Friday, November 23, 2007

Newbie Tips Newsletter: The Shining Star Issue

Build Your Business On Your Terms And Brand Yourself For Success.

O.K. guys, you're about to embark on an amazing yet possibly frightening adventure. What I want to do is help you get started with your new home business on the right track. I want to keep you moving straight toward your goals and away from the money hungry gurus who are trying to show you an "easy system."

Please, don't get me wrong. I am not at all bitter about the Internet home based business industry at all. It's what I do for a living full-time and I love it.

What I am upset about, and have always been, are the hordes of scammers out there making the whole thing look bad. There really are great opportunities out there and people are making great incomes running home based business' on the Internet. It makes me sad that people who could've done very well end up getting discouraged and give up because they were promised something and it didn't deliver.

I just want my readers to have enough knowledge to be able to defend themselves against the too good to be true get rich quick scams out there. I must admit that some of them are very convincing which is scary.

Your goal is to start a legitimate home based business that will make you money without stealing your integrity, right? Well, lets get started and get you on the right track from the beginning.

The first thing I want to do is give you the low down on what is really involved. Every single day I'm online and I see a new "system" for sale, I cringe. Please, be careful with these. They are extremely convincing when they tell you that all you have to do is plug them in and the money will start rolling in.

This is complete crap.

What they don't tell you in the sales letter is that in order for these "plug-in" systems to work for you, you must do a lot of tedious stuff every single day. While they may give you a "free money making website" with built in products, how are you going to get sign-ups and make sales if no one sees your site?

So, alas you've got to sit around and figure out how to get traffic to a website that has no personality and is exactly the same as hundreds of others who sighned up for the same thing. Even if you've got creative control, this isn't very "plug and play" now is it?

The daily chores include:
  • Surfing Traffic Exchanges For Credits.
  • Going to forums and talking about how easy you've got it when you know it's not working.
  • Spending hours and hours researching different topics so that you can write articles that might bring some meaningful traffic.
  • Posting blogs about how you don't have to do any work.
The list goes on and on.

Some of these systems teach some very good marketing techniques that actually work, but not for blatant affiliate links. Besides, your doing all of this work promoting something that's supposed to be "hands free money making." Doesn't sound like a lot of fun does it?

Here's what I think.

If you're going to go to all of this trouble anyway, why not go the whole way and build your business your way?

Instead of marketing someone else's system, build your own website and only include products and opportunities that deliver what they claim. There are plenty of good products out there that actually teach or do what they claim.

I'm speaking about the home based business niche in my experience, but I'm sure that this holds true in other niches as well. So, when I talk about information products, that's what I mean. Plus, even if you're planning on going into another niche, you'll still need to educate yourself about basic online marketing principles.

You're not going to find an easy way out, so why not have fun with it and brand yourself?

That's how affiliate marketers who are making the big money do it. They don't promote their affiliate links directly. They position themselves as experts and then lead others to their affiliate products and income opportunities as recommendations.

That's how you really stand out among the masses of sales pages on the internet. Offer your assistance and people will really appreciate it and follow your lead.

How To Be A Shining Star...
  • Help people get what they need and the money will come.
  • Be honest.
  • Don't "sell" people, no one likes to be sold.
  • Follow up with stellar customer service, even if you're not selling your own product.
  • If you're sponsoring people into a multi-tiered type program, show them the way. Those type of programs are worthless if the next tier has no clue what to do.
The last one reminds me of another point I want to make. Some of those programs that are supposed to be free to join and all you have to do is get people to sign up under you are quite misleading. You may only be able to make money if you have a certain sales volume which means that you can recruit free people till you're blue in the face and you won't make money until someone "upgrades" or buys a product (if the program even has a product other than the upgrade itself), so be sure to read the fine print before you go wasting your life on something that will give you minimal returns.

In my affiliate webmaster's course, I show my subscribers how they can build a professional website for their affiliate recommendations. The key is to focus on what that product has taught you or enabled you to achieve. I teach them to position themselves as authorities on the particular problem that the product can solve. This is done by showcasing the skills they've obtained by using the product themselves (if it's an information product, but there are other things you can sell online as well).

Just be smart about it, don't sell junk to people. Keep your customers happy so they come back. You want your efforts to keep making you money again and again. Just stick with products or opportunities that live up to the claims.

Here are some good ones that you can start with because you'll want to educate yourself in these areas for your own business start up.
  • Marketing courses.
  • Webdesign courses.
  • Software.
  • Communication.
  • Personal Growth.
All of these are things that you can benefit from owning and then promote by example.

I mentioned multi-level marketing earlier, where you profit from signing others up in your business as well as product sales. This is another great way to get into Internet Marketing because if you've signed up with a good company and the person who signed you up is willing to train you (this is the way it's supposed to be done), you'll be able to make a great living. Just make sure that training is available and that the company is established and has a great product that people are going to want.

The way it's supposed to work is that when you sign up, your sponsor shows you exactly what to do and then you show your sign ups and so on. So, make sure that you keep the duplication going by taking an interest in those who sign up in your business. Get them excited and confident to go out there and keep it growing.

If you do that, you're business will continue to pay you a residual income long after all of the hard work in the beginning is done.

Either way, direct sales or network marketing/ MLM business models, it's about people. It's the people who are going to be buying from you so focus on them. Build strong relationships and really stand out and you won't go wrong.

Newbie Tips now on the blog.

The Newbie Tips Come To Blogger

Just a quick little story about this blog...

I am a very busy home business entrepreneur. Not only do I have my network marketing business,
but I maintain 2 websites that are aimed at helping people who wanted to get started with an Internet home based business. The reason I keep these 2 sites up is because I have a mission. You can read more about that mission at my successful start blog.

Anyway, I haven't really been keeping up with my blogs like I'd like to because I have so much going on, but I've decided that I'm going to publish some of my newbie tips newsletters here on the blog.

The reason for the format changes that I've been making is the research I've been doing on Web 2.0. I absolutely adore the idea of such a user friendly Internet. So, I would like to pass on to my subscribers how to build not just a website, but a whole Internet empire for themselves.

In order to do that I need to practice what I preach and get over here and post all the time.

I'm not one of those marketers who pre-programs the autoresponder with a bunch of outdated tips. I like to really keep up on what's happening and what works and pass it on. I was recently in the process of reformatting the newsletter, some of it into video format. I had a very unfortunate computer meltdown and lost everything. I couldn't even use a browser, it was bad.

But, I'm back online and computer's fine. I even got some new stuff and made it better. So I'm back at my mission to save at least a few newbies from death by guru. I want to give people hope for their home business start up before they try the very promising "systems" out there and get discourages when nothing happens.

So, this is part of the new changes that are being made to the dynamic of Lets Start Earning and The Newbie Business Center. I'm not going to post everything on here because that wouldn't be fair to my subscribers. But, if you like the stuff you see on the blog, you can subscribe here. But I think that this will prove to be a great strategy and a good model for my readers to follow.

I'm now going to add a second part to my webmaster's course which will teach the Web 2.0 business building model. I can't wait to see what they think about it.

I keep mentioning Web 2.0 so I think that I should mention that I also am putting some parts of my newsletters on video as well. I think that some people like to read and some would rather watch a video to get the information so I'm going to do a bit of both. Plus, with video I can be a real person rather than just another website.

That is the core of what I teach my readers.
  • Market Yourself.
  • Stand Out.
  • Be Creative.
  • Be Visionary.
Don't ever think that an idea is silly or won't work. If you think it feels right, go for it. Do you think that I wasn't scared when I decided to put myself out there for the world to see? I was terrified. Some people are going to think I'm full of hot air and some people will have similar views and share my vision. All that matters is that I went out and did it and I am achieving what I had hoped to achieve. That's what I want my readers to do...

Go For It With All Your Heart!