Entrepreneur

Does ‘perfect’ actually exist or is it a figment of our social make-up? If you are a ‘perfectionist’, does it get in the way of “getting things done”. If so, you may need to take a closer look at this area of your personality as it may be getting in the way of greater success.

Successful entrepreneurs must be able to multi-task and although the details are important, making it ‘perfect’ will slow progress and may hold you back.

Here are some tips, which may help you break the mould:

Tip #1: You’ll never do it perfectly. Nobody does anything perfectly. But you can do things very well. You can do great work, you can do your very best…and that’s all that’s required to make real, measureable progress.

Tip #2: Accept the fact that you have to complete steps simultaneously. There will always be at least 2 or 3 three things happening at once. You have got to be able to move from one task to the next without being afraid that one of the steps was not done perfectly. A trusted advisor or coach can give your work the second look, the added perspective that will shed light on some obvious changes that can be made. Even then, it won’t be absolutely perfect!

Tip #3: Do good, quality work and your inevitable imperfections will be forgiven. When you focus on quality and trust the methods of experts who have already “been there” you can rest assured that your efforts will be well received by your target market.

There you have it. Focus on all round quality and the need for absolute ‘perfection’ will melt away.

Many people claim to be “SEO Experts”, but just how true are their claims and what are the qualities needed to substantiate these claims.

An  excellent SEO expert seeks out the most effective keyword phrases and bring more traffic to the website.  SEO expert also does the web page report since he’s up-to-date while using the recent trends and methods with Search engine optimization.

Here are some are some essential qualities:

• To be a successful SEO expert, you need to be focused on results and have an effective on-page and off-page marketing strategy .
• A sensible SEO expert does not ‘over promise’ results, setting implausable time-scales.  Sucessful organic search engine optimisation strategies can be lengthy affairs, often lasting several months. Good organic results can’t be obtained by just an instant and anyone who promises you this, should be avoided.
• A good SEO expert should be up-to-date with the latest optimisation techniques, as the search engine parameters change on a regular basis.

Hiring an SEO expert, can be a hit and miss affair, so it is important that you choose wisely. The best are generally results driven, which means that you will not have to cough up any substantial fee until he/she has achieved the desired result (e.g. Page one for a certain keyword/phrase etc). However, when the SEO result has been achieved, you better pay up, because they can equally help to demote your website pretty fast.

Once a decent search engine position has been achieved, you will need to keep it there. This will require on-going maintenance SEO, which also carries a regular fee.

ClickBank can be one of the easiest ways to earn money online. Become an affiliate and promote numerous digital products. However, it is not a “get rich quick”, despite what the “gurus” may tell you.

The basic method for setting up your venture on autopilot to enjoy an income thru affiliate marketing is simple.
You need to learn the basics of SEO and how to target potential buyers, and you can get up to 80% commission from product originators by publicizing, sending traffic and ultimately selling their online products.

Tutorials and guides can easily be found online. A lot of these tutorials are free and you can implement the techniques outlined. Just set up a click bank account account with your email address. After you register, you can have access to lots of products and services that you can promote.

Successful affiliates need to research products and familiarize themselves with their intended market. However, a short cut to finding successful click bank products is gage the gravity towards those products. The more affiliates that want to sell it, means that it converts well and isn’t a ‘turkey’, so to speak. There are many free tools available for affiliates to help them promote these click bank products online, including the use of social media – micro-blogging, social networking, forums and web 2.0 etc.

Click Bank has shown itself as one of the proven successful ways to make money via the Internet.

Even though there are many new methods of online marketing, there are still many marketers who like to use the tradition route of PPC or Pay-Per-Click marketing. You can’t discount the fact that this method is still more effective than ever. How many people around the world use search engines? These are the people your PPC ads will appear to.

However, because PPC marketing involves money, you need to be very careful when it comes to making your decisions. To help you, here are some tips:

Use niche Pay-Per-Click sites

It is true that both Google Adwords and Yahoo’s Overture are two of the best PPC websites that you can choose. They both are huge, both have excellent customer support and both have very high traffic which may provide you with better ROIs (Return on Investments).

But they also have one problem: competition. There are thousands of PPC marketers who belong to these two websites so unless you have a really big budget for your ads and can create ,a powerful landing page, you may never be clicked on by your target market.

Hence, make time for niche PPC sites. These are pretty small with traffic which could only be in the thousands, but competition is also somewhat low. On these sites, such as Facebook, it’s easier for you to be at par with your competitors. Moreover, since it’s already niche, traffic is mostly targeted. A lot of businesspersons have actually obtained better ROI from advertising on these websites.

Focus on your landing page.

What is a landing page? When search engine users click your PPC ad, they are redirected to a page. This does not have to be a homepage of a website; it can be any page which will convert them from a user to a subscriber of your newsletter or a lead through a lead generation page or even as a new customer for your business.

Creating a dynamic landing page, therefore, is crucial for the success of your PPC marketing. Ad2Action.com is in the business of creating the most effective and easy-to-customize graphics and templates for landing pages which accomplish the conversion goals above. You can also create multiple landing pages and test them against each other to determine which page obtain the highest number of click-through rates.

Choose your keywords well.

This is one of the most repeated tips you will get with PPC marketing, but it is also the one most often ignored.

Question: Why are keywords so important in PPC? Answer: The appearance of your ads will depend mostly on the keywords that you have chosen. They should match those words entered into search engines by a user looking for information. For example, if you are selling Mac computers, your ads will appear if a user is looking for “Mac computers for sale” or “where to buy Mac computers”.

There are two different types of keywords to choose from: general or targeted. Of the two, you really should place emphasis on the niche-targeted keywords. These are words and/or phrases that are commonly utilized by your targeted customers. Using the example of selling Macs: if you are selling second-hand Macs, you don’t just select “Mac computers for sale” but you use “second-hand (or used) Mac computers for sale.

For more information on landing pages or where to obtain them, sign up for my free online business guide. Just put your Name and Email Address in the form on the lefthand side of the homepage of this Blog. You can unsubscribe anytime and I will never share you email address. Do it Now!

Every day of the week there are thousands of people working out how to make money online and the number continues to grow rapidly. With people hearing about high potential earnings they are driven to the net hoping to get a piece of the billion dollar pie but the honest truth is a small minority are capable of making a living online. The purpose of this article is to not sell you the latest miracle report but to show you where people make the same mistakes time after time so hopefully you will be able to avoid these common traps.

If you go on any affiliate marketing forum you will find posts made by a new guy or gal complaining that after a few days they are not making any cash nor are their websites generating any traffic. Ask a few questions and it turns out they have not done any real work that would lead to making money online. The competition for the affiliate marketing dollar is extremely competitive and the work required to get to the top can not be understated. In order to make money online it is essential that you realize this is a marathon and not a sprint so if you are looking for overnight cash go out and buy a lottery ticket.

Newcomers love the shiny things and every single week some guru has released another program designed to make you rich overnight and all you have to do is sit back and count the money. All of these new shiny products basically tell you the same thing that the ten before it described which is the best way to make money online is sell a product full of hype to the newcomers on the scene. The only person who really makes money is the guy who repackaged ten pounds of old information and his buddies who promoted the heck out of it for a cut of the profits. In order to make money online you need to avoid the shiny things and invest your money in tools that will make your life easier by providing the right type of information but in the end it is up to you in how hard you work at it.

Too many people are spending all of their time searching for that magic button or the one simple trick that will send tons of traffic to their websites which will result in huge sales but they are actually not doing anything. It is very important that you understand everything behind affiliate marketing in order to succeed however if all you are doing is reading than you will never make a cent. The time it takes them to read through the new forums I am able to write another article and the time they spend reading the same information over and over again the article I wrote was sent to hundreds of article directories. In the end the person who is taking action on a continual basis is going to be the one who succeeds when it comes to affiliate marketing. It is simple learn something new and immediately put it into action for a bad website is better than no website at all.

In order to make money online you need to avoid the shiny things, put in the work and constantly be moving towards your end goal by taking action. It is time to make a choice to stand on the sidelines and watch the parade go by or take the first step by jumping into the convertible with the mayor. It all comes down to how bad you want it and what you are willing to do to succeed.

To see more about how to Make Money Online and to get my free guide. Just put your Name and Email Address in the form on the lefthand side of the homepage of this Blog. You can unsubscribe anytime and I will never share you email address. Do it Now!

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Hi all, it has been a while, hasn’t it. Today I am talking about the reason that this blog has not been updated ‘in a while’.

You may or may not know that I have several businesses (the clue is is in the use of the word ‘entrepreneur’ ; ) and as a result, I sometimes spread myself too thinly amongst my commitments (businesses, family etc.,).  In my quest for new ways to make money, I sometimes lose touch with my old core businesses, thinking that they can run indefinitely on auto-pilot, whatever the economic weather. Needless to say, this is completely the wrong way to go about things and I don’t mind telling you. Business owners should always keep an eye on their investments/businesses, even if they have overwhelming faith in their staff. After all, if a business fails, employees will lose jobs, but owners and investors stand to lose a lot more.  Therefore,  to be informed of the financial position and direction of the company is vital. Regular reporting is crucial.

So, as you can probably gather, the last few weeks I have been re-focusing and re-planning my core businesses. I have recently re-read Stephen Covey’s book ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People‘, which helped me re-align my direction (grab yourself a copy, I recommend it). As a result I am now ‘back on the block’, keeping my eyes on the prize everyday. At the same time, with flexible time management, I can still take time out to explore new avenues.

I suggest, like me, that you take some time out to look at the neglected areas of your life, whether they be business related, your relationship with significant others or spiritual time with yourself.  Re-focus, evaluate and plan.

Catch up with you soon, PJ ; )

In case you haven’t noticed or you have been fortunate enough to have been locked away on your own desert island in the sun, without  modern distractions, such as the Internet and mobile cell phones, Social Networking and Social Bookmarking have become pretty big business, not only for the website founders, but for millions of users worldwide, some of whom are looking for ways to make a few bucks online and some of whom are already making serious money.

Today, I am going to look at Social Bookmarking. Social Bookmarking websites allow you to  bookmark websites of your choice (your own included). This action, not only adds a link to the bookmark website, thus allowing readers to access your website (free advertising for businesses), it is also a great way of getting back-links to your website (or any website that you bookmark), which should help improve its search engine position.  It can be an effective SEO tool for business and blogging, if used correctly.  However, in the same way that social networking users do not liked to be spammed by other users, social bookmarking website users do not like to be spammed with pure sales related links/sales pages that add no value to their online experience. Therefore, there are some do’s and don’ts that you should follow, when choosing to submit a website for social bookmarking.

Here are some tips:

• Don’t spam. Keep your content and links relevant to the site you are bookmarking
• Do not vote for your own website to increase its importance, as you will get caught and be labelled as a spammer
• Use a bookmarking tool like Onlywire to auto-submit to all the major social booking websites, it will save you lots of time
• Do not submit every post that you make on your blog or article you write on your website. Quality is king, so only submit the best, most relevant. Also, it won’t make you look like a spammer
• If you have many websites, do not open too accounts in too many names. It is better to have a few good bookmarking IDs and spread your websites amongst these IDs, than to have an ID for each website. Also, as time goes on, these few IDs will become established and authoritative
• Alternatively, if you have a lot of websites and you can afford it, pay someone else to do your bookmarking for you. The cost can be minimal (under $10 per website) and will save you lots of time. As we all know, time is the most precious commodity in the world. People for hire can be found at websites like Elance. However, please do your research before hiring anyone and ensure that they have established, mature bookmarking accounts (i.e. They have done it many times successfully).

Thats it for today, I will be talking about Social Networking for business in the near future. Until then, take care!

PJ

No I don’t mean literally! I am actually talking about trading on ebay as a business.

Owning a business that has been part of the ebay community for the last 6 years, I have seen many ‘system’ changes and I am well versed on the whole ebay experience, from the good old days to the present.  So here is my take on things.

The changes of the last few years have totally benefited the buyer and not the seller. Ebay have made it extremely difficult for anyone to make a living from selling on ebay, let alone a decent profit.  Add this to the current economic downturn  and it is a recipe for disaster. The biggest and worst of changes in my opinion is removing the option for sellers to leave neg or neutral feedback against a bad buyer, thus not enabling the seller to leave a warning for other sellers about a troublesome buyer.  Also, having to  include Paypal as a mandatory payment method and not allowing cash (in the US) has turned droves of sellers away.

The final kick in the teeth came with the recent changes to the power seller system. Some sellers have worked hard over several years to increase volumes and have a consistently good solid record. However, with the introduction of detailed seller ratings, all that is needed is one or two customers (out of hundreds) to give you a low rating which will knock you feedback down a few points and which will not entitle you to be a top rated seller. In case you do not know, top rated sellers not only get a ‘badge’ next to their listings, but also get priority search placements within ebay’s listing results when customers do an un-filtered initial search.

So, to cut a long story short (I could go on about this subject for a long time), these ebay system changes have not helped businesses in these turbulent times, , just when a business needs all the help it can get. You may say ‘good’, it is the fault of the seller/business, for not maintaining a certain standard, but it goes a lot deeper than that. Most of the power sellers affected, were already excellent, honest, visible, upright business sellers, who far surpassed most other e-commerce websites with their service anyway, because of the original feedback system and Paypal chargeback facility (have you ever purchased something from a big brand e-commerce store, only the be told that the item is out of stock 2 weeks after you ordered it, for example. This rarely happens on ebay). How many other e-commerce websites do you know that would send out an order same day or within 24 hours, without charging you a premium for this service? A majority of sellers on ebay do this everyday.

Finally, it is not surprising that ebay, as a standalone e-commerce business, has been overtaken by Amazon, and that profits have not reached expectations. Small businesses are leaving ebay by the droves or scaling down their operations on ebay in favor of Amazon. The only things that are propping up the ebay group are Skype and Paypal. So on paper, it looks OK for them. However, for ebay to survive and thrive as a major Internet force in the coming years, they will need to treat their ‘customers’, the core  businesses and sellers that make them money, a lot better than they do today.

If you have any comments on the above subject, agreeing or disagreeing, I would love to hear from you. Just reply below.

Here are some of my hot business ideas for 2010, in no particular order:

1) Low cost, discount retail products. This is a booming market, where the evidence is clear by the emergence of thrift stores throughout the land.

2) Green Energy. Business related to bio fuels, bio tech, and all forms of recycling/re-use.

3) Local grown and sourced products. People are conscious of the amount of air/truck miles that are used up getting goods to their local supermarket/department store. They are also conscious of ensuring that their communities survive and will support local businesses, if the products and price are right.

4) The Grey Market. No, not dodgy imported goods, but anyone retired with a decent income. Gone are the days when your granny stayed at home knitting all day and went to bingo a couple of times a week, if she was lucky. These days she is more likely to have an active leisure driven lifestyle with lots of money to spend.

5) Health and Wellness related products and services. The onus these days is on the prevention or delayed onset of age related/lifestyle diseases. Therefore any product or service that can make us healthier and feel better about ourselves is a good thing.

6) Private tuition, extra-ciricual lessons for children. More parents these days, from all social backgrounds, want their children to succeed. One of the ways to help do this, is to invest in private out of school tuition for their children, especially in core subjects. Go back only 30 years ago and see how things have changed.

Above all, research your market, plan well and execute – Take Action!