Archive for May, 2009

How to Make a Fortune Promoting Other People’s Products
By Jimmy D. Brown of “Affiliate Payrise”

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There must be a reason why some affiliates succeed and some fail, a reason why some affiliates profit moderately and some affiliates profit substantially.

There must be a reason.

There is.

And that reason is this: “super” affiliates start, sustain and strengthen relationships with subscribers.

It begins and ends with a list. Even a small one can be a powerful, profitable mechanism if you follow these 7 guidelines…

1. CAPTURE THE OPTIN FIRST.

Instead of sending traffic directly to your affiliate link, send them to YOUR site where you offer some kind of list for them to join. (Hint: Mini-course works best) Once you have them on a list, they become an asset. If you send them directly to an affiliate page and they don’t buy, they’re gone forever. On your list, you can follow-up with them indefinitely.

Note: You can even redirect them to your affiliate link AFTER they join your list, effectively getting them where you wanted them to go in the first place.

2. DIFFERENTIATE THE OFFER.

Instead of sending out the same, tired, lame advertisement that every other affiliate in the world sends out, write your own. Trust me when I say that many people find it OFFENSIVE when they receive two dozens duplicate emails from two dozen list owners all promoting the exact same thing in the exact same way.
And even if they don’t find it offensive, it’s not as effective if you simply rinse and repeat what everyone else is doing.

Hint: Here’s how you differentiate…

3. SPEAK FROM EXPERIENCE.

Nothing – nothing – nothing speaks louder than RESULTS. If you want to lose a few pounds, who do you turn to? Someone who is still struggling with their own weight or someone you’ve seen drop 35 pounds? Exactly.

The way you make your mailings / ads different is you speak from your own personal experience. This product or service that you are promoting as an affiliate, how has it been useful to you personally? What results have you personally achieved? When you used it, what happened?

Note: If you haven’t personally used the product, then shame on you for trying to make a quick buck from it hocking it to others!

4. OFFER A COMPELLING INCENTIVE.

Another way to be different – and to dramatically increase your chances of getting a sale as an affiliate – is to offer some kind of compelling incentive if someone buys the offer through YOUR referral link. Whether it’s a special report or access to an audio recording, personalized consultation or advertising, a private training call or existing products and services, this can be a highly effective method of converting fence-setters into paying customers.

In order for it to work well, it must be UNIQUE (I.E. You’re the only one making the offer) and USEFUL (I.E. Something of great perceived value to the reader).

Note: Don’t have anything to offer? Don’t worry! There are many ways to easily obtain extra incentives: conduct an interview, hire a ghostwriter to create articles / reports for you, buy reprint rights to other products, assemble a bunch of free articles and other resources into a private access site, etc.

5. LOOK FOR RESIDUAL OPPORTUNITIES.

Rather than exhaust your efforts on purchases that give you a one-time commission, why not make the most of your marketing by looking firstly for offers that pay out ONGOING monthly commissions for your referred sales?

There are many different residual income generating services such as membership sites (ranging from PT Cruisers to weight loss), stock photos and clipart, hosting, autoresponders, databases (from hiking trails to sermon outlines) online magazines and a variety of other subscription based opportunities that reward you with monthly recurring commissions.

While you definitely want a mix of types of affiliate programs to promote, your priority should be in identifying and promoting those services and programs that will pay you month after month, instead of only one time.

6. BUILD A SALES ARMY.

One of the biggest untapped sources of income in any list is that of “turning subscribers into partners”. In other words, find those on your list who are interested in making money and provide them with training and materials to promote affiliate programs as well.

This has a two-fold advantage for YOU:

* First, if you find 2-tier affiliate programs, you can get your subscribers to join the program through your referral. Anytime they get a sale, you’ll earn a commission as well. You effectively get free commissions from their effort.

* Secondly, you can use their efforts to build your own assets. For example: If you provide them with a 10-page report to give away to promote their affiliate link, you can include a page in the report promoting YOUR list! You effectively get free subscribers from their effort.

7. MONETIZE FOR MULTIPLE STREAMS.

As your own list continues to grow, you certainly want to diversify in your offerings. (Not to the point of bombarding your list with offers every day of course!)

* Promote other affiliate programs.
* Create your own products.
(Even short $10 reports will earn profit!)
* Establish joint ventures.
* Co-author products.
* Cross promote.
* Conduct surveys.

There are MANY ways to make money from you list and keep your list growing, growing, growing!

Remember, it all comes down to: starting, sustaining and strengthening relationships with subscribers. And that’s how you make a fortune as an affiliate promoting other people’s products.

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Jimmy D. Brown is the author of “Affiliate Payrise“, teaching you a whopping 27 ways to increase your affiliate commissions! Tired of “tiny” commission checks? Grab your copy today at… Affiliate Payrise

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Does your workspace look like a tornado hit it? Reports are on one corner of your desk; current work is spread across the keyboard; you know you have an appointment coming up, but you can’t find your calendar under the mess.

It seems you may need to learn how to organize your workspace!

Having an organized workspace can do more for you than make your desktop look better. Being organized can help you be more productive and reduce the amount of stress you feel when you get to work, during the day, and when you leave for home.

Organizing your desk may take more time than you have available during your workday. Ask your boss if you can come in on your own time to clear and organize your desk. They’ll appreciate your desire. After all, organizing your workspace benefits them as well as you.

These steps will help you organize your workspace:

1. Remove everything from the top of your desk and out of the drawers. Of course, you can leave large items such as your computer or printer where they are. Everything else should be put into boxes.


2. Wipe down the entire surface of your desk and inside each drawer.


3. Sort through the items you removed from your desk and drawers. Group items together such as office supplies, filing materials, items to be filed, reference materials, and desk accessories.


4. Get rid of paperwork you no longer need. Do you have unnecessary duplicates of reports or files? Recycle them. Are there items you still need? Keep those items and set them aside until later.


5. Make a plan for where you’ll put things back. You’ll want items you use frequently to remain within reach, so those items will take precedence on your desk.


6. Create an area where you can keep current papers handy. Paper trays are often used. Vertical files are another option if you have quite a bit of paperwork.

* Establish a tickler file for various activities you perform regularly – To Read, To File, To Pay, To Do, and others.


7. Put items back into place after you’ve gone through them and purged what isn’t needed. Only the items you need at your desk should be put back.

Maintaining Your Organized Workspace

The old saying goes “a place for everything and everything in its place.” Decide where each item goes and then leave it there unless you’re actively using it.

* If you’re in the middle of a big project and it’s taking up much needed space, don’t be afraid to remove an item and then put it right back when you’re finished with the project.

Remember that your goal is to have an organized desk. This doesn’t mean it has to be totally cleared off, but you do want to have space so you can function.

If you’ve noticed something that will help you become more organized, don’t be afraid to ask your boss to pay for it. In the long run, your increased productivity will more than pay for the item.

After you have your desk organized, do what you can to keep it clean. Decide what you’re going to do with each item as it’s placed on your desk. Use the tickler file if you have paper, or write important dates on your calendar instead of setting things aside to deal with later.

It can be so easy to keep your desk clear once you’ve learned how to organize your workspace and put things back in their home when you’re done with them. Take the last five minutes of your day to straighten your desk and it will hopefully stay that way from here on out.

The economy isn’t in a happy place these days, and it looks as if the recession isn’t going away anytime soon. Rather than sinking in the doom and gloom, you can turn your personal finances around and generate extra income by creating passive income streams.

What is passive income and how can you create it?

There are two types of passive income: residual and leveraged. Both types become passive after some initial work, meaning once you’ve set up the income stream, it continues to bring you money without you having to spend all your time working for it.

Residual Income

Residual income is money made over a period of time, such as:

* Rent from property you own
* Commission from a client who renews an account on a yearly basis
* Selling a book or video to accompany a class you teach
* Creating a e-books or online products and selling it online via your blog
* Making photos available as a stock image for various companies
* Owning a business and hiring someone trustworthy to run it for you

These are all examples of income you set up, get running, and over time they do the heavy lifting for you. Many times, you can create passive income by delegating tasks to someone else to free up your own time for other things.

Leveraged Income

Leveraged income is when you get other people to work and create income for you. For example, you could:

* Sell an e-book online through affiliates
* Franchise your business out to other people
* Build a downline in a multi-level marketing (MLM) organization and receive commission from what people below you sell

There are different ways to create leveraged income streams. The great thing is it only takes some initial effort for all of these, and then it becomes passive.

Here are some home-based passive income streams you may want to consider:

1. eBay. Find a wholesaler you can work with and set up your own eBay store. You can buy wholesale and let the distribution company do the physical product handling and shipping. On eBay, there’s a market for nearly every product you can imagine.


2. Google Adsense. With Google Adsense, you can set up ads on your website and automatically generate income from people who click on the links in the ads.


3. Affiliate programs. Sign up for affiliate programs for products other people create. You advertise the products on your website and through email campaigns. Most of these programs pay you commissions based on your sales.


4. CafePress. CafePress.com is a website that sets you up an online shop of your own, selling personalized mouse pads, t-shirts, coffee mugs, and other items with graphics you create. The graphics can be a picture, cute saying, or whatever you desire. It costs you nothing to get started.


5. Artwork. If you’re a photographer, you can submit your photos to websites that sell images as stock pictures for various publications. You’ll receive royalties every time your picture is sold.


6. Blogging. If you’re passionate about something, blog about it. There are always people out there who share your passion or want to learn about something new. Put some ads on the site related to your blog and you can generate a nice passive income.

Generating passive income is all about “setting it and forgetting it.” Once you get the income stream set up and automated, it can involve very little further work. You may not get rich through your passive income streams, but setting these up can make a real difference in your finances.

Home based works are becoming more and more popular these days. Moms who want to spend more time attending their children and taking care of the house enter this type of business. Dads who can give up the time they spend at the office are starting to convert their home as workplace. And of course, many companies are starting to welcome out-based employees on their payroll. But then you ask: How do you start a home-based business on your own?

This article aims to answer this single and most important question.

When starting something, you should know what is that something your should start. In the case of home-based business, you should start with identifying what type of business that fits you.

In doing this, you need to know your interest. Since you will be spending most of your time at home, your lifestyle would change with a great tendency that you will live in monotony. And this is the dangerous part of home-based business. What you should do is to know what are the things you are good at and what are the things you would love to do over and over again. This will lay the ground on deciding what type of home-based business is right for you.

Weigh on your interest, skill, and talent. Obviously these are 3 different things. Talents are inert while skill is something you know how to do. Interest on the other hand is that thing you want to do. To put it on other terms, talent is passive, skill is active, and interest is both active and passive. If you work out that these 3 will compensate one another, then you are one step ahead in realizing your home-based business.

How to put all these 3 together is completely up to you. As a tip, you can create a short list of the things you love to do. Make sure you make plenty of them so that you can arrive at something you really want. Same thing goes with you talents and your skills. If you have a particular business in mind, you can still make lists of your interests, skills, and talents. This will give you better chances of arriving a he best type of home-based business for you and not on the thing that first popped-out of your mind.

Putting them together is like this: You have a great interest in reading while you have the talent in writing and your skill is putting ideas on paper. All these would become one if you decide to become a writer or translator. This will also apply on other home-based jobs such as catering services, home renovation services, cleaning services, consultancy and more.

Be reminded that coming up with a particular type of business does not mean you have already created one. You should still have to evaluate further if you are up to the nature of the business. In other words: put your idea to the test.

For example, if the type of business involves staying in front of the computer for more than 8 hours a day or speaking to a lot of people everyday, then you have to determine if you can carry the task.

Study the profitability of the business you are venturing in. Draw up a business plan to determine this. Assess the outcome of the plan and make sure you redraw another one if you find things you need to change.

Make sure that you run smoothly on the early stage of your business. Committing mistakes would cost you too much both on time and money invested. If all the day’s work will prove nothing, then you might have to change not the business, but the plan.

If you happen to fail on your initial try, never think of starting all over again. This is the worst mistake an entrepreneur would commit. Sadly, this is the most common thing that would happen in case the business fails. Just learn to move on and start where you have left off. Experience is the best teacher right? So all you have to do is to make sure that you will never have to repeat the same mistake you have committed.

So you are ready to go. You have an idea of what kind of online business you are ready to roll with and you think you are good to go. But wait, why don’t you back up for a second. Have you done the things a normal business would do before starting a venture? Have you looked at the market and chosen the best business model to follow? Have you identified the strong and weak points of the model? How about competitors or Joint Ventures partners have you identified them as well? Sometimes because it is intangible and costs less to start up we forget to go about this crucial step.

Well for starters let us just look over some of the risks you might come across starting an online business and how you could potentially avoid them before they become a problem. Most of the risks you come across will affect your business in one way or another regardless of how well your risk management is on one aspect if you let another go it could be dooms day for your business.

You need to look at yourself, your family, your time, and your money. These are the big four. Now if you live on your own (family) and all the bills are handled (money) then you only need to worry about yourself and your time. But let’s look at all of them. If you are not careful with yourself, working hard, delivering your promises, and learning what you need to then your business will not succeed.

If you do not clue your family in on the fact that you will be taking more time on your business then spending with them and it might cost more money to run at first than it makes then you family may decide to give you the boot.

Lastly if you do not watch your time and money you might find yourself spinning your wheels while you drain your coffers and sooner than you know you will have nothing but wasted precious years and an empty wallet.

Lots of people like to tout the glories of online business but the truth is they rarely speak of these hidden dangers and you need to be careful and plan accordingly.