MY THOUGHTS
08-7
Marketing On The Internet And The American Work Ethic
So you’ve decided to make your fortune as an affiliate marketer on the internet. Piece of cake! Everybody is doing it and you don’t want this opportunity to pass you by.
Slap up a little website, throw a couple of free ads together and just sit back and wait for the money to come rushing in. Everybody says you can even make money while you’re sleeping. So just wait till tomorrow and get ready to count all that dough!
Twenty-four hours and nothing. Maybe it takes another day. Two weeks and still nothing. A month and depression starts to set in. What am I doing wrong? How can I be the only guy on the internet that hasn’t struck it rich after a whole month?
This program must be a scam. That’s it! The people who sold me this deal are just cheating me! I’ll find something else.
I was so naive when I started my first business on the net that this was just about exactly how I worked. It took me quite a while to stop and realize that a business on the net should be approached just like a brick and mortar business. They are really exactly the same thing.
Preparation, planning and execution is a simple formula that works well anyplace. When I first acquired my mortgage company I would not have dreamed of just opening the doors and starting to work. It actually took months of work just to make the preparations necessary to start. What made me think that the internet was any different?
The start up costs are so much lower on the net that sometimes you forget it’s still a real business. If you’re going to make money you must never forget it’s real! The work can be just as hard and it must be just as consistent.
You always read about “autopilot” and “only work 10 minutes a day” or “just put it up and forget it”. Don’t you believe it! If you only work 10 minutes a day, you’ll probably only earn 10 minutes worth of income.
One of my affiliate programs claims “Just put the Magic Code up in less than 5 minutes and then money just flows in with no more effort” (http://tinyurl.com/6lefr7). Well it really does work that way, but I never mentioned all the time it took to put up your site or the hours and hours you spent working on your blog page before you ever added the “Magic Code”. No, you had to really work for that money. The old adage “There’s no such thing as a free lunch” is really true.
The potential income can be incredible. The fact you can work in your bedroom is a plus. You can keep expanding your operation with little working capital and that is an unheard of benefit any place else. The web can be a great place to work, but don’t got caught napping. Your code of action should be “Work, work, work”.
If you are going to make a lot of money or a fortune, why do you think you can just sit back? Most people who earn $4,000 per month must really work. If you want to earn $5,000 per week, how can you try without also working?
Granted, working on the internet is different, but you’ve still have to try. The work ethic is being redefined, but not forgotten. You can work smarter, but it still takes work. You always hear of the great percentage of people who fail on the net and why do you think that is? I don’t know about all those folks, but many just couldn’t bring themselves to roll up their sleeves and get busy.
If you don’t like hearing me nag about working, then don’t ever sign up for my news letter.( http://tinyurl.com/5gjldx )
I don’t think there is a single thing you can tell anyone that has the impact of work.
I’m part of the “old timer group” that always felt work was important. So many of the “gurus” will tell you that there are secrets and magic to use to make money, but I bet all of those people have paid their dues in hard work. They may try to sell you a dream of easy money, but it just doesn’t work that way. The only ones making money on dreams are the ones selling them. And guess what, those people work real hard to tell you that you don’t have to.
If you’re afraid of work, go on unemployment. Don’t try the internet because you’ll be disappointed. Thirty years in finance and lots of time on the net have shown me there really is no such thing as a free lunch. Big money may come easier on the internet, but work is the only way to find it.
The “Magic Code” (http://tinyurl.com/6lefr7) may get your site a cash flow, but it’s still harder to make money than I’ve said in my ads! Buyer be ware!
John Bonzo
08-1
ALWAYS LOOK TO THE FUTURE
When I started working on the internet I had no idea what I was going to be up against. It was not the slam dunk that all the advertisments said it was going to be. “Start today and be earning monry by tonight.” “Join my team and all the earnings are made on autopilot.” The promises go on and on. I finally decided that if I was going to make it, I would have to do some heavy duty studing. I soon found that was no easy task. Anyone that has gone down this road knows what I’m talking about. There is more information than a person can go through in a hundred lifetimes!
Information overload was not my only problem. I was constantly told that I should practice the tenants of web 2.0. What was that? I should get a web site. How could I do that? I needed to have bucks in the bank
for advertising ande other expenses, I had about $1.98! I needed to use blogging, PPC, product sourcing, social marketing, learn about SEO, and a countless number of other strategies. I didn’t even know what the “experts” were talking about. They could have been speaking Greek! I was experiencing not only information overload, but advertising overload as well..
Slowly I started to weed through this jungle of strange terms and gigantic amounts of information, as I did, I began to get a feeling for what I was being told. Slowly I came up with a blueprint I could follow to start getting the success I craved. Without boring you with the details of my plans, what I want to do here is explain my feelings of the web, as an enteperner , trying to take advantage of all the potential power of this greatest of man’s modern inventions, with an eye on it’s evolution as a business tool.
Everyone will probably agree that Web 10, the start, was an opportunity to read information, but not much more. At the time, we all sat around an kept saying how great it was. How incrudible it was to have
all this knowledge at our finger tips. After all, “knowledge is power!”
Slowly (in just a few years), the net became much more. We could not only read, but respond as well! The beginning of Web 2.0 was the start of reading and writing. This is where we find ourselves today. Social sites are the big thing. People can blog their fingers to death. For business we have blogging, PPC, SEO, social marketing, product sourcing, and on and on. If done properly, with both planning and execution, there is no telling how much money can be earned, people helped and total success found, no matter what our endeavor, with an internet, home business.
Stop for a moment. Is the rosy picture I just painted all there is going to be? Many of us could probably be happy if that was all. But humane nature, computers and the internet itself, will never stand still. Guess what! On the horizon is the next phase. Web 3.0 is coming! And we can do nothing to stop it. All we can do is get ready for it.
At this point in time, we’re not even sure what Web 3.0 is going to be. Some say it will be the realization of the semantic web. Artificial intelligence could play a role. 3D may play a part. It will probably be based around new and different ways of building applications. All I really know is that we must start to prepare now for the new technology of tomorrow.
If you are going to make money with your home business, have a great experience on line, and not get cheated, you must not only study today, but keep the study up tomorrow and all the days after that. I hope my site helps you a little bit.
John Bonzo
GET STARTED WITH ADVERTISING
You just signed up for your first business opportunity. It doesn’t matter what the business is. You’ve signed up and now you’re waiting for those big buck to start rolling in. You know, the ones that the people who sold you on this idea, promised would start right now. You wait and you wait, But nothing happens. Finally you decide it’s a scam and drop out. You never realize that you probably left thousand of dollars on the table.
This situation happens all the time and people just can’t figure out what is going wrong. No one ever told you that it’s impossible to go to your site if you never tell anyone where it is. Years ago I tried my first business on the internet. It was a very high end product that could have made me lots of money. I just never realized that with no advertising people couldn’t find me and have a chance to buy. So I lost big time and swore I would never get involved with any other on line home business. Boy I’m glad I changed my mind on that one!
Look around and see what the big guys are doing. Everyone knows who Wal-Mart is. We all know where to go to shop there. But guess what. Wal-Mart spends millions in advertising. Most of the other big guys from Penneys to Sears do the same thing. We should all take a lesson from them. YOU MUST ADVERTISE.
Great, if you have a gigantic advertising budget your in, but what about most of us. We are just starting out and have hardly any money for business expenses. It’s hard, but if people can’t find you, your money situation will never improve. This is where many of your trainers say, “No problem, just use your Visa card.” That is great advice, but many of us don’t have cards or the lines of credit are not large enough to really help us. At this point many of our trainers just disappear. They have no idea where to go from here or else they know that further answers require a lot of work.
We now fall into an area that requires more than that “two hour a week” promise that is advertised in so many of the business opportunities we read of. It takes time and effort, but you can over come a small advertising budget if you make up your mind to do it. There are many free places to advertise and programs that allow you to get involved with different sorts of social networking to get you name and product before many people.
In one of my future blogs I‘ll go into more detail about the concept of free advertising. I‘ll let you know the best places to go and the areas that will probably not work for you.. If you sign up for my free e-mail, you will also get more of this information. Just remember that with the right work, your home business can be rewarding and you can make lots of more money!
John Bonzo
08-3
HOW MUCH DO I NEED TO START
When you start an on line, home business, you need to approach it just like any other business you would work on. The fact of the matter is it is a real business. You need to plan it out and do all the due diligence you would on any other endevor. The one thing that does make a home business different is that it does not usually take a great deal of money. The saying that it takes money to earn money is not neccessarily true. Like the example that Mr. Lawrence gives in following article, sometimes a good imagination can go a long ways.
As you read the following article, try to put your home business into this example. I found this work very enlightening. I hope you will enjoy as much as I did.
Does It Take Money to Make Money
"I’m just so tired of working for someone else and making them rich," lamented my friend Mitch.
"You should start a small business on the side," I replied. "Then, once it’s big enough, you can quit your job."
Mitch shook his head glumly. "I don’t have enough money to start my own business, so I’m stuck."
I get so frustrated when I hear people say that. Now don’t get me wrong. I admit that having substantial cash to begin a new business can be very helpful. But having a lot of money on the line also means you’re taking a bigger risk.
The truth is, money just doesn’t matter all that much when it comes to starting a business. I know from firsthand experience that it’s possible to start a profitable business with virtually nothing.
When I began my entrepreneurial career, I was a college student living at home with my mom. And while there was enough money to pay the bills, there wasn’t much more than that. I had a part-time job, but I was desperate to find a way to make more money. And though I had zero start-up capital, I had no trouble starting a pool service business. Before I knew it, I was earning three times as much as I had been making at my part-time job.
That business made over $100,000 its first year. Since then, I’ve started more than 20 profitable enterprises with under $100 in initial capital. So having minimal capital should never stop you from starting a new business. And it shouldn’t stop you from marketing your business either.
Some people assume that they need to throw around big piles of cash in order to "properly" market a business. But a little creativity can go a lot further than money. Here, for example, is one zero-cost strategy I used…
When I was looking for ways to promote my ballroom dance instruction business, I discovered that most cable companies have a public access channel that’s available to almost anyone in their viewing area. And there’s more to public access TV than nutty shows like "Wayne ’s World." If you create a format for a show that’s informative, it can become quite popular and bring in lots of business.
Keep in mind that cable access is supposed to benefit the community, so the cable companies can be finicky about too much blatant self-promotion. But they do allow you to say who you are or what company you’re with, so people can find you.
One exciting thing about these shows is that the cable company bears the expense of producing them. For my show, I brought on guests and gave them a dance lesson on the air. I would arrange to have my guests meet me at the cable company’s studio, where they had a director, three camera operators, and other stage help to produce the show. And I didn’t have to pay anything for it.
You’d be amazed by how many people watch cable access. I was getting stopped on the street by people who were excited to meet that "dancing guy" from television. The show increased my business by about 25 percent. (I know that because I asked every new client how they heard about me.) And remember, I got this bump without spending a penny.
Not only did I get a steady stream of new clients, but having a television program gave me more credibility as an expert dance instructor. I began including the fact that I hosted a local ballroom dance TV show in my marketing materials, and I mentioned it whenever a prospective client asked about my credentials.
Almost anyone with a business that has a local customer base can take advantage of this strategy. If you’re an attorney, you could have a program where you answer call-in legal questions. If you sell real estate, you could interview guest experts on your local market. If you’re a copywriter or public relations specialist, you could provide information to help small businesses get more out of their advertising budgets. If you’re a marriage counselor, you could work with couples on the air. If you run a restaurant, you could give cooking lessons. The possibilities are endless.
If you’re interested in having your own local cable access show, here are the basic steps:
Contact the cable companies in your area to find out about their local access programming.
You’ll want to know about any rules and regulations they have. If there are any costs that you’ll have to cover. When they shoot and how you get a slot on their schedule.
Come up with a format that will be entertaining but also have the potential to bring you business.
Interacting with guests on your show is a good way to demonstrate your expertise. And you won’t have any trouble finding local experts who will be excited to appear on television. Getting the exposure will often be enough of a payment for them. Or maybe you can do what I did and give your guests free instruction in your area of expertise in return for their participation.
Plan the show.
A half-hour can be a long time if you don’t plan it out well.
When professionals plan a television program, they plot it out visually on a "storyboard." You can use a similar, though less formal, tool.
Let’s say you will be producing a 30-minute show. Take a piece of paper and draw a horizontal line across it. Mark off five-minute increments, and then write in what the audience will be seeing during each of those increments. The first five minutes will probably be your introduction. The next 10, you might spend interviewing guest number one. The next 10, you might spend with guest number two. And then you’ll give a five-minute closing.
Do it!
Most of the cable companies that produce public access programs are used to working with people who aren’t experienced, and they can help you a lot.
Help them by making sure that you and your guests arrive on set early. Have an outline of the show for the director, so he understands what will be shot. Bring any props or other items you might need on the air. And if you’re going to be interviewing your guests, be prepared with a list of questions.
This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, the Internet’s most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.
If you are interested in getting ETR, I have a link to it on my “free information” page.
John Bonzo
08-4
Just Do It
(Getting started in a home business)
There are a countless number of reason for a business to fail. Not just a home based business, but a brick and mortar business as well. I am not going into all the terrible things that can go wrong. (And there can be many!) What I am going to address is the first one that hit’s a great many endeavors. You can’t succeed if you don’t try. There are thousands of great business ideas that simply die while still in the head of the “almost owner“.
Procrastination is a common reason to never see your business up and making money. People spend so much time getting the information that they feel is important to get started that they begin feeling “information overload.” The greatest problem with this situation is that the more detail you may learn, the more you feel you are not qualified to start running your on line business. Fear is a great reason of premature failure.
John Denton and Derek Gehl, two of my “quasi” mentors have both addressed this situation and gave the same example for one step to success. They both said that when they started in the business they tried to figure out what the “big guys” who were making all the money were doing. They contacted some of these folks and talked about their different approaches. Both were amazed to find that some of these highly successful people didn’t even know as much as they did! The secret wasn’t what they knew, but what they did.
Each of these successful people just got going, They didn’t wait untill they had all the answers to start. They started and learned as they went. They weren’t afraid to make mistakes, but actually used mistakes as part of their learning experience. As a result, they started to earn money while others were just sitting back and wasting their time simply reading and trying to learn. Fear was not a guiding force in their programs. Oh they were concerned about problems that might arise, but they waited for them and then learned as they corrected each situation.
In my earlier years as a mortgage company owner, I used a little swaying when ever I trained one of my new loan officers. I continually told them “just do it!” I’m sure some of these trainees got tired of this saying, but the ones that did “just do It’ were the ones that succeeded quickly in that very competitive and complex business. They learned as they went and were earning large commissions while the others were just sitting back in their dust!
All business opportunities are quite similar. You never start earning the money until you learn to “just do it”. On line, home businesses, are very much that way. You can start immediately and start raking in the money while you are leaning. Don’t procrastinate.
There is no time like today to get going. Take the chance to learn as you go. Take each mistake and problem as a learning experience. I bet you will never forget the lessons you learn in that manner. Also these bits of information are important, you are not wasting time learning the things you may never need to know. There are only so many hours in a day, Use them wisely.
Good luck as you get started. Earning money is a lot more fun than just reading about earning money. Good lick in all your efforts.
John Bonzo
8-08
MAKING MONEY WITH ARTICLES FOR BANNER ADVERTISEMENTS
When you’re trying to make money off the articles you write on your website, it’s important to effectively promote your site so that you will attract customers and they can see just what a good, quality site you have. There are several ways to market and promote your website. Banner advertising can be a very productive selection.
You may find a real discussion in the marketing field as to the effectiveness of banner Ads. Some will even tell you this type of advertising is dead. I believe you’ll find effective use of banners can prove as productive as many other types of advertising.
What Banner Ads Can Do For You
Banner ads can help bring visitors from others sites to yours. Although monthly fees may be expensive on high traffic sites, in the end it may be a cheaper and faster way to start seeing significant revenue from your website efforts than waiting for SEO techniques to bring your site to the top. Aside from paying to advertise on someone else’s site, there are also free banner exchanges and other outlets for banner advertising. We will look at the pros and cons of some of these options..
Free Banner Exchanges
Free banner exchanges are usually when you and other sites exchange each others banners. Their banner will go on your site and your banner will go one theirs Although this option is usually free, there are two main problems with it. First of all, if you want your banner on a significant number of sites, it will mean cluttering your own site up with quite a few outside banners. You could even shoot yourself in the foot if you run a competitors ad because, instead of clicking on your product, your visitors may be clicking on your competitors’. Secondly, you have to be really careful about the types of sites that you exchange banners with. Some sites like to gather a lot of banners so that they can be a directory or portal site and not have to have any real content. These “banner farms” or “link farms” will do nothing positive for your site and, in the meantime, you will be bringing them potential traffic.
Recently a new type of advertising site has begun to appear that allows you to post banners at no cost or for a nominal fee. They usually also offer solo ads as well as other forms of advertising. These sites usually offer a free membership as well as one of two low priced life time memberships. They can be great, but the downside is that most of the members of these sites are looking for free or real low cost items so they are probably not your best prospects.
Paid Banner Ads
As we saw above, though paid banner ads cost money, they can pay great dividends if you choose them correctly. You need to ensure that the site produces the amount of traffic that they say it will and that they have your ad placed in a way that invites visitors to click without being too pushy. You also want to make sure your banner is not lost in a whole group of other banners. .
All in all, banner ads can end up being profitable for your site if you go about it the right way. If you do decide to check out banner advertisement as a marketing avenue, be sure to keep the above tips in mind.
Good luck in all your marketing endeavors.
John Bonzo
