A Perfect Time To Start Your Home Business

A Perfect Time To Start Your Home Business

by: Arun Pal Singh

It was the day that changed course of my life.

As we walked together on that empty road he asked me, ขWhen are you starting with your venture?ข

He was a close friend. I had revealed him often how I would love to start my own online business from home and work towards financial independence.

He knew nothing about internet business. But he always heard me with attention and encouragement.

ขQuite a time has passed since you first mentioned.ข He smiled as I remembered.

ขNext year. Something has come up. I do not think I will be able to do this year.ข I replied.

What he said was never expected, ขIf you do not have time this year and think you will have next year, you will never have the time. Things are not going to change much tomorrow than they are today. If you want to do it then do it now.

As he parted after a long discussion he gave the final blow, ขThere will be no perfect time any day. If you postpone, it will fizzle out.ข

Often I receive emails of people who ask when they should start their business. I have passed through same kind of phase. I will repeat the advice my friend gave me.

ขNOW.ข

Yes! Now is the right time for anything.

When we dream about a venture, knowingly or subconsciously we attach a state of perfection with that dream. It is a human habit. When mind dreams it does with perfection.

But reality is different. You might already have prior engagements that won’t leave you with perfect state of conditions to pursue your dreams. Shall you wait so that things become better? Well! The conditions did not improve in my case and as I see now they never become perfect.

A dream has to pass through congested reality before it could be realized.

Start now. The chaos which you face today would be present tomorrow also. These are the most frequent questions that trouble the mind of a potential starter.

# Where do I get extra time required?

Squeeze it. You do not need much of a time to work on the net. In case of business on the net, it is pretty manageable with small editing of your time management.

# What if I do not have resources?

Well! You need to search for what you can do. Cut down dispensable expenses like movies or eating out. Borrow if you can. If you are sincere enough you will find a way.

# I do not have a perfect plan.

Okay. Start with imperfect one that you have formulated. You can modify it along the way if you need. Start now. There is plenty to learn in the way. You cannot learn all before you start. And read this carefully. Nobody starts with perfect plan. Things shape up as you walk the path.

Action is what separates achievers from dreamers.

It is very easy to dream. There is no cost involved, no hindrance of any kind to stop the mind. Dreaming is the first step towards any endeavor. But dream must be followed by action to realize that dream.

If it is not followed by action a dream has got no meaning. World is full of wasted ideas and talents. Don’t let that happen to you.

Act now. Do not think tomorrow it will become better.

Tomorrow the things will be same.

Now is perfect time.

Now you have the right finances.

Now you have the right knowledge to start.

Catch a dream. Make a plan and กJust do it.ก

Copyright 2005 Arun Pal Singh

About The Author

Arun Pal Singh, a successful marketer and writer offers a unique and duplicable business opportunity at http://www.homeforprofits.com. To avail his free Income Course, send an email to [email protected] with subject ‘subscribe’.

This article was posted on April 09

by Arun Pal Singh

Seven Things to do NOW to Look Good ALWAYS!

Seven Things to do NOW to Look Good ALWAYS!

by: Renu DalalJain

Fashion magazines target people every day with lists and charts telling them the latest trends and techniques to look better, skinnier, smarter, where to buy the hippest clothes or the latest shoes! If you’re a woman, you are probably bombarded more often than you like, and if you’re a man, you may not get the information that you really want to know! Due to the glut of information available, most people know the obvious things to do to look elegant or well groomed, such as getting a good haircut or wearing certain brand name clothes. However, this may lead people to overlook some simple, basic things that can be done RIGHT NOW to add that subtle flair and polish to your everyday look!

Renu DalalJain, a certified image consultant and the owner of Flair Consulting in Philadelphia, PA, works with men and women to help them put their best personal face forward in social or corporate settings. She maintains that there are seven essential things any man or women can do, and often overlook, to help them present a wellgroomed, neat, and elegant appearance to the world! And all this without spending a dime!

1) Keep your skin and lips well conditioned. Ashy knees, flaky skin and chapped lips do not look nice, and will make your skin look old and tired. This is especially important in colder weather. If you wear lipstick, it is imperative that you keep your lips moist, because chapped lips are even more apparent under color. Keep lip balm in your car and your bedside table and apply it whenever you get in the car and before going to bed at night.

2) Make sure your nails are well shaped and all a similar length. Nothing says you don’t care like ragged nails or nails that are different lengths! (Ladies, I know you worked hard to grow those nails but just because only one broke, you shouldn’t think nobody would notice!) If you polish your nails, keep your everyday color one shade brighter than your skintone. This looks professional and clean and makes your hands look elegant, especially if you wear rings. If you like brighter colors make sure you repair chipped polish right away! Chips in bright polish are extremely noticeable and make you look sloppy.

3) Make sure your clothes and accessories are in a similar color family – don’t wear shades of beige or brown clothing with black shoes or a white belt. As a rule of thumb, make sure your belt, shoes, and watchstrap are in the same color family. Sometimes a strikingly different purse or shoes can make a statement, but it has to be well planned. The article in question must be of good quality and in good condition, since you want people to notice it.

4) Your socks or hose must match either your shoes or your pants. Do not EVER wear blue socks with brown shoes, or black socks with sneakers! If you are wearing slingback or openback shoes, make sure your socks or hose are the color of your shoes or nudecolored. If you are wearing sandals, do NOT wear hose unless it is patterned (think fishnets) and ขdeliberately worn to make a trendy statementข.

5) Wear the highest length socks you can (at least mid to high calflength). NOBODY wants to see shiny shins peeking out when you sit down!

6) Polish your shoes and clean your sneakers! The number one thing people forget to do when going out is to check their shoes for scuffs or dirt. Polished shoes show that you care about your appearance. The most expensive shoes in the world will look horrible if they are dirty or scuffed!

7) Keep your wallet or purse organized all the time. Nothing makes you look disorganized like an overstuffed wallet hanging on for dear life in your back pocket, or a purse bursting at the seams! Make yourself a system to keep the business cards, credit cards or receipts you don’t need all the time, in your briefcase or at home.

And a bonus: an understated use of scent (aftershave, cologne or perfume) shows that you take an extra step with your grooming and can have a positive effect not only on your own mood but on those around you. According to the Social Issues Research Center in Oxford, UK, subtle fragrances can have dramatic effects in improving your mood and sense of wellbeing. In addition, in experiments, subjects exposed to pleasant fragrances tend to give higher ‘attractiveness ratings’ to people in photographs. The regular use of pleasant fragrances helps to reduce mood disturbances in men and women.

About The Author

Copyright © 2004 Renu DalalJain, MS, CIC

Flair Consulting

http://www.flairconsulting.com

[email protected]

This article was posted on November 04, 2004

by Renu DalalJain

Are You Irresistibly Attractive?

Are You Irresistibly Attractive?

by: Kimberly Stevens

If you’ve done any reading on the subject of marketing, you’ve certainly heard the term ขUnique Selling Propositionข or ขUSP.ข

As a reminder, your USP is what positions you in the marketplace are you, or what you sell, the best, the cheapest, the fastest, the easiest, the longest lasting, the most reliable, the most prestigious? Your USP is what makes you distinct from your competitors, but it’s often the thing firsttime business owners don’t fully understand.

Lara and I just started working together last month, and one of the first things we had to tackle was her USP. As a web site designer, she is part of a welldeveloped marketplace often competing with several other companies for every job.

ขI really don’t know why they keep picking the other guy. It’s so frustrating after I’ve worked so hard to get in the door in the first place. The only way I feel like I can get the job is if I underbid it, but I’ll never be able to keep my business running that way.ข

ขWell, you’re right,ข I replied. ขYou shouldn’t have to lower your prices just to get every job. There are certainly web designers out there who are charging less than you, but there are probably an equal number of them that are charging more. So, if we assume that there are companies hiring your higher priced competitors, then maybe price isn’t what every prospect bases their decision on.ข

ขIt sure has been for me. That’s always the reason they say they didn’t choose me. It makes me think that I’m going to have to lower my prices in order to get any work, but like I said, I’m not charging anything out of the ordinary. My hourly rate is at the market average as far as I can tell.ข

There were a couple of issues that we explored during the rest of the conversation, including her pricing, her competitors, her target market, her mission, etc. But the one that really hit home was her USP.

Up until this point, Lara didn’t realize that she was the one forcing her prospects to make their decisions based on price. She was marketing using the Competition Model instead of the Distinction Model.

In the Competition Model, your prospects see you as offering the same service as your competitors. In their mind, there is no delineation between what you and your competitors offer and how you offer it. So the only decisionmaking factor they are left with is price.

If they think all web designers offer the same level of web site design, can complete it in the same time frame and will be equally professional, what’s left? That’s right … price.

Think about how you make buying decisions. If you are getting your clothes drycleaned every week and you think that the three local dry cleaners all do a decent job, will have your suits ready in two days, and are equally friendly or disagreeable, aren’t you going to go with the cheapest one?

But some dry cleaners pick up and deliver don’t they? Some offer tailoring and mending services in addition to dry cleaning. Others set up shop inside large grocery stores, so you can knock out two errands in one stop.

These things make them distinct from their competitors. There are people who will pay a little more in order to have their dry cleaning picked up. There are others that will pay a little more to be able to drop it off and pick it up at the same time they are buying their week’s groceries.

If you don’t want to compete strictly on price, you’ve got to be DISTINCT from your competitors. That way, your prospects have something, besides price, to base their decision on. By emphasizing that distinction in your marketing efforts, you will naturally attract those prospects who value your distinction.

And when you are Irresistibly Attractive, the sales pressure is off. You just go out there, show them who you are and what you can do, and they come to you!

So how do you make you and your business DISTINCT and, therefore, Irresistibly Attractive? By creating your Unique Selling Proposition (USP).

What makes you different than your competitors? Are you faster? Do you deliver better quality? Are you more responsive to their needs? Are you closer in proximity? Do you specialize in a particular industry?

Take a moment to put yourself in the mind of your prospects. If you were hiring someone to perform your kind of service, what would you want?

You can practice by thinking about your own buying decisions. If I was hiring someone to clean my house, I would want them to:

do an impeccable cleaning job

show up on the scheduled day/time

avoid breaking/taking things

smoke outside of my house, if they smoke

charge $100 or less

If I could find someone to do these things for $65, I would hire them. But, if I would have to sacrifice the quality of their work or their reliability in order to pay the lower price, I would go with someone else. It’s important to me to have a clean house and to know that I can count on that person to show up on Thursdays before I have guests arrive on Friday.

So, here’s the process:

make a list of the things you would look for if you were a prospect hiring someone to do your service

put that list in priority order

gather all of your sales materials together (e.g. printout of web site, business cards, letterhead, brochures, email signature lines, proposal, trade show displays, newsletter, sales letter, direct mailers, cold calling script, elevator speech, etc.)

set aside 12 hours to review all of your materials to see what message you are sending to your prospects

revise your materials as needed

When you review your materials, try to look at them with fresh eyes as a prospect would. After going through them once and making notes about the impression they set, go through them again specifically looking for the top two distinctions from your list.

Do your sales materials/tools really bring your message home? Are your top 2 distinctions clearly emphasized in your materials? Are there things you need to add, omit, or revise in order to create your distinct impression on your prospects?

Once you are communicating a very specific and consistent message about yourself and your business, you will find that you no longer have to sell. Business comes to you – and it’s the kind of work you like that pays you what you deserve.

About The Author

Kimberly Stevens is the author of the ebook series, *The Profitable Business Owner: A StepbyStep System for Starting & Running a Successful Service Business*. Download Sample Chapters & get her free MiniCourse, *The 10 Most Common Mistakes Business Owners Make & How To Avoid Them* at: http://www.askthebizcoach.com/ebooks.htm

[email protected]

This article was posted on February 07, 2003

by Kimberly Stevens

Part 2 Do Not Ever Link to a Site Without Doing T

Part 2 Do Not Ever Link to a Site Without Doing This First!

by: John Krycek

Writing Links

In the first part of this article we learned some techniques to build a solid potential link partner list for your website. Those sites aren’t any good to you if you don’t use a strategy for writing the textual content of those links. Yes. I mean those few little words that are underlined in blue. In the right order they give the key to your website door to the world. In the wrong order, they don’t budge the cylinders in the lock.

Number of links takes second place to quality of links. The words you choose, varying them for each targeted link site, and incorporating some tried and true direct mail standard tactics will make your links more popular in the search engines, which is our ultimate goal. So lets get started!

As we said earlier, links are a crucial part of attaining high search rankings. The key to writing good กlink contentก uses the same tactics for writing all good web content. Namely, don’t write for the search engines. Write for your readers and target audience. After you do that, then go back and tweak the little details to optimize for the engines. Why? The search companies attempt to give results for human readers, and because a number one search engine position is worthless if the description of your site is the most boring thing anyone has ever read.

You have humans that are examining your site to see if they want to link to you. Even if you pay for links someone has to make the decision that you’re worthy of being on their site. And further, youกll never sell your product or service or attain any readership. Letกs take a simple stepbystep approach and make sure your links are lively, catchy, searchable and gushing to be clicked.

Pretend you’re the owner of a pumpkin company website. You sell all things made from pumpkins.

Step 1 Review Your Keyword List

Those are the words and phrases that you want to rank highly with in the search engines. They are the starting point for your link text. Note: กlink textก is the clickable part of the link, the underlined blue type. Letกs take some keywords and apply a few tactics to them to develop a good link.

A few keywords might be:

pumpkin retailer

pumpkin festival

pumpkin plant

pumpkin holiday

pumpkin festival

Step 2 Create variations on those keywords.

Think of phrases that someone might enter into a search engine. Using that thought as the core, build outward by elaborating and specifying. Ask yourself กwhat type of ____?ก to help you expand. For example, take the few keywords above and make them a bit more specific to:

pumpkin pie recipe

pumpkin bread recipe

cooking pumpkin seed

pumpkin patch

how to grow pumpkin

planting pumpkin seed

pumpkin carving design

carve Halloween pumpkin

pumpkin carving pattern

pumpkin costume

pumpkin centerpiece

Note: When coming up with additional keyword phrases (for use within your page elements and link) try this tool. www.inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ is part of Overture sponsored listings (now Yahoo) that will tell you how many times a phrase was searched in their engines on the web. Target the phrases with the most hits.

Step 3 Word Varieties

Your link should contain enough words so that when read out of context it still makes sense. Not so many words that it becomes blurred when a reader scans through a page.

Take the list you just made vary your keyword links using all of those keywords. Search engines raise an eyebrow at seeing กpumpkin recipeก on 50 sites with the exact same phrase all pointing back to you. It doesn’t see natural. Mixing up your link text with กpumpkin pie recipieก,กpumpkin bread recipeก, and กcooking pumpkin seedsก and the rest of your list keeps you well diversified without danger of spamming. And your keywords are more focused and targeted which gives you a better chance of being ranked higher.

Step 4 Incorporating Direct Mail Tactics

Now we have the words that will make up our link text. We’re almost finished. We need to give people some motivation to click.

The simplest of direct mail programs or incentive marketing campaigns all have a solid กcall to action.ก We need one here too. Why should a reader go to your site? Whatกs in it for them? Theyกve got better things to do.

So many websites use the phrases กClick here,ก กLearn more,ก or กMore infoก. Thereกs a definite boundary between keeping things simple and clean on a web page and just copping out. When I see those phrases on a link I think the writer didn’t have time to get me excited about their product so I don’t have time to go look.

It doesn’t take much to write a simple call to action. For example:

Instead of กpumpkin pie recipe,ก say กGrandmaกs pumpkin pie recipe and all things pumpkin at The Orange Pumpkin.ก Now your reader knows the name of your business (which will also be indexed), and thinks if itกs made by Grandma itกs probably good… I think Iกll have a look.

Step 5 Put it all together

Take your keyword phrase and surrounding text and create your link. The coded form looks like this.

Grandmaกs pumpkin pie recipe and all things pumpkin at The Orange Pumpkin.

Every single link doesn’t have to be different, but you should have quite a variety if you follow these steps for all your keywords.

Don’t forget to use those keywords within your page too!!

Step 6 Final Thoughts

Stay away from link farms and free for all link sites.

List in as many Directories as you can, especially ones that are of the same nature as your site.

Try to get oneway links. You might be able to buy some from someone fairly cheaply. If you have to get a reciprocal link, stick to sites that are similar in theme to yours. They don’t have to be identical, but in the case of The Orange Pumpkin Company, a link from a car dealer is a waste of time…unless that car dealer happens to have a collection of the worldกs greatest pumpkin recipes on their site. If thatกs the case, then try to get a link on the page with the recipes.

Even though you’re goal is to rank high in the searches, write for the end user. Then go back and finetune things for an optimized search engine friendly page.

Good luck and happy linking!

About The Author

John Krycek is the owner and creative director of theMouseworks.ca. Read more articles on the insights and secrets of website design and development and internet marketing in easy, nontechnical, up front English!

[email protected]

This article was posted on August 25

by John Krycek

A Hard Lesson Learned ….

A Hard Lesson Learned ….

by: Diane Hughes

Are you like me? I like to handle things on my own so I don’t even THINK about incorporating help with anything I am working on … especially my business as a whole.

Well, I learned something new recently. It was a HORRIBLE experience that actually turned out for the better. Let me tell you my story:

I have a team of about 2000 associates. Since all my sites are hosted at Host4Profit except for the site that their websites are hosted on, I decided to transfer everything over. Well, I have transferred many sites before so I knew how it worked. I knew I would get access to Host4Profit before transferring with my registrar and that all I had to do was upload everything over to the new host while my old host was still active. This would make a seamless transfer. No one would ever know anything happened …

To make a long story short, it didn’t turn out to be as seamless as I hoped and things were a little messed up for about a day. Needless to say, I received TONS of emails!

กWhat happened?!ก

กWhere did you go?!ก

กGive me my money back!ก

กHello? Are you there?ก

Well, I couldn’t ANSWER these emails because I was busy getting the transfer problem fixed. This caused most of them to email me a SECOND time, therefore doubling the amount of emails sitting in my email box! Stress was building as I worked to get the problem fixed ….

After the problem was finally resolved, I sent an update letting everyone know what happened. I got back to any emails that I felt needed answering … this whole thing took almost 18 hours of my time and NO SLEEP for me!

The stress and the fact that I had no sleep took itกs toll on me. When I got some really rude emails from some angry customers and associates, I didn’t take my own advice and let it sit until I calmed down. You know what I did instead? I gave refunds to all of them! I didn’t even want to deal with it … as a result, I refunded over $1000 in sales.

I know, I know … you’re asking yourself, กHow could that be a good thing?ก Well, it made me get out of my bull stubborn กIกll handle it allก attitude and incorporate some much needed help. Now I have someone to answer those emails, someone to answer those calls, and various other things. What a RELIEF! Why didn’t I do it sooner?! 🙂

If you answered กYesก to my first question above, heed my advice. Take off those bull horns and find a couple of people that you trust to help with some of your dauntless duties. And if your business is not big enough yet to incorporate help and you’re handling it just fine … don’t forget this advice when it grows right before your very eyes

Copyright 2004 Diane Hughes

About The Author

Diane C. Hughes * ProBizTips.com

FREE Report: Amazingly Simple (Yet Super Powerful) Ways To Skyrocket Your Sales And Build Your BusinessInto A Tower of Profits! ==>> http://madmarketer.com/diane

This article was posted on April 26, 2004

by Diane Hughes

Does Your Marketing Plan Need Changing?

Does Your Marketing Plan Need Changing?

by: Joy Gendusa

Change is good, right? Not always. But when is it bad? Is it a question of good or bad? Sounds philosophical. Maybe it is.

Philosophize on this…why would one take something that is going good – no.. great – and change it? Obvious answer is to make it better. Not!

In business or in marketing, change is not always good. When you have certain promotional actions that are in place making things happen, or in better terms, making you money – don’t change them! Why do I say this? Because I see it time and time again. Someone has a marketing campaign that is bringing in a good return on investment and they up and decide to change their postcard! What?!?!?!?!? Change your postcard – why??????? ขEr uh, we just decided to do something different.ข

And then some three or four months down the road, they call back with their tail between their legs and ask – no demand to have everything back the way it was before. In this latter case – change is good.

I am not just saying that to say that one should always keep their postcard marketing campaign the same and never change it. Quite the contrary. Change your marketing, change your habits, change your way of life when it warrants it. There is really some truth to the old adage ขIf it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.ข Maybe it is human nature to want to change everything once something gets going just the way they planned it. Who the heck knows? All I can say is step outside the humannature box. Change only when things are drastic or when change is warranted.

Drastic circumstances deserve drastic measures. But how do you determine drastic? Sometimes that is really easy. Your company’s income is crashing. Do something! Change! Or better yet, figure out what you changed and get it back to what was working.

How about a plateau? Does that deserve change? Depends on how long that plateau lasts. I have never seen things leveling off and staying level forever. It either goes one of two ways – up or down. I know an optometrist who had a very successful practice in small town USA. He never really marketed. He never really had to. People knew of him from miles around. Mainly he did PR stuff – a fundraiser here, networking there, etc., etc. His good works made him well known and respected and the community ooo’ed and ah’ed over him so much the paper loved printing it.

But things changed. Malls started opening up. People started shopping out of smalltown USA and into the bigger cities. The environment changed. But he didn’t. He still kept a good practice, but you could see something interesting – his gross income started to plateau. And over time – many years – that plateau gradually started to show where it was really going. I actually don’t have to say where – you’ve got the picture.

Now, would that demand drastic measures? Taking into account inflation, cost of living and other factors that are on the rise – yes, I would say that would demand drastic measures. Did he take them? Not until the direness became all too apparent. But yes, he finally did take them. He started postcard marketing his youknowwhat off!

I have another client that is just a dream. They have had the same list for the past 5 years, ever since they have been in business – thirty thousand physical therapists they mailed to over and over and over and over and … They never changed. They figured if it was bringing in the income it was the thing that was working. And it worked and it still works. And today – they made Entrepreneur’s 100 Hot List for 2005.

So, next time you think about changing your marketing plan, look to see if it needs it. Look at your numbers. Are they improving? Declining? If your income is going up – don’t change one single thing. But if it is going down or flat lining – for heaven’s sake, change!

About The Author

Joy Gendusa founded PostcardMania in 1998, her only assets a computer and a phone. By 2004 the company did $9 million in sales and employed over 60 people. She attributes her explosive growth to her ability to choose incredible staff and her innate marketing savvy. As an Expert Author, she is always willing to share her marketing advice through articles, interviews and speaking engagements; visit www.postcardmania.com.

This article was posted on September 07

by Joy Gendusa

How To Improve Your Conversion Rate

How To Improve Your Conversion Rate

by: Michael Cheney

Hardly a day goes by that I don’t get an email from someone saying:

กMichael, I just don’t know what to do. We are not getting sales, nobody is signing up, we are not making any money. What is going wrong?ก

They start thinking about search engines, more marketing and expensive advertising. When what they SHOULD be doing is taking a step back and saying;

กWhy aren’t the people who are already finding my website doing what it is I want them to do?ก

If you can get to the bottom of that problem you might not even need to get more people to your website. If you can convert a high percentage of the visitors that are already finding you into sales you won’t need to devote as much time and money to marketing your site in the first place. So letกs talk about some quickfire ways you can improve your conversion rate.

**This Visitor Will SelfDestruct in 5 Seconds..

You have probably heard a lot of figures and the average seems to be about 4 5 seconds: the time you have from when somebody lands on your home page to actually convince them to remain on your site.

You don’t have long after the 5 seconds if people don’t see what they want to see they will disappear forever. What happens is when I come to your site I am looking to get a series of questions I have in my mind answered as quickly as possible.

For example, I want to know;

Why you are different to your competitors, maybe where you ship to, how many products do you have on your site?

What sets you apart from everyone else in your region or in your industry?

What do your customers say about you?

Do you have any testimonials?

Do you have any press coverage?

Do you have any accreditations?

What makes your product so special?

What do you actually provide on this website?

I want to know all of these things in about five or six seconds.

Now it is not easy, nobody is saying that it is easy, but you do need to get over these benefits as soon as you can on your homepage. One of the ways you can start to do this is to actually bullet points of information.

**Be Ruthless With The Pages on Your Website

Take a look at your web site and pare down everything that you think is not essential. Try to take a step back, put yourself in the shoes of the customer, look at your website and look at every element and say;

กIf I removed that would my web site be any worse?ก

As a customer would that make the experience any worse, would that give the customer less information?

It is quite a scary thing to do. I have been down this road myself. When you start to do this it turns around your whole perspective on what your website is actually trying to do. I have landed on some websites, as Iกm sure you have, that have the opening line;

กWelcome to our home page. Welcome to ABC Ltd. We were formed in 1973 and we have 50 staff. Our core services are..ก

And it just goes on and on and on boring long paragraphs. People just don’t read like this on the web. They just want something now, they want it yesterday. So you need to think about how your website content is put together.

Don’t put things on your site that the managing director wants on there or things that you want on there or the graphic designer or developer wants on there. Put things on there that your CUSTOMER WANTS.

**Don’t Try To Be All Things To All Men

Another way you can improve your conversion rate is to try to focus on one single goal for your website or for each page.

The problem I see a lot of people struggle with is that they are trying to do too much with their web site;

They are trying to sell a product

They are trying to get people on their subscriber list

They are trying to give information to their employees

They are trying to get new business

They are trying to get information to customers

They are trying to give information about the community

Just hold fire a minute and zero in on the ultimate goal of the site. What is your siteกs primary objective?

You need to have one goal for the site or at least one goal for each page.

**Your Website Only Needs To Do One of The Following 2 Things

To help your thinking in this there are really only two things that a web site should do. If you are in the position that you can sell directly over the web that is what you need to do you need to be selling through your website.

If you can’t do that, and there are a lot of companies that can’t due to the type of business they are in, then you need to be getting peopleกs contact information. That is it. Just two things.

Either sell to visitors or get their contact information.

Once you realise this, and it might not be a nice thing to hear, because you might look at your site and think that lots of your pages are now redundant, or that certain pages don’t sell anything or get contact information. You might realise that specific paragraphs aren’t getting contact information for you or selling anything. The entire creation and copywriting process of your website becomes a totally different exercise.

But if you don’t focus on one of those two things then nothing is going to happen. I know from experience that not many visitors will read through your homepage, through the about page, through the services page and then dawdle along and click on contact and say;

กI will go to the enquiry form and see how much do you charge.ก

You might get the odd one. But you are not going to get tens, thousands or tens of thousands. You need to sell something or get contact information. Your website needs to be a machine that does one or both of those things and that is it.

About The Author

Michael Cheney

This article is an excerpt of กFrom Zero To Heroก a free 30minute Audio Masterclass you can download here: http://www.websitemarketingbible.com/marketing/

This article was posted on February 28

by Michael Cheney

How to Make Success a Habit

How to Make Success a Habit

by: Tamara Baruhovich

Want to make success a habit in your life? If you’ve got determination, it may be simpler than what you think. All you need is a slight change in your thinking pattern. Changing your thoughts will change your beliefs, your expectations, your attitude, and consequently, your behavior. A change in behavior will eventually lead you to a change in performance. And when you perform at your peak, you succeed. It doesn’t matter where you are in life, or what you do for a living, if you just modify the way you look at things, the way you think about things, you can achieve success.

The following steps can help you develop the habit of success:

1. Develop Real Desire.

What is really important for you? What do you really want in life? Truly, if you had everything you ever wanted right now, how would that picture look? For some, it may be a brand new home, for others a brand new Porsche. Maybe you want more time with your family, work from home full time or a fancy vacation every few months. Whatever it is, you need to develop true desire for the things you want. This desire has to come not only from your mind, but from your heart, and it should be your driving force. Like a compass on a ship, your desire will guide you through rough waters until you get to your destination.

2. Get Rid of Ambivalence and Be Realistic.

Ambivalence about what you want will undermine your success. Make up your mind, and be realistic about your desires. You may want to become the best olympic diver, and that is fine if you’re 16 and have been diving since you were 2, but… how realistic is that if you are over 30 and have never taken a class in diving? Plan realistically when you think about your desire. 3. Use Your Desire to Get Motivated. Successful people use what they desire as motivation. If you want a brand new home, get a picture of the house you’d like to own. Frame it and hang it over your desk and look at it every time things get though. It will help you see things from a different perspective, and will keep you motivated to move on.

4. Spell Out Your Specific Goals.

Decide how you’re going to get the specific things that you want. This should help you determine what you need to do to get closer to the fulfillment of your desire. Let’s say that for you to achieve the home of your dreams, you need to save $25K for a downpayment. If you are like me, you won’t get to save that by working for somebody else. So how can you achieve that? By working on an independent venture, either to supplement your income or to replace it altogether. That should be one of your goals.

5. Chose Achievable, Simple Goals.

Chose simple goals to start, even if they are not impressive. Once you’ve succeeded at achieving the simple ones, reward yourself and go on to achieve more elaborate goals. Always write them down, and keep them in your mind all the time, no matter what you’re doing. Focusing on your goals will help you get through the day. One trait of successful people is their ability to focus.

6. Develop a Complete Plan of Action.

Break your main goal into smaller goals, and then the small goals into simple steps. Then, give yourself definite deadlines to complete each step. Decide on the first step of your first small goal, and concentrate on it. Do you want to start a business in Network Marketing, but have heard all kinds of stories that make you wonder if it’s right for you? Your first step then is to get educated and informed. Gather all of the information you need to help you make a wise decision. Decide on the amount of time you’ll give yourself to do this task, and meet your deadline. Stick with your plan. Just do it. This is the attitude of people who are determined to succeed.

7. Stay Positive.

Successful people have the discipline to stay positive even through rough times. Also, they don’t worry about things going wrong. Once negativity steps into your thinking, it can immobilize you and stop you from taking action. Successful people know that worrying is useless. If you think about it, most things we worry about don’t ever happen anyhow. Even when some things go wrong, you’ll be able to handle whatever comes your way if you have a positive attitude. Don’t let imaginary problems stop you from taking action.

Determination and optimism can carry you a long way toward achieving your immediate and longterm goals to attain the life you want. When your vision is clear, you don’t let yourself get bogged down by temporary problems. Even when times get though and you feel like giving up, your vision will carry you through those moments. Even if you’ve made mistakes in the past, you’ll be able to learn from them, pick yourself up and keep going. Attitude will allow you to navigate your way around obstacles, and keep your eyes, mind and your whole being focused on the big picture. Teach yourself to remain centered and focused, like successful people do. And do whatever it takes to reach your goals, just because what you’re working for is worth the effort. Remember your desire?

You have permission to publish this article electronically or in print, free of charge, as long as the bylines are included. A courtesy copy of your publication would be appreciated.

About The Author

Tamara Baruhovich, writer, webmaster, and business mentor, coaches individuals all over the world, into starting and operating a profitable home business, in either direct sales or Network Marketing. For more information, visit www.EliteTeamLeaders.com and www.esoftwarebiz.info.

[email protected]

This article was posted on November 19, 2004

by Tamara Baruhovich

Getting More Work DONE In Your Online Business

Getting More Work DONE In Your Online Business

by: Willie Crawford

If you’re anything like me, there never seems to be enough time to get all of the things done that youกd like to do. If your income goals are as high as mine (sevenfigures,) then you also realize that youกll have a very hard time reaching them if you’re trading time for money. I realized this second point when I first noticed all of the doctors and lawyers leaving those practices to start their own businesses. When I asked them why, they explained that they only got paid when they worked, and that the fact that they could only work so many hours per day was what limited their incomes the most.

Assuming you’re not simply trading your time for money… working for a salary or at an hourly wage, how do you simply get more done?

First of all, you need to make sure that you’re only trying to do the things that you should be doing. For most entrepreneurs that means doing things to grow and market your business. Most other work should be farmed out… subcontracted or outsourced to technicians. If you can easily hire someone to do it cheaper than you can do it, then YOU shouldn’t be doing it.

Trying to do everything yourself is one of the biggest reasons I see most netrepreneurs failing. You simply can’t be an expert at everything, or do everything yourself. You need to identify those things that will offer you the highest return on your most limited asset (your time), and then you need to focus on doing just those things.

Yes, you may need to understand how to do some basic things yourself at first. For example, when putting up your first website, it may make sense to learn some basic html or atleast how to use a WYSIWYG (what You See Is What You Get) HTML editor. If you can afford to hire a webmaster and programmers to do everything for you though, even learning those things may not be the best and highest use of your time.

My personal experience, like that of many of my contemporaries, is that I learned to use DreamWeaver to do my own webpages. I simply didn’t want to be trapped waiting for my webmaster to make minor changes (that I knew would dramatically improve my bottom line) to a webpage . Good webmasters and programmers are often in high demand and very busy.

After I learned to do the basics, I also often fell into the trap that I want YOU to avoid. I want you to do two things. First, learn to say กNOก and secondly, learn to prioritize.

Learning to say กnoก can be hard. Itกs human nature to want to do favors for others. We want to be liked. We believe that if we say กnoก to requests for assistance, we will be liked less. Until you learn to say กnoก when you have a full plate, others will control your time and decide what you do… when. You can’t afford to put that much control over your time, your business, and your LIFE into the hands of others. So, itกs critical to master the skill of saying กnoก sometimes. You can do it politely 🙂

Learning to prioritize is the second essential that you must master. Otherwise, youกll simply find yourself doing the easy, enjoyable things that produce little longterm benefit, while you ignore the very things that you should be doing.

There are a lot of systems for prioritizing, and you have to choose the one that works best for you. For me, it involves making a list of the things that I must get done and then doing the most important ones first. This takes firmness and being honest with yourself. You have to do the most important things first because, then, if something doesn’t get done, it will be the less important things that you simply can’t fit in.

In prioritizing, you do need to seek balance though. Things you probably don’t want to compromise are your health and your relationships with your family. Make those a higher priority than business.

A common trap too many netrepreneurs fall into… one that Iกve fallen into, is offering to do too many things for others. In a phone conversation, or perhaps a discussion board thread, someone needs help doing something that is very simple to you. You try to explain to them how to do it, and they just don’t seem to กget it.ก So you offer to do it for them. Before you know it, you find yourself doing the very things that you normally get someone else to do for you so that you can focus on better uses of your time.

Hereกs how I got out of the trap I just described… I often had clients who needed to get minor things done before we could get other goals accomplished. They needed to know how to do minor things like FTP’ing a file, making minor edits to webpages, or perhaps changing out a graphic. In the interest of expediency, I often offered to do these minor chores… until I saw how often they mushroomed into major projects. My solution…. I found, or created, video tutorials explaining how to do these simple task. I reasoned that it made more sense to just do the task once, and record it so that I would have it handy if needed again.

If you visit my site at: http://WillieCrawford.com/how.html youกll find links to a few of these videos I did in Camtasia. These are flash videos on how to:

Copy and paste

FTP a file

Make minor webpage edits etc.

I actually have dozens of these but just share these few with you for illustrative purposes. Setting up something like this may be a great timesaver.

Very similar to the concept above, if you find yourself getting asked the same questions over and over again, perhaps you should set up a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) section on your website. This will stop hundreds of emails or phone calls. Just make the link to it prominent on your website.

If you find yourself answering the same email questions, or requests, over and over again, set up email templates in your email program so that you have those answers handy. Then, often all you will need to do is pull up the template and change the name to respond quickly via email. You could also use programs that scan an email looking for keywords and then automatically send a response based upon the context of the email. Thatกs a little advanced for this article, so I won’t explain it here.

Similar to the Camtasia videos, if you find you’re explaining the same thing over and over again, you could also post an MP3 teleclass recording online for your clients. You could also just set up a phone line with the recorded messages, instructions, or other information, and provide your clients with the phone number for listening to the recording. Many sales organizations use this idea for weekly training meetings, etc.

There are many other common sense things you can do to get more done. A couple of quick ones that I use are:

Just working smarter… i.e., I don’t stand in line at the post office. My staff and I have arranged to just walk up to the counter and leave the containers full of mail on the counter. The clerk simply gives us more mail กbuckets,ก and we buy postage in bulk or over the Internet. If we do need to actually talk to a clerk, we visit the post office during the least busy times of the day… NOT during lunchtime when everyone visits the post office.

Avoid time wasters such as spending too much time at online discussion forums. These can be great places to network, brainstorm, or do research, but make sure you’re not just avoiding getting started on an urgent project.

Identify when you are most productive and use that time to do your most challenging work. Set aside times when you are least productive (based upon your natural body cycles) to answer email or return phone calls.

Stop procrastinating! Often we procrastinate because a task seems so large. Simply break it down into bitsized steps and it will seem less ominous. Then choose a step and do it. Mark that step off your schedule to reinforce the fact that you are making progress 🙂

Automate where possible using things like autoresponders and interactive web forms to dispense commonly requested documents. You can even use software to automatically update or change the content on your webpages. One such piece of software that I use and love is called ‘traffic On Steroids.ก You can check it out at:

http://WillieCrawford.com/trafficonsteroids.html

These are just a few of the ways that you can get more focused and get more done. Itกs really just a matter of prioritizing and then doing it. Adopt just a few of these ideas and youกll be surprised at how much more you do actually get DONE! Without implementing a few of these suggestions you can’t be successful simply because youกll never finish all of the tasks that you need to do.

Copyright 2005 Willie Crawford

About The Author

Willie Crawford is a corporate president, published author, seminar speaker and host, teleseminar speaker and host, retired military officer, karate black belt, master network marketing trainer, and lifetime student of marketing. He shows people how to actually generate substantial income online using very simple, easily modeled systems. An example of such a system that you can study and duplicate is at: http://HowToBeReallyHealthy.com

This article was posted on March 24, 2005

by Willie Crawford

Online Business: Work Smarter, Not Harder

Online Business: Work Smarter, Not Harder

by: Keith E Bryan

Online business is probably the fastest growing market on the planet. With over 34 million web pages out there and more being created every day it seems like an almost hopeless prospect for the solo home business owner to achieve any sort of success. Think of the competition…….right? Well, almost.

For those of us that have been raised in a world where a small business owner works like a dog to keep their creation from going bankrupt it seems almost unfathomable to even think of competing with the กbigก companies. If youกve ever known anyone that owns a business think back to the first few years of their entrepreneurial venture. Youกve probably never seen anyone so tired/overworked/stressed/worried in your life. This is what most people think of when someone mentions กstarting your own businessก.

The beauty of the modern online business is that practically everything can be automated. This is not to say that there is no work involved in starting a business on the internet. The difference from business twenty years ago and business today is astounding! If you plan your online business well you can accomplish in minutes what just twenty years ago would have taken hours, if not days.

Lets run through some of the options available to you to make your online experience less stressful and time consuming. Letกs find out how to work Smarter, not Harder.

First things first……. We have to build a website.

This alone scares many people. กI don’t know HTMLก or กI can’t afford to have a page built for meก are things I hear all the time when talking to people about online business. Letกs get something straight…… you DO NOT need to know how to program better than the top site designers at EBay in order to make a web page. I know many people with minimal HTML knowledge that have done exceedingly well in online business.

There are many template systems out there that make building a completely functional web page as easy as copy and paste. One I frequently recommend is the Powersite System (http://powersitesystem.com). Itกs simple and effective and lets the new business owner focus on adding content, not scanning endless lines of code or constantly uploading your updated page to the server from a desktop program.

Youกll need to pick key words for your site which can easily be accomplished with websites like Wordtracker. Pick key words that will get you some traffic but aren’t going to be impossible to get your site ranked. More on this……..

http://bizwhiz.com/article362.html

Then you need to find a domain name www.valuename.com works just fine and is cheap. Look for a domain name that contains your key words and is fairly easy to remember, the shorter the better for simplicity. (ie: avoid picking www.ThisisMyBusinessSiteandYouShouldLookatIt12345.com)

Next Step…… Adding Content / Products

If your page is going to be informational there are many great article services out there. Here are a few…..

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/article_announce/

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/netwritepublishannounce/

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/publisher_network/

http://thePhantomWriters.com

If you are going to sell actual products youกll probably want to look into working with a dropshipper (unless you have a big garage to store all the products you will be selling) There are many out there. Here is one Iกve heard great things about…..

http://www.mydssd.com

And then…… Exchanging Links

The best way to move up in the search engines (to gain traffic) is to have many related pages linking to yours. Link exchange websites like Link Partners are a great way to find sites to exchange relevant links with. Much of this can be automated to save you time and effort……. all you have to do is approve links you want and decline the ones you don’t.

You can also do a search in a few of the major search engines for your selected keywords……. the sites that pop up at the top of the search are the ones you would ideally like to exchange links with to boost your rankings.

Last one…….. Get an Auto Responder

This is a service that will send automatic email messages for you at preprogrammed times that you select. Set one up to send out occasional information about your site to your members, use it to keep in touch with your customers, get feedback about your site to help you improve….. etc. You won’t actually NEED this feature until you are getting heavy traffic to your site, but itกs a handy time saving tool for busy webmasters.

Thatกs basically it! Rinse and Repeat.

Of course thereกs always more things that you might like to try to improve your business but those are the basics. Try new things and track the results. See what works for your site and go from there. The secret to online business is to jump in and get wet…… do SOMETHING and work on improving things from there…… one step at a time.

About The Author

Keith Bryan has over 9 years experience in both Internet and other forms of advertising and marketing. For more information, tips, tricks, hot products and articles check out http://www.workathome101.net or email us at [email protected]

[email protected]

This article was posted on March 21, 2004

by Keith E Bryan

The 2 BestKept Secrets Of The Internet

The 2 BestKept Secrets Of The Internet

by: Mike Cheney

Itกs a difficult creating a website that brings you business. Itกs fulltime job where things seem easy at first but as soon as you start to explore the possibilities and appreciate the complexity of the task at hand it can soon start taking up ever increasing amounts of your time. There is a plethora of people out there offering you conflicting advice and itกs often difficult to know what to focus on.

This article cuts through all that and reveals to you the two most important things you need to know about creating a website that brings more profit to your business..

Secret Number 1 Information

Yes thatกs all it is information. Just think about this for a minute what is the sole reason anyone surfing any website anywhere across the world is looking for? Every single one of them is looking for just one thing information. The information might take the form of text, an image, a sound file or whatever but at the end of the day it is information. This is the first biggest and bestkept secret of success on the internet and now you know it!

What do you mean กSo what?ก. The sole purpose of your website is to provide its visitors with information think about this the next time some combattrousered graphic designer tells you a big Flash graphic would be a good thing to have instead of a homepage.. People are looking for information don’t put anything in the way of them getting this. Make sure the information you have on your site is easy to find, worthwhile reading and ideally easy for your visitors to disseminate onto their friends and colleagues.

Information is also essential if you are going to gain any influence with the search engines. They might only be computer programs but those search engine critters can be quite clever at discerning a website that contains nothing of any use and one that has useful information relevant to its target audience. Lots and lots of high quality relevant content on your website will do more for your websiteกs overall success than a fancy graphic or rotating picture of your head on the homepage.

Secret Number 2 Interaction

Goto your website. Just look at it. Go through a few pages. Imagine that you had hit กPrintก on each of those pages. Would the experience of reading the pages in hardcopy be exactly the same as reading them on the screen? If it would you don’t own a website you own an expensive brochure. Interaction is why the internet was born it is the one attribute and opportunity that sets the medium apart from print and anything else. Your website needs to be littered with things that enable interaction between you and your visitors. Feedback forms, downloads, bookmarking tools, contact options, newsletters etc.

Information and interaction together these are the only things that matter when it comes to the internet. Now go back, look at your site and appraise it honestly in terms of how well it addresses each of the two facets. Is it full of interactive features that enable people to get closer to your business and control their browsing experience? Does it provide lots of valuable information that is easy to find? Armed with these two secrets you can start to truly harness the real power of the internet. Good luck!

Mike Cheney, www.magnet4web.com

About The Author

Are You Getting Your MagnetMail? Mike Cheneyกs WorldFamous Free Magic Mail To Make Your Website Magnetic, Get Yours Now: www.magnet4web.com/website_services/?page=magnetmail

This article was posted on March 31, 2004

by Mike Cheney

7 MustHave Traits For Work At Home Success

7 MustHave Traits For Work At Home Success

by: Trent Brownrigg

There are a lot of reasons why so many people fail shortly after starting a home business. In order to achieve your work at home dreams there are certain traits you must possess or acquire. I have listed 7 musthave traits that I consider to be the most important. Go through the list carefully. Truly think about whether or not you have the desired trait. If you find that there are some that don’t describe you then decide how you are going to change in order to acquire it. Don’t try and fool yourself into believing you already have all these traits, unless you truly do. Fooling yourself will also be cheating you out of achieving your home business goals.
1) Self Discipline – Working at home means that you don’t have a boss or coworkers to keep you on task. When you are the boss it is easy to do something other than work. This is especially true in a home business where you have your personal life all around you. You must discipline yourself to do certain tasks at certain times every day. Do not let your home life interfere with your business just because you work at home.
2) Routine – You must avoid procrastination all costs! Once again you do not have a boss or other authority figure to keep you on task. A luxury of being your own boss is that you get to pick your working hours. Make sure you aren’t putting off work until tomorrow or the next day. Doing this will squash your home business dreams faster than anything. You must establish a workload to get done every day and do it.
3) Persistence People are always starting this or that but hardly anyone ever finishes once it gets a little rough. Having a home business has a lot of benefits but first you have to get through all the hurdles in the beginning. There are few things harder than building a home business from the ground up. There are also few things more rewarding once you have succeeded. It will get tough at times so you must have persistence.
4) Desire – You can hope and wish to gain financial independence for the rest of your life but it will never happen until you desire it. You must determine exactly what you want for your financial future and then let it become your obsession. Do not leave any room for failure or you will do just that… fail.
5) Purpose – In order to build a solid business you must have a central purpose. It’s easy to try and do a hundred different things at one time but it gets you nowhere in the end. People that fail don’t have a defined purpose or goal set for what they are trying to do. When you try to do too many things at once, without really knowing what you are doing it for, then you will quickly find that nothing is working. Many people just give up at this point.
6) Education – You don’t have to have a college degree to work at home. In fact, starting a home business really doesn’t require you to have much of a formal education at all. However, you must educate yourself tremendously on your particular business topic. There is going to be a lot of things you need to know in your business. Most of it can be learned on the internet or with home study courses.
7) Enthusiasm – You must thoroughly enjoy what you do in order to succeed at it. There is an old saying that enthusiasm is contagious. With enthusiasm you will have much more success getting people to do business with you. The whole purpose of working at home is to do something you like, under your own terms, so pick something you are enthused about.
Now, go back and read the list again. Do you lack any of the desired traits? Do you possess any of the negative traits? Find someone who knows you very well and is comfortable giving you constructive criticism. Have them go over the list with you to give you an outside perspective on yourself. If you find anything you need to work on, get started immediately. This is no time to procrastinate. Your future is on the line!
Copyright© Trent Brownrigg www.workathomejobsiowa.com
I grant permission to publish this article, electronically or in print, as long as the bylines are included, with a live link, and the article is not changed in any way (grammatical corrections accepted).

About The Author

Trent Brownrigg is a successful internet marketer, webmaster, and author of business articles. He will personally help you build a secure financial future. Visit http://www.workathomejobsiowa.com for more details.

This article was posted on June 23, 2004

by Trent Brownrigg