn’t an accident. I worked my butt off to get where I am today.
Now that I’m sharing my experience with people, I’m constantly hit with the label of “con artist”, “scammer” and many other names not nearly as nice as these.
Those who know me can attest that I’m probably one of the most generous people they know. I always go above and beyond to help someone out and often push my own desires aside if I can help someone else instead.
I had no idea when I got into this teaching business that there would be so much negativity associated with it. Sure, I get to hear a lot of praise from the students who take my training, but the non-customers who contact me are 90% negative, 5% skeptical and 5% excited to hear what I’m saying.
The biggest problem people have when trying to make money is the negative mindset.
If you are constantly thinking people are out to rip you off, you will never be successful. You’ll spend so much of your time trying to “prove” someone else is a fraud that you’ll never have time to actually make money yourself.
I’m yet to find a successful person in business who is always negative and pessimistic. Success just doesn’t match with this type of personality.
But, just being positive won’t make you successful however…
You have to take action!
It’s pretty sad, but most people never take action and actually put in the work to make things happen.
Usually what happens is someone will read an article or take a training class and store away that knowledge in their brain and never use it. Even if it’s the most valuable piece of knowledge in the world, they just absorb it and move on.
They spend most of their lives searching for more information, when in fact they probably already have enough knowledge to be very successful as it is.
An example of this is from my training class I teach. I just got a refund request this morning from a guy who said he “already knew everything I was teaching”. Yet, somehow he was not successful and still searching for a secret solution to his problem of not making any money online.
Maybe he did know everything I was teaching in the class, but if so, he should be selling websites for six figures like I’ve been doing. The problem may be that he is just an information junkie who never applies anything he learns.
It’s interesting when I hear people say “it’s too hard to make money online”.
That’s a bunch of nonsense!
HARD WORK is digging ditches in 100 degree sunshine for 8 hours per day.
Sitting on your butt writing a few articles is NOT hard work. Getting links to your website is NOT hard work. Spending 3 hours watching Google’s free video tutorials to learn Adwords is NOT hard work.
Yes, it takes time and yes, it can be boring, but it is not hard…
Sitting at a job you hate for 8 hours a day is much harder than an internet business.
Most people get overwhelmed.
A lot of times people are not successful online because they are simply overwhelmed. There are two possibilities here.
1) People are overwhelmed by opportunities.
Maybe you are signed up to 80 different internet marketers’ email lists, and each week you get a new “magic button internet billionaire training program”. So you jump from one idea to the next without actually doing anything. This is a very common problem. The solution is simple though, just unsubscribe from all of those email lists.
Very few email lists, from what I’ve seen, actually provide much value. In most cases, you just get hit with offer after offer of things to buy, which doesn’t help you one bit. In fact, it hurts you more than anything because of the distractions.
If someone truly wanted to help you by making recommendations, they wouldn’t be promoting a membership site coaching program one week and then the following week be promoting a software program that churns out 400 adsense websites per hour.
It’s no wonder you’re not successful, you’re getting pulled in 100 different directions that teach completely opposite business models.
2) People are overwhelmed by projects.
If you do have the ability to focus without the distraction of the “product launch of the week”, another issue you may face is being overwhelmed by the scope of your project.
You might decide to start a website on dogs, but when you are planning your website you think about all the things you want to cover.
You want to cover dog training, but then dog supplies look interesting too, so you plan out that section of your site. Then dog breeding looks like a good topic to get into, so you spend a couple weeks researching that topic. But then you figure some people might want to learn how to start their own dog sitting business, so you think about how you are going to get into that sub niche as well.
After you figure out all 214 dog related topics you want to cover on your site, you look at your outline of things you want to cover and say “there’s no way I’ll have time to do all of this work”.
And since it looks too much like work, you file it away until the next time you are feeling ambitious.
The months and years pass and you still never start your web business because there’s just too much to do.
Resolution to this problem - just break up the project into small chunks. Give yourself a deadline to complete each small chunk and slowly but surely you will get where you want to be. Maybe focus 3 weeks to building the dog training part of your website, then move on to the next part.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Adsense for Feeds
Ever since Google bought Feedburner they have been working towards placing Adsense on the Feedburner feeds. No surprise there as G needs to keep growing and Adsense/Adwords is what feeds the beast. A few months back Feedburner made Adsense available and I attempted to try it but for what ever reason it didn't work. No doubt I screwed things up - not a surprise either as most of you know I am not technically gifted and spent about 5 seconds trying to figure out what went wrong before ditching the whole works.
Long story short - a few days ago I noticed a new link on my Adsense Overview page (see image below) which is entitled Adsense for Feeds. Of course it may have been there for a while and I just didn't notice it until now.
Needless to say I clicked the "Get Started" button. I was taken to the following page.
Naturally it told me that I had no feeds in my account and gave me a link to "View our Account Migration Guide". Apparently you will have to have Google migrate all your feeds from Feedburner to Adsense. Turns out this isn't complicated.
In fact Google will do it for you. This is right up my alley - anytime I can get someone else to do the tech stuff suits me just fine. Just ask my good friend Terry! Just give Google your Feedburner username and provide your Adsense email address and they will do the necessary steps for you.
So I did and am waiting to see what happens next.
Now I'm telling all you folks this because should things work out all of my feed subscribers will be snarling and nashing their teeth as soon as the Adsense ads start appearing on my feeds. Before you all hit the unsubscribe button please hear me out.
This whole Adsense on Feeds thing has me more than curious as it just doesn't fit in with Google's current policies. How are they going to assure quality clicks for the Advertisers? At present they frown on too many clicks coming from the same IP. One of the things you have to be careful of is that some of your readers may try and help you by clicking your ads repeatedly. This doesn't help at all and can get your account banned. Clicks have to be natural and repeated clicks from the same IP is not natural.
However, if I have Adsense on my Feeds then I am only going to get clicks from my readers. Search traffic will not see these ads. Presumably G wants my readers to click the ads - if not then why offer the service. So does this mean that they won't mind the same people clicking ads on a more frequent basis? They can hardly penalize me for repeated clicks when my pool of readers is limited. This, in a nutshell, is what I want to find out. In one sense my readers are highly targeted for my keywords and Google likes that. I suppose they feel this will benefit the Advertisers - maybe it will. On the other hand this just seems ripe for abuse and I am curious as to how G plans on counting clicks. Which will they consider valid and which will be considered suspect?
I am asking you dear readers not to get all un-subscribe on my ass when the ads appear as I simply want to see how this program is going to be monitored by Google. I will certainly keep you abreast of my findings. I should also say that this is not a call to entice you to click those ads. Please, please, please... don't unless it is something you really are interested in. I have no wish to game Adsense in any way and you shouldn't either. I suspect that my readers will ignore them in the same way they ignore the ads on my blog - just background noise that bloggers tend not to notice. I understand why search traffic clicks ads - I don't understand why targeted feed subscribers ever would though. And I don't understand why Google thinks they would either.
In any event you now know up front what I'm up too and I hope you will not get offended when you see the ads. Just another little experiment and I'll fill you in when I get some results.
Long story short - a few days ago I noticed a new link on my Adsense Overview page (see image below) which is entitled Adsense for Feeds. Of course it may have been there for a while and I just didn't notice it until now.
Needless to say I clicked the "Get Started" button. I was taken to the following page.
Naturally it told me that I had no feeds in my account and gave me a link to "View our Account Migration Guide". Apparently you will have to have Google migrate all your feeds from Feedburner to Adsense. Turns out this isn't complicated.
In fact Google will do it for you. This is right up my alley - anytime I can get someone else to do the tech stuff suits me just fine. Just ask my good friend Terry! Just give Google your Feedburner username and provide your Adsense email address and they will do the necessary steps for you.
So I did and am waiting to see what happens next.
Now I'm telling all you folks this because should things work out all of my feed subscribers will be snarling and nashing their teeth as soon as the Adsense ads start appearing on my feeds. Before you all hit the unsubscribe button please hear me out.
This whole Adsense on Feeds thing has me more than curious as it just doesn't fit in with Google's current policies. How are they going to assure quality clicks for the Advertisers? At present they frown on too many clicks coming from the same IP. One of the things you have to be careful of is that some of your readers may try and help you by clicking your ads repeatedly. This doesn't help at all and can get your account banned. Clicks have to be natural and repeated clicks from the same IP is not natural.
However, if I have Adsense on my Feeds then I am only going to get clicks from my readers. Search traffic will not see these ads. Presumably G wants my readers to click the ads - if not then why offer the service. So does this mean that they won't mind the same people clicking ads on a more frequent basis? They can hardly penalize me for repeated clicks when my pool of readers is limited. This, in a nutshell, is what I want to find out. In one sense my readers are highly targeted for my keywords and Google likes that. I suppose they feel this will benefit the Advertisers - maybe it will. On the other hand this just seems ripe for abuse and I am curious as to how G plans on counting clicks. Which will they consider valid and which will be considered suspect?
I am asking you dear readers not to get all un-subscribe on my ass when the ads appear as I simply want to see how this program is going to be monitored by Google. I will certainly keep you abreast of my findings. I should also say that this is not a call to entice you to click those ads. Please, please, please... don't unless it is something you really are interested in. I have no wish to game Adsense in any way and you shouldn't either. I suspect that my readers will ignore them in the same way they ignore the ads on my blog - just background noise that bloggers tend not to notice. I understand why search traffic clicks ads - I don't understand why targeted feed subscribers ever would though. And I don't understand why Google thinks they would either.
In any event you now know up front what I'm up too and I hope you will not get offended when you see the ads. Just another little experiment and I'll fill you in when I get some results.
Ways To “Sick-Proof” Your Online Business
When you run a business - no matter how big or small - you end up tied to your work a lot. So, when you fall ill, it’s bound to affect your money making abilities. Yes, even if you’re running an online enterprise.
Good news is that there are some ways to help you “sick-proof” your online business. Here are some tips and ideas to stop your online business ventures from falling apart when you fall ill:
1. Communicate your situation. This is especially important if you’re running a shop and people can still buy items from your online stores, etc. Even when you’re running content or community sites, it’s important to let people know if you’re unable to work your usual hours. It is best to assure customers, readers, or watchers that you just didn’t disappear on them. Send email newsletters, write a quick update on your blog, or post a message on your site/shop.
2. Hire temporary help. Whether you’re running a website, blog, eBay auctions, or online shops, you can hire help during the time that you’ll be away. This is especially useful if you think you’ll be away for an extended period of time - or you’re unsure when you’ll be up to speed with your work. Sometimes, even when you’re only gone 2-3 days from your online business, you might find it overwhelming to catch up on the work that you’ve missed. So, having someone to help you get back to business might be a good idea. If you’re unable to hire someone but can tap on ‘volunteers’ (unpaid help), then good on ‘ya.
3. Manage Expectations. Other than communicating that you’re not well (see #1), it’s also good to manage your customers’ expectations. Tell people when you think you’ll be able to deliver the goods. If there’s a delay, let them know as well. And, if there’s exceptional delay (if you’re ill for over a week or so), it’s a good idea to have regular communication. And perhaps, if you’re in to selling products + services, and there are delivery delays and such, you might consider an extra gift or so as part of goodwill. People will not expect it, but they’ll appreciate it.
4. Have a ‘Vacation Autoresponder’ Message Ready. Make sure you learn how to set up your email autoresponders. And, create different canned messages for various occasions. For your the times that you’re not well, having a message like: “Sorry I’m able to respond to your email right now. I am currently on sick leave. I will get back to you as soon as I’m able to. If this is about an urgent matter, please contact -” (give info of your ‘back up person’ or your temporary help).
5. Train one or more of your family members/friends to do part of the work for you. If you’re a one man/woman show when it comes to your online work, make sure someone in your immediate family (or one of your good friends) may be trusted to step in if you can’t even get up to even send an email during your ’sick period’. This way, you have someone to help check your messages, send communication on your behalf, etc., if absolutely necessary. Yes, teach them at least to turn on your ‘Vacation Autoresponder’.
6. Create Passive Income Streams. As an online entrepreneur, it’s always desirable to come up with as many passive income streams as possible. You know - the type of money that will keep on rolling in, even when you’re not doing much. They’re paychecks that keep on getting sent, even when you’re sick. If you don’t have any passive income streams online, you really should think about creating them. After all, when you’re in business online, you don’t want your income to stop as soon as you’re unable to work.
So, what about you? How do you prepare your online business in the event that you fall ill? Are there other strategies you use to make sure you protect your income?
Good news is that there are some ways to help you “sick-proof” your online business. Here are some tips and ideas to stop your online business ventures from falling apart when you fall ill:
1. Communicate your situation. This is especially important if you’re running a shop and people can still buy items from your online stores, etc. Even when you’re running content or community sites, it’s important to let people know if you’re unable to work your usual hours. It is best to assure customers, readers, or watchers that you just didn’t disappear on them. Send email newsletters, write a quick update on your blog, or post a message on your site/shop.
2. Hire temporary help. Whether you’re running a website, blog, eBay auctions, or online shops, you can hire help during the time that you’ll be away. This is especially useful if you think you’ll be away for an extended period of time - or you’re unsure when you’ll be up to speed with your work. Sometimes, even when you’re only gone 2-3 days from your online business, you might find it overwhelming to catch up on the work that you’ve missed. So, having someone to help you get back to business might be a good idea. If you’re unable to hire someone but can tap on ‘volunteers’ (unpaid help), then good on ‘ya.
3. Manage Expectations. Other than communicating that you’re not well (see #1), it’s also good to manage your customers’ expectations. Tell people when you think you’ll be able to deliver the goods. If there’s a delay, let them know as well. And, if there’s exceptional delay (if you’re ill for over a week or so), it’s a good idea to have regular communication. And perhaps, if you’re in to selling products + services, and there are delivery delays and such, you might consider an extra gift or so as part of goodwill. People will not expect it, but they’ll appreciate it.
4. Have a ‘Vacation Autoresponder’ Message Ready. Make sure you learn how to set up your email autoresponders. And, create different canned messages for various occasions. For your the times that you’re not well, having a message like: “Sorry I’m able to respond to your email right now. I am currently on sick leave. I will get back to you as soon as I’m able to. If this is about an urgent matter, please contact -” (give info of your ‘back up person’ or your temporary help).
5. Train one or more of your family members/friends to do part of the work for you. If you’re a one man/woman show when it comes to your online work, make sure someone in your immediate family (or one of your good friends) may be trusted to step in if you can’t even get up to even send an email during your ’sick period’. This way, you have someone to help check your messages, send communication on your behalf, etc., if absolutely necessary. Yes, teach them at least to turn on your ‘Vacation Autoresponder’.
6. Create Passive Income Streams. As an online entrepreneur, it’s always desirable to come up with as many passive income streams as possible. You know - the type of money that will keep on rolling in, even when you’re not doing much. They’re paychecks that keep on getting sent, even when you’re sick. If you don’t have any passive income streams online, you really should think about creating them. After all, when you’re in business online, you don’t want your income to stop as soon as you’re unable to work.
So, what about you? How do you prepare your online business in the event that you fall ill? Are there other strategies you use to make sure you protect your income?
Ways to Generate Income With Facebook
Facebook has over 124 millions of registered users. It is a great social networking platform that can help you make money on the Internet. In this blog post, I will discuss four different ways to earn income online using Facebook.
Promote Your Own Products
Through your Facebook profile, you can market your products to other Facebook users. Since Facebook is a social networking website, you should only market products that are resonate with your profile, otherwise people will quickly see you as a marketer which will make you difficult to make new friends in Facebook. You should promote something that your Facebook friends interested. The product can make a difference in their lives or help them solve a problem. Example of products that sell well on the Internet are digital products such as e-books, music downloads, photographic content and reports.
Affiliate Marketing
If you don’t own your product, you may market other people product for a share of sale commission using your Facebook profile. Here again, you should only choose those affiliate products that resonate with your profile in Facebook. The simplest way to market your affiliate products is by posting your affiliate links in your profile. But, you need to limit the number of affiliate links included into your profile because too many offer links could make your profile look like a sale page and this will turn off people who come to view your profile.
Furthermore, you can offer a free gift or free resource on your profile in exchange for your target prospects email address. This way, you will gather their contact information legally and ethically where you can later send them your affiliate offers.
Offer Your Services
Facebook not just a good place to market products, you can also use it to sell your professional service. There are many services you can sell through Facebook. But, whatever service you are offering, make sure it resonates with the persona that you have built on Facebook. Some of the services you can offer are web development, freelance writing, consulting, one-on-one mentoring service, Internet marketing and so on.
Create Your Own Application
You can develop your own application for Facebook users to download and use it for their benefits of social networking in Facebook. One existing good Facebook application is ‘Introduce Me’. This application let people you know to introduce you to people they know in Facebook. This application is placed in profile. So, you can also contribute your unique and useful application and let millions of Facebook users to use it.
There are a few ways you can make money with your application. You can sell it immediately for a one-time profit. Or market it to have as many people as possible, and then monetize it to earn income. What are your choices of monetizing your application? Well, you can sell ad space within your application to potential advertisers, use the application to help sell your virtual items like ring, tones and etc; or promote your affiliate program for commission.
Developing your own application can be very profitable to you. However, you will need a group of experts to help you and you must have enough financial resources to back your project.
Promote Your Own Products
Through your Facebook profile, you can market your products to other Facebook users. Since Facebook is a social networking website, you should only market products that are resonate with your profile, otherwise people will quickly see you as a marketer which will make you difficult to make new friends in Facebook. You should promote something that your Facebook friends interested. The product can make a difference in their lives or help them solve a problem. Example of products that sell well on the Internet are digital products such as e-books, music downloads, photographic content and reports.
Affiliate Marketing
If you don’t own your product, you may market other people product for a share of sale commission using your Facebook profile. Here again, you should only choose those affiliate products that resonate with your profile in Facebook. The simplest way to market your affiliate products is by posting your affiliate links in your profile. But, you need to limit the number of affiliate links included into your profile because too many offer links could make your profile look like a sale page and this will turn off people who come to view your profile.
Furthermore, you can offer a free gift or free resource on your profile in exchange for your target prospects email address. This way, you will gather their contact information legally and ethically where you can later send them your affiliate offers.
Offer Your Services
Facebook not just a good place to market products, you can also use it to sell your professional service. There are many services you can sell through Facebook. But, whatever service you are offering, make sure it resonates with the persona that you have built on Facebook. Some of the services you can offer are web development, freelance writing, consulting, one-on-one mentoring service, Internet marketing and so on.
Create Your Own Application
You can develop your own application for Facebook users to download and use it for their benefits of social networking in Facebook. One existing good Facebook application is ‘Introduce Me’. This application let people you know to introduce you to people they know in Facebook. This application is placed in profile. So, you can also contribute your unique and useful application and let millions of Facebook users to use it.
There are a few ways you can make money with your application. You can sell it immediately for a one-time profit. Or market it to have as many people as possible, and then monetize it to earn income. What are your choices of monetizing your application? Well, you can sell ad space within your application to potential advertisers, use the application to help sell your virtual items like ring, tones and etc; or promote your affiliate program for commission.
Developing your own application can be very profitable to you. However, you will need a group of experts to help you and you must have enough financial resources to back your project.
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