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Business opportunities are all over the Internet. You can do any one that you feel is right for you. However, making money with them is not as easy as everyone leads you to believe. There are a few things that you need to know if you are going to make money online. By following these tips you will be able to achieve the financial freedom that you have always dreamed of.

Tip 1: When looking for a business opportunity you will need to find one that has great products that you know everyone will want. They also need to have a marketing system that can be easily duplicated. This will provide you with training on marketing that will help you start making money.

Tip 2: When you find the opportunity that you are looking for. You will need to educate yourself on Internet marketing. This is one very important thing that you do not want to neglect. This will be your key to achieving the financial freedom that you want. You will never stop learning as there is so much that you need to know. Just remember that education is something that you need for any business.

Tip 3: You will need to be persistent and be able to motivate yourself. It will be up to you to make money with your own business. No one can do this for you so you will need to be able to do a little something on your business every day. No matter what you will need to be persistent in your advertising. It may take you a while to get where you want to be but by doing a little something every day you will be able to get your business started.

Tip 4: Don’t ever give up. This is one mistake that a lot of people make when they don’t see results right away. It will take some time to make the kind of money that you want to. There will also be a learning curve when you first start your business. So do everything you can to become a success and don’t ever let anything stop you.

Tip 5: Find a mentor who can teach you what you need to know. There are a lot of people out there who are successfully making money on the Internet every day. Most of these people will be able to show you how they did it and will help you every step of the way.

These are just a few tips that you will need to follow if you are going to achieve the financial freedom that you want. It can be done but it may take you some time. Don’t let this stop you from making your business a success.

Summary: Financial freedom can be achieved when you have your own online business. You just need to follow a few simple tips to help you on the road to success. It is up to you to make your own dream of financial freedom come true.

I’ve learned a lot about search engines and search engine marketing, mostly by trial and error. It’s those countless hours of research, testing, and failing when I often think it would have been better to let someone else experience it first, then I could simply observe and learn. But, I don’t have the patience to stand around and let others fail first. What’s the fun in that?

So, I’ve put together five points that, hopefully, someone else can learn from and avoid having to test themselves.

1) Google is the 800 pound gorilla. This is something I learned when I was mostly using pay per click advertising. Google is so far ahead in terms of technology and usability. Other search engines not only missed the boat, they fell in the water and drowned. Yahoo! is coming around but how many years did it take? Google is where it’s at. So, get over your love of Yahoo!, MSN, and AskJeeves. Join the gorilla.

2) Be patient So simple yet so profound. I see it time and again. People, especially new internet marketers, get dollar signs stuck in their eyes. They bite off on all the garbage that says you can get millions of visitors with no money and no effort. I bought off on it too. And it worked, for a few months. Trying to start a business online will try your soul like nothing else. The only way to have patience is to set goals, way out goals, and move towards them. There’s no more free lunch on the internet

3) Nobody owes you anything We get upset. We cry and scream. We think we’ve been treated unfairly. We’re doing good and then, wammo! We get hit with an update which knocks us out. Someone posts an ugly comment about our business. We get accused of all sorts of stuff. Some of it true. Most of it false. But we have to keep perspective. Nobody, not even the search engines, owe us anything. Think about it. Search engines are a free service. How many daily newspapers let businesses advertise for free? That’s essentially what you’re getting, free advertising.

4) You have to prove yourself This goes back to patience. When you’re just starting out, no matter how great you think you really are, you still have to prove yourself. You have to go out just like everyone else, toot your own horn, give away free advice, and basically do it all for no money. How do you earn trust? By being trustworthy. Very few bootstrap startups are successful from day one. Set goals, keep your perspective, and never give up.

5) Spammers still make money I never officially considered myself a spammer. But, I did use a few spammy techniques to get search traffic. What you have to realize is that there will always be spammers. If people are still making money by sending spam email, they still make money by spamming the search engines. Yes, it’s getting harder but it’s not impossible. But, don’t fall to that temptation. Spamming as a business is a lot of work. Why not focus on what you really want to do and not worry about the search engines? Trust me, you’ll rest a lot easier.

While these ideas certainly don’t cover every “I wish I knew” scenario, they should give you a head start on where you should be directing your time and money. Two valuable resources that can never be recovered once spent.

Here’s a great strategy that can dramatically change your business. It works best for professional service providers but it can work well for others as well. If you haven’t started down this road before, it can involve a lot of work but you only have to do it once. As soon as you’ve gone through the process once, you can use the same strategy over and over again. And you’ll be positioning yourself as an expert along the way.

First things first. You have to ensure you’re an expert in the field. Does that mean you have to be a PhD in the topic? No, it doesn’t. It just means you have to know enough about the topic to be authoritative. Keep in mind that most people know very little about any one fields and a recent study found that if you read just three books on a particular subject, you’ll effectively become an expert on that topic relative to everyone else.

The next thing you have to do is write a short handbook on the topic. This can be as easy as summarizing the content in the three books you read and putting the same content in your own words and in a condenses document. By doing this, you can forever more refer to yourself as an author and other people will treat you with more respect as a result. I have written two handbooks in the past. One was 28 pages and the other was 34. So these don’t need to be long novels. They just need to demonstrate your expertise.

The process of writing a short handbook does something else too. It structures your thoughts and your understanding of the topic. By being forced to explain the topic to an uneducated reader, you will end up knowing the subject better yourself. And with that understanding in place, you need to massage that content into a 2-hour workshop. Think about the most important points and organize them into a logical order for an audience to hear.

Next up, schedule the event and market it to get a few people in attendance. There are a lot of different ways to market an event like this and it doesn’t need to cost you a lot of money. The important thing is to get 10 or 15 people in attendance. That will give you a sufficient audience to practice delivering the information and getting the questions that naturally come up.

When you’re comfortable with the process, bring a microphone and record an event live. You can download Audacity for free and the microphone will cost $50 or less. Then, you’ll get the exposure from the workshop as usual but you’ll get an information product to boot. The importance of this is significant. A lot of speaking engagements require the speaker to have an information product to sell. It also builds more credibility. And it allows you to make some money even though you’re providing the workshops for free.

This 5-step strategy is a great way to position yourself as an expert within your field and leverage that position to gain new clients or partners. And once you’ve gone through the process once, you’ll have the tools forever more and can use them as often as possible without further efforts.

Tactical Execution has made a business out of helping others achieve their goals. The information in this article is just the tip of the iceberg and I encourage you to visit the website to take advantage of the resources available there.

It is becoming more common but the big question I get when talking to people is “Why use a blog?”.

Off the top of my head I can think of 5 major reasons.

A blog is:

•    Easy to update
•    Easy to get started
•    Liked by the search engines
•    Creating feeds automatically
•    Allows people to interact with you

Before I start let me take just a minute to define the term blog. The following is quoted from Dr. Mani one of the earliest marketers to embrace blogs.

“A blog is short for “web log” a sort of online personal diary where “anyone” can reveal his/her innermost thoughts, feelings, desires, dreams, ambitions, fears, hopes … you get the meaning.

Yes, it’s a website. With one small difference. It lists posts ordered by date in a personal journal format, and is easier to create than a website – just involves typing into a form and pushing the PUBLISH button”

The ease of push button publishing of most blog platforms make them one of the easiest web sites to update. On most platforms you don’t need to know HTML though it does help. If you can create a word document you can update a blog.

They are extremely easy to get started. Blogger and Word Press both can be started without much more than creating an account and clicking a few choices. Now there are huge advantages to hosting your blog on your own domain. But even there if you have cpanel hosting with Fantastico it is an almost fill in the blank process to get started. No great technical skills needed.

Search engines like blogs. They are usually updated regularly because it is easy. Compare the type and push a button to update of the average blog platform to creating an HTML page uploading it either through the cpanel or FTP. Much easier so it happens much more often. Blogs tend to have fresher content.

The search engines also like the RSS feeds that are created. Properly used feeds can allow you to generate links from other authoritative sites such as Technorati, Feedburner and others. These high PR sites create backlinks to your site which will make the search engines rate you higher. People can easily subscribe to your feed and know when you have updated your site through various RSS readers.

Finally, the biggest advantage is that blogs can be interactive. Most blog platforms allow your reader to comment on what you have written.

This does two very good things for you. You get additional updated content (which the search engines like) and you get feedback on what you have written.  Which are you more likely to do? Click a comment link and leave your input on a blog or try and find a way to contact the average webmaster. Even if you do it is usually through a form or email that does not increase the content of the site.

A blog definitely gets my vote. What about you?

Don’t be terrified by the following statistics: 1. 95% of network marketers never make it past the 1st year. 2. 3 out of 4 distributors quit within their first 90 days. This high percentage of failure applies to every aspect of human life – no more than 5% of human beings could achieve real success. The majority of the online business owners fail because they ignore or forget to lay a solid foundation. A house build on sand can never stand long.

It is true that online business offers many advantages. There is no inventory expense, no worry about management and employee relationship, no hassle with payroll, refunds or product returns and no headache over 9 to 5 routine and work burnout. You are your own boss and you work at your favorite pace in the comfort of your own home. You can make a fortune over a shorter period of time once you are in the right track.

However, as long as it’s defined as business, home based online marketing business can not go far beyond the basic requirements for a business. There is no shortcut in building up any business. How many beginners, blinded by the “get-rich-fast” schemes, were misled by the little work and 5 or 6 digit income promise that floods the internet business world? Just look at the fast-changing internet marketing business world, what are left behind are those products or services that sustains the basic demands of the market while the crazy money making Hypes vanish soon like bubbles. The following are 5 essential components to lay solid foundation and achieve success in your home business.

1. Do Your Homework.

Before you plunge into any online business, do research on the programs and products available on the internet markets. Choose your niche market and product. Exam your attitude, availability and capability. Find something that you are really interested in, which will inspire you later when you feel discouraged. This mind-set period is extremely important, which is the first cornerstone to build your mansion of business. Your ability is what you are capable of doing, your motivation determines what you do and your attitude or your mind-set determines how well you do it.

2. Create Your Business Plan

It would be much easier for any business to be on the right track with the guideline or roadmap of a business plan. Your business plan defines your target audience, your budget and advertising, the ways to reach your prospects and build up your opt-in lists and strategies to turn your prospects into customers. It guides you to attain your short and long term goals. Give yourself at least 3 to 6 months to learn the basics of your business.

3. Select Carefully Your Sponsor and Program

Like any business, online marketing business has its unique marketing tools and strategies. As a beginner, you must learn how to use these tools and where to find the marketing strategies. Finding the sponsor/program that can teach you these secrets makes the difference between success and failure. Choose the business model with proven records of success and the one who can provide you with detailed and systematical training after you sign up. “Opportunity dances with those already on the dance floor.” The value of a right program and guiding sponsor is priceless, which means half success of your future business.

4. Duplicate What You Have Learned

Once you find the sponsor/program that works for you, follow orders and repeat what your sponsor has done to make his/her business successful. Apply the principles and rules you are taught. Nothing but action brings your business to a new stage. After you have commended these strategies and mastered the secret weapons, you can start your own program or other programs by duplicating what you have learned during this apprenticeship. You business grow s in the process of your learning and taking actions.

5. Be Persistent

No one can run before learning to walk. The above four essentials are the basic steps to build up your business. As far as your final success is concerned, perseverance counts. Always remember: “Genius is 1 percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration.” – Thomas Edison. Focus and patience help you win the race.

In his book “Practical Thinking”, Dr. Edward de Bono talks about the basic thinking processes, how one understands, and the ways to be right or wrong in thinking. He said that the main purpose of thinking is not just to accumulate knowledge but to get enough knowledge in order to act on something. He also said that, in practice, the validity of an idea does not have any bearing in being right in thinking, for being right is a feeling, a belief that one is right during the time of thinking.

To put this in practical use, you should write your ad copies so that your visitors will feel it is right to buy your products. Make them feel that it is their idea to make the purchase. By doing so, it will be easier for you to persuade these potential customers to hit that buy button.

Here, then, are some ways to create that feeling of rightness in your readers:

1. Provide the benefits of your product.

People usually buy because of the benefits, not because of the features of a product. They think, “How can this help me? What’s in it for me?” By providing the benefits, you can show how your product can avoid pain. For example, you may say, “Never again be rejected when asking for a date.” You can also show how your product can gain pleasure. An example, you can say, “Imagine yourself opening the doors of your dream home.”

2. Use “goody-goody” words to build up the positive emotional reaction of your readers.

Words such as honesty, freedom, dignity, love and dream, convey such emotions that your readers react positively to them. For example, you can say, “Financial freedom for you.” Your visitor will then have the feeling that financial freedom is possible for them, and they may want to take a look at your product.

3. Use “bad” words to elicit the negative reaction.

Using “bad” words, such as hate, weak, or debt convey the opposite. By using these words, you can heighten the negative feelings of your readers that they may see your product as a tool to avoid or end their pain. You can say, for example, “Don’t you just hate your job?”

4. Assume your visitors will buy your product.

A popular line in ad copies start with the words “Who wants to be the next”. For example, by asking “Who wants to be the next millionaire?”, you are assuming that by buying your product, your visitor will become a millionaire. You can also start your sales letter with the greeting, “Dear Future Millionaire”.

5. Add a little humor in your sales letter.

Humor can put people in a good mood, making them to agree with you and lower their resistance to buy. This can provide that little extra push needed to close a deal.

Remember, make your readers feel that buying from you is a right decision they are about to do. Provide the benefits of your product, use words laden with emotions, and add a little humor in your ad copy. This way, you may see a drastic improvement in your sales conversion.

The customers are coming. Are you ready?

If you operate a retail store, you have less than one month to make a big success of this holiday season.

I’m sure you know how to run your store but I’d like to give you some tips to contribute to your success.

1. Few stores have enough staff working the floor. Schedule more staff than you need to work the registers and stock the floor. It’s stupid to operate with only sufficient staff to ring up sales. The goal isn’t to get the customers out the door as quickly as possible. Shoppers at this time of year have no idea what they want and are highly suggestible. You should schedule enough staff to keep the lines short at the cash registers and have sales people circulating the store suggesting items to customers. The goal is to sell as much as possible. If everyone is ringing up sales, no one is selling. Adding staff to work with customers will produce more sales. Retail help is CHEAP. A floor person can generate at least $100 per hour. Don’t be cheap, be smart.

2. Train your people. Retailers make the mistake of treating the holiday season as a “busy” time. It’s not just a busy time. The rules of engagement are completely different in November and December than they are for a busy Saturday in August. First of all, people are not buying for themselves at this time of year as they are during most of the year. This changes the whole shopping dynamic because people know what they like for themselves but find it much harder to choose something for someone else. The customers need more assurance. They want to know that their selections are good ones.

Teach your staff to help people shop for other people. NEVER ask, “can I help you?” Try this, “Hi, may I ask who are you shopping for? I might be able to suggest something great.” Do you want to knock your customers over with great service? Ask them “Is there anything I can do to make your shopping easier?”

Another big difference about this time of year is men will be shopping in stores or departments where they do not normally shop. Help them. Men are looking for a way to buy their way out of the season. There’s an old expression in retail that says women browse for a pair of pants and men hunt down a pair of pants.

Lastly, budgets mean nothing in December. People who had carefully planned to spend $50 on mom will spend $100 to get mom checked off their list.

3. Keep the goods on the sales floor, not in the back room. The store’s shelves must be full. When the amount of goods on the shelves begins to thin, the available selection looks picked over. That’s another reason to keep plenty of staff working. Small stores tend to stock and organize when things slow down. That’s the Sears way of doing things. You want your store as nice and full as possible when the most people are shopping in your store. As obvious as that sounds, you’ll seldom see it in practice. As soon as things slow down, around 9:00 p.m., everyone is folding sweaters and bringing out goods. Don’t bring carts on the floor during the busy time. But you can bring out goods in a constant flow of small boxes. When you bring a box out, watch the crowd flock to it.

4. Shock your customers with service. Offer to carry bags to their car. Offer separate receipts for each item. Sure, that’s a pain for you but it’s a wonderful service for the customer. Have envelopes handy and offer to put receipts in envelopes. You could run off some nice stickers for the envelopes saying something like, “gift receipts from Mandy’s Boutique”.

Get a pile of $5 cards from the food court or a near by coffee shop. You can probably get a big discount from your own food court vendors. If a customer spends over a certain amount, give them a card and tell them to take a break on you. Don’t advertise this. Just do it. Building goodwill through service is a lot cheaper than marking everything down 3 weeks before Christmas. Make it so fun to shop in your store your customers will tell their friends about you. Sell everything and you won’t have to take mark downs.

5. Offer gift boxes before the customer reaches the register. Show them a particular item in a box. You are selling convenience. Customers see your wonderful staff doing half of the project of wrapping their purchases. That’s much better than asking customers if they want some boxes at check-time and then just putting flat cardboard in their bags.

If you don’t have gift boxes, go get them, dummy! ANYTHING in a box will sell as you get closer to the end of the season. Display lots of items in boxes. Guys especially will appreciate seeing things boxed. It completes the picture. They see a robe hanging and think, “maybe she’ll like that”. They see a robe in a box and think, “I’m done shopping”.

You don’t need to box everything in the store. You can box samples for display. Next to the hanging robes, put one in a box. Your staff can switch it for the customer’s correct size and color. That’s a service, right? You should have a box for everything you sell. When people see a boxed item, they buy it.

5a. More about the box thing. If it’s in a box, suggest it. When guy buys a robe, suggest a nice boxed pair of gloves. Add-ons are easy to sell when boxed. Go to Sears and look around. They put screwdrivers in boxes during the holidays. Sears gets that part of the season right.

All 5 ½ of these items relate to giving good service. If you train your staff to provide extraordinary, remarkable, outstanding and incredible service, you won’t be discounting your inventory as early as your competitors.

Holiday shoppers want to finish their shopping, not to shop. Make it easy and fun to shop at your store and people will try to finish their shopping chore with you.

Do not run out of boxes. That’s inexcusable this time of year.

Have a great season!

Chris Reich, Author of TeachU’s Business Talk Blog
Chris@TeachU.com

If you want to driving traffic to your website, one of the most important SEO tactics is link building. Link building can help to increase your ranking on popular search engine like Google and Yahoo and can also help you to increase your amount of referral links to your site. There are a variety of different ways that you can build links to your site, but you want to make sure that you use the most effective methods possible. The following are four of the best ways to buil

There are many conflicting theories about color and layout of a website, however I would like to list a few rules that will help you improve your website visitor experiences.

I have seen literally hundreds of landing pages and websites that have great sales copy, are promoting quality products, and have a lot of potential to be a great, but the page looks horrible. Today we are going to focus on the readability and layout of a website.

The purpose of a landing page or website is to get your visitors to read what you have to say. Whether you’re selling products and services, or providing useful information, you need to be able to effectively communicate with your visitors for them to take the action you desire. That action could be clicking on a link, signing up for a newsletter, or purchasing a product. The size and color of your text play a huge part in communicating your message to your visitors. Having Black Text, on a white background is THE easiest form of text to read.

Using color schemes that clash, or cause the text to be difficult to read will many times cause your visitors to leave your page immediately. If you want to use a different color background or text color, make sure that readability is not negatively affected. Below are a few rules that will help you improve your website.

1. Do not use dark text with a dark background. Dark text on dark background makes it hard to distinguish text from the background color. Thus making your eyes have to focus harder.

2. Do not use text colors that clash with background color. White text on a black background has a “glowing” like affect that makes your text hard to read. Red on blue also creates a negative glowing affect.

3. Do not use large text for your main sales copy or body paragraphs. It is ok to use larger text for links and headlines, but the main text of your page should be Arial Size 2 (12pt). Arial Size 2 is the internet standard.

4. Do not waste the space at the top of the page with unnecessary graphics, flash, or banners that have no purpose. Simply listing the name of your website, or domain name is a very poor use of this prime real estate space. The first fold of your website is the most important space that you have because it is the section of the page that is visible as soon as your page loads. Do not take up this space with unnecessary graphics, flash, or banners. A Strong headline that states the benefit of your product or service is always better than a banner that has no purpose.

If you are struggling with site design or if its taking too much of your time, here’s some tools that can greatly help you.

Site Rubix: Not free but well worth the investment. Cost less than most website builders. This website builder enables you to create professional looking websites within 5 minutes, all without any Html knowledge.

DreamWeaver: This software is allows you to build visually appealing websites without Html skills, but may take you awhile to get past the learning curve that the software presents. DreamWeaver is one of the more popular but expensive website builders.

Nvu: It’s free, but will take you longer to make a website and generally the site will not look as professional.

Remember, your website serves a purpose, whatever that purpose is make sure your visitors can easily read and understand message. I hope the tips provided above assist you in creating a professional looking website that you can take pride in.

The unique power of promotional products is the ability to place targeted marketing messages in front of people during their everyday lives in a manner which produces less waste than traditional marketing methods, but keeps the messages top of mind with prospects.

A broad definition of a promotional item is as follows: any useful item which contains branding (like a logo, marketing message or contact information).  The meanings of ‘useful’ and ‘branding’ have been stretched and expanded over the years, but the idea remains relatively simple.

For example, Google typically gives out tech-y items which are not necessarily related directly to their business.  Some examples include: a mini-fridge, a lava-lamp, or a digital picture frame.  These items are intended less for direct-response generation, and more to enforce their brand as a chic, retro-cool organization.

There are four attributes that your promotional products must possess in order to be successful:

Your promotional gifts must have four specific attributes to be successful:

1.  They must feature an effective marketing message:
The call to action is one of the most overlooked attributes of a promotional product.

2.  Audiences must be carefully selected for targeting and qualification:
Businesses just can’t afford to market to everyone.  The goal is to get your promotional gifts into the hands of trusted and prominent industry personas.

3.  Promotional items must be audience-appropriate:
The best case scenario of a mismatched product is no response, and the worst is negative PR!  Imagine sending a sausage and cheese gift basket to a vegan group…

4.  Timing is everything:
Even if your product, message and audience selection are perfect, it all falls apart with improper timing.  The only difference between a grandfather clock and a log is timing!

Partnering with a person or firm who is experienced in the world of promotional products is a great shortcut to making sure these four objectives are fulfilled.  Experience is the key to producing a well-timed, targeted, appropriate and effective promotional gift.