Archive for March, 2010

The 5% Factor of Success

The sad fact is that about 95% all people who go online to become an Internet Marketer will fail in the end. And they not only fail but  lose a lot of money in the process!

And all that happens despite the fact that the market is literally flooded with good ebooks, manuals, coaching, membership sites, (about list building, Google Adwords, traffic etc.) that were developed with only one goal in mind - to teach you the knowledge you need to become a successful marketer.

But YOU still struggle to make things work for you.

Right now you most probably belong to one of the following groups:

1. You bought numerous Internet Marketing products and implemented all advice, tips and techniques in your own business. But no matter what you are doing you are just not achieving the good results you are hoping for. You have read all the testimonials and raving forum posts from other marketers who used the products with great success. But for you it’s just not happening.

2. You, too, bought every product out there. But instead of using them to start your own online business, you somehow never take any action towards actually building it. Yes, you have big dreams about it. Yes, you can imagine how thrilling it must be to live the Internet Lifestyle. Yes, you study and learn everything possible for hours a day. Yes, you know you should finally start – BUT you just don’t do it. Something is always holding you back.

3. You have some success already. You might even earn a 4 or 5 figure income already. But your dreams are much bigger than that. The only thing is, you hit some kind of plateau and you just don’t get to the next level. You know you have the knowledge and determination but you are stuck with this level of income.

There is a reason for it, and no matter at which point you said, “Yes, that’s me,” it’s the same reason for everyone.

It’s the missing link for building the successful Internet business you are dreaming of.

Are you curious what the missing link is?

Let me start with telling you an eye-opening story ( I wrote and published this article years ago)…

“Don’t Act Like An Elephant!”

Strange statement, isn’t it?

But listen carefully because it can make the difference of success and failure in your business and private life.

So, let me explain…

You might know that in India elephants are used for manual labor. But what to do with them when they are not working? How to restrain them?

Their handlers came up with the idea to program them while they are still very young - by setting self-imposed limits into their thinking.

How does it work?

When the elephants are still small, weighing around 150 pounds, they get tied up with a very heavy rope.

All day long, the elephants try to get rid of it, whine, tug at it and some of them even try to chew it. But they can’t break free. Finally, the elephants give up and the fight is over.

And now it’s getting interesting…

From this moment on, they strongly believe that there is absolutely no chance to get rid of the rope. They accept the “fact” that the rope limits them.

And with this imprinted belief in place, their handlers are able to tie them with extremely small ropes!

And even as adults, weighing 8,000 pounds and more, they never attempt to break free because they “know” they have no chance at all!

As you can see, the elephants’ limits are not real, but exist only in their mind.

And so are we programmed with built-in-boundaries. They are also not real but exist only in our minds.

But with these imprinted belief systems, with these inner boundaries, we are unable…

- to live our lives to the fullest
- to be as successful as we could be
- to set and reach higher goals
- to make 10 times more money as we do now
- to build a successful business
- to get the promotion and pay increase
we always dreamed of
- to fulfill our true dreams and desires

The point is…

Your Inner Belief Systems Will Make Or Break Your Business!

Let me explain this with a simple ‘White Hat’ example…

Let’s say you are at a stage of your online business where you have built a list to a certain size. So far you didn’t promote anything but put your efforts into building a relationship with your list members first by providing great content.

But now you think you are ready to give it a shot. You heard about a great product and that marketers who promote this affiliate product achieve great results. For you it’s a no-brainer to go for it as well.

With your list size you expect ‘realistically’ at least 10-15 sales. You put great efforts in creating a convincing email about the product – you hit the
’send’ button – and, instead of 10 or even more sales, you make only one.

Depending on your existing inner beliefs one of two things will be happening…

A. If you have any negative beliefs in regards of your business itself or your ability of running a business successfully, you’ll experience thoughts like, “I can’t understand why this is happening to me while everyone else and their dogs are doing great promoting this product; maybe I am simply not good enough to be successful as an Internet Marketer; maybe other marketers have better lists than I; I think the experts were right by telling me that my niche might be too competitive for a newbie to have a chance to make money.” And so on…

B. If your core beliefs regarding your business and your abilities in general are positive, you might have thoughts like, “I expected a little bit more, but hey, at least I made a sale at all; I am really grateful for it; I have accomplished something; I have to tell …(spouse) about my success; I can hardly wait for the next email campaign; I expect even better results next time.” And so on…

A week later there is another opportunity to endorse a good product.
If you were the first marketer (A), you don’t feel that enthusiastic anymore but worry a little about the outcome already, but you still create a rock solid email message - you hit the ‘send’ button - and there are no sales at all from your campaign.

Now you doubt yourself even more. Your feeling of being a failure is deepening. You now really believe that something is wrong with your list. You think you entered your market too late to make any significant profit, etc.

And the worst thing that is happening, you are strengthening your already existing negative belief system! And that will make sure that you’ll go the road leading to more and more disappointments and bad outcomes. And finally you’ll quit and will be convinced Internet Marketing is just not for
you.

A damaging belief, no matter if lying open in your mind or buried deeply inside, will always sabotage a possible positive outcome, no matter how hard you try!

If you were the second marketer (B), you feel great while crafting your endorsement email. You are relaxed and grateful for the chance to make some profit again.

You feel highly motivated, and you expect even better results this time – you hit the ‘send’ button – and (drum rolls, please ) you made 4 sales this time.

You feel even more grateful. Your feeling of accomplishment is deepening. Your self-confidence is rising. And, most importantly, you are strengthening your already existing positive belief that will support you in everything you are going to do from here on.

From this moment on you are on the road to success not only in email marketing but in all areas of your business. Your positive belief, your ability to feel grateful for even small victories (sales) and your positive expectation will get you more and more things, results and circumstances you can be grateful for.

Because it is so important to understand I want to repeat it one more time.

The chances for the first marketer are slim to none to make any significant profit with his/her business. The negative belief system that is controlling his or her life will always sabotage the chance for big, long lasting success.

Bottom line: your perception of yourself is the vital key to your success.It’s because of self-imposed limits. Your inner boundaries will always sabotage true, long-lasting success - no matter what you do, no matter how hard you try.
So ask yourself, what is your self belief today?

So, I hope you now have something to think about.

Please let me know your opinion!

4 Major Reasons to Market Online

Reason # 1: People Are Spending MORE Money Online

According to a comScore research report, the number of people actually searching for products and services online increased by 21% in 2008. Today in 2010 almost 75% of the Internet population are searching the Internet before buying something. So the Internet is a growing trend and more and more of your prospects and customers likely to look for you online.

So why is the Internet a growing trend?

It’s convenient and a great way for them to save time and often save money too.

Remember that a lot of people are time-poor in today’s hectic 24/7 society.

Having more people searching for your product and service is one thing. The important question is: are they spending more money online?

A com Score study reported that US e-commerce spending in 2008 reached a staggering $214.4 billion – a 7% increase over the previous year. So importantly, more people are spending more money online too – they’re not just lookie-loos and information seekers. They’ve got cash to spend and they’re going to spend it online somewhere the only question is: will it be with you or your competitors? To get the most exposure, focus your efforts on Google and then Yahoo!

Where does your company website appear on Google for the typical phrases that your prospects and customers are searching for? If your company website doesn’t appear, ask yourself this; is your competitor site appearing? If they are, what are you going to do about it? One excellent way is contacting me and I will help you J The other way is just ignore it and hope your business magically go online.

You’re effectively invisible and don’t exist on the Internet. We can help you to greatly increase the visibility and sales for your business online. And not only with your

existing website (or one we can create for you), but also with online videos and landing pages that show up on Google as well as automated email systems.

Reason # 2: If You Don’t, Your Competitors Get the Profits

Chances are good that your competitors have already realized the benefits of marketing their business online. So if you don’t have a significant online presence then you’re losing out on the Internet visitors and they will go to your competitors instead – together with their money now and most likely into the future too.

Fortunately, most businesses that are marketing themselves on the Internet are doing a mediocre job at best and can usually be easily beaten online – with some correctly applied expertise.

Reason # 3: Online = Greater Return on Investment

As marketing budgets come under more pressure, businesses are now looking for methods that have a proven return-on-investment (ROI) so that they can get more

bang from their marketing bucks. Because of this, a lot of businesses are using online marketing methods such as e-mail marketing, search engine marketing and online video marketing which are proven to outperform traditional media such as conventional advertising.

But where should you spend your marketing dollars online? Well, a Sapient survey in 2007 found that 38% of online marketers ranked online search as their #1 marketing channel for providing ROI with e-mail marketing second at 24% and digital advertising at 15%.

According to a study by the Direct Marketing Association, the ROI from email marketing in 2008 was $45.06 for every dollar spend whilst direct offline marketing had an ROI of just $15.55 for ever dollar invested. (Source: The Power of Direct Marketing Economic Study 2008 by the Direct Marketing Association).

In yet another study by McKinsey of 340 senior marketing executives in June 2008, they found that 91% were using online advertising and over half said that they plan to maintain or increase their current online spend. More importantly, 55% said that theyare cutting expenditure on traditional media to be able to increase their online efforts.

One of the most effective ways to advertise online these days is with internet web video. In another study by comScore, it was found that “nearly 139 million U.S.

Internet users watched an average of 83 videos per viewer in March” (2009). How to Recession-Proof Your Business Using the Internet So, the trend is for savvy businesses to shift their marketing dollars from traditional offline methods such as advertising to online methods that have greater ROI. If your current marketing methods are not producing the results you want, then we can help you to get a much higher ROI from every penny of your marketing budget by helping you to use online methods with a proven and greater ROI.

Reason # 4: Online Marketing Influences Offline Sales

One of the key things to understand is that people’s buying behaviour has changed as a direct result of the Internet. People are increasingly likely to do a search for a product or service online and then either purchase it online there and then or use it later to influence their purchasing decisions once they do go offline.

A joint Google and comScore study on “The Role of Search in Consumer Buying” found that immediate online sales accounted for only 16% of activity and a further 21% of sales came online at some point later after the search. More strikingly, a whopping 63% of sales came from activity done offline at some point after the online search was conducted. (The study was conducted in March 2006 and examined activity across 11 product categories over a 60-day period).

This holds true for business-to-business sales as well as just business-to-consumer sales. For example, in their Business to Business survey of 2007, Enquiro discovered that 36.4% of respondents found vendors online but then completed their purchase offline later. (Source: Enquiro “Business to Business Survey 2007” May 2007

When you consider that comScore also has reported that 25% of all Google searches are YouTube video searches, it is no wonder why so many companies are focusing a large portion of their internet marketing on the realm of internet video. Further, it is no secret that video can be much more influential to prospective buyers than purely textual presentations. So, the buying decisions of your prospects and customers are being greatly influenced online and will lead to offline sales. If you are not there to influence them online, then they’ll most likely not buy from you when they go to purchase offline later and buy from your competitors instead.

I can help you to increase your online presence, with search engine rankings, email marketing, online video marketing, and landing pages designed to sell, so that online prospects and customers find your business instead of your competitors. And to generate leads and sales from the prospects who do find you so that they buy from you instead of your competition. Isn’t that what you really want ultimately?

Call me today at 0194751379 (Charles) and let us discuss how you can make more money online.

20 Ways to Generate Backlinks

We all know that backlink is very important for generating traffic and ranking high in search engines. Here are 20 ways to have backlinks to your site.

1. Blog Commenting. Easy way to get backlinks, do comment on dofollow blogs. Use Follow List or this software to find out blogs related to your niche.

2. Web Directory. You are able to submit your blog to Directory but Nowdays Google, doesn’t put a great deal importance on the free Web Directory listings. However, I still prefer to submit my blog to Free Directories. Here is the list of Free Directories with high PR.

3. Link Exchange & Blogroll. This is most common way to increase your backlinks but Keep in mind you don’t want too many outbound links, so don’t go crazy with link exchanges.

4. Forum Posting. These days Many Forums provide Dofollow link via signatures of signed up users. If the forum is a popular one, a backlink can be extremely valuable. In a lot of cases however, administrators don’t allow links in forums posts. Some administrators even prohibit the search engines from indexing their content.

5. Ask Questions Websites. Whenever you ask for information, identify yourself by a link to your website. A good example of this is the Yahoo questions and answers and Google Group.

6. Social Bookmarking. These days Social media is very popular source of backlinks. At least bookmark yourself.

Create good content on your website, other members will eventually bookmark you and you’ll get a free backlink. A good example is delicious.com and digg.com.

7. Stumble upon. At least hit the”I like this” for your web page. If you can find stumble upon partners, this will help bring traffic to your website beyond expectations.

8. Press Release. Submit press release about events in your business and website. Of course include the link to your website. The most popular press releases website is prweb.com

9. Squidoo Page. It’s easy and if you have the time to develop it, it can be very authoritative. If you don’t there’s heaps of services out there to help you out. Totally far-out drag and drop modules, not so strict moderators, solid backlinks and a chance to get some quality traffic too.

10. Digg.com. First build a solid profile, where you have a network of loyal diggers. If you can hit the Digg front page, you are likely to get linked to by a lot of web-masters.

11. Article directories. Publish content for directories such as eZineArticles, GoArticles, thewhir or iSnare. Don’t forget to “add your website link in “About Author’s” Area.

12. Join Yahoo Answers. Providing useful answers, along with a link is an easy way to earn a back-link.

13. Link Baiting. It is essentially a piece of content placed on a web page – whether it’s an article, blog post, picture, or any other section of web – that is designed for the specific intention of gathering links from as many different sources as possible.

14. Guest Posting. This is the very popular way, specially between bloggers on the internet. Guest posting is not just about getting the backlinks.

15. Spread the Love. Dedicate a post or two per week to link to other blogger’s posts that you found useful.

16. Technorati. Build on your Technorati Profile.

17. Create Hubpages about your website, products, services or anything related. Also include links to your website.

18. Contact your fellow bloggers in your niche and ask them for an reciprocal link exchange.

19. Buy Backlinks. Be careful where to buy from and make sure that the website hosting your link is worth it.

20. Rent links from others website – Text-Link-Ads is most likely your best option.

Using Technshare for Link Building.

1. Leave a comment and get a backlink as all our comments are Dofollow.

2. commentLuv every time you leave a comment, get a link to your latest blog posts.

3. Top commentators. Our most contributing members will be rewarded with a link, every month.

Article taken from http://www.technshare.com/20-ways-to-build-backlinks/

I am sure by now you have a little about social media or Facebook/Twitter but do now know how to use it. In fact Obama (president of USA) won his election by focusing mostly marketing  through social media. Even Malaysia in the past election used a lot of social media and is currently the alternative government channel of reaching out to their fans.

So if the government is actively using social media for themselves, how about your business? Are your competitor online in Facebook already competing for their market share in the social media.

Just to summarize what social media can do for your business:
1  You can share expertise and knowledge on sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook

2  You can master these tools very quickly, and proft from them in a fast web enviroment

3  Your own customers can brag about how good your business is

4  You can bridge the gap to customers who don’t even know you exist, but would likely use your company

5 You can keep track about what people are talking about your business and brand (good or bad)

6. You can build a network of fans/followers who are hungry to know more about your business

7. You could build your brand in a very much cost effective way compared to traditional print advertising. Think owning your own TV station in Youtube or radio station in Podcast.

There are probably easily 20 more benefits and if I were to explain everything, I could probably write an ebook!

A recent survey on the social media powerhouse facebook noted over 300 million people currently use it. 300 million is a lot of people to tap into for business. And even if only half those people were active—and the number is likely more—the potential is huge. There are millions on the growing Twitter. LinkedIn is becoming an even clearer business social media
site. YouTube gets 1 billion hits every single day!

In Malaysia alone it is estimated over 5 million Internet users who has facebook account and watches youtube daily! Now do you see the potential of marketing your products or business there? How much of that market do you want to own? Can you afford not to take part and just watch as your competitors start utilizing these social media and leaving you behind?

SO how do you make money? You get known. Many online buyers might not even know you exist. There are so many companies online right now—there are millions of sites and billions of pages—un-less you get ranked very highly on Google and Yahoo, you will still have to invest capital into other marketing efforts. Email marketing is very powerful, and combined with social media marketing is a better choice at any stage, whether you’re just beginning to get online and starting your business or even if you’re established.

Here are some examples how I helped my customers use social media. Do you know you can target demographics, age group, gender and even education level? How cool is that for targeted marketing? Here are some tips you can implement immediately as I always advice my customers.

1. find out who your buyers are by inviting them to join you on social media sites like Twitter and face-book. by doing so, you gain at least some info on who they are. You might notice mostly 40-60 year old men buy your expensive video games with high end graphics, but that teenage girls are actually the ones who buy in the most volume from your role playing games.

2. Use Twitter to keep in touch, sell them on new services, ask for products they might want to see more of, and products they feel aren’t worth the money.

3. Use facebook or a Yahoo Groups forum to be more friendly with your buyers. Video gamers are going online to play games by the millions, so you can set up pages for them via groups, forums, or social media tools like facebook. You can even post new screen images of your games (or if you are selling something else too of course)

4. Finally, you want to know what they can afford. If your buyers are mostly the elite, people with bigger wallets, you  may see different opportunities than if they were penny pinching people on low wage jobs. It just depends on their education and vocation, and by fnding these out you gain great knowledge.

Business to consumer is the king of social media, but business to business cannot be ignored. Most of these examples were focused on b2C, which is the biggest market, selling products and services directly. If you focus on b2b, you can sometimes earn more. The same strategies apply. business owners and CEOs are using social media tools more than ever to fnd new partners for business enterprises. And some businesses purchases will make you more than any single customer will ever make you.It’s not all clear yet where social media will go, but I see one of the best things it offers you is simply an ability to fnd out who is buying from you. Instead of getting their emails—which is still good—or by having them fll out a form—which is good but rarely works—you can make buying from you more enjoyable and learn to keep customers over long periods. Social media is the key to all that.

Having said all that, if you need help branding online and harnessing the power of Internet to grow your business, just give me a call. I would love to hear from you. I can easily be reached at
0194751379 (Charles)