It’s been a while since I have blogged. I’ve been extremely busy with some new products and other tools.  It’s been crazy.

Here is a quick update and talk about learning and self improvement.

We’ll talk soon…….

- Hill

OK.  So you ask, “Hill, you keep talking about making money online but you don’t always give details about how.”

Well, here you go…….  Here is one of many ways of making money online.  The beauty about this method is that you don’t even need a product of your own.  The most common term is “Affiliate Marketing”.  The way it works is as follows….

A merchant has a product they want to sell and they want to get as many interested people as possible to see their product.  They may not know much about marketing or they may not have a good budget for marketing.  Whatever the reason, they decide to let other people become and affiliate to promote their product.  In return, they are willing to give the affiliate a commission (or portion) of the profits for helping them make a sale.  So, it is a good deal for both parties involved.  The merchant makes a sale without having to do much advertising and the affiliate makes money by referring the customer without having to have a product of their own and dealing with the customer.  The affiliate is basically a middleman that get a cut of the action.

So, you can be an affiliate.  Many merchants have affiliate programs.  Sometimes they have different names such as “associates program” or “referral program”, but they generally follow the same idea.  Some merchants have their own programs but many use affiliate networks that make things much easier for both the affiliate and the merchant.  The affiliate network handles the transactions and pays the merchant and the affiliate on a regular basis.  This is convenient for all parties involved.  In addition, as an affiliate, you may decide to promote many different offers within an affiliate network and all of the commissions you make will all be included in your check (so you don’t have to get a bunch of smaller checks.)  Many of the networks have excellent tools for finding offers and tracking your results.

To get started, you need to find some affiliate networks and sign up for them.  You can then browse around their offers and pick the ones you want to promote.  There are thousands and thousands of offers out there so you will probably find something you are interested in.  Typically, they give you a special web link that you can use on your blog, in an email, in a pay-per-click ad, or almost anywhere else you want to put it.  Then, if someone clicks on your link and makes a purchase, you will get credit for the sale and you will be credited your commission in your affiliate network account.  Isn’t that cool?

Many people have mastered the art of affiliate marketing and make millions of dollars promoting other people’s products.  There are all kinds of techniques for affiliate marketing.  Start doing some Google searches for affiliate networks and affiliate marketing and you just might like what you see and make some money along the way………..

- Hill

With all of these government bailouts (that we the taxpayers are paying for), it makes you wonder - “Where is MY bailout!”  All of these multi-billion dollar banks, insurance companies, auto makers, and everyone else in line all say that they are going to go bankrupt and need someone to give them money to stay afloat.  Well how about you and your family?

Many people are in debt to their eyeballs and don’t see a way of getting out without a bailout of there own.  Are you in this same situation living paycheck to paycheck? Don’t you wish you could ask the government for a bailout to pay off your debts so YOU can stay afloat?  Well, think again.  The government is not about to bail you out too.

However, hope is not lost.  You CAN have a bailout of your very own.  It won’t be a free handout from the government or anyone else; but you can create your own bailout.  There is nothing to keep you from generating your own income in addition to what you are already making.  There are so many opportunities of making money with your own business.  With an internet based business, your costs are so low, there is virtually no risk.

Don’t get caught up in JOB mentality.  Your JOB does not have to be your only source of income.  You don’t have to stay in your normal rut of going to work, putting in your time (probably doing something you really aren’t excited about doing), and coming home to sit on the couch watching the time-robbing television and falling asleep only to wake up and start the process all over again.

You can create a business doing something you love.  It won’t be easy, but you can eventually build it to replace your JOB so that you can work when you want and doing what you want.  It won’t happen unless you start.  Decide what you love to do and think about what product or service you could sell.  It may be the best decision of your life.

It is your choice….  Keep doing what you have always done and you will keep getting what you’ve already got.  Or, step out and choose to take control of your life and create your very own bailout!

If you want to get started with a website of your very own but don’t know where to start, post a comment on this post.  It will be kept private……

- Hill

Labor day originated in 1882 as the Central Labor Union of New York City looked to create a “day off for the working citizens”.  Most “working” people with typical jobs look forward to this day off of work.  Frequently you will hear people with a job excited about a day off.

While taking time off from “work” to spend time with your family is a very good thing to do, wouldn’t you rather work for yourself and be able to take off whenever you want and not have to wait for a national holiday to spend time with your family?

Don’t just settle for trading your time for money at a JOB where you will always be a slave to your employer and many times have to sacrifice important valuable family time to fulfill your employers dreams instead of your own.  If you haven’t already, now is the time to start your own business and start paving the way to your own freedom and financial independence.

You can do it.  One of the best ways is to start an internet based business doing whatever you love to do.  Just set up a blog or some sort of web based tool to get your information out there and build up a list of subscribers to your information.  From that list and the relationships you build, you can create a product or service and start selling it.  It’s not as difficult as you may think.  The toughest part is just getting started.  Maybe labor day is the day for you to start forging your path to success.

Happy Labor Day!

- Hill Robertson

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.

- Hill Robertson

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 .

- Hill Robertson

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.

You can get it here:

http://hillrobertson.com/BlogCarnivalSubmissionService

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:

http://hillrobertson.com/BlogCarnivalSubmissionService

Submit your blog posts now.

- Hill Robertson

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!

- Hill Robertson

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).

- Hill Robertson

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….

- Hill Robertson