Land Girls Understood Values of Mutual Support and Getting Your Hands Dirty

I’ve always been a big believer in trying to do what I believed was for the ‘common good’, even when this meant swimming against tide of opinion and even making myself unpopular in the process in my strident youth. At the end of the day, if you are not true to yourself, you are lost and vulnerable to whichever winds are blowing around you. Given that we are daily at risk of tripping over into Moral Morass Abyss, I tend to check the motives of my actions regularly and pay attention to my moral compass.

After riots rocked cities all over the United Kingdom in my formative years, I became involved in what has become a life-long commitment to work with others to improve peoples’ lives and environment. What is challenging for me nowadays is that I that I want to continue these efforts as an entrepreneur. I want to balance the pursuit of profit with using whatever skills, knowledge and wealth I accumulate as a woman business owner, to make bigger differences than I ever managed to do as a consistently near-broke employee of larger organisations.

My aim is to make my entrepreneurial efforts contribute to what might be called ‘empowerment’ and ‘citizenship’. Achieving the greatest positive benefits for the greatest amount of people, through my own efforts and those of the team with whom I choose to work is one of the ethical decisions I have made at the start of my business.

I am not alone it seems, Price Waterhouse Coopers recently undertook research about the effects of the recession on women and found: “The research that we have done on women in the recession shows that 72 per cent say that it has got them thinking about a new start,” she says. “And nearly half of them want to shift into a small business or a social enterprise”. (Dame Julie Mellor quoted in the Times Online.)

I am passionate about achieving balanced change in a world desperately out of balance. What keeps me grounded is my environment and my determination to contribute towards womens’ equality of access to wealth and resources. What lifts my eyes beyond my personal horizon is my assurance that the emergence of the moral entrepreneur is in ascendancy and that the community of entrepreneurs with whom I now work share my vision. Collaboration amongst entrepreneurs is how business has to be, especially in times of economic challenge in order to ‘raise the boat for everybody’.

We simply cannot afford to keep on doing the same things we have always done, if we want to see something different – Einstein described this as the definition of insanity. We only have to look around at some of the crises with which we are now faced to see that he was right. We DO have to do things differently from now on in order to stop the rot and redress the social imbalances within our own communities and yes, even between nations.

Lofty ideals maybe. I certainly don’t lay any claim to easy answers – albeit sometimes I am aware we absolutely need to “keep it simple, stupid” or KISS as my friends say!

I recently heard a speech from a college professor, eminent philosopher and author on this, Mr Michael Sandel. I was gripped. How to express that it could be ok for people to make money and not burn the earth or each other in the process had been on my mind for weeks… How am I going to remain ethical and be happy when I become a rich woman (yes, I am serious about that) and help others to generate wealth for themselves is a question I have churned over many times since deciding to become an entrepreneur.

If my business entails sharing ideas on how people can achieve dreams of wealth, I need to be clear that this is indeed a ‘worthy’ goal. This means ignoring my own scripts ready to start replaying in my mind at any moment, which were handed to me by poor parents and relations and an even poorer local community.
Professor Sandel is passionate about morality, justice and ethical politics and economics. Hearing him helped me take one of the most vital steps in forging ahead in establishing my own home business.

He called economics “spurious”. But I had been listening to debates on taxation, inflation, employment and economics on the radio for years, gradually figuring out how we all fit into place with these big systems; I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Knowing that he was wiser than me, I turned the radio up and I went about tidying and cleaning up listening – my practical business activities could wait! This was far too important.

What he was getting at, was that economists tell us what we SHOULD be doing for the health of the GDP, employment, inflation and so forth (work harder, for longer hours, accept high taxation, etc) – as if it was all about the Economy and money. But all of these subjects are MORAL and political issues; they have to be weighed up in terms of justice, fairness, ecology and so forth, so they need to be democratically debated by everybody (not just economists). WE, the community has to have their say in order to discover ways to go about our daily life which enables the future of our communities, our families AND our environment to be secure…

The role of economics is to inform us of what might be the practical results of our decisions, no more than that. The crucial words here: ‘might be’. We are still learning all of the time, because the world is constantly evolving, as we learn new things about our world on a daily basis.

So, if our everyday behaviour as individual local citizens and even nations of people and international communities effects the balance of payments, distribution of welfare, health of the planet, the future of all living beings, for instance, then there are ethical implications of ignoring getting involved with each other in subjects about which we care passionately. In other words, “If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem”.

When I worked for other people in the past, we shared the same ideas to some degree, but quite often the politics of working closely together could get in the way of positive results – be it clash of personality or values and beliefs. In the words of my all time favourite song-writers, Neil Peart and Geddy Lee: “Glittering prizes and endless compromises shatter the illusion of integrity.”

So now, here I am, a mature woman of middle years and newbie entrepreneur, I now get to CHOOSE whom I work with. I choose my team carefully. If I am not convinced that they want to raise the bar for themselves and others somehow, then I really have little interest in supporting them or working with them. How can they inspire others to achieve better for themselves? It’s just not how I want to live my life. Fortunately, there are plenty of would be business owners out there who will be dreaming big too.

I set out in my working career in paid jobs working alongside or on behalf of communities in the belief we were changing lives for the better. I am still that person. Nowadays my methods are different, but the purpose remains. There’s hardly anything more exciting to me than hearing from someone who wants to change their own life, but who also has big dreams and is prepared to get their hands dirty.

Some might say that knowing there’s “10,000 holes in Blackburn Lancashire” is depressing and de-motivating. Not for me! Potholes need to be filled in so that we can all go safely about our business and the only way this is going to happen, for it to work for the maximum amount of people is by finding the right people to do the job and who want the same results. I always did like a challenge! But more importantly than that, I love finding people who want to get stuck in and get involved in wherever their passion takes them. Hope, combined with action and combined effort are the only way any of us will achieve success and fulfill our dreams.

I want more and better for more people and planet and I intend to build a team who feel the same. So what about you? What would you change if you had the economic power to do it?

(P.S. I chose these photo’s of the Land-Girls because their stories over the last year or so, in the 60th anniversary of ‘D’ Day and all, seemed to sum up what inspires me. The ladies in the hay-stacks are the Llandaff Land-Girls, from close to where I live)

Llandaff Land Girls Pitched In For Everyone's Benefit As Much As Their Own

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Last year I took a few more steps to becoming self-employed. I signed up to a few different online business programmes, which I thought would help me to work from home and earn money.

In all, before I found the right opportunity for me, I spent just short of £200 on cheap introductory online business schemes, which were leaders into more expensive back end product lines. This might not seem much, but at the time I was on welfare benefits for a few months after a car accident. I had no savings nor any partner’s earnings to lean on.

I knew I had to find another option for earning money; because of my injuries, I wasn’t sure I would be able to return to a physically demanding job that I had only been in a few days, after quitting a well paid management job, which had been slowly killing me. I was in a mess physically and financially.

Even a couple of hundred pounds can be the difference in putting food on the table or paying the phone bill and can come at a cost to your peace of mind. They were difficult days and I got my fingers burnt investigating opportunities and options.

Many work at home scams, rely on their adverts containing a grain of truth and depend on the naivety and vulnerability of people to believe what are at best only partial truth and at worst completely false claims. A spokesperson for the attorney general of Minnesota, Ben Wogsland was reported as citing the state’s highest unemployment rate in 25 years, which makes “so many people who are desperate, who are vulnerable.”

Suffice to say, my money went nowhere as even those front end products did not engender enough trust for me to want to spend any more money with them. My message to you is to beware of claims of “Get Rich Fast” , “Make Money Now” or “Better Faster”. The online business world is still prone to hype and scams, in spite of recent attempts by Google and the Federal Trade Commission to clean it up.

We haven’t seen the last of work at home scams yet. You may be attracted by offers which seem cheap or easy, but the devil is always in the detail. Buried in the “terms and conditions” may be small print allowing scammers to tap into your bank account.

The Federal Trade Commission has recently been applying pressure to rid the net of Get Rich Quick scams. Google have been cleaning up their pages and YouTube videos, making even legitimate online businesses raise the bar in terms of how they sell their products. Whilst some businesses have lost previous advertising campaigns as a result, it’s all good.

Fortunately, we are now seeing a decline in misrepresentation of business opportunities. But you need to check out what is involved with those offering you the chance to earn working from home. Perhaps you can only make money by recruiting other people to participate. This is known as a “pyramid scheme”; these are ILLEGAL.

This compares with legitimate direct sales or direct marketing for instance, where recruits earnings depend on sales as well as ‘residual income’ from their team.

If an advertisement makes an offer sounding ridiculously easy, it’s probably too good to be true. Similarly an online ad may only talk about your pipe dreams without telling you what kind of work you will do — other than it’s lucrative — this too can be a bad sign. Look for a contact number to ask about what is involved in this instance. If you cannot access a member of staff to talk to, do you really want to hand over any money?

Whilst you shouldn’t have to pay for information about a legitimate job, you may have to pay for training. You can always contact the Better Business Bureau or Office of Fair trading in the UK, or similar agency in other countries to see if there have been any other people making complaints about the “work at home” company you are looking into.

Watch out for apparently credible claims in scam email advertisements containing phrases such as “as seen on…” with logos of news organizations, such as ABC-TV or claiming affiliation to national institutions or corporations. Some scams show what look like legitimate business newspaper stories which endorse their product. Ask yourself if you are familiar with the named media, if not, you need to check them out.

To stay on the right side of the law, some ads contain lines like, “We are not a partner, affiliate, or licensee of (a large company) nor is our company in any other way formally associated with it.” However, the rest of the ad copy may seem to align themselves with legitimate online businesses.

Also, the word “advertisement” should appear somewhere on the page; this guarantees a certain standard of truth. If you see an ad which is suspect, report it to the relevant authorities.

Terms and conditions in ads can be very long, difficult to understand and skewed to benefit the company. It may say, for example, that in the event of a dispute, you can never sue the company; or in some cases, the company can sue you. Look out for continuing monthly charges, not just the shipping charge for the “free” kit. I got stung by such a scheme to the tune of over fifty pounds with one company and twenty with another!

Perhaps the most convincing of advertisements are those in an email which claim to be warnings of all other scams out there. Shockingly, they can be guilty of the very same work at home scams but lull you into a false sense of security by attacking others!

Finally, check amongst contact details for whether the work at home opportunity is with an off-shore company; if so, they may not be obliged to comply with regulations, meaning you are not protected. If there are no contact details available, steer clear.

Take a particular favourite scam of online business opportunities which features an ad of the good looking young man in jeans stretched out on a deck, one hand behind his head and the other resting on his chest. Next to him is his laptop, he’s apparently taking a snooze break from. The idyllic lifestyle is topped with the headline: “Work from home. Never set an alarm clock again. Make a fortune while being your own boss”. The ad contains the famous Google logo and makes income claims of “Earn up to $250 to $943 per day using Google.” (Anyone recognise ‘Google Fortune’?; there are other similar ones).

Google clamped down. The Federal Trade Commission earlier in 2009 sued a company calling itself ‘Google Money Tree’, which it said “conned consumers who are struggling to make a living and pay their bills during these difficult economic times” by claiming it was affiliated with Google.

Earning big money for simple and easy work from home, (that incidentally, requires your prior payment for a manual on how to do it) just is not common sense: “If that was true, we’d all be doing it”, is something I find myself saying to potential prospects to a legitimate opportunity I have since discovered since learning from having my fingers burnt with both scammers and also legitimate online business opportunities who simply lacked the integrity to tell the whole truth.

There are legitimate opportunities to work from home for a relatively small start up fees. A good example is the burgeoning secret shopper businesses, which women in particular find convenient to balance with other part time jobs and their home and family.

Of course, variations on secret shopper scams are also on the increase. For instance, if an offer is to “test shop” a money-transfer company, involving depositing a company check, this should ring alarm bells. It goes something like, you deposit a check into your own bank account and then wire some of your own money through e.g. Western Union. Low and behold, it later turns out to be worthless and you feel foolish to have been taken in.

Making anything upwards of about $15 per assignment is what you can generally expect as a mystery shopper. It tends to supplement other household earnings, unless you work it full time. This is work you can enjoy! It’s fun pretending to be someone else and being able to do it between other errands, so it doesn’t take too much of your time. The extra money funds your treats. “Kerching!”

The legitimate home based business home shopping sector is providing real benefits to people who can either only work part time or perhaps have disabilities, have retired or are students, i.e. people in circumstances which can make it difficult for them to find traditional work. This is a great legitimate opportunity to earn additional money I found for my own country…

I am not yet fortunate enough to know many women entrepreneurs in and as yet, my sponsor is my only relatively “wealthy woman” and self-made female entrepreneur that I know. It has always been my experience that successful women business owners tend to come from an entrepreneurial family back-ground.
Nevertheless, I understand the importance of women networking for empowering women, so as opportunities are limited where I am geographically based, I regularly tune into websites hosted by the likes of, Ellie Drake of Braveheartwomen. I specifically seek out sites created by women for women because I feel that I can relate to their specific experiences more easily and with less scepticism. I do not exclude male tutelage, but find that they are less interested in women’s empowerment, which is still regrettably, sorely needed.

I figure that women will more than likely have something extra to say to me as a woman that can help fill in the jig-saw pieces missing from pictures created by men which assume an equality of attitude and circumstances of women, which is not the case. As yet, it is still a male-dominated entrepreneurial world and although online marketing is increasingly populated by women, when I visit marketing forums, I find women still calling to hear the voices of other women.

Personally, I find there’s something particularly fulfilling and rewarding about seeing women sharing their specific experiences and in such diverse ways, which really inspires me. We need these female entrepreneurs as role models, so we can learn how to emulate what they do. I am eternally grateful to those women out there for having the commitment to share her good fortune and the good fortune of other successful women with those of us still hungry for their success.

Recently, Ellie Drake hosted a show where Kim Kiyosaki, one of the most successful women entrepreneurs in real estate today was sharing the stage with other successful women. What I learnt from the two part interviews has inspired me to share with you what these women and in particular Kim had to say.

Given the surge of women setting up a home based business, moving towards financial independence and that more women are looking for solutions to regaining control over their working life, in gratitude to those women on whose shoulders the rest of us stand, I hope you enjoy the video below and wish you success in seeking out your own female role models.

If you enjoy this, then when you have watched this, please sign up for your own account with Braveheart Women to see the second part of this show. (I do not profit by this – no affiliate scheme here. I just figure it is only fair to give something back to Ellie and her team in terms of growing the Braveheart membership and profile.)

Oh and whilst I’m in my ‘mission for women’s empowerment mode’, here’s another bonus piece of insight for women business owners and women entrepreneurs …

In return for bringing these women to you here, I want to ask you in return, which women do you consider as role models and why? Are any of there any favourite women marketers out there? Please leave a comment.

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I have not long been involved in the online world, but since the arrival of my lap top three years ago, I have increasingly become addicted to virtual socialising and sharing! Dating forums, debating forums to marketing forums; I love them!

For too long, however, I wasted time believing that as a woman ‘of a certain age’ living in the valleys of Wales, I was unlikely to meet a man in my day to day countryside lifestyle, so I’d take my pursuit of romance to online forums. He had to be out there, I thought… Let me just say to any younger readers here, I’m in the ‘more mature lady’ age bracket, so I don’t go clubbing and the pubs in my valley are pretty rubbish. It’s no fun to drive for at least half an hour to have one beer only to return home dissatisfied… it’s the forty-plus way in the countryside. (Be warned!)

The web encourages a ‘fast-food’ or ‘hit and run’ attitude to one of life’s most precious gifts. I eventually abandoned wasting my Friday evenings and Sunday afternoons, thinking I would leave a picky profile out there and if a fellow picky man was attracted to me, well then bonus….if not, hey, that’s OK too. Plenty else to do.

Meantime, there’s money to be made online. Having mastered the art of chatting to complete strangers on line, with no body language to read and having had far too much practice with time wasters, or people who just lacked learning in the communications skills department, I have discovered my virtual community in the many online forums out there.

Netlog is my latest online forum discovery and am looking forward to finding out how folk tick around here and to enjoying exchanging profound discoveries and complete rubbish in equal proportion. It’s a younger audience, but we all need to remain open to the influence of younger generations, right?

Here’s a few of my other favourite marketing forums:

• BB (exclusive to my business),
• Better Networker (LOADS to learn here about entrepreneurial skills and resources),
• Connected Women (still finding my way around here; it’s a new online forum),
• Yuwie(What! Get paid to socialise? I’m up for that!),
• Twitter (laughter, tears, inspiration; Twitter has it all!), Secret Women’s Business Network,
• LinkedIn (Women, Social Media and Green Group, amongst others!),
• Warrior Forum (I like to hop around here – there’s so much to learn from fellow online entrepreneurs…and so much fun here!).
• Direct Matches – Another money spinning and business building referral option is offered here.
• Last but not least, there are some great Google groups too…(select those in the middle range of membership numbers or be lost!).I tend to hang out amongst business owners and entrepreneurs here, although sometimes I drop in on my sisters looking to get a balance of work and personal life here too

This year I’m going to make my Sundays my do digital visits with my virtual valley friends.

Are there any other countryside dwellers out there who are on an online mission of any description? What are peoples’ favourite forums? Drop me a line and share your 2010 digital ambitions… Oh, by the way, my digital dating is on a back-boiler these days… making money online is much more fun for the foreseeable future!

Which dating sites am I still signed up to? Oh, that would be asking for trouble! ; )



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The older I get, the more communications technology excites me! It can be such a powerful force to get your messages out. It doesn’t matter if you’re a lone small business owner or a huge multi-national, you can compete on the internet these days on an equal footing, if you know how to use what’s on offer.

My latest source of excitement is the wonders of autoresponders! Their power to automate your words and make your messages viral is phenomenal if you get it right…

It is incredible that despite computers having been around for twenty years and the internet for about a decade, small to medium sized businesses have still not grasped the sales power of a well-targeted email marketing campaign. With other technological advances and the onslaught of social media, business owners are struggling to put all of the pieces together and juggle the various components of their marketing mix.

The autoresponder is one of the least talked about ‘work-horse’ tools of successful marketers. One great bonus lies in its ability to do your marketing exactly to your schedule once you have set it up. Autoresponder systems allow you to do the crucial on-going relationship building and marketing to the list of prospects you build. Once your messages get through spam filters, if you can achieve that magical click through, your chances of staying ahead of your competitors is increased.

Email marketing software tools allow you to set up well-thought out campaign messages that you want your markets to receive about you and your products or your industry. They allow you to keep your products and your brand and persona in the sights of your buyers and even reach new ones. With great copywriting in your headlines and used in combination with other strategies, you can ‘set it and forget it’, allowing the software to deliver your communications when you need to get the message out, for instance at special promotion times.

It’s worth knowing that a person has to be exposed to a product on average seven times, before they will buy. Autoresponder email software facilitates the process of more successful online marketing. Selling your ‘benefits’ consistently will increase your chances of a customer sharing their contact details with you to find out more when they are ready to buy.

In spite of the fact that we are all bombarded daily in our in-boxes, master marketers have combined the arts of strong copywriting and customer psychology to get past the sceptic reader and generate interest in them and their product over the ‘long term sales cycle’.

Marketing Sherpa’s Email Marketing Benchmark Survey 2009 found that ‘relevance’ of content of emails was the utmost priority of direct marketers using this medium. The second biggest challenge was gaining attention over competitors. Knowing one’s business, relationship development and information marketing all come together in strong copywriting in email campaigns.

There are 2 main functions to email marketing campaigns:

1 Collecting data about your prospects from your opt in box on your website, allowing you to customise your campaigns to warm markets. When used in conjunction with tracking your marketing campaign management will be more successful.

2 Automation of emails; if you were to have to send emails to all of your marketing leads individually, it would be extremely time-consuming and the campaign co-ordination and lead management would be nigh on impossible.

Here’s power to your clicks! : )

I would definitely recommend setting up your own Autoresponder email marketing software account. I’d say, in fact, it’s mandatory for any direct marketing success…

In times of increased competition and a plethora of marketing media, it is important to have a number of online marketing strategies in your arsenal to stay ahead of the game.

Return On Investment can be difficult to calculate in terms of marketing campaigns, unless set up right. It is important to monitor the time and costs incurred of any single campaign vis a vis sales generated as part of your planning and marketing strategy.

Some software will allow you to track click through rates to your web-site, so you can measure your success. Coupled with after-sales research and feedback, you know whether you are hitting your targets.

Email software may also facilitate maximising your ‘opt in’ rate or ‘digital foot-fall’ via tools to generate appropriate opt in boxes, where clients share their contact details in return for some benefit offered from doing so.

Aweber is one such email marketing software and stands out in terms of its success for deliverability of over 99% compared to competitors. It’s reliability and customer service are second to none in the industry and well worth checking out if you are looking to leverage the power of the internet for increasing sales.

If you are looking to learn more about how to make your email campaigns more successful and increase your bottom line, I have written more about these software systems on my site. Share some of your experiences of other software systems – gaffs, glitches, goals and glory! Which system do you prefer and why?

So Why Invest in Automated Email Software?

“Autoresponders are the greatest marketing invention ever created for the Internet, hands down!” – Forrester Research

Let’s Take A Closer Look at the Advantages of an Autoresponder System:

• Having your own email marketing software enables you to protect that most valuable of your assets as an entrepreneur, time management. Their administration can be out-sourced, as can the copywriting. Your need only be role the strategic planning and monitoring. Once set, you can forget and your software acts as your digital salesperson.
• Email marketing software enables you to capitalise on that equally important asset in direct marketing, your business leads. Being able to personalise your messages with the tools offered means that you are maintaining a relationship with your customers.
• This leads nicely into list building. Some email marketing software offer opt-in box tools, for you to maximise traffic from your web-site.
• Timed campaigns can be switched on and off according to events going on in the wider world: Christmas, Thanks-giving, New Year, Summer holidays, etc.
• If you are building up to a specific event, autoresponders enable you to give customers plenty of notice.
• Email software will allow you to broadcast messages without having to under-take previous key word research in order to get noticed – albeit your copy-writing and research of product and customer needs attention.
• Automated email campaigns allow you to do extra affiliate marketing. This can work well as an adjunct to your main messages in your ‘ps’.
• Video is increasingly taking precedence for relationship building, but some people just don’t feel comfortable with this medium. Emails allow your personality and brand to come forward in a no-pressure way.
• Never under-estimate the potential viral capacity, as your prospect forwards your message to other warm prospects, expanding your reach to ‘warm markets’. Digital media acts as a tool for ‘word of mouth’ recommmendation. Make your messages entertaining. We all love a laugh!
• As a team builder for instance in an MLM, replication of effort is vital to leverage income. Any email campaign you set up, can be duplicated by your downline, if you choose the right software that offers appropriate tools to do so.
• The option to set up separate lists of prospects to direct different campaigns to allows you to target your marketing messages according to whether your leads are ‘cold’, warm or hot, or what you believe their individual preferences may be. Emails which are automated make co-ordination of various campaigns more viable given shortages of time or staffing pressures.
• Depending upon your wider marketing strategy, there may be scope for linkage via the software to your own team of phone consultants who can do your telling and selling over the phone to your leads as a more ‘human face’ of your campaigns. This is all about the marketing mix and bringing the customer closer to you.
• Branding can be optimised through on-going contact. The intent of your email is simply to share the link to your online marketing pages with your email contact list. Rather than hard-selling, you’re simply sharing information by linking for instance to a company blog, where you can share your expertise or sharing the latest information or research on issues related to your products and services, with links to your sales pages. Recently, larger companies with bigger budgets are creating entertaining videos with no direct references to their products, only ‘sponsored by…’ The equivalent in small businesses might be videos of participation of staff in charitable events with humorous or ‘heart-warming’ story lines.
• Email marketing software is a powerful tool when integrated with other social media. E.g. They provide a complement to Twitter, MySpace, Facebook relationship marketing. Social media is a great forum for expressing ‘brand personality’. These can be links in generic emails, or form a ‘ps’ just to keep eyeballs on you for longer!!!

I’ll be returning to the theme of marketing mix strategies again, but would love to hear any additional comments you have to make about what your priorities are. Have you read the MarketingSherpa report? If so, what did you find helpful to your business development strategies? Feel free to post any questions here about Aweber, as this is my preferred choice and am just kicking off with it properly as we speak.




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Don't Believe the Hype! Business needs proper establishment

Millions of people like you world-wide are now looking more than ever for a new opportunity in a top home-based business. Forbes Magazine, report that seventy million Americans plan to start their own business within the next three years; over forty thousand new business start-ups happen per day in the USA. In spite of a current global recession, the figures are similar for many other nations.

Current economic climates are persuading people to look for alternative sources of income and security beyond their traditional industries. People are looking more for self-reliance and independence in their day job. If anyone tries to tell you that you have reason to be cautious, this does not match up with the statistics. The network marketing business is bucking the recessionary trend. This was a way of working that it seemed to me when I was looking at my options, could offer some real future security.

It’s difficult, however, if you are just starting out or even looking to change your line of business. Increasingly would be small business owners and entrepreneurs are bombarded with opportunities, many seeming alike, in terms of ‘get rich quick’ offers. In the on-line world of business, it is difficult to know what are the indicators of a top home-based business opportunity; I should know, I wasted time and money on getting involved in an MLM which would take me all my time and energy to just stand still. Well publicised stories of such businesses which can have you spending more money than you will make or which barely allow you to break even give entrepreneurs looking to work from home legitimate cause for scepticism when deciding what is your best investment option.

So if your head is spinning right now, let’s look at your main considerations. You need first off to be assured in your own mind that you have found a strong business model. So take some time comparing different home businesses. Look for a top tier option, a ‘Direct Sales’ model, as opposed to a ‘Multi Level Marketing model’ ( “MLM” ). This way, you will not incur risks of only getting paid on multiple levels of “down-lines” or ‘sign ups’ within your organization. A notorious problem associated with the MLM industry is a high level of attrition in your down-line; i.e. people jumping ship when they become dissatisfied and move onto their next venture. Their leaving your team is a loss of ‘residual’ income for you. Heaven forbid they take a whole sales team with them when they move on.

Within weeks of my joining an MLM, my upline informed me that she was moving to another business and I was to be her last sign up. Ironically, I found out afterwards that the new opportunity was also not all it was cracked up to be; she defected back. Hopping around between MLM businesses seems to be pretty common and with risks and benefits so disproportionate, I am frankly not surprised.

When you are looking to earn from sales as well as residual commissions this threatens a vital stream of income. When you lose team commissions from those leaving ‘below’ you, whilst you do still maintain your income from your own direct sales, your chances of realizing any respectable passive residual income in your business becomes increasingly difficult, even impossible. Your time becomes spent heavily on recruiting and training new people, only to have them quit within an average of three months. (Make no mistake this is the average attrition rate with MLM’s).

By choosing a more exclusive or top level business, you will find that the buy in cost is higher, but your rewards are in the bigger commissions paid. That being said, it’s worth bearing in mind that there are lucrative direct sales businesses out there which cost much less than traditional ‘bricks and mortar’ businesses or franchises, (yet this is how an average entrepreneur still invests).

A good home-based business opportunity will operate on a model which pays well on sales made. Lack of positive cash flow is one of the major stumbling blocks for people starting out in a new business, and knowing that you will be paid well on sales you make will help to ensure you are able to continue to operate your business.

Another consideration should be a dual income business system, meaning that you will receive a commission for each sale up front, but there is also a generous residual income component built in at the back end. The reason this is important, is that your business sponsor must have a financial incentive for assisting you to get up and running. Otherwise, after you have signed on the dotted line, you may be left to your own devices to learn how to set up and operate your business. Again, this ‘sink or swim’ process is common to many MLM’s. Find out about what training and support may be on offer before you make the financial investment.

The last (but certainly not least) feature of a powerful business opportunity is if it offers an automated, <strong>duplicatable</strong> online marketing system. OK, that sounds a little like jargon. But what it means is that you need to investigate how much of a back-office support system your business offers? You do not want to be spending any more time than necessary on training new team members. Can you out-source elements of the business, if so, do you know the legalities and costs involved?

There are some truly amazing products out there, but if you have no systems of advertising and selling them, then you simply don’t have a great business. Using systems that harness the power and reach of the internet, and are easily duplicatable will create a very strong foundation for a long term, lucrative business.

Your Business Will Bear Fruit Given the Right Growing Conditions

This brings me to my final point. Remember, you are in a business for the long-term. Direct sales for instance, is a relationship-based business. Most of your customers are likely to be return buyers (on average more than 80% of sales). It is important you understand this from the beginning and do not get disheartened if you do not get immediate results. A reason many MLM businesses fail is a lack of commitment to the long term. Find a business which will weather all of the seasons and the product is of value and sustainable over time and internationally.

This may seem a lot to consider, but if you are prepared to invest your time and energy into your future, establishing your check-list early on in your search could be crucial to your long-term success and could save you a lot of heart and head-ache, to say nothing of cash in the long run.

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Before you can earn money online by online marketing, you need to understand exactly how you make money with affiliate marketing and what you need to seriously consider before diving in to what is often sold as an “easy way to make money online”. Whether you are just starting out or are an experienced online marketer already, I have information to share for wherever you are up to now. Here’s what this article will cover in brief:

• What is affiliate marketing?
• What is an “affiliate”?
• What is an “affiliate program”?
• Signing up for an affiliate program
• Your “affiliate link” to earning
• Commission payments
• Payment systems

“Affiliate marketing” is a way of making money on the Internet that has been around for decades. This money making scheme turns ordinary people into millionaires like no other industry. If you are not selling your own products and offering affiliate programs to others, basically, affiliate marketing pays a person for selling someone else’s products or introducing someone to a third party’s goods or services, either on-line or off.

So, you are paid in commission when you send leads or customers to a merchant who sells goods and services. Many of the multi-nationals now have this as part of their marketing strategy. Direct marketing via affiliate programmes is big business. According to Marketing Sherpa: “Affiliate Marketing involves an estimated $14 billion in annual online sales”.

An “Affiliate” is the person who will make money by signing up with a company’s affiliate program and then they send paying customers to the seller. As the ‘product promoter’ you earn a fee, or commission for helping to sell a company’s products or services online.

Affiliates may also be known as: “associates,” “program partners,” or “publishers”. I go into JV’s in my extended Affiliate Marketing 101.

So how do you earn money as an affiliate? When you make a sale, the merchant pays you a percentage of the value of that sale.

Ebooks, down-loadable information reports or training programs, which offer valuable information to people are common products and services for sale in an online company’s affiliate program. Whoever refers you to them will have made a commission for your purchase of that information product.

Some affiliate ‘merchants’ pay you when you send them qualified leads. These product producers and publishers promote “offers” through CPA (Cost Per Action) Networks. More on this later.

Affiliate programs work well with social media marketing online, which means that a website can earn money for you as you sleep if you learn Web 2.0 marketing methods.

So how does this marketing system work to earn you money? Well, when you sign up for a merchant’s “affiliate program,” you become a member of that merchant’s ‘online sales force’. Obviously, it pays them to get as many people as possible promoting their product online as a cheap marketing system. Your ‘word of mouth’ recommendation online is likely to find a ready made ‘warm market’ for them; for this access to a bigger audience, they are willing to give you a cut of their profits. This can be as little as a few percentage points to as much as 90% in commission payment.

This compensates you for the time and money you spend advertising and promoting a company’s products, which they would otherwise be spending on billboards and overheads of a marketing employee’s wages, insurance, pension etc. They also benefit because you only get paid only if you generate sales or leads. No results, no pay! But hey, if you want to quit your day job and work from home, how else can you make money from your easy chair and doing what you enjoy (apart from some seedier industries perhaps!)

Signing up for an affiliate program is easy enough. You’ll need to apply – generally online, although, some companies still require paper applications. Some programs will offer direct deposit into an online merchant account, which you may be required to sign up to.

When you are signed up, the seller will give you a unique URL (web-page with a number identifying your account attached) to direct customers to, or similarly, they may give you a ‘link’ unique to you. Depending on how you are going to generate leads, will determine the system you will use.

‘Banners’ – small images which when clicked take you to a product seller site – for instance may link to the product seller via a URL with either your unique business name associated with it or a unique reference number, linked to your account with them. These are fun to play with and do some of the marketing heavy lifting for you by putting together images and ideas with clickable links.

Merchant sites issue affiliate IDs and affiliate links, plus link tracking and payment services, for thousands of merchants. You as the affiliate are brought together with the producer via their portal. These third-party merchant-affiliate link companies get paid for all these services by the product producer, which means it’s free for you, the affiliate, to sign up to.

Because they give you access to many different companies. This saves your time searching for all kinds of products, from many different merchants, in the myriad of niches; you can quickly access multiple programs in less time with one ID. The drawback, however, is that in all likelihood, the compensation system will not be very lucrative, so what you save in time in the short term, you can lose in the longer term in terms of earnings for efforts.

Here your banking and bookkeeping if you are a sole-proprietor are organised for you, should you choose to go this route.

That being said, book-keeping should not be an issue; you want to look at out-sourcing this aspect of your business anyway to free you up for the creative and strategic stuff, which is what will grow your business. You are a professional marketer and you want your time spent on this revenue producing activity, not on book-keeping!

So, assuming you have decided your target income, done your homework and have found the lucrative products you can get passionate about promoting. Next comes, the “affiliate agreement”. Make sure you understand WHAT you are signing up to, because if you violate their terms and conditions, the merchant can withhold payment, or even drop you from their affiliate program.

Your job is to put this link on a website, in an email, an article, a video, or even in a picture online; this is where your Web 2.0 training comes in. There are so many ways to promote, this has to be learnt seperately and is too big a topic to deal with here (in fact it is an on-going learning and training process for any marketer who wants to get this right and one you need to commit to right at the start).

The promotion and marketing is the skilled part of being an affiliate earner. You’ve got to get people to click on your link AND BUY. Curious Georges and Looky Loos are no good to your business partner or your bank account!

Get this marketing process right from step one and your visitor follows through your marketing system and makes a purchase, you will be paid a commission on that sale.

The merchant’s web-page must also do a good job of selling the person who clicks on your link, but it is your own system, creativity and skill that gets the potential buyer to click through in the first place.

For example, if you place the link on a website that includes your detailed review of the product, together with projecting the right approach, a visitor will be more inclined to buy. Do not believe any business partner if they try to tell you that their site will do all the selling for you! They are lying to you. Getting someone there in the first place is a job in itself!

So then how does the merchant know that you personally should be paid, and not someone else? Well, remember the link they gave you that you filed on your computer for safe keeping? This contains code which is unique to your account with them, so they can track where the sale was made from.

This code is a unique set of numbers or letters. It’s called your “affiliate ID.” The code identifies you — and only you — as the person who is responsible for the sale.

Ok well if you’ve stuck with me this far. Don’t worry if all of these detailed considerations seem a little over-whelming right now… Overwhelm is better than under-whelm after all, right?! The important thing is making good money online is about making your future earnings secure and set up well it is great fun!

You need to learn a little about the techy side of the system too, so now is probably as good a time as any to tell you how “cookies” help you to make sales too. These are tiny programs dropped into to a visitor’s web browser when they click your affiliate link. Cookies store information on a visitor’s computer for your benefit. The information dropped into their computer identifies you as the affiliate who drove them to the site belonging to the product seller.

Compensation Systems: (ie How You Get Paid)
Before signing up to give your time to any partner affiliate program, you need to think about your own goals. Seriously! What do you want to earn? What will this money buy you? What is the reason you are doing this in the first place? The answers need to be in the fore-front of your mind when committing your time and energy. Will your new business partner affiliate commissions get you closer to your goal?

With this in mind, let’s take a look at what’s on offer for affiliates.

Cost Per Action (CPA) or Pay Per Lead

This type of affiliate program pays a set fee for each qualified lead you send to the seller’s site through your affiliate link. The visitor has to take action to share their contact information with the merchant to be considered a “qualified lead” .

The MERCHANT decides who is “qualified prospect”. There are about 50 different Cost Per Action / Acquisition networks around who specialize in financial services programs; they are highly selective and offer lucrative returns for experienced marketers.

Pay Per Click (PPC). Contextual Advertising

Generally merchant partners don’t pay you when someone clicks your affiliate link, but when someone BUYS after clicking your affiliate link. Certain advertising programs do pay just for clicks however. Providing ad space on your web-site can make a small amount of money from each click on an ad; it all adds up.

Google AdSense is probably the most popular amongst affiliates of this kind of advertising. You show say 3 or 4 Google ads on your site, and when visitors click them, you receive a small percentage of the amount the advertisers pay Google.

Generally speaking, sending your visitors to a web page with contextual ads isn’t as profitable as commission-based sales, but it still offers another avenue to make you money! See my 101 on Affiliate Marketing for more details on the relative pros and cons of ad systems.

Pay-Per-Sale

Pay per sale is basically commissions for direct marketing; you get paid for sales made after the person you refer clicks through and buys.

Residual Income and Recurring Revenue

A favourite topic. In residual income programs, merchants pay you a recurring commission on subscriptions and monthly services. Direct Marketing, Network Marketing or MLM companies will pay you ‘residual earnings’ for other affiliates you sign up. Effectively, their marketing efforts carry on earning for you, whilst you are busy doing something else… Long-term, these back-end commissions are your biggest profits! Click here to find out how I learnt about what a difference residual income with the Get Paid Today system makes to your online success.

I would suggest you really do your homework here, as this is where you are really leveraging your efforts for maximum returns for minimal effort. Bear in mind, however, that you have to make a commitment to your own professional development as you are now in the realms of team building and coaching. If you like working with people and are a good communicator, you’ll have a ball building a potentially lucrative business.

Hybrid Programs

I left this until last, as this type of marketing combines elements of any of the above. Sometimes merchants combine different payment programs. For instance, differing rates per banner click or sales made after someone clicks. Some will also offer bonuses after you make a certain number of sales. Others offer a scale that pays higher commissions the more sales you make.

I haven’t tried this model personally. It’s tends to be used for physical products as opposed to for example digital information ones. Once more, commitment to improving your marketing professionalism is required. Consider this perhaps having mastered promoting commission-based products first.

COMMISSION PAYMENT SYSTEMS

The basics! There are basically two types of commissions:

SINGLE-TIER COMMISSIONS are straight commission payments made for your direct sales results. You get a percentage of the profit made by the seller per sale.

TWO-TIER COMMISSIONS pay as this implies, on two levels (although MLMs are set up on a similar basis). You benefit from your own sales, and you can make money on a percentage of sales made by new affiliates whom you refer to the affiliate program and who sign up.

So, the benefits are obvious here; even if you don’t make many direct sales, the affiliates who sign up under you will. There are sound business reasons for you to do so however, as anyone investing in a strong business, will want to see their ‘leader’ doing as they do too. With the right team support, you will earn automatic earnings for you as you get a percentage of your team’s sales who copy what you and your team are doing!

Two-tier programs are not so common; MLM’s are more common; Some say this is because of the complex tracking required. MLMs are not necessarily the holy grail of marketers either, however. If you happen to find a two-tier program in a niche that fits well with online marketing strategies, you might end up recruiting many second-tier affiliates through your articles, videos, forum postings or other social media postings. Those small second-tier commissions can add up!

To learn more about the potential disadvantages of some MLM business systems, I suggest you check out the increasingly infamous Coffee House Letter.

At the end of the day, your affiliate marketing needs to underpin a good business model, to keep revenue flowing whilst you build your main business on the back end.

As far as Payment Terms go, merchants can issue earnings payments whenever suits them, so it’s important to read the small print in your agreement when you sign up for an affiliate program to see if their terms suit you too.

Just remember that before you can get paid, generally speaking, your earnings may have to reach a pre-determined amount, although the good news is that not all systems are set up like this, also the earnings, once they begin to happen, will bring regular income.

There is so much more you will learn from learning to earn in the direct marketing industry. It is a steep learning curve for many as over 60% of online marketers are completely new to the industry! Right now it happens to be one of the most competitive industries you could choose to get involved in, and over 95% fail to survive their first year – but don’t let that put you off; there are reasons for peoples’ failure, the point is to invest in your marketing training to save yourself money and headache in the long run.

That being said, it is not only definitely the most rewarding thing I have ever done work-wise, I happen to know that the direct marketing industry truly is THE door for the ordinary person to walk through to become rich beyond their wildest expectations. The long-term rewards of sheer hard-work during the set up period and development in the first year or two make it all worth while in the long run… Making money whilst walking the dog in the hills where I live or whilst I sleep and knowing I have skills for life-long monthly earnings beyond the average surgeon’s annual salary… nothing can top that!

I have tried to cover the basics of affiliate marketing, but I have also left a lot of information for other articles. But if you want to learn more, be sure to check out my Affiliate Marketing 101 or fire me a question. I’d love to hear what others’ experiences are… (Did I mention that being part of a real community online is also one of the really fun parts of the direct marketing business? If you are at all over-whelmed and think that you need to learn the nuts and bolts of how to get the customers clicking on your links, then the best thing you can do right now, is actually invest in your marketing training.

So here’s my shameless plug. The best training bar none, that takes you by the hand through every step of the nuts and bolts of Web 2.0 social media marketing that I’ve galloped through here is Traffic Formula 2 by Mike Dillard and his team. The truth is,, there is nothing for free if it’s worth getting and this investment in your online marketing skills will be your best in terms of getting set up in such a way that the only way you can fail will be by not putting in the time!

Now go learn to earn more than you ever made in a day job in a month and what it really means to Be Do Have AND Have Fun! Check out my extended 101 article on the subject of affiliate marketing to get the step by step process of how to do this.

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“What – you may ask – does a snoozing cat have to do with time managment ?” Well, Milly here is very aware of when it is time to take breaks. You see her most pressing time management issue is timing that crucial pounce amongst the shrubs, when there’s a juicy bird for the taking!

Much of her time is taken up with the understanding of the importance of delegation and so she let’s me know when it is time to fill her bowl up or open her portal to her kingdom outside in the garden. But more about the significance of Duchess Milly and sneaky feline habits later…

Meantime, we mere humans however, have a whole different time scale and set of pressures to juggle. I for one have always struggled with procrastination for instance, to say nothing of prioritisation!

But recently…my mind was blown by my biggest wake up call of the decade to come! My New Year’s Resolution has been injected with rocket fuel! I am in that on-going process of building my money mindset and moving towards real prosperity and away from survival mode. Then came the call from the Senior Vice President of Marketing for my Internet Marketing company…

This past six months nearly, I have been struggling to stay on track with my ‘time management’. It’s always been a struggle for me and I won’t make excuses…we all only have 24 hours – albeit perhaps personal circumstances do have some impact, but nevertheless… I have always felt I could do better and have made consistent efforts at balancing pressures and responsibilities.

Now, I’ll be honest here, I know I can do much better at prioritising my time. I have chronic (monthly) ADHD, in an industry geared to distracting the best of us!

But who would have thought that one of the keys to time management skills might be knowing what you are worth on an hourly basis? This is eye opening stuff I have grappled with before as an under-paid employee, but never as an entrepreneur!

It’s so easy to calculate exactly what you are worth as a self-employed person, right down to the “hour”. I used to do this as a six monthly ritual when I had a J.O.B. to see how my employer valued me – (less than £10 per hour all told…! : -S )

So many people who are self employed or own their own business and work on commission never really know what they’re time is worth exactly, let alone what they’re worth “per hour.”

Why is this is a BIG problem?

Well, if YOU don’t know what YOUR time is worth per hour or per day, how can anyone else who wants to contract your services? Worse still…if no one knows what YOUR time is worth how could they ever “value” YOU or YOUR time or YOUR service?

Read that last bit again and think about it for a moment.

OK Well, the good news is, there is a way to work out what you are worth BY THE HOUR. The eye opener for me when I did this as a business owner, I was even more uncomfortable about my sleep ins and some other time-consuming habits that I had been allowing to sneak in up until that point…

This, my friend, is a really powerful tool and unlike any other time management system you may ever have adopted. It defies all general time management and productivity principals.

OK, so are you ready with your pen and calculator…?

Let’s say you earn $200,000 per year (or perhaps that’s what you want to earn) and you work 8 hours per day 5 or 6 days per week. Take out a few weekends and holidays and call it 250 actual work days per year instead of 365. So, then:250 work days per year multiplied by 8 work hours in a day would equal 2,000 “work hours” in a year. With me so far? Easy, hey?

So this works out at your being worth $100 per hour, right?

Wrong….lol!
Studies have shown over and over again that, at best, 1/3 of your work time is actually “work time” meaning only about 3 of the 8 hours of your work day are actually “profit producing” work hours. And nowadays, with all the distractions we’re faced with, it’s likely a LOT less than 3 hours… much less.

But for argument’s sake, let’s call it 3 hours. And let’s calculate your real hourly worth.
So, take the same 250 work days in a year and now multiply it by our NEW number – 3. Remember, 1/3 or less of your time will be productive, “profit producing” time. Now, 3 hours in the day (not 8), which would now equal 750 “real work hours” per year. Now, your time is worth $267 per hour. This is the real cost of that hour on Facebook or hanging out with friends!

This means you’re worth three times what you would have originally thought and your time three times more valuable!

This simple formula has rocket fuelled my New Year resolution to be more productive. I am more conscious of my time a LOT more and am wasting a LOT less of it… Knowing my true professional value is one helluva motivator for me not letting a more of my time get wasted by either my lax habits or anyone else’s for that matter.

My colleague, Andrew got this time management system from Dan Kennedy. Let me know what your reaction is when you do the numbers…

And remember – if you won’t put a value on your time, no one else will either…

If you are looking to really get your ‘self-management’ maximised, take a look at Dan Kennedy’s book, where the formula came from:
“No B.S. Time Management For Entrepreneurs – The Ultimate, No Holds Barred, Kick Butt, Take No Prisoners Guide To Time Productivity & Sanity.”

Great title and definitely one on my list for mindset training this year… Let me know if you have read it and how it is helping with your time management…

(My guilty secret and sneaking time waster… a little afternoon nap with my friend Milly…What’s yours?)

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The INTENSITY of competition in home based business and network marketing arena is heating up right now (Have you been feeling it?).

There are more people rushing to join the network marketing industry, because of the returns and freedom it can offer. Correspondingly, there are also more customers; that’s good. But more customers also means more competitors. In any case, I need to know what I am up against. I must have MORE than a “great” product and a turnkey “system” to prevail against the toughest online marketing rivalry.

*Understand this*

The key to success in network marketing is NOT brute force! It’s FINESSE.

Even if you’re competing with 5000 other marketers, the secret to winning this game is counter-intuitive but simple. Sixteen years ago, stuffing a few thousand flyers in people’s letterboxes was enough to do the job. Obviously, that’s not going to cut it any more. Nowadays you must make the paradigm shifts necessary to propel you to the head of the pack.

And, like anything else, it’s easy when you know how.

So what is the secret?

I’m convinced that there is one fundamental understanding that people must comprehend as foundation for their home based business …and that is this:

*Information Marketing*

Understand and implement the principles of Information Marketing and you’ll steadily surpass even the most determined competitors. It’s not easy. But it gets easier. Again, you do NOT succeed in network marketing through brute force selling. Don’t pitch. Never pitch. TEACH!

Lever off the shoulder of the ‘giant’ company you have teamed up with. Maybe you had the foresight to join the best online marketing education company on the planet, if so, this makes you a leader in this industry. Well done!

But what to teach? What to offer first? Well, the “Self Employed & Rich” series is a good start. Being aware of what is in this series will help attract a list; market to that list. The Coffee House Letter is another “Attraction Marketing” based set of lessons – an awesome one.

In fact, I never pitch the business. I pitch the Coffee House Letter. That is I ‘pitch’ vital marketing industry information.

Then, when people give me their email address, they get to know me (from my emails and my website) and they get to know about my partner companies. It’s simple, it’s beautiful and it works. It works because, in the first instance, I’m giving information WITHOUT WANT. I’m teaching and I’m attracting people to me who think the same way I do. I’m implementing the fundamental but counter-intuitive laws of “Attraction Marketing”.

Free Magnetic Sponsoring Boot Camp Series

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Good honest, transparent ethical, marketing eliminates the need for selling. We don’t like to be sold, but we like to have an authentic conversation about our needs.”
Mary Ellen Tribby – Braveheart Women Marketing Award Winner

Why is lead generation consistently the BIG issue for network marketing – or any other business for that matter? Perhaps the truth is that network marketing is more competitive, more expensive, more complex, and tougher than ever before to make a success of. So let’s get real, right now. Google advertisers, in particular, giving up faster than ever. Well this is great news for the rest of us; less competition!

Ask any business owner what their biggest challenge is in their direct marketing business and you will hear a re-occurring theme….

“My biggest problem is how to generate leads and make more money than what I spend on marketing.”

So why is lead generation such a struggle for so many business owners? If millions are made on the net daily, what makes the difference for those winners? Why is network marketing such a source of frustration for so many home business owners?

Well, I am convinced that there are two fundamental reasons for this:

1. Too many internet marketers fail to properly grasp and apply the powerful but counter-intuitive rules of “Information Marketing” (or Attraction Marketing) which determine the success of businesses online.

2. Most marketers fail to create a well-thought-out sales funnel. You need to break the process down into steps, and optimise each step for a smooth transition along the marketing path from when a buyer undertakes their research to reaching their buying destination and your bank balance!

Direct marketing is not just about keywords, clicks and leads. And thank goodness it isn’t just that simple, because if it were, then you and I would be up against even more competition!

Enticing keywords, selling clicks and generating leads is only the beginning of the marketing process, albeit crucial. But what do you do with your visitors once they arrive at your site? Is the process of buying made as simple and as pleasurable as possible? How are they supported to progress through your sales funnel? If they want to proceed to buy, can they do so with confidence and automatically?

These questions boil down to having a smooth sales experience, where all bases are covered. The devil as they say, is in the detail. Think of your own customer experiences online, then consider these elements of your customer’s sales experience:

• Rich media
• Good graphics
• User friendly widgets
• Congruent flow and themes
• Landing page which matches the ad they clicked from in content
• Personalised ‘user friendly’ web site that allows people to get to know, like and respect you
• System of auto-responders that enable you to continue to communicate with them, automatically

Some business systems offer more tools than ever for getting the process right; with too many other models, you are left to struggle frustratingly to put all of the jigsaw pieces from different jigsaws together! Finding the right information marketing system means all you have to do is to put an integrated system to work for you.

Network markers, especially if newbies in business, can struggle getting a firm handle on the interlinked parts of an on-line sales funnel and learning which tools to leverage for the best results is a daunting task, with plenty of trial and error – Believe me, I KNOW! : )

The (short-term) Answer: Forget the tools for a while. Forget about buying leads, Twitter, Facebook, Google, MySpace, WordPress, Warrior, YouTube, Classifieds, SEO,Squidoo, WordPress, Blogger, LinkedIn, etc. etc etc (Phew!)

Instead, focus on the PRINCIPLES of ‘Information Marketing’, arguably, THE KEY to how any lasting business is built. Learn the skills that will guarantee the successful deployment of the marketing strategies for Squidoo, WordPress, Blogger, etc. These “tools” when used inappropriately cause you to waste energy, time and money.

Information Marketing means sharing what you know and letting potential future customers benefit from your experience. Be seen as the preferred knowledgeable marketer / retailer / consultant of choice. The principles of Attraction Marketing are that you have to give of yourself, in time and energy, in order to receive – in the true spirit of generosity. It is this ‘giving without expectation of receiving’ which makes you attractive to others.

Of course, learn how to use your tools too. but keep developing professionally; make a commitment to continual learning and most importantly, be generous instead of needy.

If you don’t understand the necessity of this approach or its integrity, then perhaps think of it purely in terms of THE RESULT; ie Less of your time and money spent, you more money earn AND gain longer term sustainability as your reputation grows and your customers return for your new offers…Everyone’s a winner!

If this still does not make business sense to you, in terms of lead generation, then seriously, it’s time to think about doing your network marketing business and your bank account a favour, make a risk free investment in learn more about earning with Attraction Marketing here. Just come back and let me know the difference this makes for you this coming year… I guarantee it will, or your money back!

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