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Build a Home Internet Business: Where to Begin One of my favorite phrases I like to remind beginning online marketers is "Relentless Focused Action." The phrase is self-explanatory for how to achieve success online. I have had many new clients who come to me saying they are "studying" Internet marketing before they begin. Often they have been "studying" for many months. It is OK to study. Nothing is wrong with that; I do it all the time myself. However, in a short amount of time, once the beginner has a bit of knowledge under his or her belt, it is time to take action! Eight hours of time in the trenches actions doing the work instead of studying are worth far more than 2 weeks spent just thinking and planning. I can't emphasize enough how important taking action is! Not only is action the only way to reach success, it is the best way to learn! Reading about something is fine, but doing is the real teacher. For example, I took a LOT of education classes in college which were supposed to teach me how to teach. But in reality, I learned more about teaching in the first week on the job than all the classes I took put together. This is usually true for almost every occupation. Likewise, all the newsletters, tutorials, and videos you watch are worth far less than the time you spend in taking action. Sure, the action could be in the wrong direction. But it is always an important learning experience. Remember that changing direction while moving is far easier than changing direction when standing still. Another problem many beginners have is that, although they understand action is important, they underestimate how much action is required. For example, article marketing is a tried and proven method for building back links and driving traffic. A beginner may understand this and then begin writing 3 or 4 articles a month. In reality, this will do little good. Those who are successful with article marketing generate that many articles per day...not per month. The same goes for any area of marketing; focused and massive action will work! Hit and miss marketing is a waste of time. One of my favorite phrases I like to remind beginning online marketers is "Relentless Focused Action." The phrase is self-explanatory for how to achieve success online. I have had many new clients who come to me saying they are "studying" Internet marketing before they begin. Often they have been "studying" for many months. It is OK to study. Nothing is wrong with that; I do it all the time myself. However, in a short amount of time, once the beginner has a bit of knowledge under his or her belt, it is time to take action! Eight hours of time in the trenches actions doing the work instead of studying are worth far more than 2 weeks spent just thinking and planning. I can't emphasize enough how important taking action is! Not only is action the only way to reach success, it is the best way to learn! Reading about something is fine, but doing is the real teacher. For example, I took a LOT of education classes in college which were supposed to teach me how to teach. But in reality, I learned more about teaching in the first week on the job than all the classes I took put together. This is usually true for almost every occupation. Likewise, all the newsletters, tutorials, and videos you watch are worth far less than the time you spend in taking action. Sure, the action could be in the wrong direction. But it is always an important learning experience. Remember that changing direction while moving is far easier than changing direction when standing still. Another problem many beginners have is that, although they understand action is important, they underestimate how much action is required. For example, article marketing is a tried and proven method for building back links and driving traffic. A beginner may understand this and then begin writing 3 or 4 articles a month. In reality, this will do little good. Those who are successful with article marketing generate that many articles per day...not per month. The same goes for any area of marketing; focused and massive action will work! Hit and miss marketing is a waste of time. Build a Home Internet Business and Escape the Stressful Rat Race My Monday mornings used to be spent getting up and going off to work. I used to wonder if it was even possible for me to get out of that kind of routinely situation. I even started thinking that it was my destiny to be doing that. After all, how would the world function if everybody just stayed at home and worked from their computers? However, like many others, I always had a restless feeling that I was not doing what I was sent out to do; that I wasn't performing my purpose in life. I had taken many different jobs, but none of them made me feel like I was doing what I was supposed to. Of course, I tried a lot of ways to get out of those types of jobs, but the same thing would happen, and before I knew it, I was back to getting up every Monday morning to head off to work. However, I never let go of my dream of doing something on my own; of working for myself, instead of someone else. And somehow, I knew that was always a better idea. I think people who have lost that dream may still be made to to work for someone else, but for those people who still hold on to that dream, that may not be the case. The good thing is, dreaming and truly believing that you will live the life you choose for yourself is already 90% of the battle. So dream deeper; think of how it will make you feel when you could finally get up on Monday mornings to work for your own projects, instead of someone else's. Dream deeper and believe it with all that you have. Believe it until you could almost taste it, and then all that is required is for you to take action. What Is Holding You Back? If you have ever wondered why you, and many others like you, are still stuck in a job that they do not really enjoy, while secretly wishing to lead a totally different life; well, I have come to realize that the answer is, more often than not, fear. There are a lot of things to be afraid of. The fear of the unknown, of not making any money, of not making enough money, of what might happen, of what might not happen, of getting insurance, of losing a retirement plan, and the list goes on. But imagine if we lived to follow our hearts, instead of letting our fears get the best of us. I know fear very well; it often leads to a dead end road. Fear kept me stressed for years in the high speed rat race. And most of us get stuck in that rat race. And so we realize one day that we have fallen into a trap, and remain stuck in a miserable life. Some people actually think that we are not even supposed to like our jobs; that it is normal to be doing something without passion. Maybe it is, but this is such a sad thought. But then again, it is too easy to let all the years pass. It is easy to just say "Maybe next month, or next year"; but we all know life is short. Of course, there are no guarantees, which is what has gotten you all worried in the first place, but once you have freed yourself of your loathed daily routine, your creative side will shine and ensure your success. You must believe tin yourself a hundred percent, and if even that is a problem, maybe you have to start there. Correct your way of thinking! Every single one of us has ten times the potential when we are on our own, as compared to when we are stuck in some office cubicle. You must find out what the reason behind your lack of self-belief is. If other people are willing to pay you to help them make money, then why can't you be just as valuable when applying that work for yourself? Focus on your dreams, but take action, and then actually live your dreams! Finding Your "Groove" If you have a full time job and you have trouble getting things going for you, do not beat yourself up; that is truly one tough task. Eventually, you will have to find time to free up space for your creativity to shine. As in most ventures, Internet marketing, creative time is very important. When things start to overwhelm you and you just feel like you are beating your head against a rock wall, take a breather. Take your mind outside and take a short walk, instead of working in front of the keyboard 24/7. Your success cannot and must not be forced. Things will fall into place once you have started growing from inside. Hard work alone cannot produce success. And when you have finally gotten your groove, things won't even seem like work anymore. Finding Your Groove Part II As most of you may already know, I do not only help novice Internet marketers, I also help Internet marketers that are on the brink of success. I help those who are so close to succeeding that they can almost taste it. Sometimes this may get really frustrating. Knowing that success is very close, and all you have is not enough to speed up the process. Somehow you feel like all your efforts are not working, and that success is too close, but still very far. If you find yourself feeling like you are constantly trying to move mountains just to attain some level of success, than you are probably working against your own goal. Internet marketing is all about taking basic skills and making them work with your personality, and how you do this, determines your success. When you find the perfect fit, however, things will start falling into place, and things will flow more easily. Think about it. Somehow, you can feel if what you are doing is a good fit for you. Many people have good ideas and plans and sufficient knowledge, but their chosen method is not in harmony with their real selves. Once you have found something that fits you to a tee, things will become easier and success will be yours! Do not try to imitate how any body else approaches their Internet marketing methods. Instead, try to find your own winning formula, because only when you find the exact connection between you and your marketing methods, will you become successful. My Idea of "Job Security" My wife and I often went to a Chinese restaurant which was quite popular. One day, we noticed that a new Chinese restaurant was being built right next door! This surely caused the owner of our favorite Chinese restaurant to get anxious and suffer for sleepless nights. While i was eating there, I realized that it is much safer to be in internet marketing than owning your own family restaurant. Now, what if the Chinese restaurant owner had to close and re-tool his life? What will be the costs and risks involved in that? W definitely do not want to go through all of that. On the other hand, what if my website would go down the drain for some reason? That won't be such a huge deal, i will just have to revamp and ramp up my other sites or start anew. Anyone who possesses sufficient marketing skills not only rests better at night, but wakes up to many opportunities! Leaving the Rat Race It's a great morning! I'm watching the rain outside the window and can almost here all the plants and trees say, "aahhh!" I'm glad i can stay home to enjoy this. I spent many mornings getting up to work all day, and on each of those mornings, I had wished that I could stay home and work here. But, here I am, and I had always known this day would come. My Mother always told me I could have anything that I wanted if I dreamed and worked enough. And I guess now I could say, she was absolutely right. Before I stopped working for someone else, I didn't realize how stressful it had been for me. The stress didn't stop at wok, it had extended on the hours after work, when I knew that I would have to get up early tomorrow and do the same things all over again. Work-related stress had even extended to my weekends, especially during Sunday nights where waking up and going off to work on the next Monday mornings was closer. Nowadays, I am aware how much stress has been lifted from me. I realized that the long stressful hours I used to put it working for someone else was not at the same level of the way it improved my life. But I know now that life does not have to be that hard. I have realized that when you focus on smaller amounts of time and work hard on your own projects, you can enjoy a better life as compared with a life spent working 40 to 50 hours a week for someone else. And that is the best part of life online! A Day In An Internet Marketer's Life It is eight in the evening, Wednesday, as I am writing this in Southard. And as I am thinking back on the days, it dawned on me how different this day was compared to how it would have been when I was still stuck in my full-time job. Here is how today went: I got up at around seven in the morning and began working on AdWords. I created a campaign with a squeeze page for a new product which took me about three hours. I took a break by ten and went to our garage, which we had converted into a studio. I worked on some clay pots I made yesterday. By half past ten, I was back on the computer until noon. I randomly tweeted while I was on the computer. My wife and I then ate sandwiches and then went for a walk with our dogs. At around one in the afternoon, I went to get my haircut, after which, I took the day's shipping to the post office. I got back home by two and caught up with my forum and emails. I then checked to see if my new AdWords campaign stats were already showing up. Around three in the afternoon, I saw my wife outside raking leaves, and I somehow felt guilty because we had huge amounts of leaves to rake. I decided to go out and help her and then fired up our new kiln for the first time. We came in at around six and I started heating up leftovers for supper, after I decided to catch up on my forums and emails. By seven, we were watching American Idol we had Tivoed the night before. Before dark we went outside with the dogs to hunt for squirrels. We came back in and we are sitting in our recliners right now. I have some writing to do so I will probably be up for a little while. I might sleep at around ten thirty, like I usually do, or stay up until midnight if I really feel like writing. This was a pretty typical day; definitely easier than my days spent working for another person. I am glad to know that all the hard work and exhaustion I had given when starting out this business paid off. My wife and I are living our dream, every day, in this 20 acre property. Better Late Than Never To Begin Living Your Dream! It is a lazy Sunday afternoon here in Oklahoma woods. I know many of you enjoy watching football games while trying to avoid thinking of the stressful day tomorrow. If you dread Mondays, keep reading! One year of hard work and two years of VERY hard work is what got me out of the maze I was living in. Looking back, I realize how much I was truly giving up just to receive a monthly pay check. The ins and outs of corporate life made me feel like caged bide; in a sense, it took away my innate creativity. Nowadays, I feel like a freed bird, like I have complete control over my destiny. Whether my wife and I live from paycheck to paycheck, whether we are well off, of filthy rich; that is completely under my control. I do not have to worry about my losing my job, getting promoted or receiving a raise, I decide what happens in my life I remember how terrified I was at losing my monthly security blanket. The first month was the toughest, but by the second month I could feel a new energy taking over me. By the time the third month ended, I was rolling with energy and focus! I know it sounds cheesy, but allowing my self to find and use my full potential was the best thing that had happened to me. I only regret not getting on track sooner! Your Dream: Will It Be Coffee Or A Website? Someone told me that they could not afford to do internet marketing and that $3.95 for monthly hosting and $9.95 a year for a domain name was too much money for them/ I understand things can be tight, but I am sure most of us spend that much money on our vices! The money you spend for soft drinks or gourmet coffee just might as easily be your investment for starting a new career and finally leaving your corporate rat race! In internet marketing, as I have told you before, there is almost no risk, almost no investment required, and the potential is nearly unlimited. No other business may compare with the possible return internet marketing offers! So break that caffeine habit and get yourself a website! Give Your Dream Time Most Internet marketing beginners have the common trait of being impatient. Joe Newbie has an idea he thinks will make him a million. He plans it out, works hard for a month implanting it, then checks his PayPal account and finds nothing. Not one single sale. The day after, his account is still empty, and the next week, it has remained the same. Joe starts getting discouraged, he waits again for another two weeks. Still zero sales. Here is how it could have worked. Joe had a great idea; he put a month's worth of work into it. However, his idea needed three months of work to get started. Unfortunately, Joe would never know; he got frustrated and quit. I am not saying that all good ideas require three months, but you must realize that if an idea does not produce results, it either needs more work put into it, or it was a bad idea. It is up to you to know the difference; trial and error will be your guide. Continue working on an idea or drop it and go to the next. One of these routes will lead to your success! You know where the third options leads. Quitters never win. Creating Your Online Home Business Success in Six Simple Steps Your success on the Internet, or with any other goal, is determined by a series of steps. There is a great book "Think and Grow Rich" by Napoleon Hill that is perfect for developing an action plan for any goal. I highly recommend it... you won't be disappointed! I am asking a few questions here to help you drill down to your specific plan. Please put thoughtful consideration into each answer. OBJECTIVES/CHALLENGES 1. If I had more free time, I would... 2. What is my burning desire? What are my goals? What do I want in life and why am I doing this? 3. What are the greatest obstacles to attaining my goals? 4. How much time am I willing to dedicate each week to accomplish these goals? 5. Will I continue with my occupation after this is completed? 6. Name two things that I am willing to give up or sacrifice on your way: Those questions are designed to see how serious you are about achieving success. Now for the steps: The 6 Steps 1: Fix your mind on the exact goal you desire. Be definite ... Be specific! 2: Determine what value you intend to give in return. 3: Establish a definite date when you intend to complete the goal. 4: Create a definite plan for carrying out your desire and begin immediately! Whether you are ready or not... start today. Put that plan into ACTION! The specific details will work out later. Just get started! 5: Now write a clear, concise statement of your goal, the timeframe, what value you plan to give, and then describe how you intend to accomplish it. 6: Twice daily read your statement aloud - morning and night! Read with conviction - see it and believe you've already accomplished your goal. Your ability to define specifically what you want to accomplish, putting an action plan in place, and then acting is of vital importance. But the key is to convince yourself - with feeling, emotion, and "a burning desire" that you will be successful. That desire, kept strong in your mind, will help ensure that you are acting to accomplish your goals and therefore will lead to your success. When you follow these steps, I KNOW you will have success! Internet Home Business Tips Internet marketers are confronted with the different faces of this business. An utmost advantage in investing in an online business, compared to the traditional business, is the simplicity of trial and error of ideas. Without committing too much time and money, the Internet marketer can choose whether to pursue an idea or not. A failure in an investment can be so heartbreaking, and although Internet marketers are not fully protected from that, we have the advantage of benefiting from small capitals and failures. The strength of Internet marketing comes from a failure, truly that is ironic, however we must make sense of this process to enjoy the beauty of online business. Once someone has experienced "failure" in the brick and mortar world, they really come to appreciate the risk vs. reward aspect of online marketing. A failure in the brick and mortar world can be a devastating experience. However, a failure in the online world usually only means a small bump in the road for most marketers. Every advantage has a disadvantage. Internet marketing may come casual and easy from the investment's point of view, but success is still not THAT simple. The process in earning money demands testing ideas numerous times that it entails huge loses and multiple failures as well. This is why not all can survive. The downside in Internet marketing is not the failures, but the determination to move forward. If you had your fair share of failures, don't fret because all of us do. All successful people go through the same experience and feel exactly as you do. If you have not failed, then you have not succeeded. Best Internet Marketing Strategies I recently gave advice to a friend who was developing an online business. In the course of one of our conversations I reminded him that it probably would be several months before he saw even one sale. This was after he had already spent countless hours building the site and preparing his business for orders. He seemed shocked I would say he may have to wait that long. But after further conversation, I helped him realize how important it was that patience was in his tool kit of the best Internet marketing strategies. Although there are many ways of making money on the web, I will focus this discussion on the most common way which is selling goods or services. I will also assume you already have a sellable and potentially profitable product or service in mind and you have at least a basic knowledge of web design. This last assumption is the main stumbling block people have when wanting to start a web business. Simply put, it is a necessity to learn web design. Get a book, take a class, or get a friend's help in order to learn the necessary skills of web design. Now we'll discuss the nuts of bolts of defining the best Internet marketing strategies. Assuming you are starting from scratch with a new product or service with a new web site, I'll first discuss the basic criteria which must be met. One of the best Internet marketing strategies is to have a product with a unique name. For example, you would prefer to sell a product named "SupremeBar" instead of "PowerBar". SupremeBar has only a handful of results in Google. PowerBar has 2.5 million. The trick is to find a niche product area which there is already a market for but has little competition yet in the search engines. It would be very difficult to start selling PowerBars on the Internet. There is way too much competition for that keyword, and would not be one of your best Internet marketing strategies. Ok, so you have the perfect product with a relatively unique name. Now you must start creating the site. Google is the search engine of choice to be in. Over 65% of all searches on the Internet are through Google. Yahoo is number two and MSN is a distant third. I've found it is quite easy to get my brand new sites to be listed well in Yahoo and MSN, and those will send you some traffic. But one of the best Internet marketing strategies is to put all of one's efforts into getting listed high in Google. Just focus on that. If you do that, you will also show up well in MSN and Yahoo usually. And most of the time MSN and Yahoo will index your pages long before Google will. Remember, content is king on the Internet. Providing great content is one of the best Internet marketing strategies one can have. Google gives relevance to many things when deciding how high to rank your page. Relevant content, how many other sites link to you, how long the page has been indexed, etc. Since your site is brand new, the only thing you can offer the Google spider analyzing your site is content. You simply must create as much original content about your product as you can. Write pages about SupremeBar's nutritional content, its history, and its many uses as an energy bar, etc. Your first and core pages should be optimized on the keyword SupremeBar. The best Internet marketing strategies should be all about driving relevant traffic to you site. Searchers who find your site with a search of SupremeBar make up the absolute most relevant traffic. They are searching for what you sell! Remember, the content in your site MUST be original. Even though some sites may rank high with duplicated content, Google will tell you this is not a good thing and those sites risk being penalyzed. All the search engines consider this to be Spam. You should be able to copy and paste any paragraph on your site into an exact phrase match (using quotations) in a Google search and not find any other results but yours. Never ever copy someone else's content for your own. If you do, it will at some point come back to haunt you. Copied content is definitely not one of the best Internet Marketing strategies. So now you have a great content and you need to create the page. My advice to you is to make the page as personal as possible. Your potential customers viewing the site must trust you. Without trust, you will not make any sales. The best Internet marketing strategies for the beginning web entrepreneur are to keep everything simple. You are probably not a pro at web design, but that is OK. Do not make the mistake of trying to make your site look fancy and super professional if you aren't an expert. It you try that, it will be obvious you are not and the site will look "cheesy". Just keep it simple and personal. People will trust either a simple, personal site or an expensive, high-tech looking site. They won't trust anything in between. Remember that point. It will be one of your best Internet marketing strategies! Use only basic HTML to build your site. Don't use Flash, layers, or fancy scripts. Not only does your code need to be clean for the spiders to read fast and easily, trying to be fancy will deter from the site. It's best to have a picture of yourself and talk about yourself, your family, your pets, etc. The best Internet marketing strategies should always include giving the viewers of your site confidence in you. People HAVE to feel comfortable with you before they will send you money! Finally, the list of the best Internet marketing strategies has to include a discussion on the host and shopping cart used. You must have a reliable host. You must also have a payment method for your product. One can use PayPal and get a free shopping cart. It is fine at first and I suggest starting a new site with it. But after the sales start coming in, you will want a more robust shopping cart. Our most successful site was started with a Godaddy $3.95 per month hosting accounts using the Free PayPal shopping cart. Although the PayPal cart has limitations, it was an easy way to test our idea with little risk. Once the sales started coming in, we switched to a more advanced host and shopping cart with Yahoo. Although I have only scratched the surface of describing for you the best Internet marketing strategies, you should have enough information here to be well on the road to success! Good Luck! We can all find success in this business. The only thing that differs one from the other is the ability to stay and proceed even through it all. Build a Home Online Business In the past several years my wife and I have created numerous and successful online businesses. I also have much experience helping beginners get off the ground with their own online businesses. I first want to first discuss what beginners to an online home business should avoid. Basically, if an offer promises bank loads of money with only a few hours of work per week, it's a scam. If the offer shows you plenty of pictures of fancy cars, vacation places, and even pretty women, it's a scam. But most importantly, anything that sounds too good to be true usually means it is. Also, if the offer says something about giving you your own affiliate website, that's another area to stay away from. If the offer tells you that you get your own online store, that process won't work either. There are no shortcuts to building a profitable online home business. Again, if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. There are no "turnkey" systems you can buy for this process. There are no secrets you can "discover." There's nothing you can purchase that's going to give you a very quick and easy online income. An online home business IS a business and requires treating it like one. The correct ways to build an online business are these: 1. First, you must have an idea. You must have some original idea and/or product ...or some unique twist on an existing idea. But most importantly, before you even begin you must know how to do the proper research in order to determine if the idea has a chance of success. Oftentimes, beginners start a project with an idea that has no possible chance of succeeding. Beginners must be able to determine if the idea is viable before they put any work or money into an attempt for building an online business at home. Doing otherwise is a lot like shooting arrows into the dark - maybe you'll hit something - probably you won't. 2. You must have a website. Beginners, for some reason, believe they can get into Internet marketing without a website. That simply isn't true. 99%, or higher, of all people who are having success on the Internet now days have their own websites. I'm not talking about the free sites available. Purchasing your own domain and your own hosting account are basic requirements for online success. 3. Before you even begin the project, you must have in mind how you will drive traffic to your site...and there are various ways to do that. You can use SEO, you can use tools like Twitter and Facebook or maybe you can use AdWords advertising. There are numerous ways to do drive traffic. Before you begin, you must have a traffic generation strategy in mind. Far too many beginners drop the ball in this area. Internet marketing and an online business are not "build it and they will come." For success, it is important to understand these basic principles for building a home online business in the beginning.