The first step in becoming successful in any undertaking is getting over your fear of success. Yes, you read that correctly, I said “fear of success”.

Too many people erroneously believe that it is the fear of failure that holds them back. However, this is false. I can almost hear you saying, “but I don’t fear success, success is what I crave!”

You are comfortable in your little rut. You probably come home from work, make dinner, then sit in front of the television for a little rest and relaxation after a hard days work. This is comfortable for you. This is the life that you have come to know, probably for years now.

But what happens if you do start to succeed? Now you are going to have responsibilities, more money than you’ve ever had before, what if you succeed too much and are forced to quit your job? Then you have lost the security of your regular employment.

The problem with this kind of thinking is that you are thinking about things in the wrong order. I will teach you in future posts that you need to consider the bigger picture, and “begin with the end in mind,” as Stephen Covey says.

But if you are one of those people who do fear success, then you need to forget about the end right now and think about what’s next. Maybe you do not see yourself earning $5000 per month right now, but you can see yourself earning $200 extra per month from your online business.

$200 a month is not the definition of success for most people but it will help pay some bills while you strive for the next step

Most marketing plans begin with the discovery of the niche. We have to begin by asking ourselves, what constitutes an effective and a workable niche. There are two main criteria for niche selection: What information are people already searching for, and what information are people willing to pay money to acquire.

The best way to find what people are already searching for is to use one of the many free keyword research tools that are available. Simply conduct a search engine query for “free keyword research tool” and you will be presented with many different options. Then it is simply a matter of suggesting possible topics to research.

For beginning marketers, it is best to stay in the traditional topics of “health, wealth and relationships” with a few exceptions, it is thought that people are willing to spend money in those areas, more than in most others.

Once we have established a niche, it is time to decide what we are going to do in that niche to profit from it. The easiest way for most to get started is to simply find a product that we can sell as an affiliate. To do this, visit one of the many websites that feature products from which we can select. Again, you can conduct a utilize a search engine for this purpose.

By now, we should have a niche, and an affiliate product to try to drive traffic to. Many of the good affiliate programs will give you ideas regarding how best to drive traffic to their products. However, some of the methods most often considered are article writing, forum posting, classified ads, and even offline advertising.

If you have read this post all the way through, you probably think that it is incomplete. You wonder whether or not there is more to it. The short answer to that is “not really”. This short action plan summary is really all there is to it.

Of course, I could go into more detail regarding traffic generation, landing pages or product review sites, but this piece is designed for beginners. It is important to master the basics first. Learn to find a niche, select a product, and send traffic to your affiliate link, going too far ahead in the beginning will only lead to frustration and ultimately, failure.

1) You must be outgoing. You must be willing to go the extra mile so that you are able to reach your goals. Sometimes you may come upon an obstacle in your way that you may think that you can overcome but you can. No one said that it was going to be easy to achieve your goals, you are the one that set them, and you have to work to make sure that you reach them. If you are outgoing, you can do anything that you want to do in life.

2) You must be patient. You have to understand that everything isn’t going to be smooth sailing and happen just when you what it too. It takes time for you to be able to achieve your goals, it will not happen over night.

3) You must be strong. You will have to take criticism well, because along your journey you are going to have to listen to what other people say and learn from it. The people that are giving you advice are not trying to be mean; they are just trying to help you out. If no one helps you, you are going to have a harder time than most people would.

4) You must be adaptable. You are going to have to adjust to different situations and environments when you are going to college to get your degree or start your first day on your job.

5) You must be a person who realizes that anything can happen. If you put your mind to it, you can do anything that you want to. It is entirely up to you, how many goals that you set for yourself. Make sure that you don’t set them so high that you can’t achieve them.

I discovered at one point, to my horror, that you have to spend money to make money.

If there was any secret, that was the only one.

I tried using Squidoo,  free hosting packages, Blogger and whatever else I could to try to avoid spending money on my business.  Why don’t we take a minute to listen to how that sounds, ” avoid spending money on my business”

I can’t think of any other business that you can build without spending money.  Why would this one be any different?  You must invest in your business and the first few months will be directly out of pocket.  But how much?

Not as much as you think.

$9 a year for a domain.
$12 a month for your hosting.
$19 a month for your autoresponder.

All of that works out to about $31.75 a month that you are investing in your business.

Before you leave a bunch of comments telling me that you don’t have the money, let me tell you about my story.  When I started in this business, I had a wife with no job, a house, two kids and only a part-time job to support all of us.  You would think that I didn’t have the money to invest in a business.

Yet, I made it a MUST!

I found the money by canceling our cable tv.  We saved about $60 a month, we didn’t have a cell phone, saving about $30 a month, that freed up some more money allowing me to take advantage of other opportunities such as useful products.

Is success in business a must for you or a wish?  If it is a wish then you will have a hard time succeeding.

Is your business a hobby or a business?  If it is a hobby, that’s fine, you can still make a few hundred a month from your hobby.  But if it is a business and success is must, then that puts you on a whole other level.

April 25th, 2011 | Posted in Internet Marketing tactics | No Comments
3 Good Reasons to Write Articles

During the past, why have people attempted to write articles? Tough times cause website visitors to go the extra mile to discover solutions.
A lot of people are averse to new ideas, choose to keep trying with the old solutions, regardless if they don’t give good results. Sometimes they are devoid of enough current information. Some fear the unknown, nor think it over. Sometimes they just usually do not understand how to start. And others do not attempt given that they don’t understand the possibility positive aspects as well as benefits involved.
When one really understands the intricacies, one’s vision clears and potential obstacles seem simpler or important. Understanding is essential. Through studying the pros and cons of write articles, let’s just consider 3 argument points in favor of writing articles to drive traffic to your website. In the first place, article writing can garner the highest traffic volume.
Yes, your objection that many people already write articles is most likely a legitimate one. Nonetheless, we should consider that the likelihood that you are going to be able to publish on such high ranking websites as article directories is small. Next will come article readers tend to implicitly trust their authors. As a result of that, readers who find you through your articles have a higher tendency to believe that you are already an expert.
This will cause a higher percentage of them to click through to your website. Once on your website, they will be more inclined to take the action that you wish them to take. Third and last, your articles are more than just articles. Post them on your website or blog, or include them in your ebook or information product. There are multiple uses for this one single effort.. This provides you with an advantage: One bit of work results in many different ways to capitalize on it.
Once more, take into account that you already know your subject anyway, and if you don’t then you need reason to study and research it.! Now pause an instant and just consider those reasons. Aren’t they good reasons to write articles? In all seriousness and honesty, contemplate this for a moment. Do those factors truly not affect you? If this all wasn’t enough, how about a bonus reason to write articles, it’s free!
Its true that you could pay for solo ads or press releases, or even Google AdSense, but all those could potentially break your business. Write a few decent articles and see how much your business improves.

If you have just sent an email to Any@topmarketinguru.com:

** YOU WILL NOT RECEIVE A REPLY FROM THIS ADDRESS **

All emails are now handled through our support system.

This is so we can ensure you get the best possible support you need.

Please re-submit your request by visiting:

http://www.xxx.com/inconvenient.

If you visit the knowledge-base you will probably find your question is already answered.
If it has not then you can simply ‘submit a ticket’.

I don’t know about you but I consider this rude. The person that I received this response from today is a guy who has a bunch of my money. In other words, I have bought and used, and befitted from his products.

It is a guy who I admire and respect. Except for this.

Specifically, I was considering promoting one of his products because he is a guy that I know produces good stuff. I had a simple two sentence question about the product that would have required a one sentence answer. I see no reason to have to go through the hassle of creating an account, submitting a ticket just so that I can have my one sentence answer.

But I have decided against promoting the product anyway, not just because of this response but this response provided me with a different reason.

If I promote someone’s product, I am, in effect putting my reputation on the line also.
Will someone from my list remember that he or she purchased the product through my link, I don’t know. However, I do know that I can’t take the chance.

I try my best to personally answer every email that I receive. I freely admit that it is not always possible to answer everyone so I must prioritize. I suppose that I should start sending an auto reply to each of my emails such as

Your email will be read, if it is a serious question from a list member it will be responded to as soon as possible. If it is spam from a list member, (and that does happen!) it will be deleted and the email address placed in my “blocked sender list”. But your email will be read!”

It is impersonal, I agree, but I believe that as I get busier, it is better than letting people wait without giving them an explanation for why they’re waiting.

The second reason I will not promote the product is that I haven’t seen it. I said, months ago, that I would never promote anything that I have seen, read, used, benefited from, or personally created. I almost forgot about that rule, I guess I should thank him for reminding me.

Maybe I’ll submit a helpdesk ticket with a link to this blog post so that I can thank him.

—————————————————————–
By the way, my long list of products at an incredibly stupid low price is still available.

Robert
Here is the list of products that you will receive. (do not buy from these links, they are just for reference)

1. Articleprofitmastery - www.articleprofitmastery.com
2. Niche Detective – www.mynichedetective.com
3. One Week Ebook
4. ebook creation and marketing package, with all the bonuses
www.action-innovations.com/ebooknewbie.html
5. You Tube Marketing Tactics www.action-innovations.com/youtube
6. 15000 PLR Articles
7. 150 Internet Marketing Videos

—————————————————————–
Click the “Buy Now” button to take advantage of this offer.

Just $17

Most marketing plans begin with the discovery of the niche. We have to begin by asking ourselves, what constitutes an effective and a workable niche. There are two main criteria for niche selection: What information are people already searching for, and what information are people willing to pay money to acquire.

The best way to find what people are already searching for is to use one of the many free keyword research tools that are available. Simply conduct a search engine query for “free keyword research tool” and you will be presented with many different options. Then it is simply a matter of suggesting possible topics to research.

For beginning marketers, it is best to stay in the traditional topics of “health, wealth and relationships” with a few exceptions, it is thought that people are willing to spend money in those areas, more than in most others.

Once we have established a niche, it is time to decide what we are going to do in that niche to profit from it. The easiest way for most to get started is to simply find a product that we can sell as an affiliate. To do this, visit one of the many websites that feature products from which we can select. Again, you can conduct a utilize a search engine for this purpose.

By now, we should have a niche, and an affiliate product to try to drive traffic to. Many of the good affiliate programs will give you ideas regarding how best to drive traffic to their products. However, some of the methods most often considered are article writing, forum posting, classified ads, and even offline advertising.

If you have read this post all the way through, you probably think that it is incomplete. You wonder whether or not there is more to it. The short answer to that is “not really”. This short action plan summary is really all there is to it.

Of course, I could go into more detail regarding traffic generation, landing pages or product review sites, but this piece is designed for beginners. It is important to master the basics first. Learn to find a niche, select a product, and send traffic to your affiliate link, going too far ahead in the beginning will only lead to frustration and ultimately, failure.

When I was a kid, my dad worked alternately from home and from the office. When I asked him why he did not work from home more frequently, he commented that it was impossible to get focused enough on the job while at home with all the distractions. And that was even before the internet. Imagine what he would say now with all the internet distractions.

I agree and at the same time, I disagree with my old man’s assessment.

I believe that working from home can be as simple as finding the correct distractions combined with timing your other distractions. For example, Facebook is a great business tool and a great distraction. I love to play some of the mindless Facebook games, but unfortunately, before long a 5 minute break can turn into a 30 minute loss of production.

Purchase an egg timer and set it for whatever seems reasonable for you. Of course, I recommend no more than 10 minutes for each hour of work.

If possible, you should create two facebook accounts; one for your business and one for personal. Absolutely no game applications should appear on your business account. This will ensure that during your working time, when you log on to your facebook account, you only have access to business related information and materials.

When you are on your own time, you should feel free to log in to whatever account you choose and perform any action you choose, but working on your business at home requires discipline.

This business is absolutely the correct business for me and I’ll tell you why. I’m not an exceptional people person. As a matter of fact, if I am in a situation where I’m trying to relate or help a person and it is not working out, I get very flustered and easily agitated.

If I am trying to guide a coaching client, on the other hand, I’m very good at it because most of what we do is not in person. Most of it is emails and maybe the odd phone call.

That is why I’m never going to quit. But if you don’t have a reason to continue to do this business, there might be a better business for you.

Step 2: If you have decided that this is the right business for you, then we proceed to “never quit” This business is not difficult, in fact, there are only three steps to a successful business.

Step 3: create a landing page: This can be a blog, squeeze page, Squidoo Lens, It doesn’t matter.
Step 4: drive traffic to that page: Article writing, link building, solo ads, again it doesn’t matter
Step 5: Have some action for people to take on your page: Buy something, sign up for a free report, click an ad, it doesn’t matter.

Step 6: The only thing that matters is that you do it consistently. Do at least a little bit of work every day of the week, and do a lot of work a couple of days of the week.

Step 7: Don’t be afraid to change your plan if it is not working. If you have made it this far then you have already decided that this business is for you, therefore, “never quit”. If something isn’t working, change some things until you find out what does work. You can chose to try a different landing page, try a different traffic method, change your niche.

The correct combination does exist, the trick is to stay in the business long enough to find it. What else are you going to do with your free time? Watch TV?