This is not going to be an all-encompassing list of ways to monetize your blog – just the basics.  You will find as your blog grows that you may have different needs.  You may be even reaching a different audience than you had originally anticipated and your advertising will evolve to complement your blog.  That being the case, I am just going to cover a few basic ways for you to monetize your blog. 

There seems to be some out there that shun monetizing their blogs.  Some people say that it is a turn-off and people won’t visit your site.  Based upon my observations, this is totally false.   Most of the successful blogs out there are ripe with ads and many of those people make a nice chunk of change from their advertising efforts.  Are there extremely successful blogs out there that aren’t monetized?  Sure, but they are far and few between.   I would say that even those sites are monetized as it is one big ad for the author and what he or she promotes.

So let us presume that you don’t have any moral quibbles with monetizing your site.  What is the best way to do it?   I don’t know – but below are four good places to start advertising on your blog.

Sidenote:  When choosing your ads (whatever form you decide to utilize), you need to think like a reader of your blog.  How did they arrive at your blog?  What interests drew them to your blog?  What parallel interests would people like these have?  This is where you want to direct your advertising efforts.  I know you are saying “Thank you Captain Obvious,” but you’d be surprised how many people don’t even get this straight-forward concept.

Google

Let’s start with one of the most common forms of monetization – Google’s AdSense.  Google allows you to place a script on your blog to display ads that were placed via Google AdWords by advertisers seeking a specific audience.  Well, how are you going to know what to tell Google to put on your blog – sounds daunting doesn’t it?  Lucky for you, if you want to use Google’s AdSense, it is contextual – meaning that the Google’s script analyzes the content of where AdSense is being place and displays ads that are relevant to that content.  Easy squeezy lemon peasy!  Oh, so you want me to give you a tutorial on AdSense – ain’t happening – just go to Google AdSense, and they got the best tutorials you could ask for.

Display Ads

Next, are display ads, or more commonly called banner ads.  These are the squares, rectangles,  or whatever other shape they will come up with next that are basically billboard ads on your blog.  Some are unobtrusive while others are really annoying – you are going to have to decided your comfort level with ad size.  You will notice that a very common size now are the 125×125 ads which refers to the ad size length by width in pixels.  Why are they popular?  Probably because they fit well in multiples on the sidebar or at the top of a blog while being large enough to convey a message with flare (they got pictures so they are pretty) – see my side bar for an example.  The next most popular are the rectangular banner ads which come in a couple of different sizes.   These usually go at the top of a site or are included within or at the bottom of a post. 

Alright, where do you get these?  Almost all affiliate programs that you will want to promote will have banner ads available.  The easiest way to join affiliate programs is through an affiliate network.  What dat?  An affiliate network  basically brings advertisers and publishers (you as the blog owner are the publisher) and provides what amounts to a middle-man for publishers to come to a single source to find advertisers.  There are several really good affiliate networks out there you can work with, but let me just give you two to start with.  The first is Commission Junction – the largest in the industry is a great place to start.  They have hundreds of advertisers with dozens of different styles of ads from banners to text.  In addition, their Commission Junction University is a great place for you to get an in-depth introduction to the world of affiliate marketing. 

The next one I want to recommend is :

There you go, a prime example of a 125×125 banner ad being used contextually within content.  But why do I like them?  As the ad says, they have great payouts but they also have excellent customer service. 

Please be aware that you may apply to either of the services and be denied because they may not feel that you have enough blog-credibility in their opinion.  If that happens, don’t fret.  Use the ads available through direct affiliate channels, and keep plugging away.  After you have some posts under your belt, apply again.

Text Links

When people think of text links, they often think of buying links which may or may not be a wise decision for you (just do a search for “text links” for more information).  When I speak of text links, I am referring linking directly to the text of your posts. 

This is something that you can and should do when the opportunity arises as it will definitely add to your bottom line.  A straight forward example of this is in this sample portion of a post:

While there are many places to find a domain, I find that GoDaddy offers me the best range of solutions for…..

What I have done there is put a very unobtrusive affiliate link to GoDaddy so that if anyone follows that link and purchases something from GoDaddy before the cookie expires, then I get an affiliate commission.  To most people this doesn’t look like advertising either, it simply looks like a link to the website being referenced. 

Selling Products or Services

This should be the first thing anyone thinks about when wanting to have a business – selling products or services.  However, many of us don’t have a product or service to offer, or at least we don’t think we do.  If you have great content, you can organize it, package it and sell it.  This is what you see with most ebook offers – simply of collection of knowledge on a subject laid out in an easy to read and easy to follow manner (hopefully anyway).

Perhaps you have a connection to buy and resell certain items that you think there is a great market for and is related to your blog – this would be a great venue to offer up those products, even if it is just an adjunct to  your current eBay efforts.  It could pay off big for you and may lead to other distribution opportunities – especially if your blog showcases you as an authority in that particular product field.

Of course if you have expertise in a certain area, you can and should offer up you r knowledge for a fee as a consultant.  Many companies have grown out of someone offering their expertise and parlaying it into a much larger, more lucrative venture.  If you are confident of your expertise, utilize it and get paid for it.

Wrapping It Up

There are many more ways to monetize your site that I haven’t covered such as Chitika, Yahoo Publisher Network, Linkworth, Direct Media Exchange…the list can go on and on.  I think the few advertising avenues that I covered are the best places to start.  After you have explored these ideas and are comfortable with advertising on your blog, you can start exploring other avenues.

One thing I can tell you though, is that you don’t want to try every kind of advertising that there is all at once – your site WILL look gaudy and that WILL turn some people off.  Be selective, keep track of performance, and adjust as needed.

Off you go.Similar Posts:

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You need to realize that if you get stuck and don’t know what to write, you have tons of resources at your finger tips to spur on your creative side.  You don’t have to reinvent the wheel.  99.9% (or greater) of all of our thoughts are not original.  By that I mean that someone else has thought about what you are thinking about.  So why even put my thoughts down on my blog you ask?  Well, while others are thinking about what you are thinking of writing, they may not be putting it down in writing, and even if they do, you bring something to the party which is your own perspective – that is what this is all about.

The things I am putting in my blog have been written hundreds or thousands of times before, but nobody quite the same as me – some more eloquent and complete and others less so.  My purpose for doing it is that I am going to reach an audience and I will connect with some and not others.  This is the way it is.  Some will like your style and others won’t.  Don’t sweat it, just do it.

Back to where to get inspiration.  Surely you have your own thoughts on your subject, but just are nervous about putting your thoughts down just yet.  An easy way to ease into it is to start looking for other websites with the same interests.  You need to find about 15 of them and subscribe to their RSS feeds.  If you don’t know about those, you can go to feedburner and read up on them.  Make sure you click the cute little elephant icon on my blog and subscribe to my feed.  Subscribing to multiple feeds basically aggregates a bunch of information into one easy to read place.  What’s so good about that?  Duh, inspiration at your fingertips.  If you subscribe to sites that you are interested in, they are bound to touch on a subject that you are passionate about – read their articles or posts and use one that you find interesting as a starting point for one of your posts.  Some people purely comment on others posts in their own blogs, and that is fine as they are brining their own particular viewpoint.  You can “improve” on what they wrote, or even write a counterpoint.  

• Important point: Be sure to post a comment on the blogs that you follow.  Doing this on a consistent basis will result in traffic.

Okay, so that is one good place – how about others?  Another place you can look is in your Facebook account. What?  You don’t have a Facebook account?  Go get one NOW!  I guess if you have a MySpace account you can use that too.  So how do you use it?  Within those social networking sites are thousands of people who have the same interests that you do to, and you can join groups.  Follow those groups and see what people are posting in their profiles, you are bound to find something interesting to write about.

Another social networking site that is specifically made for bloggers is blogcatalog – there are actually lots of sites like this, but I like blogcatalog better than many of the others.  Check it out for yourself, join, and start participating.  Not only will this give you possible ideas, but if you put in a little time, you can generate a lot of free traffic from this site.

The above points start to touch on the use of social networking in your blogging pursuits.  Believe me, they are a vitally important part of your success.  I will be putting together more in-depth posts on these social networking sites in the future.  For now, why don’t you hit me up on Twitter (ooh, another site).Similar Posts:

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However, this lack of “completeness” touches on one of my previous posts about organization and failing to plan.  I have been going about my posts with my idea in mind and putting down a few thoughts on the notepad on my desktop, but really, this is not the best way to write – just off the top of your head so to speak.  

I and you should take the time to write down the key points of what you are going to write, think it though in your mind, and then revisit the key points that you wrote down.  Do you want to add anything?  Do you want to change the order?  Do you perhaps want to split it up into 2 or more posts?  

I am implementing this simple method to make my life easier and to present a more professional post.  Don’t get me wrong, I am not writing technically, but I really don’t want to pass along misinformation, or partial information.  

If you are reading my post, you are looking at me with some authority.  Make no mistake, this is exactly what people reading your posts will be thinking of you – don’t let them down!Similar Posts:

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Back to where I started off – I was thinking about it, and I am going to break this up into three parts instead.  Promotion will be next time.  I need to stress that this post is primarily focused on those who have their own hosting when I am talking about widgets and plugins.  I am not trying to make you free blog people feel bad, there just isn’t that much available for you – but there are a few really useful things, so read on.

“Why I gotta tweak my blog?” you ask.  Well, getting your blog on the internet is great, but you need to do things to make it more attractive to visitors and to the search engines.

For visitors, there has to be stuff (techie term I use a lot) on your page so that it looks attractive.  Now this doesn’t mean that a blog without stuff can’t be successful, but I just think that making it look a little attractive can attract more eyeballs (you know, people looking at your blog).  So what can you do to make it more attractive?  I am going to break this down in two parts – free and self hosted.

FREE

How do you start off in making your free Wordpress blog more attractive?  You start off with using the widgets found in the Design area of your Wordpress blog.  There are several thing that you can add to make your blog look more “complete” for lack of a better word.  Mess around with the widgets – see what you like.

Not fancy enough for you yet?  Well, you can put pictures with the Flickr widget.  Don’t know what Flickr is?  Flickr is the largest photo-sharing website in the world where people post their pictures.  Don’t have a Flickr account, and therefore no pictures to share – no problem, you just activate the widget and it will bring up Flickr interesting pictures of the day.  Cool huh?  Of course you can get your own pictures up too – I will let you tinker around to figure that out – it’s easy though.

Next thing you can do is use the text box to put in your own links attached to pictures like you see on my free Make Money Online Wordpress blog.  You see my Twitter and Facebook icons (they are actually called badges if you are doing a search)?  If you click on them, you will be sent to my pages on those respective sites.  Another pretty cool thing huh?

“Wait a doggone minute,” you say, “I don’t know how to make a picture that will send me to some predetermined part of this interweb thingy.  How am I supposed to do this?”  Not too hard actually.  First, sign up for Twitter and Facebook – you will use them latter anyway, so don’t delay, do it today – now actually.

Then you would search for badges for Twitter like you can find here.  Download the picture. Open up a new post – you are going to write a dummy post (like you are going to post, but don’t actually post it).  Then you use the first icon (as of this writing anyway) next to the Add Media function at the top of the area in which you write your post to insert the Twitter badge that you downloaded.  You should then see the badge in the writing are of the post – just like I did below:

There is an option when inserting the picture to enter a link, just leave that blank, or erase whatever is in there.  For those of you already familiar with the linking of a picture might wonder why I suggest this – personal preference, and ease of use for newbies – you’ll see in a moment.  Once you see the picture in the post, you highlight the picture (you know, left click, then drag the pointer across the picture).  When you do this, you will notice two little icons in the post menu (above the picture) to the right of the three icons with lines.  The two icons are for creating links and there is one with three links of a chain, and the other is a broken link.  You are going to use the three links icon.  Click on that and a box will appear – input the link URL – in this case your Twitter page URL and where it says Target, scroll down and choose the option that says open in a new window.  My reasoning for this is that you are going to be trying hard to get people to your page, you don’t want to send them away with links….this way, you send them to your link, but your blog page will remain open in the background.  You can do this over and over with other pictures for links to your social networking sites, or for affiliate programs.

Enough for now.  Putter around with you blog and start writing posts!

Self-Hosted

I think that you can use the tips I shared above as a starting off point too, but you have the option to use plugins, and you really need to do that.  For now, because it is getting late, and I am getting tired of typing, I am just going to give you a linked list of plugins that I like.  There are hundreds of plugins available, and it is likely that you will want something specifically targeted to your audience or uses, but the following is a list of plugins that I regularly use:

Contact Form 7

Comment Relish

FeedBurner FeedSmith

Dofollow

flickrRSS

Google XML sitemaps

Platinum SEO Pack —OR—All in One SEO

Sociable

Twitter Tools

Wordpress Automatic Upgrade

Akismet (included with Wordpress)

Check these plugins out and read about them, download them if you like, then activate them.  If you like the usability of the plugin, please donate to the author – they are making our life easier through their creations.

Alright, it is past my bedtime.  I will cover some basic promotion techniques next time.Similar Posts:

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You Gotta Blog Dog!

So you got your domain…or you couldn’t afford one…either way I got your next step. You have to get your blog up and running. This is really an easy step, but I can tell you from personal experience that getting the blog up is not the problem – keeping it up is. You need to provide your own blog Viagra which comes in the form of tenacity. I have had problems with the blogging aspect myself and had instead just focused on the affiliate side of marketing. Blogging can and should be a part of your overall success strategy.

So I am going to break this down into two parts. The first is putting up your blog – like I said, easy. The second part (another post) will be about what you need to do to keep up your blogging and how you will start promoting it. This second post will be just a touch on the subject as I will cover this more in-depth over and over in the future as it involves the ever-evolving social media marketing aspect of blogging.

First things first – you have to choose your blogging platform – choose Wordpress. Wasn’t that easy? I took all of the thinking out of it for you. Don’t get me wrong, Blogger blogs and the others are good, and I do use them, but Wordpress is the one I would choose if I could only choose one. For the uninitiated, let me give you a brief reason behind this. Wordpress is an open source project – basically, there is a huge community of techno-geeks (all the love in the world intended on that one) who work on making Wordpress better and more usable. Because of this, you will find an unparalleled amount of support, applications, and themes (the background of your blog) available all for free. There certainly are things that you can pay for, but before you sink anymore money than in necessary into your online venture, let me tell you, free is good!

Wordpress comes in two flavors – self hosted, and well, Wordpress hosted.  If you purchased or are going to purchase hosting, you will use Wordpress.org, and if you want to go the free route, you will use Wordpress.com.

So why would anyone use the self-hosted Wordpress when the other is free?  Well, you have much more flexibility with your own hosting as your choice of themes (backgrounds) and plugins (cool little tools) are not limited like they are on the Wordpress.com site.  However, once again, free is good, so if money is really tight, use that option.  As a matter of fact, if you are planning on doing the self hosted route, go ahead and get a free blog if you have never blogged before.  It will be very quick and painless, and once you decide to get your self hosted blog, everything will be familiar.

Another difference is in your web address.  For instance, this self hosted Wordpress blog address is mmoneyonline.com – this sort of layout is something that most people are familiar with and is relatively easy to type in the browser bar.  I opened up a free Wordpress blog for mmoneyonline (took me 5 minutes to do – including typing the post and changing the header image) and the web address is mmoneyonline.wordpress.com  go there to check it out just so you can get the visual.  So the bottom line is if you go with the free account, you will not be able to fully brand yourself as you will always have “wordpress” attached to your name – but you can certainly start out this way as many people have already done.  Not bad for free and 5 minutes of my time huh?  Of course it is fairly sparse (as of this writing) – I will utilize it – but I will cover the use of additional free blogs in a future post. 

So, how do you put up a free Wordpress blog?  Just click wordpress.com/signup/ and fill in the Wordpress.com form and you will be up and running in just a minute or two – it really is super simple.  You will have options as to your background and as to widgets you can use.  I could go in-depth on these things, but again, I am more of a big picture kind of a guy.  Even if I explained it, you would still have to tinker around with it to understand it…but trust me, it is all very easy.  

Now, for self hosted.  You want to have familiarized yourself with the back office of your host provider first – that way you have some sense of what they are talking about in the installation guide.  Second, you want to go to http://wordpress.org/download/ and click download to put the wordpress folder full wordpress stuff on your desktop (that is a technical term – stuff).  You then click the link on that page that says handy guide, and you follow all the instructions from there.  Once again, I am not going to even attempt to put down all the particulars as I am not a technical writer – just follow the directions.  If you get stuck, there is a Wordpress installation forum at http://wordpress.org/support/forum/2 and there are even people who volunteer to install Wordpress for you on those forums.  But I suggest you slog through it and do it yourself, by all means, ask questions, but there is no better way to learn than to do it yourself.  

As a first timer, it may take you an hour, once you do it a few times, it takes only a couple of minutes – maybe take me 5 minutes, and I am not a techie at all!

Once you are in, tinker around – it is relatively intuitive.

Okie dokie?  That is enough for now – have fun!Similar Posts:

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To Host or Not to Host – That is the question!

If money is extremely tight, this isn’t really a question.  You can wait till my next entry where I will cover putting up a free blog.  But if you are able to pay for hosting, there are numerous benefits to having your own web hosting.  But you don’t know the first thing about putting up a website – or blog in our case do you?  Don’t worry – it is quite simple.  Trust me, if I can do it, you can do it too.

So what hosting service do you want to get?  I have a few options to offer up to you.  So many people will say that this one is the best, or that one is the best.  Really, some are superior to others in reliability and customer service, but it really comes down to which one best suits your needs.

BlueHost is the service I recommend; another highly recommended hosting service is Host Gator, but there are many others out there.  You can even find some services that are free!  As far as free services go, please read the fine print carefully because each vary considerably in the way that they operate.  One such service I can recommend is DotEasy.

Okay, so you took a look?  Like one over the other?  Like another service better than the ones I recommended? Make sure you comment on the post if you think there is a better service that you have found.

Now you need to familiarize yourself with your service – get into the back office and have a look around.  I am not going to go over the particulars of all the features because there are more features from these companies than I know how to use.  Keep in mind – I am NOT a techie.  The fact that a non-techie is writing about hosting should be another clue to you that ANYONE can do it.  All hosting services have getting started guides as well as tech support – many even have forums where you can get your questions answered.  

So what is your first question?  Probably – How do I get my website up?  Good, but you need to focus on your domain for the moment.  Did you choose a domain?  Did you buy it from GoDaddy, or did you wait to purchase it from the hosting service?  If you purchased your domain from a source other than your hosting plan, you need to direct the domain to the DNS servers of your hosting company.  

So this is your homework:

If you haven’t purchased your domain yet, go ahead and double check that it is the right domain for you – re-review the previous posts and if it is right for you, purchase it.

If you purchased your domain through GoDaddy or another third party service, find out how to direct your domain name to your host providers DNS service.  It isn’t that hard, just find out the DNS server names (usually 2) from the provider, then go to your GoDaddy account and input those names in the appropriate place.  The fact that I am not giving you step-by-step instructions is on purpose.  You need to just do it and get yourself acquainted with tinkering around under the hood – it’ll be good for you!Similar Posts:

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Yes, I know.  What I am doing in these first few steps is laying heavy groundwork so that you have a platform.  Setting a goal without having any idea of what you framework or platform is – well, it is just not realistic.  Once you have an idea coming together about what you will be working with, you will be able to much more clearly set up your goals, strategy, and tactics.

So what does a domain name have to do with it?  Well, it really is going to get you waist-deep into DOING something to start your business.  It is also going to give you an anchor-point to which you can look and see that you have a place in which you can start building your business.

You are going to have a store-front which will be a blog for our purposes, but your storefront must have a name.  So why don’t I just pick out a name and go with it you say?  Obviously, if you think about that, you understand that names can help, hurt, or do absolutely nothing for a store (blog in this case).  More importantly, with online marketing, there is the ever-present need for SEO – search engine optimization.  While I hear different takes on the importance of this and that with SEO, there is no question that choosing a domain name related to your topic/niche is a definite benefit.  When the search engines are looking for sites in a specific category, the domain name and content determine how high your site is going to get listed.

So now you have to make a money decision.  Are you going to shell out any money for a domain?  Well, you don’t have to – that is the good news.  You can start, and run an online business with very little money.  You can get your own blog for $0 down and just $0 per month – good deal huh?

In fact, if you are not sure that you are serious, I might even recommend that you go this route.  There is really nothing wrong with doing this if money is really tight.  I do however recommend that you get your own domain and hosting service if you can afford it and are sure that you really want to take on the challenge of running an online business.  Why?  Because you have a lot more control.  In addition, you look more professional to your readers.

If you must go the free route, the rest of this is not really going to apply as much, but read it, and follow along anyway, you may learn something.

So how do you choose your name?  This is getting into some higher-level internet marketing, but I am going to make it pretty easy.  You should do a little research to determine you keywords – I am suggesting that you try using your keywords as part of your domain name.  Such as my keyword or actually phrase (when I first started) was make money online, so you see this domain name has the money online portion – making it pretty clear what this blog is about.  Now there is more competition for this key-phrase than just about anything else out there – so don’t pick it!

Remember that I said you needed to get your general idea of what your niche is going to be?  Well, now is time to refine that niche.  To do this, you need to pick your general terms and use a few tools to whittle it down to a more specific niche.  So how is this done?

I just randomly picked dog training as a niche.  Now I know from past research that this is really quite a large market.  If you pick dog training as your keywords, you are going to have heavy competition.  Suppose that you have a general interest in dog training, but are willing to narrow-down the scope of the market in which you are going to go after.  You can get the idea of where you can focus your efforts by using Google Adwords Keyword Suggestion Tool.  It is pretty simple, just type in your general keywords and click Get Keyword Ideas.  This will bring up a list of keywords that are associated to the keywords you typed in.  If you were to go there today, you would see that dog training had approximately 1,500,000 searches on Google in July.  Wow, that is a lot, you should use that as your keywords: dog training!  Well now, hold on Sparky, that isn’t all you want to look at.  

The reason why you may not want to just go ahead and pick dog training to be part of your domain, is that you may want to modify it.  Sure dog training has the greatest amount of searches on the top of that list, but did you look further down?  The serious searches were dog and dogs.  Okay, no big deal in this case, because if you have dog training in domain name, you have got the dog part covered.   

[side note: Since you are in the vicinity, you may also want to look at advertiser competition.  Take a look at the greenish bars to the right of the keywords.  These show how much competition there is for specific keywords.  For advertising, this is crucial, and we will use this later, but for picking your domain name, not as important - just something to be familiar with.]

Okay already, I want to get my domain name.  Well too bad!  Nah, just kidding.  If you are anxious to get it, just go to www.GoDaddy.com and use their handy-dandy domain name finder.  I am pretty sure that the domain you have in you mind is already taken.  You will have to try a bunch of combinations to find a name that you really want, so be patient.  The nice thing is that GoDaddy’s search results include suggestions to help you out. 

Once you have found a domain that you will be happy with (at least to start out your online marketing career), go ahead and buy it if you must…or you can wait till next time when I talk about hosting, free hosting, and blogs.  Yes, we will talk about the free stuff too, I promise.


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Now comes the plan.  Planning involves organization and focus – see how this is coming together?  Now when I say a plan, we are not talking about how you are going to market your product, what avenues you are going to use for advertising, promotion, etc.  These are categorized by strategy and tactics.  The strategy will be the overall view of what you want to do with your business – the big picture so to speak; and the tactics will be the specific steps you take – the details – to achieve that big picture.  What I am talking about here is the structure you will use in your business.  Some call this time management, but I believe it is more involved than just that.  Call it what you want – just make sure you do it.

You thought you were already putting together the details didn’t you?  Well sorry, but this step is critically important for you overall success.  You see I have broken down the first three steps as organization, focus, and planning.  In reality, they are all the same – all interconnected, and they will not work independently of each other.  

Your need to have a specific plan as to how much time you are going to allocate towards your marketing efforts – this is your most important asset.  Sure money is important, but we can talk about this later as there are multiple ways to market – some involving money, and others time – so for now, concentrate on your time.  

You need to approach this as a job.  What?  I don’t want another job!  Yes, you hear people say it is your own business and to treat it like one.  This may work for some people, but the mindset you really need to approach your “business” with is more like that of an employee working a job.  I think you will catch the drift in a moment.  

As an employee, you are hired to accomplish specific tasks as laid out in your job description.  You are expected to produce a certain amount of product or service in a given time.  The time frames in which you are expected to accomplish these tasks are usually regular intervals i.e. Monday through Friday, 9-5.  You see, as an employee, you are regimented.  The regiment is structure, and the structure allows you reasonable accommodation to accomplish your tasks.

This regimented structure, if applied to your own business will help you to accomplish more than if you just go at it saying, oh I have my own business.  Isn’t it nice?  I can work whenever and however much I want – weeee!  Uh, not a good idea.  Approach your business as an employee.  You need to work for your business…then it can eventually work for you.

So sorry if I am starting to make running your own internet marketing business as un-sexy, but that’s the reality – it takes work to get it off the ground.  Once it is up and running though, it can be a very lucrative and enjoyable venture.

So what is the plan?  Your plan needs to entail the following:

1. Organize your business life (see previous posts)

2. Focus on one particular thing in which your internet marketing business will revolve around (see previous posts).  

3. Create a WORK schedule – make it reasonable – make sure you can actually set aside that time.  Oh, and when you work during that time, make sure you FOCUS – this is the only way you will get things done.

4. Create a weekly plan.  What (be specific) will you accomplish in the hours you have set aside in your work schedule?

5. Do it!  Follow your schedule and take action.  With your organization and focus, you will be able to accomplish your tasks.

6. Recap at the end of each week.  Did you accomplish what you said you were going to do?  If not, adjust.  If you had to much time left over take on more tasks, if you didn’t accomplish enough, scale back.

Well, that seems overly simple doesn’t it?  Yeah, it is.  This is just the structure of you efforts.  Your other plan – strategy and tactics will be a much more complicated step.  And as to the above, you can modify it, but it gives you a general idea.  You need structure.  For that, you need to organize, focus, and make a plan.

Okay, well, that is enough for now.  Stop reading and get out a pencil and paper, or use the computer right in front of you.  Plan out your schedule.  Organize if you haven’t already.  Find your focus.  Whatever you do, don’t do nothing.  Take action – your dreams will start to take shape.Similar Posts:

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• Getting Focused

The next step is getting focused – yeah, it really does go hand-in-hand with getting organized, but it is a little different.  You need to focus grasshopper so that you have clarity in what it is you are going to accomplish as well as how you are getting there.  ”Hey, that sounds like a goal” you say.  Bingo!  Oh, but wait, the step after this is the planning stage, isn’t that where goals come in?  No, these first three steps are the creation of your goals.  This is not a GOAL:

I am going to start a business online

-Start internet marketing business by August 15, 2009

-Spend 2 hours each day on business

I am going to make $105,000 by December 15, 2008

-Need to make $15,000 per month ($3750 per week, $535.71 per day)

etc, etc, etc…

You know, some stupid little thing that you wrote down on a piece of paper, then taped it to your computer to look at everyday.  You see people all the time telling you to write down your basic goals and review them daily.  Bull puckey!  That is an over-simplification, and in and of itself will not work.  You need to get more specific about things…..and…..you need to get in a mindset for accomplishing these things.  The simple fact is that most people are going to fail.  You are greatly increasing you odds of success by starting out with some organization, focus, and planning.  I know that I have already said these things, but I am trying to pound it into your head.  If you have a thick skull like me, it’ll take a couple of times.

So how can this guy who seemingly has ADD tell me anything about focus?  Well, quite simply, because before I learned to focus, everything about internet marketing was a blur to me.  So many programs, systems, gurus, all coming from different directions telling me what I need to do.  I was wasting money and more importantly time on program after program without dedicating my efforts to any one program because I lacked the discipline of focus.  Once I learned to focus, things started to fall into place.

So how do you focus?  One of the most important things to do is organize (step 1).  Specifically, reduce the amount of information that is coming at you – remember, unsubscribe from lists (I am sure I am going to get a lot of guru love for that recommendation).  Un-clutter you life.  We are primarily talking about your life as it pertains to online business, so you workspace and your computer.  Also, if you can make it clear to your loved ones that you are taking on a part-time business, and your time needs to be respected (good luck with that one), do this as well.

Here is the hardest part about focus.  What are you promoting with your business?  Do you have your own products?  If so, this is easy.  Forget about all the ancillary stuff (marketing programs, etc) just focus on your product and making it the best product you can.  Simple, the rest will fall into place (with time).

But you don’t have a product do you?  Of course not, you are a newbie.  None-the-less, you have seen several products that you really like, maybe even purchased and you are doing your part to promote them.  So you probably have your favorite five or six programs that you want to focus on – right?  Wrong!  You need to pick ONE and focus on it.  ”But, but, but how can I pick just one?” you ask.  Let me ask you, are you reading this because you are making a lot of money promoting those five or six products?  Not very likely.  The more likely story is that you want to succeed, but lack the focus and knowledge and that is why you are here.  Thinking perhaps this guy might be able to give me that magic bullet.  Well, sorry, but there is no magic bullet.  It is a bunch of bullets that you need to gather and use effectively in order to succeed. 

So how do you choose?  Well, that depends on what specific market segment you are going after.  You probably want to make a go at it in the Make Money Online segment.  After all, that seems like a natural fit for your interests.  If this is not your chosen niche or category, congratulations, you are way ahead of the game.  You need to NOT go at your new business trying to take on the most hotly contested “niche” and it ain’t really a niche – it is the Walmart of niches – humongous (returned 43,500,000 search results on Google as of this writing), and lots of competition.  You will get crushed.  Now once you have some experience, you can get into this game, but trust me.  Stay away until you know what you are doing.

So, hopefully you have some interests that you can pursue making money online with.  Such as dog training, basket weaving, exercise, whatever you interests are.  Just about every niche out there unless it is really, really tiny will have opportunities for you to make money off of other people’s products.  So do some research on what it is you want to focus on- hopefully it is something for which you have a passion – this will make it easier to be a success.  Get a list of the affiliate programs you find in that niche, and put them on your excel spreadsheet that you created (you know, in the getting organized section). Don’t pick you product just yet, I am going to give you some information later on about how to pick these products.  The main point here if for you to at least get a direction on where you are going to FOCUS your efforts.

So you know what focus is.  You need to get into that mindset of being able to focus.  Clear the distractions, clear the noise, it will only hinder your efforts.  Work on this.  It is not easy, but it will pay off.

And just so you understand what it is I am doing here, is that I am laying out information for critical thinking.  You need to think about what is being discussed, determine how it applies to your situation, and derive what useful information you can for yourself…and most importantly apply it.  I cannot write down all the details.  The details are where you come in…

Next time, putting together a plan.Similar Posts:

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Getting organized can be a pretty quick and simple task.  You need to make your work environment one that makes you more productive.  Clean up around you computer area and get rid of the junk.  Get yourself a notebook and a pen or pencil.  This takes care of your physical desktop.  

Your virtual desktop (your computer) needs to be cleaned up as well.  Do you have 50 icons on your desktop?  If so, you have way too many (you know even if there are 20, you got too much).  You need to make yourself some folders on the desktop with the main one being your business folder – name it what you want, but all of your online business related activities will go in there.  Make some other folders within that one.  Make one for your blog (if you don’t already, you will have one), one for your programs (most likely affiliate programs that you will be promoting), and one for promotion (this will be for all of you promotional activities- advertising, etc.).  Your affiliate program and promotion folder should also have spreadsheets opened up in each one of them – an Excel type of program to keep track of all your affiliate links, where and what you are advertising, etc..  You will see over time how important it is to track your efforts to see what is working and what is not.  I will be expanding on the tracking of efforts down the line. For now, just make the folders and open up some blank spreadsheets and label them.  Once you see that you have information that you need to keep, you at least will have an immediate place to put them.

Your e-mail.  This may be a tedious task, but it is vitally important as it has a direct impact on the next step which is focusing your efforts.  If you have been interested in online marketing for any length of time whatsoever, you have undoubtedly singed up for list after list and probably receive anywhere from 20 to over 100 e-mails a day.  This is too much.  You already knew this, but haven’t done a thing about it have you?  You need to pick no more than 10 lists to belong to.  You will have to go back and look at what information you receive and determine who is sending you “good” information, and not just ads disguised as information.  Why 10?  It is an arbitrary number, and I believe that this is a reasonable amount of information for most people to handle.  You need to be able to continue to receive valuable, free information as well as see what other online marketers are doing.  If you are receiving mailings from marketers, they have some level of success.  Look at what they do and pay attention to things that you like and don’t like about their marketing efforts – take notes.

Okay, that is enough to keep you busy for a few days.  Be back here in a few days for your next steps.Similar Posts:

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