I hate bursting peoples’ bubbles, especially if it means I am ‘treading roughshod on your dreams’, but I am not going insult your intelligence. let’s be realistic, the truth is: A business so easy that anyone can do it, simply does not exist.

Think about it, this is the industry that can make a formerly poor person VERY rich, so everyone working the 9-5 slog would be doing this instead, if this business was that easy.

If you have been involved with MLM or Network Marketing before, no doubt this was almost certainly one of the first things your would-be sponsor said to you. (By the way, usually this person is quite new to the industry themselves and tend not to hang around too long before they discover that they too have been misled, or they have maxed out their credit card or are in mega-debt – whichever comes first).

My last MLM sponsor signed me up, only to tell me after-wards that she was moving to another opportunity. As far as I can tell, she is back to that MLM company which I signed up with her for – she has after all, invested at least half a decade in making it work and she cannot just let all that go so easily. Strangely enough, she also has a 9-5 job, so you make of that what you will!

This is how your ‘work from home business’ all begins:

You will be shown the product range and even be encouraged to buy a selection of them. You will be told that these products are “revolutionary”, “life changing” and “so powerful that everyone will be knocking down your door to get their hands on them”. (So, perhaps they are good, but how’s your garage or spare room looking right now?)

You will be told that even with absolutely no previous experience in any type of business venture before, it is possible for virtually anyone to build a residual income by “sharing” these products with anyone and everyone you come into daily contact with. Network marketing business is “THAT easy!”

But I’m getting ahead of myself here, more of MLM style “marketing strategies” in MLM Myth #2.

There are many reasons why people are attracted to the MLM or a Network Marketing Business. These might be some of the very same reasons that you are looking into it right now:

• The prospect of making money from home
• Sacking your boss
• Choosing when, where and how much you work
• No more office politics
• An end to nightmarish daily commuting
• More time with family or loved ones
• More time doing the things you love
• Achieving financial security or even freedom

Don’t get me wrong, these are all great reasons for wanting to pursue internet or network marketing as a business opportunity. Unfortunately, these benefits are almost always combined with marketing strategies which lead prospects to believe that the business is aseasy as telling people.

MLM marketing tends to focus on the income claims of the top earners . The truth: these top industry producers usually represent about ONLY the top 1% of the total number of active consultants in the company. Lesson – Testimonials are ‘anecdotes’ and are not necessarily the norm… More often they represent 1% of your industry!

And so now you are to believe that: firstly, not only is the business easy, secondly: you need no previous experience, and thirdly that you only need to do the minimum amount of work to realistically generate a six figure income within a few years. Hmm…

Now, the trouble is, what this style of marketing does, is attract the wrong type of people to the industry in the first place. People who are looking to “get rich quick”. People who have a “lottery mentality”. People who expect that the money will come flooding into their bank account by magic thinking.

People who think that any legitimate business can be built this way should not even be considering self employment. The simple home truth of the matter is that in some ways, this business is even tougher than a “brick and mortar” business.

Just think about this for a moment.

Let’s imagine that you have opened a shop in a busy part of town. You lease a building, put up signs, bring in stock and then advertise your new business.

If you have done your market research well first, you will have positioned your business in a place where your niche market is likely to be walking past your shop every day and there is a pretty good chance that at some point, they will walk through your front door to see what you have to offer.

Not so in a home based business. There is just you, your phone, and often a cupboard chock full of your ‘life changing’ new products. If you have been given a replicated web-page, you might feel particularly blessed, until you try to advertise on Google and they throw you out!

Still… You have no boss to answer to.

No deadlines to stress over (except perhaps those imposed by your bank or lending institution).

No daily routine to work to.

No need to even get dressed if you don’t feel like it.

It may sound like work freedom. But it takes a particular type of drive and discipline to build a business out of nothing under these circumstances. Your work ethic needs to be pretty strong and your persistence in the face of some tough market conditions needs to be like nothing you may have ever experienced before.

My experience has been that people who have had previous business experience in either brick and mortar or MLM have a far greater understanding of the consistent and focused effort that is required to build a business. People who have been career employees tend to find the learning curve far steeper.

So if you are looking at a “business opportunity” and it all sounds too good to be true, keep looking. Because if it sounds too good to be true… it is… Not least because how can you trust a sponsor who deceives you? (Albeit they may well be deceiving themselves too if they are still new to the business).

Truth is… This business is a COACHING business and you have to be prepared to build those skills over years to really make the big time in the network marketing business. Anyone can learn tricks and scripts to recruit! It takes an exceptional person to commit to supporting through through your business growing pains…

Want to know more about the slugs and bugs chomping away at the efforts of good people in the internet marketing industry? Check out the Coffee House Letter here

There’ll be more on this subject of MLM myths in the future…

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You will forgive me if today’s blog might be a bit of combination of info and rant.  HOW I HATE LOSING TIME WITH TECHNICAL HURDLES.

On a positive note, this blog is also a commitment to myself that when I figure out the uploading of Screencast /  Camtasia, I will start to get to grips with doing some practical ‘How-To’ videos for some of the more technical aspects of blog maintenance.

It started hours ago now, with my  investigating how to cut out the annoying amount of inappropriate links or outright spamming from appendage-treatment-specialists, who are sending out their bots to worm their way into my blogtestines and make my blog health suffer from their infestation. Make no mistake about it, spammers are parasites on the underbelly of the blogosphere and I am getting tired of wasting my time deleting their spammage.

(Hmm… But trackbacks are also useful for link love … What to do?… Thinks….)

Today I also had four apparently very complimentary comments, the first of which, I naively believed to be genuine positive feedback from a reader. After the second, third and fourth linked to the same website, each with a different and no doubt spurious made up name and differing I.P. addresses, I smelt a rat. I did some research and these I.P. concerns were well founded; links to rubbish sites being hidden by pathetic attempts to hide the fact they were from the same Spamster. I got angry then at being taken for a mug by this same self-seeking, black-hat wearing splogger.

Needless to say, this ‘Splogger’ has had all of his empty, obsequeous blatherings about my wonderful blog now deleted and I am adding to the list of my ‘to do’s to delete all the other comments on my blog, where the email address came back as non-existent, when I personally mailed my commenters.

Reader, I suggest you do a regular clean up on your blog too, because naff links from these so-called ‘sploggers’, will undermine your Google quality score.  The good news, is that fortunately those wonderful anorak fans of WordPress out there have created some pretty cool plugins to keep you clear of any nasty infections…

When I set up this blog, I installed Akismet. Obviously, this is offering me some protection, but I am still unable to recognise black-hatted spam-bots when I encounter them here, as my mere human radar does not extend that far.

I went looking for some new protection and downloaded: si-captcha-for-wordpress from the WordPress Directory and Trackback Validation.

The download into my labyrinthine filing is the easy part, of course; it’s the upload and install to my WordPress blog that is tricky. I just cannot remember the ‘flingfile’ route back to the light from the depths of the deep cyber-universe accessible by the myriad of rabbit holes!

Now, I have done this before with help, but am a determined person and by now seasoned enough blogger to know that any ‘how-to’ video answers are likely to either be non-existent or too techy in their explanations, as they are often done by bloggers who assume a certain level of expertise.

Guys, this blogger has A.D.H.D. She DOESN’T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT… Knowing this, I determined to take another route, to show anyone following behind a possible route out of this hideous labyrinthe. I downloaded more screen-capture software – CamStudioTech14 – as my old favourite, Jing have now restricted usage for freeloaders like me!

“I am going to make a video presentation for us non-techy wannabe propellor-heads”, I thought. ( “Hmmm… Good luck with that!”, said my infinite doubt!) Before I knew it another work hour down the drain!

Then, having got to the point of tearing my hair out, I went back to my business partners for their SEO training support.  Fortunately, they have worked with some of the best SEO technicians around, including Ferny and Ray at SEO Networker (That’s them wrestling with other tricky manoevres in their black-belt exam!)  As it happens, I had been promising myself to hear all of their series of recording and boy am I glad I did! Within 24 hours, the transformation is already amazing…  I feel like I can breathe again and stop scratching!

Today’s blog then is about TREATING THE DISEASE instead of the symptoms for better time managment… I will still get around to mastering Camtasia sometime in the not too distant future and shoot some problem-solver videos for e-how.com, YouTube, Tube Mogul and you guys… but thanks to Ferny and Ray, all that download-upload malarky is now automated by a plug in they recommend. They also know some great ways to innoculate your  blog against the curse of Splogeritis.

Learn more about what SEO automation can do for you from two of the industry wizards; Check out the dynamic duo that is SEO Networker from this link .

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We bloggers love our WordPress blogs! Me, I’m already planning another blog site and going a little crazy that I haven’t got more time or resources to manage a bunch of sites yet!

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I read a great blog today on Copyblogger.com which offered great tips to get over your struggle to find something to say in articles or on your blog and which led me to share some of my own simple tips on getting over writer’s block and creating the kind of blog your reader wants to come back to.

Copyblogger’s first tip on writing content for blogs is a personal favourite of mine, because it’s kind of like the speed-dater’s approach to getting over word-shyness and is a great ‘brain-storming’ technique. The idea is to give yourself a short time slot to write as much as you ca,n about any given topic or topics, which works because it focusses on the AMOUNT you write, rather than the QUALITY. Freed from worry about whether what you write is ‘good enough’ just allows the free-flow of your expressing own thoughts, however they come out on paper.

So if you worry about your own writing, go and get a piece of paper and pen, or open a new word document on your P.C. and set your timer on your watch or phone for about three minutes and just START to write whatever comes into your head!

The idea is to not focus on the results, but to just get into the physical act of putting pen to paper or fingers to keys. The trick here, is to write as if talking to someone you know well, like a friend or family member. Ask yourself, are you afraid of talking to your best friend and saying what you really think? Probably not. So for this exercise, pretend you are speaking directly to someone who is already listening to you in your real life. Chances are when you have finished writing, you will have written some pretty good basic ideas on which to build a decent blog.

Being natural is what will interest people enough to read what you have to say. We all like to feel as relaxed as we can in any new social situation, even if it is only trawling the internet from the safety of our living room! So, be yourself and you will attract other people thinking along the same lines as yourself or wanting to learn about the information and ideas you are sharing. This is a mental hurdle you can practise your way over.

Another adaptation of this simple writing exercise for those a little more comfortable with their own ideas, or for when you are progressing, but still needing to build confidence in your own ability to say something ‘worth reading’ by others, is to think of a specific topic first off that you would like to talk about a little more at length, before you put pen to paper. Then give yourself ten seconds and NO MORE to come up with THREE key words, phrases or concepts involved with your idea. That done, start the clock again and repeat the first exercise, but this time giving yourself five minutes and using your key terms, with one of them being used at least twice in your text.

If you are want to be a little more confident people actually want to read your material, then you can always cheat and borrow the words off Google’s free online Keyword tool and use these terms which other people are using to search with, when they go online to look for your chosen topic. Use Google key word suggestions to ‘speak your mind with. This way, you can select those terms which suit you and which you would like to use to attract visitors to your site with.

The other good thing about this second method is that it gets you used to writing within the ‘frame of reference’ of your ideal readers. So, if 10,000 people locally are looking to find out about ‘grooming my dog’, according to the Google tool, then putting these words into your writing is not only going to give you practice of writing for its own sakes, but it can boost your confidence in terms of being able to speak to those people who search for information on your canine care blog topic anyway.

When you are done, your next step is to put it out there in a safe environment for feedback. If you are not ready to ‘publish’ on your blog yet, read your article aloud to someone whose opinion you trust. This way both you and they get to hear your voice and you can learn a lot just by hearing yourself speak. Don’t worry about stopping and tweaking; it’s all good.

The important part of sharing your writing with another, is that this person has to tell you truthfully whether what you say sounds like you! Simple as… If they think it does not sound natural, or quite right, then your next step is to put the paper down and just speak aloud for a few minutes on the same topic, (referring to words or phrases you have written down already if you need to). Get your friend to then scribble down which words or phrases they like as you speak and then give you feedback on why they liked these parts of your mini-speech.

This two way dialogue is how we naturally ‘find our voice’ during normal conversations as we grow up, without the fear we may attach to our ability to write those ideas down. The trouble comes in the voices we have in our own heads about what we have written in the past. Just for a moment, think back to the red scrawl your English teacher penned all over what you thought was a really good piece of work and how crushed you felt. It felt pretty crappy, right? Chances are there was part of you deciding right then that writing was not for you.

Sadly, many people bring this rubbish about ‘rules’ of writing through to writing on their blog.

NEWSFLASH! The world has changed since then, thank goodness! So WHO CARES about old fashioned rules? They do not apply to blogging!

Writing conventional, formal articles is fine, once you develop and want your work syndicated on Article Directories or when you want to produce a press release for the launch of your latest service or product, but at this stage your focus should be purely on YOU feeling O.K. to speak freely and clearly. Nobody is going to criticise you heavily at this point. On a blog, they will merely hit the back button on their computer and you will never know they were even there. Even if they do leave negative comments, chances are they will be drowned out by the positive feedback anyway, OR they will even actually offer constructive advice and you can continue to learn from your new fans… even better.

Copyblogger sums it up perfectly here:
“Yes, writing must communicate a message, and to that end the conventions of standard English are important. But in many instances, those rules actually hinder our ability to create a realistic voice… the rules of our language evolved over time with the specific purpose of creating clarity. If breaking a rule will enhance the clarity of their writing, then they should break it — and so should you.”

So for instance, your teachers taught you that a ‘paragraph’ meant a few sentences put together before you left a space for the next subject.

RUBBISH!

It all depends is the truth here. The short answer to this ‘rule’, is that you OWN your blog, so you can say what you want. So for instance, I just highlighted my personal response to an idea about ‘accepted’ rules of writing in a line and paragraph all of its own, by saying “Rubbish!”… I wanted your attention focussed on my opinion… and that is fine…Did you get irritated when you saw me doing it? (If you did, then need to get with the program here!)

As for all the ‘dot, dot, dot’, stuff I often use in my own blogs, we never got much of that in our school essays without being told to complete our ideas or to put it ‘in quotes’. I put them in my blog because I want my readers to fill in the gaps for themselves as they read, so I am not just talking to them, I am acknowledging that they may also have a reaction to what I say and I am making room for that… Make sense? : )

So writing fragments rather than complete sentences might break the received wisdom of writing in traditions of written English, but like adding an apostrophe (‘) or missing out letters of words to speak with a regional accent in colloquial English, breaking and bending rules of writing is GOOD. It conveys YOUR personality, which is after all, what people like to connect with when they choose to hear YOUR voice over the next blogger.

Your blog is written with YOUR rule book. It’s your party and you can blog, blawg or blarg… if you want to! Forget the rules. Write in your own way, without worrying about correctness and then re-read it. If it sounds good to you, it is because it SOUNDS like you and will sound good to someone else (or why else would people bother speaking to you day-to-day at all?!)

O.K. So now you are moving from a few short paragraphs hastily thrown down in five minute bursts and you are now wondering WHAT you can possibly write 500 words or more about. First piece of advice, take a deep breath and ask yourself if you ever went on and on at somebody about a subject you cared about and which you thought you had a valid opinion on. You opened your mouth and came out with it until you had made your point, right?

So, what is so different about finding a subject about which you are passionateand putting that passion to paper? Mine’s reading and writing, in case you had not guessed already! So much so, believe it or not, we are currently at over 1,000 words. OK, perhaps I have had a bit more practice, but the point here is that all I am doing is speaking digitally to you about a subject I know something about. And THIS is YOUR KEY to writing what other people WANT to read.

If you are not confident about knowing ENOUGH, then simply do a search online for other people blogging about what you are interested in. Copy and paste tit-bits and then re-write them (DON’T COPY OTHER PEOPLE FOLKS! You will not gain popularity for that!). Do your research. Look up some facts and start sticking the bits together in a way you would explain about a new subject to your best friend, so that they follow you and understand what you are telling them even though they perhaps knew nothing about the subject before.

One of my teachers advised me at school to write about a subject assuming the reader knows nothing. This advice stood me in good stead for years. I still apply that principle partly, but also I assume that the reader of my blog knows something, or they would not even be interested enough to visit in the first place. People sometimes just need gentle coaxing to remind them of stuff they know already, but perhaps have forgotten.

Remember that rule of writing you were told about not repeating yourself? Well here’s another rule you can throw out if writing online. Guess what? Your friend does not always ‘get it’ the first time you tell them something new, so sometimes you have to translate what you are saying by paraphrasing into words they can understand. You make it SIMPLE and GIVE EXAMPLES from your own life perhaps: “Remember that time when…well that’s what this is.”

So by now, you are rocking and roller-penning! You are almost there! Gradually getting all unblocked and blogged-up! (There’s another freedom I permit myself in blogging right there… the liberty to make up your own new expressions or words that folk will understand and enjoy… Us bloggers LOVE creativity!)

I love learning new words…

ANORAK CONFESSION: I love it when the Oxford English Dictionary up-dates their latest edition annually and hearing their latest additions that have entered our everyday language. I remember when ‘skanking’ was included and the officionados wanted a definition, so they called on the poet, Linton Kwesi Johnson. He turned up with his ghetto blaster, switched on a killer reggae song and proceeded to skank for about five minutes. When the reggae song finished, he turned to the lexicographers and said: “now describe that!”. I’d love to have been a fly on the wall; it always makes me laugh when I picture it.

But I digress (because I can without fear of red penned lines across my page!) The point is, you can say what you like as long as you are getting your ideas across and speaking as yourself, with your own true perspective and your own voice. We can all tell a faker when we hear one; the same applies to the written word. If it is not in your own voice, people will generally know and this is off-putting amongst the bloggerati.

I am saying this also because I recently had my own personal revelation about writing… Now reader, I think I am lucky… I was a curious child and read far too many books than was healthy for one who could have been climbing walls and showing off how clever I was with other kids… I kept a diary as a child and wrote letters to friends of family abroad. I felt O.K. to say my own stuff… I was fearless. It didn’t matter even if the words were a little jumbled, as long as I got the news across. The thing is I was RELAXED with what I wrote for the most part and felt ok to be myself. This is the heart of many peoples’ writer’s block.

It is this psychological hurdle you have to simply write your way out ofby just doing it. The first time I made cheesecake, it was pretty disgusting and fell to pieces as you tried to eat it. The next time was marginally better, but still didn’t taste great. I was never going to be a great cake baker, but I improved with practice. could probably do a half-decent one now if I put my mind to it. What’s interesting though is that I do not enjoy everyone’s cheesecake either: too sweet, too buttery, too rich… But my sister… well now… it’s what she loves doing and she makes cheescake to die for… It’s all a matter of practised skills and taste.

So, my tips for getting over blogger’s block: Firstly, find a subject with which you are comfortable; if you are passionate, even better, you will research it and become an expert people seek out. Second: Practise being that ‘passionate pen’. People appreciate it, the more real you are. Third: Ask readers for feedback. Fourth: BREAK THE RULES and limits you didn’t realise you had set up in your mind all those years back. They no longer apply. The more renegade you are as a writer, the more irresistably readable you become to a growing number of fans.

Welcome to the world of blogger’s writes! Have fun!

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Such a cool education video for this girly time I am having in my life again

If anyone ever doubted their capacity to effect the lives of those less fortunate and lift them into a better life, here’s your food for thought………

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Sometimes I get a little weary of affirmations which trip off the tongue and whilst having some powerful motivational value, can over the longer term, serve to undermine that very drive their advocate seeks to stimulate. So, it has been that occasionally on days when I am taking a step back to look at the big picture, in true passive-aggressive personality style, I look for potential pit-falls, as well as calculating the value of what would otherwise be purely ‘positive affirmations’.

When I first heard “Winners Never Quit, Quitters Never Win” it gave me a real rush of “let’s do it” hormones. It was a phrase I boosted my activity with when I felt somewhat over-whelmed by a steep learning curve. I still like it enough to find myself repeating it internally, when frustrated by one challenge or another.

Nevertheless, life is never simple, so whilst I am all for seeing my glass ‘half-full’, let’s be realistic… When taken in context of the fuller picture, singing ‘Always Look On The Bright Side of Life’ and carrying on regardless is just going to get you further into deep water. So for instance, we can tell ourselves little lies in order to maintain the status quo, because the familiar is comfortable and predictable for us, when what we need more than anything is to step out of a potentially destructive relationship with whatever activity, person or business we are involved with.

This fact extends to you and your business. In the words of Perry Marshall:
” Let’s get something straight: Some businesses don’t work. Some enterprises aren’t worth doing. Some products are so weak that nothing can save them. Some ventures are doomed from the start, and even if they *appear* to be worthwhile.”

I recommend that as single business owners, without any team, you adopt two or three marketing strategies that you are comfortable with and can build on your learning with, only moving onto new marketing strategies, when you have consolidated those initial techniques. As a newbie entrepreneur, you need to be checking and testing your results for whether you are successfully building your list with your tecniques. If you tweak and alter a particular technique, like video marketing, but are just not getting clicks to your site, you either need to learn from other video marketers or think of something else, because, sexy as video is, it just isn’t your forte perhaps. You can always come back to it, having mastered an easier marketing method.

The reality in terms of your results achieved should serve to sharpen your mind and allow you to let go of sentimental attachments to situations or strategies which no longer serve their purpose. In business, we must regularly evaluate whether the good outweighs the bad, with a constant eye to the bottom line. Knowing when to cut our losses or move on is not necessarily about ‘being a quitter’. Having the strength to make uncomfortable decisions is a strength.

If your business is not profitable, it’s time to take a long hard look at what you are in it for. If however, you are ‘moving on’ because in reality, you were just not prepared to learn from mistakes, then you will find yourself in exactly the same mess further down the line in another failing business.

If you sincerely believe that you are on the right track and need to just get through some practical obstacles, but feel like running away because it’s all ‘just too much’ (We’ve all been there), this is the time to say “Winners never quit, quitters never win!”

It’s natural to have days when we call into question the direction we are going in and is even healthy to do so, rather than burying our heads and telling ourselves “It’s fine. It will be alright” knowing full well that your doubt has been daily now for over a month!

Effective business management in terms of our marketing means looking at the real numbers and results to differentiate between successful and losing propositions. Are you looking at your CTR and analysing the cost of acquiring customers to get down to the true cost of your business and overheads, for instance?

If the amount of work and time involved, taken with the true cost of achieving sales is devaluing your time and eating into profit margins, it’s time to drop the destructive habit and learn from it before finding a better option. So if you ‘quit’ and gain by that, how can you be a loser? People quit bad habits daily, why not apply this same evaluation process to your business and marketing?

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