I hope everyone had a great Father’s day. I sure did. I always enjoy spending time with my family. My family is the primary reason I build my internet businesses. It gives me the freedom to control my own success. A job will not allow you to control your own success (or freedom). A job will keep you enslaved to your employer. Your employer will dictate how much money you make, when you have to work, and how long you have to work. If you think about it in a different way, you employer tells you how little money you make (just enough to get by - if even that much). They tell you when you can’t be spending time with your family and they tell you how much time you can spend with your family. On top of that, they can lay you off at any moment regardless of your situation.
I recently had some friends of mine told that they were no longer needed at their place of employment. They had worked hard (and did an excellent job) for many years and made the business what it was for their employer. They made many sacrifices along the way for the sake of their jobs and in the end, they were just let go. This seems to happen more and more these days.
The best way to be successful and in control of your own freedom is to have a business of your own that you control. An internet business is an ideal way to accomplish these goals. All you need to do is find out what people want and are willing to pay for, create the product, and sell it. It’s really pretty simple. It may not be easy, but it is a simple formula.
What are you interested in? Do you have a hobby? What do you know a lot about? You are an expert about something. If you know more about something than a majority of other people, you are an expert to them. They will want to know what you know. Just think about how many times someone asked you advice about something. You were an expert to them about whatever they were asking about. There are MANY more people that would ask you the same type of questions if they knew you could help them and a percentage of those people will pay you for your information.
So, get started and set up a blog or some other internet presence about yourself and your “expertise” and let people know about you. This is just the beginning of a successful business that can help you can gain financial freedom and success.
Here we go with the geeky info……I uploaded my first video to YouTube so it may not be perfect but it is a start. The video gives a little bit of information about virtual machines.I boot up a Windows XP virtual machine using VMware fusion on my Mac Pro and show you how to run Internet Explorer on a Mac (sort of).
This is one of the tools I use to do my website development for my internet businesses. It allows me to test my websites on multiple configurations with different operating systems and in different browsers. By using the VMware virtual machine software, I can do all of my testing on my Mac Pro system without having to physically have several different computers to test with.I can run multiple versions of Windows (XP, Vista, etc.) and I can run multiple versions of Linux while running on my host Mac OSX system. It gives me the best of all worlds and a lot of flexibility.
VMware can be run on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS. It is a valuable tool in many ways for many people. You can find it at http://vmware.com .
Submitting your blog to blog carnivals is one of the best ways to get quality targeted traffic to your blog. I am launching a new type of blog carnival submission service. It is a “pay per post” type of service. It is not a subscription service. This allows you to pick and choose the blog posts that you want to submit to the carnivals and when you want to submit them.
All you have to do is purchase a submission and submit your blog post info in a simple form. Then, just wait for your information to be submitted to various blog carnivals that are related to the topic of your post. You will start to see your links posted to carnivals as they are issued. The links will start trickling in. The more submissions you make, the more links you get.
My service also allows you to stand out by giving you the option to add your own remarks about the blog post. This can be a summary or some sort of “teaser” to get readers to click on your link. This can be a very big advantage over the other blogs posted to the carnivals because most other blog links will just have the minimum information required.
Start sending quality traffic to your blog with my blog carnival submission service by clicking on the following link:
There really are an unlimited amount of ways you can make money on the internet legally, morally, and ethically. There are a lot of scams out there but there are also plenty of good ways to make money. The problem so many people have is there is too much - too many choices. Is this the problem you have?
It is easy to get paralyzed into doing nothing because you don’t know which path to choose. I have done the same thing many times before. As an entrepreneur, I constantly have money making ideas going through my head. They could all probably make good money, but I will catch myself not even getting started on one because I keep thinking what else I can do that would be even better. The reality is, until action is taken to actually turn the idea into a product, create the copy, and sell it, it is going to make absolutely zero dollars no matter what other “better” ideas are floating around my head. Do you do the same thing?
Until I learned to take an idea and just run with it until it is complete, I kept jumping from one thing to another. It is also easier to just focus on one product and get it done. You will be able to produce every product quicker when you focus on it. Then, once it is done, you can move on to the next “better” product. You will never have a perfect product. So stop waiting until it is perfect.
Just pick an idea for a product that you are passionate about and focus on it until it is complete. Sure, you may make some mistakes along the way but that is how you learn to make the next one even better. You won’t succeed without making some mistakes along the way anyway. So go ahead and get a bunch of “mistakes” under your belt so you can be closer to achieving your goals of success!
Do you have business systems in place that do work for you whether you do anything or not? A business system in place that gives you the freedom to focus on other areas of your business or take care of other matters is one of the key ingredients to a successful business.
Today was a great example of how one of my business systems kept my internet business rolling along while I was unable to. You see, today, I had an appointment with my eye doctor. I was planning on a normal checkup with no interruption to my regular business and family activities. However, it turned out that I needed to have my eyes dilated for some of the tests. Getting your eyes dilated in not fun at all. It disrupts a lot of your routine.
After the procedure, I had to wear 2 pairs of sunglasses (at the same time) to keep the light low enough to not be painful to my eyes. They said my eyes would not be “normal” for at least 3 or 4 hours. As soon as I got home, I got in bed and covered my head so there was no light getting to my eyes so I could have some relief until my pupils returned to normal. I had to wait a few more hours before they felt normal again. In fact, I kept the sunglasses on for the first few hours on my computer (and we’re talking at night) just to stay comfortable.
Anyway, thanks to my business systems in place, I didn’t have to worry about many of my normal functions (such as blog carnival submissions). If I had to submit them myself, my eyes could not have handled it and I probably would be in too much pain to write this blog posting.
So, set up as many business systems as you can to reduce the work you have to do yourself. This will free up your time to focus on other areas of your business (or let you go to the eye doctor and have your eyes dilated).
One of the most important pieces of a successful business of any kind is having a list of “customers”. My email subscription list is basically my list of customers. It doesn’t mean that any of them buy anything. But they do have an interest in the information I post on this blog. In a way it is similar to someone visiting a store and browsing the merchandise. Let’s look at an example…..
If I like model trains, I may visit a particular model train store every now and then to see what new trains are in stock. I probably won’t buy anything the first few times I visit the store but I will probably have a good time since I like model trains. While I visit the store, I may talk with the owner on occasion and build some sort of relationship with the owner. It still doesn’t mean I will buy anything. However, if someone else I know mentions something about model trains, there is a good chance I will mention the store that I like to visit. This is word of mouth advertising and can be very powerful for any business.
I would probably visit the train store many more times since I enjoy it and may learn something new about model trains that I didn’t know before. I will also probably meet some other people in the store that have something in common with me - model trains. This is even more reinforcement for me to return to the store another time.
Then, one day when I finally decide to buy a model train, I know exactly where to go. There is really not much “selling” or “pitching” the owner would have to do since I already have a relationship with the owner and have a sense of trust with him or her. I would probably even pay a little bit more to the store than I would to someone else that I do not know.
Blogs are really not much different. They are your “store” if you will. It is a place where your “customers” return on a regular basis and build a relationship with you and build a trust with you. They will keep coming back to see what is new with you and to hopefully learn a little bit more about what they enjoy.
This is one of the reasons it is so important to build a subscriber list. It allows you to let your subscribers (customers) know when you have updated your “inventory” or have some more words of wisdom to share with them. If you sell something through your blog, your frequent visitors will many times be the first to purchase your products since they already know you and trust you.
So, be sure to have an opt-in form so your visitors can subscribe to your blog and you can keep them informed and continue to build a relationship that will last a very long time.
One of the reasons I have started implementing the private posts is to encourage frequent visitors to sign up for my blog notification subscription so they can be added to my customer list. Subscribers benefit too with valuable information posts that I don’t publish to everyone and also with special product discounts or early releases.
Do you have a list for your business? You should. If not, get started right now….
Are you subscribed to this blog yet? I’m going to start posting private blog entries very soon (hint, hint). You must be subscribed to my email blog announcement list to get the password. If you are not yet subscribed, submit your info at the top right of this blog before any private posts are made if you want the password to be able to read them.
Don’t wait too long before you subscribe. If you do, you may miss out on some valuable information or product discounts. Also, the popup window will go away after you subscribe if you use cookies.
Subscribe to this blog right now. Your information will remain private and will never be sold or given away.
To get more potential customers to make a purchase, sometimes it is as simple as giving them what they want. Don’t spend all of your time trying to poke, prod, and cram your potential customers into the product you offer. You should mold your product into what they are looking for. If you do this, you will have a happy customer. This holds true for most any business whether it is an internet business or not.
In my website businesses, I use to give the customer what I thought was what they needed. I would try to put myself in their shoes and decide what they needed based on what I knew. The problem with this method is that the customer knew how their business worked. I didn’t. I tried to push them into the mold that I conjured up in my own head.
Don’t tell your customer too much about what they need. First, listen to them. Then, listen a little more. Keep listening. They will tell you exactly what they need. Once you find out what they need, you can tailor your product to meed their specific needs. Even if you can’t give them exactly what they need, you can probably get closer than if you just forced something on them.
Be sure you over deliver. Give them even more than what you promise. They will realize how much value they get with you. Give them great service and support. Once they like you, you will have a customer that will give you repeat business over and over again. They will recommend you to others who eventually will also purchase from you over and over again. After a while, you will build up a very loyal customer base that will keep you successful for many years to come. It all starts with giving your customers what they want.
Have you subscribed to this blog yet? If you haven’t yet subscribed to this blog, now is the time to do it. The best way is to fill out your name and email address in the subscribe area at the top right of this blog to get email notifications. You get several benefits by signing up for email notifications as follows:
You will get passwords for special private blog posts
You may get product offers earlier or at more of a discount than those who are not subscribed
You may get other bonuses that I decide to give at any random time
If you don’t subscribe, you may just miss an awesome deal. Go ahead and subscribe to get updated with great success related information and products. There is no obligation and remember, I will never give or sell your information to anyone, guaranteed!
