Health, Wealth and Wisdom

The Problem with Newbies (part 3)

By admin | September 8, 2008

Hi and hope you had a terrific weekend! Today I’d like to continue on some of the problems that prevent newbies from achieving success in internet marketing. Do you know what your most valuable asset in your internet marketing business is? Your list? Nope. It’s your TIME. If you don’t use your time wisely, you won’t have any list worth shouting about.

Now before you go thinking, “This is another one of those time management rants …”, let me assure you that it is not. I am not about to tell you all the technical stuff like how you should plan your time, eliminate time-wasters, automate your functions etc.

I have learnt from experience that one of the BIGGEST hindrances to making money online is that internet marketing newbies spend their time ‘wrongly’. What do I mean by ‘wrongly’? Let me put it this way. You either make money or lose money. It’s the same in any business you’re in, and internet marketing is no different. This is especially so when you’re just starting out.

Have you come across some guru who says he makes money even in his sleep or when he’s on vacation? Well, that’s very true, but only because he has taken the TIME to build an empire of websites that together form multiple streams of income. This would have taken him a couple of years at least. It is highly improbable for you to earn enough to quit your job and take a holiday anytime you wish and still earn mega-bucks if you only have one website. The gurus can afford to enjoy the fruits of their labor because they worked their tails off when they were newbies making money, not losing money. Now that seems obvious, but let me tell you what I mean.

As I said, you either make money or lose money. Every activity either makes money or loses money for you. In internet marketing, reading emails loses money for you. Watching videos or listening to audios lose money for you. Organizing all your files and folders loses money for you. Now before you think I’m crazy, let me explain that all these activities are ESSENTIAL and need to be done. But more often than not, the newbie internet marketer spends all his time doing all these things at the expense of the more important money-making activities.

So what are the more important money-making activities? Here are some of them. Researching your niche, keyword research, writing great copy, creating websites, driving traffic and tracking your stats. More (much more) of your time should be spent on these activities each day than reading emails, organizing your files, downloading free stuff, watching videos, listening to webinars etc. All these should also be done but you must keep a proper balance. In other words, spend more time each day doing the things that make you money directly than doing things that don’t.

Now let’s make things practical. I would suggest that you make this routine a habit. Suppose you have 8 hours a day to work on your internet business, the non-money-making activities should be limited to only 2 hours. The rest of the time should be spent on direct money-making activities. If you don’t have a website up yet, then that should be your main focus. Do whatever research necessary, then write some compelling copy and create your website. Only when you have some virtual real estate can you sell it. It’s pointless reading up on the latest traffic-generating strategy when you haven’t even got your website ready!

If you already have a website, then spend time driving traffic. Perhaps an hour a day blogging and commenting on other blogs, another hour posting on forums, another hour creating a Squidoo lens or Hubpage, another hour tracking your stats and tweaking your site etc. This is what the gurus did in their early days for months and years. Trust me, if you do this consistently, sooner or later you will have multiple streams of income each producing money for you on a regular basis. After some time, you too can take a vacation anytime you wish and still be making money.

Well, that’s it for today. Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post. You won’t be disappointed.

Clarence

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The Problem with Newbies (part 2)

By admin | September 5, 2008

Yesterday, I wrote about the characteristics of an internet marketing newbie. The most prevalent and common condition that newbies find themselves in is information overload or analysis paralysis. This means you are so overwhelmed by information (and offers and products and the latest ’secrets’ etc) that you don’t know what to do or where to start. Also this leads to a perpetual learning, reading, studying of all kinds of methods and ways to make money that you don’t take enough action actually doing it. After some time (maybe a few months or so), you wonder how come you make so little money in your business. Been there, done that!

Let me share a bit about myself and my own journey in internet marketing so far. I’ve been having an online business for more than a year now and can be considered an intermediate marketer. My business is still a one-man operation for now. I do make money online (and am happy with it) but I’m aiming for more. I’ve learnt a LOT the past year or so and I can tell you lots of things about how to start and maintain a money-making internet business, especially if you’re a newbie beginner.

I live in Malaysia. This is a disadvantage when it comes to currency exchange because the Malaysian ringgit is much weaker than the USD. I was not born with a silver spoon in my mouth and I don’t have a huge budget for my business, meaning I have to be very selective on how I spend to grow my business. Furthermore, I live on the other side of the world compared to most marketers so that makes tuning in to live events really hard sometimes (I’m not in the habit of waking up at 3 in the morning). Do you share any of my disadvantages? If so, then listen up because I’ve gone through a lot the past year and you can learn from my experiences and mistakes.

If you’re a newbie, overcoming information overload comes with the right thinking. Do not be afraid of ‘losing out’. You may be afraid that everyone else knows the latest strategy or has the latest information except you. If that describes you, stop thinking like that! Let me give you an example. You probably heard of Ryan Deiss’ Continuity Blueprint that went live yesterday. Well, I watched his videos and I thought they were great. Knowing Ryan, the Continuity Blueprint is a great product also. But it went live at about 3 a.m. Malaysian time and it sold out within the hour (he was admitting only 100 people into the program). Did I try to get myself a place at 3 a.m.? Nope. Do I think I missed out on something? Nope. See what I mean by right thinking?

So in light of that, the first thing to do is to unsubscribe from as many lists as you think are not essential. Which are essential and which are not? That you have to decide for yourself. But if you’re not on so many lists, don’t worry about it. If you don’t know about every product that comes out, don’t fret over it. Believe me, you won’t lose out. Unsubscribing will free your time and energy for you to focus on what is really important. You already have enough information to put yourself on the path to success if you just use whatever you’ve got now instead of perpetually reading, studying and learning the so-called latest method in internet marketing. Do you think the gurus got to where they are now by constantly reading emails and e-books without doing actual marketing?

Now that’s the first step to take if you’re a newbie who has been online anywhere from 6 months to a year but still not making money.

That’s all for today. Stay tuned because I’ll be sharing more essential information in the coming posts. In the meantime, have a great weekend!

Clarence

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The Problem with Newbies (part 1)

By admin | September 4, 2008

Over the next week or so, I am going to write posts to help you if you are an internet marketing newbie who is just starting out. Internet marketing newbies are those who form the largest portion of those who fail to make a living on the internet. These posts are to help you not only survive but succeed and ultimately make a living online. If you are a newbie, chances are, these characteristics describe you:

You dream of making a lavish full-time income on the internet, mostly on autopilot. This allows you the freedom to live the kind of lifestyle you desire without financial worries.

You are on many, many lists. Every internet marketing guru has your name and email address on their lists. As a result, you get bombarded with at least 100 emails from these guys everyday and a huge amount of your time is spent reading these emails and related attachments.

You are on the internet everyday trying to figure out how to run a successful online business. You probably learn new things almost daily. You are constantly watching videos, listening to audios or reading e-books learning the newest money-making system on the internet.

You download just about everything (especially if it’s free) found on the internet. Whether you need it or not and whether you know how to use it or not are unimportant. You download it anyway ‘just in case’.

You buy more info-products, software, scripts, systems, ‘how-to’ methods etc than you actually use. As a result, you have tons of PLR, MRR or RR e-books, the latest software and scripts, memberships to all sorts of programs that promise to be the silver bullet that answers the basic question, “What Must I Do To Succeed On The Internet?” sitting in your hard drive gathering virtual dust.

The combined effect of these characteristics is information overload and analysis paralysis. In other words, you hardly take any action based on what you already know or have in hand. Now at this point, you may think that this post is irrelevant to you because you do take action. If that is so, then why are you not succeeding beyond your wildest dreams? And why is there such a high failure rate (some say as high as 95%) among internet marketers?

So what should you do? Well, reading this post is the first thing to do. If I have just described you in the paragraph above, I’m going to help you build your business if you’ll just keep following my posts over the next week or so.

Ok, that’s it for today.

Keep coming back to this blog and stay tuned to what I’m going to share. Believe me, it’s very important and it’ll mean a breakthrough for your business beyond your dreams.

Talk soon,

Clarence

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Step by Step System for Niche Marketing part 4

By admin | September 3, 2008

Here’s the final part of my step by step system for niche marketing. But first let me re-cap the earlier steps. There are seven steps altogether, including today’s final step. First, find a profitable niche. This means a niche that has buyers willing to spend money for what you have to offer. Second, do keyword research. Find good keywords pertaining to your niche. I have mentioned some good keyword research tools in my earlier post. Third, find content around your keywords. These contents may be articles, blog posts, videos, audios, podcasts, e-books etc. Fourth, find or create your own product using your content. You can cut and paste, modify or change as you wish to come up with your own product. Alternatively, find a related product from affiliate marketplaces like Clickbank. Fifthly, create your websites. You should have at least a blog, a main website and a squeeze page. Each should have links to one another and an opt-in form to gather leads. Sixthly, drive traffic to your websites. I have given lots of traffic generations strategies in my previous post.

Finally, the seventh step is to track and tweak your websites. As you drive traffic, always check your stats. I recommend two of the best tracking websites - hexatrack.com and google.com/analytics. Both give you excellent stats and best of all, are free!

Always tweak one thing at a time for example, change your header and see what happens after a few days. Then try something else like change your headline and see what happens. Keep tweaking based on the stats that you find and you’ll get the best combination of copy in your websites that bring you maximum profits.

Well, that’s how to do niche marketing. As they say, it’s not rocket science, so if I can do it, YOU can do it, too!

All the best,

Clarence

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Step by Step System for Niche Marketing pt 3

By admin | August 10, 2008

Hope you had a super weekend! Mine was hectic as usual. It’s expected…I’m a pastor :-) I’d like to share the next step in my step by step system for niche marketing. First a quick recap. Step one was to find a profitable niche. Then you do keyword research to come up with good keywords, especially long tail ones (keyword phrases with 3 or more words). The next step is to generate content related to these keywords. After that, find (or create) a product that has to do with your keywords or contents. Once you have your product, you can set up your websites i.e. a blog, main website with sales page and squeeze page. That’s where I stopped. Now let’s move on to the next step. This is the penultimate one but it’s pretty long so this post is only gonna be about this step.

6. Generate traffic to your websites. On each of your sites, you should have a lead capture form that allows you to obtain the names and email addresses of your visitors. Then you direct as much traffic as possible to your websites. I do not recommend you buy leads (’Pay $10 and blast your ad to 1,000,000 emails’). These leads are usually not targeted enough to your niche and there is always the danger of spamming. If any one of those 1,000,000 people accuse you of spamming you’re in trouble, even if you didn’t spam them. So stick to tried and true traffic generation methods such as (these steps are courtesy of James Grandstaff):

a. Ezine ads. You can google ‘ezine directories’ and find a list of ezines you can advertise in

b. Forum commenting. Comment on forums in your niche and add a signature file that links back to your site(s).

c. Articles. Remember you generated content in step no. 3? Make your content into articles and submit them to article directories. Just make sure your articles are keyword laden with between 2-5% KW density (see my post ‘How to See Through Guru Tactics’).

d. Safelist advertising. These are lists of people who have agreed to receive emails from each other. So you can join these lists and email others who have joined like you. Tell them about your website and product. Once again, you can google ’safelist’ to find these lists.

e. List builders. This is similar to safelists except you can only email your downlines but not your uplines.

f. Joint ventures. Usually you cannot do JV’s if you’re affiliate marketing. But if you have your own product, then you can look for JV partners. They are people who have their own lists to whom they can promote your product. Of course, you must do something for them in return.

g. Pay per click advertising. Most people use Google Adwords. A word of caution, though. If you’re just starting out and are not clued-in, you may spend more than you earn on PPC. It has happened to me before so I know what I’m talking about. So if you are a newbie, stick to free traffic methods initially.

h. Viral Marketing. You give a re-brandable or ‘passable’ content out for free. For example, you can produce a video and upload it or a pdf document and submit it to free ebook directories.

i. Traffic exchanges. This is ideal for advertising a squeeze page where members can view each others’ websites to collect advertising credits.

There are other methods, such as press releases, social media etc, but the above ones are good enough for starters. And most of them are free. So use them. The key is consistency. Do every one of them a little each day. You WILL see results (your list grows, you make sales etc) within a few months.

Alright, that’s all for today! Have a great week, take care

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Step by Step System for Niche Marketing pt 2

By admin | August 6, 2008

Hi, there! Let me continue with part 2 of my post, ‘Step by Step System for Niche Marketing’. But first, a quick recap on steps 1 to 3. The first and foremost thing is to find a profitable niche. By that I mean a niche with buyers who have a need they want met. After finding such a niche, then find good keywords. Find especially long-tail keywords. They may not have very high search volumes, but they have much less competition (i.e. there are not many websites that come up when you type these long-tail keywords into the search engines). Only after getting your keywords do you start generating content.

As you can see, it’s a step by step process. It must be done in the correct sequence. And every step is important. Think of it like the recipe for baking a cake. Each step is essential and all steps must be done in the correct order. In fact, I’ve got a free podcast series called ‘The Almost Magical Recipe of Making Money Online’. You can read my story and get this podcast series by clicking here. Although I started the website primarily for Baby Boomers, the podcast series is appropriate for anybody who wants to have an internet marketing business. Just fill in your name and address at the bottom of the page. Here’s the link again. http://www.beyourownonlineboss.com

Now after you’ve completed step 3 of generating content, you can go on to the next step:

4. Get a product. You can either find a product you can sell as an affiliate or create your own product. If you’re just starting out, I’d suggest you do affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketplace sites like Clickbank or Commission Junction or PayDotCom are ideal for finding affiliate products. Find a product that is as closely related to your main keywords as possible, for example the name of the product may contain your long-tail keyword. Or alternatively, you can create your own product. The advantages of that are you can determine the modality of the product (whether you want it to be an audio or video or pdf document etc) and of course, you can keep 100% of whatever price you fix your product to be. With product in hand, now proceed to step no. 5

5. Create the appropriate websites. Notice I said, ‘websites’. You should create more than one. You need at least a blog, a main website containing a sales page and product and a squeeze page. That makes 3 websites. Do you have to have 3 separate domains? Not necessarily. You can use just one domain but have them on different folders or use subdomains or even add-on domains. All three websites have different functions. For example, your blog can carry a review of your product and lots of testimonies of the product. Your main website will have useful content about the niche you’re in and perhaps a forum for people to join a community. And of course your squeeze page is for lead capture to build your list in your niche. And you should link all three websites to each other. These backlinks will push your websites up the SE rankings.

Ok, I hope you are benefiting from these tips. In my next post, I’ll share the next step, so stay tuned!

Clarence

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Step by Step System to Niche Marketing

By admin | August 5, 2008

The trouble with internet marketing is that there is so much information around that you don’t know where to start. And this information is not arranged in a step by step way that is easy to understand and implement. The gurus often give advice or teaching that is peacemeal or that only relates to one aspect of internet marketing. So after two years of researching virtually everything, I have put together my complete step by step system to internet marketing that teaches you how to start making money online from scratch and which can be replicated again and again. I’ll give you a simplified version of it here.

My personal preferance is niche marketing. I am marketing in a few niches and I’ve had to learn the hard way how to do it right. Here is my 7-step system to niche marketing success:

1. Find a profitable niche. I have come across gurus who teach on this but few know how to teach it correctly. For example, have you heard of gurus that tell you to go into a niche that you personally like or are interested in and at the same time can make you money? Well, what if the niche that I like does not make me money? That’s what happened to me when I took my first internet marketing course. All the niches I liked had low search volumes. So I’ve since learned that finding a profitable niche is more important than one that I like. If they both happen to be one and the same, that’s a bonus. But if a profitable niches is not one of my personal likes, I would still go into it simply because it makes money.

2. Do your keyword research in your profitable niche. In my last post, I mentioned that article marketing in itself is not enough to generate traffic. The missing element is keywords. Keywords with high search volume and few competing sites. Thankfully, there are great free keyword research tools that get the job done excellently. Google’s own keyword research tool is one great example. Now it has been improved and tells you search volume in addition to amount of competition. Once you get a good set of keywords for your niche, you can proceed to the next step.

3. Generate keyword-rich content. Now you find all sorts of content related to your keywords. It may be in the form of articles, audios, videos, blog posts, wiki, social media submissions etc. Just make sure that you make changes to them or write your own so that you do not plagiarize. And also make sure your KW density is correct i.e. around 2-5% of your content, otherwise you may be regarded as spamming. How do you get content? Well, use the search engines, go to article directories, surf the social media sites, video sites, podcasts etc. The more content you have, the better, as long as they are of quality, not just full of fluff.

You with me so far? Good. That’s the first three steps in my 7-step system. I’ll reveal the next 4 steps in my next post.

Stay tuned!

Clarence

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How To See Through Guru Tactics

By admin | July 30, 2008

It’s great to be back! I’ve been away the past few weeks. I wrote an article awhile ago about gurus and their tactics. I submitted it to an article directory and I’d like to share it now.

Let me say from the very beginning that most gurus are really nice people. Some of them aren’t, though. But even the good ones do the following things I’m about to show you. If you know what they are, you’ll have a more realistic perspective of the offers gurus make you.

Have you read lines like, “You can work only 2-3 hours a day …” in a sales letter? I have, many times. Well, if you work only 2-3 hours a day right from the start of your internet marketing career, you won’t make much money, that’s for sure. So if you intend to make internet marketing merely a hobby, then 3 hours a day would be fine. But if you’re serious about making it a career, 2-3 hours a day is a fallacy, at least in the beginning.

You see, the problem is most gurus show you only the final result. They have the luxury of working so few hours a day because they have a support team doing the technical work (which is very time consuming), answering emails, manning their support desk, web-mastering and a host of other tedious tasks for them. But when they first started out, they worked their tails off, putting in hours and hours of work trying to understand and implement it all.

That’s the first guru tactic you must be aware of. They usually show you only the final result but don’t tell you how they got there. Here’s the second tactic.

Gurus, more often than not, leave out crucial parts of the puzzle. I’m sure you know about article marketing. Every guru will tell you to write articles that link back to your website. So you find a bunch of articles from the web, edit them and submit them to an article directory. After a week or so, you check your stats. A paltry 30 or 40 views. You wait another few days. The count increases to about 70 views. So few! You decide to write your own articles. “Original content will definitely do better,” is what you think. After a week you check your stats. This time, it’s about 50 views. What’s wrong? You thought article marketing was the panacea to all the ills of traffic generation. You look at the gurus and their articles (which are worse than yours) get thousands of views within a couple of weeks.

The thing is the gurus never told you the most crucial part about article marketing. I’m no guru so I’m going to tell it to you. Here it is…

Your articles must be keyword-laden, especially long-tail keyword-laden. THAT’S how you get lots of page views. Do you find gurus telling you that in their coaching courses? Very few do. I once took a ‘personal, take-you-by-the-hand’ coaching course from a ‘guru’ and he taught me article marketing but not how to write keyword-laden articles. Here’s the final guru tactic.

They tell you half-truths. If you’ve come across claims like “I made $68,495.57 in my first month in internet marketing”, welcome to the club. Is such a statement true? Yes it is. But is that all there is to it? Not on your life. The full truth is, “I made $68,495.57 in my first month…but I spent $5,892.97 on advertising, software, a coaching course, reports, recurring expenses etc.” Is spending $5,892.97 to earn $68,495.57 good ROI?” Of course! But what if you don’t have $5,892.97 to spend in one month when you’re first starting out?

Many gurus’ coaching courses contain hidden costs which they don’t reveal in their sales letters. I once signed up for a coaching course where the guru said I only had to spend $24.95 per month to launch a successful internet business. As time went on, he told me I had to spend $150 on a solo ad, then another amount on pay-per-click advertising, then some more on some other stuff. Well unless you’ve got very deep pockets, you can’t keep up with the expenses while you wait for income to increase.

These are some of the tactics gurus use to get a response from you, whether it’s to buy their products or opt-in to their list. Now that you know the true picture, you can make a better decision about their offers.

Ok, take care y’all!

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Freebies for you

By admin | July 9, 2008

I love helping people. And one of the ways to do that is by giving stuff away for free! So I’ve just added a Freebies page in this blog. In it you can find all kinds of things to help you in your business and personal life.

I just uploaded 5 fantastic freebies you can download. They include 2 classics. To me they are compulsory reading for anyone (not only internet marketers). There are also some internet marketing e-books.

Just click on the Freebies tab and you’ll find out what I’m raving about

O, another thing…I will update the page regularly with new freebies, so check back often, ok?

See ya!

Clarence

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Marriage Test on Infidelity

By admin | July 7, 2008

This post applies to married couples and singles in a steady relationship. How easy is it for you to have an affair? How prone are you to being unfaithful to your spouse or boyfriend or girlfriend? How strong is your marriage or steady relationship? Is it able to withstand the temptation of infidelity? Take this Infidelity Test to find out. It will go a long way towards answering the questions I just mentioned.

Here it is:

Answer ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to the following questions and compare your score with the assessment scale below

1. Do you have close friendships with anyone of the opposite sex?

2. Do you have same-sex close personal friends with whom you regularly share your feelings or intimate details about your life?

3. Do you keep in touch with ex-lovers?

4. Do you share your personal life with colleagues or clients?

5. Do you flirt?

6. Do you fantasize about anyone other than your partner?

7. Have you ever been unfaithful?

8. Do you have a hobby, game, sport or activity that interferes with your connection to your partner?

9. Is there anyone other than your partner that you have physical contact with regularly?

10. Do you have family members with whom you regularly share your feelings or intimate details about your life?

11. Is there anyone other than your partner that you give to regularly?

12. Do you dress provocatively?

13. Do you have any addictions?

14. Do you ever share good news with someone other than your partner before sharing it with your partner?

15. If an attractive person flirts with you, would you engage him/her and enjoy it?

Assessment Scale

0-3 ‘Yes’ : Faithful Marriage Champion - Congratulations! You are physically, emotionally and spiritually faithful to your partner. But you should still ask yourself if you fall short in any area or if you have room to improve on anything

4-8 ‘Yes’ : Average - You could improve your faithfulness and fidelity a lot and intensify your connection with your partner. You’re probably not aware of how damaging the connections you are making outside your marriage or relationship are to your relationship with your partner. For FREE insight and help in improving your marriage or relationship click on this link:

How to Fix Your Marriage. Get FREE Advice Immediately. New Alternative to Counseling.

9-15 ‘Yes’ : Out of shape marriage - You need help. Your focus is outside your marriage or relationship. You are borderline unfaithful to your partner, either physically or emotionally or both. You need to redirect your focus to what’s most important. Quit all the extra-curricular. It’s draining your marriage/relationship. Don’t delay. Get FREE help and insight to fix your marriage and relationship! Click on this link:

How to Fix Your Marriage. Get FREE Advice Immediately. New Alternative to Counseling.