Affiliate Business Cash |

My last post on the topic of freelance writing was titled make money with freelance writing. It garnered some interesting comments from readers. They were mainly to do with setting rates (the never ending topic), as well as how to go about the whole business in general.

I guess, when we talk about freelance writing, rates and getting started, we can keep turning in circles, since we will never agree for sure with regards to what is right and wrong.

In the end you will have to factor in your own experience, your needs and your position in your market to determine your own rates and procedures.

In this post I want to show you what I deem an absolutely necessity - must haves, if you really want to be a player in your market.

What most aspiring freelance writers often forget is, not everybody needs to start out in the Internet marketing, blogging industry. Many write for industry specific markets and earn a quiet fortune along the way.

What really determines your market is your expertise in it. If you are very knowledgeable and passionate about a specific topic, then this could provide the perfect starting position for your writing business.

You could target the health niche, the sports niche, the fitness niche, or even the lawyer/attorney niche. Regardless of the market or industry, writers are needed everywhere.

Once you break into your market, it’s time to make sure you have what it takes to build your business in blocks.

I did exactly the same thing, moving ahead, step by step, until I was able to sack my boss for good. It took me a total of seven months to do this and if I was able to do this, so can you. Also, when you look at the bigger picture, what are seven months in comparison to being stuck for another twenty years in a job that sucks the life out of you?

1.) To be taken serious you need a portfolio site

I’m not kidding. A portfolio site is an absolute must if you want to play your market. It shows prospective clients just how serious you are about your business and instills a sense of professionalism.

I used to be happy with having my blog and a hire me page, thinking it was sufficient enough for my business. I did have a portfolio site too, but it didn’t list rates and only contained my story, as well as a contact me form, very basic. Then once I became involved in the thought process on whether to post or not to post my rates, I had a wake up call while reading a blog post on Copyblogger.

This post was the final straw I needed to move my business to the next level (unfortunately I can’t remember the exact post). I moved my portfolio site from using a free template to a paid one, whilst investing a couple of hundred dollars for the transition. I also paid for a logo and customizations and the result has been nothing but amazing.

Within four days of having the new site up I had a new client. It paid instantly for the make-over. Since then, I have seen a sharp rise in new clients wanting to book my services. As a matter of fact, upgrading my portfolio site was the difference between me trawling various online job sites, looking for work and being fully booked out for 6 months solid, without having to look for work.

In my case, my blog is my voice, while my portfolio site is my profile, telling clients “hey, I’m serious about this, this is my business and I treat it as such”.

2.) Consistency matters

Consistency is key when it comes to your rates. Once you have established your rates to a satisfactory level, keep them consistent. This is why you are posting your rates in the first place.

Potential clients can see whether their needs and your services provides a match or not.

Being too murky here, or swapping them around isn’t good for business. It would be like going to your deli, buying a cup of coffee for $2 today, $3.50 tomorrow and $4 next week. You certainly won’t go back there in a hurry.

If you have established long term clients, keep your rates the same. I’m not saying you can’t ask for a pay rise, but you need to know when and where and be absolute certain you provided value for money to your client before you even attempt this.

I had one specific long term client whom I worked for with beginners rates. Every week I’d write 14 articles for a set amount. I did this for 8 months. Then he asked me whether I’d be interested to do something totally different, I said yes and named my current rate. He obliged.

He could have just as easily gone to outsource this job to India for a third of what he pays me, but because he knows I’m reliable and loves my work, he chose me instead.

Another client paid me the same rates for about 7 months now. I knew I had outgrown them (the rates) some time ago, but didn’t want to lose the client. This month I finally made the plunge and asked for a pay rise. I got it.

These are typical examples that sometimes it does pay to wait. A long term client can be worth a lot, since they often send you referrals too. Having said this, I also get referrals from new clients, which is the ultimate show of trust and appreciation. These people really rock because they show me how much they really value my work, which has nothing to do with money.

3.) Go beyond the call of duty

I pride myself on doing everything I can to make life easier for my clients. This involves sending them the finished work in a easy to use format, depending on what they need it for.

I also provide extra services for which I do not charge a cent. These services are not listed on my portfolio site either, I just provide them as I can. I guess in some ways I see myself as a service warrior. In the age of lost customer service art, I do my best to help rectify this gaping hole.

For example, I gained a new blogging client a few months ago. I got booked to publish a couple of blog posts every week, which I did. But because I was able to self publish I also had full access to the site as an administrator. My client was really busy with other aspects of his business at the time (that’s why he hired me in the first place), so when I saw his massive comment backlog I offered to look after this for him, approving, replying and denying comments - no charge. A simple gesture of service, that’s all. Naturally he was delighted.

These are the little things that really matter a lot!

Whatever it is you can do to make life a little easier for a client, do it. It will come back to you ten fold. I like to call this karma. Being a big believer of karma, I have to say, from where I’m standing, it really works.

What do you need?

If you are a budding freelance writer, stuck or frustrated, not knowing where to turn, let me know in the comments. While I’m far from knowing it all (I learn new things every day), I would be happy to help you as much as I can from what I have learned up until this stage in my business.

To wrap this post up, I have to honestly say; the three keys above have been the three major factors responsible for moving my business to the next level.

(original article)

This video is part of my new starting a blog video series that will include 50+ videos about creating a blog for profit.

In this video, we are going to talk about some of the reasons why starting a blog is a great option for individuals that are looking to create income online.

© Court’s Internet Marketing School

(original article)

Affiliate marketing is very beneficial both for merchants and affiliate marketers. It is a popular method to earn profits from the websites and also helps the merchants to increase their sales.

It is the cheapest business on the internet that can make you the highest profit.

Lets us discuss some important benefits of affiliate marketing to affiliate marketers and merchants.

Benefits to affiliate marketer

1. No Need to create a product!

One important benefit of affiliate marketing is that you are not required create or produce any products. It is the duty of merchants to create the products. So you are only required to select the products to sell, get the affiliate links and start your business in ten minutes. You can focus on selling the product as you don´t need to do anything with the production or delivery of the products.

2. You Can Start with No Money, or with as little as $100

Another important feature of affiliate marketing is that you can start your business with little or no out of pocket expense. This is the lowest possible investment in today’s world to start a business which has a great scope in the market. If you simply don´t have any money to invest, you can always use free tools to start your business.

3. The Easiest Online Business

It is the easiest online business due to the fact that the merchants do all the hard work like making products, delivering products to consumers, handling money transactions etc. Affiliate marketers are not responsible for any of these tasks. They just need to focus on promoting their affiliate links.

4. Make Money While You Sleep

As you have your affiliate links on the website which is available on the internet all the time, you are not required to remain online to keep in touch with your customers. People can visit your site whenever they want and can visit your affiliate links. If they like the product they can easily buy it by just by clicking the given links.

Your only concern will be checking your email to see how many sales you have made from your links.

5. Penetrate Hot Markets Fast!

You can select any hot market at any time to choose the products you wish to sell. If you observe that other marketers are making money with pet care related products for instance, just register with an affiliate program to get some hot pet related products, set up an adwords campaign, and in 10 minutes, you can start to make money!

Benefits to Merchants

1) More Sales in Less Time

The products of different merchants are advertised by many affiliate marketers at the same time. The main website of the merchant is also advertising the products. If the page rank of the merchant website and his affiliate marketers are high, tons of traffic, which are your buyers, will visit the product pages. The website of every affiliate marketer will send the people to merchant websites. This results in more sales in less time.

2) Broader Market to Sell Products

Having new affiliates just expands the market of merchants. Don´t select the affiliates blindly. Do the research to check if the affiliate´s website is related to your business or not. If the affiliate marketer´s website is matching your products theme, then there are more chances of sales. The affiliate´s website will receive hits for the people who need to know about your products and they are more likely to visit your website to make a purchase.

3) Less Efforts Required

Affiliates are doing the hard work of advertising for your products. If your affiliates are doing good work then you don´t need to spend extra time and money for advertising. Just concentrate on improving the quality of your products and launching new products.

Affiliate marketing can provide the easy, fast and reliable money to affiliate marketers. At the same time it gives more sales in less time and money to the merchants.

My blog was started in February, 2007 and has grown to have around 3,500 subscribers and is on track to produce more than six figures this year. During the last 16 months, I have learned a lot of things about starting a blog that makes money.

While we have written extensively about a lot of different techniques that can be used by people that are trying to start a blog, I still don’t feel like we have an efficient road map that can be followed by anyone. I also see a lot of people struggle with their blogs. I believe that most people don’t make much at all through blogging, even though it can be very lucrative. Something is definitely missing…

For that reason and after a lot of thinking on my part, I have decided to release a 50+ part series of videos that will walk you through starting a blog for profit. I couldn’t be more excited because I know that this series will be the most useful project I’ve published until this point!

I’ll be covering everything including choosing a profitable topic, setting up a blog, designing the blog properly, using plugins to increase the power of the blog, writing content that will grab people’s attention, making money with a blog, and more. I’ll be using screen-casts so that you can watch me work and get a better idea of what you need to do.

This post will be added to my Court’s Best Work section at the top of the sidebar, and any video posts included in the project will be linked to here. To make sure you don’t miss the videos, you can subscribe to my RSS feed. The first video post will be published tomorrow so stay tuned!!

~ Court

(original article)

All right, I admit this title is a little heavy, but I did write it for a simple reason. I wanted to shake you awake. Is the the work you are doing at the moment making you happy? Whether you are employed in a secure job, working from home or running a corporate business empire it doesn’t matter. What matters is how you feel about what you do.

It’s a bit like being married, I guess. If the thought of waking up beside your wife or husband leaves you horrified, then it’s time for a divorce. What do you believe?

Sure, we can hang on for the sake of our kids, for the money, the perks but what happens when we wake up one day realizing we lost most of our “active years” to accepting less than acceptable terms?

Fact is, we spent about a fifth of our life at work, therefore dreading to go there would be a crime.

If we take an average of 40 years (350400 hours) to be our working life, with a 40 hour week (83200 hours) we actually work away some 23 percent of our life. This figure doesn’t factor in holidays since most of us actually work for longer than 40 years anyway, so it will balance out again. For many people this figure is actually way higher than this.

The so called modernized nations have become slaves to the system, working for bigger mortgages, more technology toys and a lot less fun than our ancestors had.

Do you really want to waste away 1/5 of your life by following the unhappy path? If not, then this is your wake up call!

I’m deadly serious (here we are again). Most people waste their lives away. Just look around you. How many friends, fellow workers, family members can you see complaining every day. They see nothing but the negatives and their main activities for the day is discussing their job or their neighbor.

Gossip is for poor minded people.

I like to share a quote with you, a quote I read many years ago. This has stayed with me for some 6 years now. It was actually this very quote or saying that changed my life for the better. Unfortunately, I can’t remember who quoted this, therefore please forgive my ignorance.

“Poor minds discuss others.

Average minds discuss events.

Great minds discuss ideas.”

I’m sure you are not average. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be a reader of Court’s Internet Marketing School blog. Readers who stop by here want more from their lives. They are truly fed up with the mediocrities of life and want to find ways to aspire to better things.

You don’t have to accept the common road. The road others have traveled before and will continue to do so in the future.

It all starts with our habit to put things off. This is the worst inhibitor of people’s success.

Instead of complaining why not get active. Now! Not yesterday, not in 10 years, not when the kids finish college, not when you have saved enough to actually do it but without delay.

I challenge you to do it.

Does it always work? Of course not! However, I tell you what it does. By engaging a positive and proactive mind set, we activate our creative genius. This genius is responsible for finding alternative ways to aid us reach a target much faster than if we merely left things as they are.

If you hate your job, get out. If you hate your boss, find a new job or quit. If you can’t stand your life, change it.

You know, I personally wasted about 5 years of my life hating my job with such a passion it made me depressive and very cranky. The irony here is in reality, I’m a very happy and fun person to be around. Therefore, why did I waste all these years you might wonder.

I found many excuses as to why I couldn’t just quit my job. I basically lived in denial. Even so, if I’m totally honest with myself, I could have done this pretty much instantly. This is why I am so taken by my good friend Don’s approach to putting his mouth where his heart is. After experiencing some major upsets at his workplace, he finally pulled the plug and quit his job. He blogs over at Making Sales Making Money and is a frequent reader here on Court’s domain.

What Don, myself and many others have done is to ultimately follow our passion. Neither of us knew whether it would work out. Some still don’t know this. Nevertheless, I can bet my life on it that Don is deliriously happy now. He followed his dream.

Are you willing to follow your dream, come hail or sunshine?

I’m sure most of you are aware that dreams do come with some burden. You could struggle with your discipline, fail your business or even become un-enchanted with it after some time.

Ultimately, regardless of your dreams you have to act now. Life is too short to miss out on all the fun. Every minute you wish for something to happen, your clock is ticking away, never to be in the same moment again.

(original article)

Online case studies have become a frequent showcase here on Court’s Internet Marketing School. This paid service has been designed to help businesses reach the next level by exposing the errors that might hold your business back with our reviews. A featured review here should help you to advance to the next level in your business and if you are interested, you can buy your own review so that I can take a look at your site.

About YesTemplates

Today’s case study lets me look at YesTemplates, a full service web development company that specializes in premium website templates with exclusive ownership rights at affordable prices - prices start at $75 for exclusive ownership rights.

With over 5 years of experience in template design the team at YesTemplates know what they are talking about when it comes to designing corporate templates, logos and web templates.

Plus, any template you buy from YesTemplate will be made available to you only with exclusive ownership. This is perhaps their strongest selling point overall.

The low down

While browsing their website, I was very impressed with the navigation, the speed in which the pages load and the general cleanliness of their designs. YesTemplates have a vast range of website templates and logo designs available to buy right now.

To me it is clear that they truly know what they are talking about according to their about us page.

Finding a suitable website template was actually surprisingly easy. YesTemplate’s navigational menu makes it fast and painless to find a template that fits within your niche. You can chose from a wide range of topics (about 43 in all) such as:

• church
• computer
• family
• fashion
• finance
• health & fitness
• hosting
• media & press
• night club
• personal
• restaurant
• real estate
• sport
• travel
• wedding
• and much more

Each of these topics has a good selection of templates to choose from. Before you buy any template you can hover your mouse over the image and it will show you a larger preview. I like this feature as it was instantly and I didn’t have to click around and open dozens of new browser pages to see a vast range of templates up close.

As you can see from the few screen shots, the quality of their designs is very good. I also liked the way they display the designs and show whether they are still available or not. Remember, once they are sold, they are gone.

Prices are surprisingly affordable. As a general range, most website templates cost from $70 - $85. Unless you want a custom design of course. If I take into consideration the time needed to design these, this really is peanuts if you ask me.

In my time online I’ve seen many other sites who repeatedly sell their website templates over and over again, sometimes 50 times, sometimes more for the same prices. Therefore I think YesTemplates is providing exceptional value for money.

Template customizations

In case you wonder, YesTemplates will customize any of their existing templates for a low fee to suit your needs. Whether it be the color scheme, images, icons, background images or even tweaking the actual content layout, you can have it all.

If you find yourself lost with a worthless template from another company, YesTemplate will take care of you too.

Further services of YesTemplates

Corporate identity: There is a vast selection of ready made corporate letterheads to brand your business with. Available at a low cost of $37, I found that while they are very affordable, they are also a little “old age” for my personal taste.

Having said that I realize that you get what you pay for and if I was to choose a corporate identity from YesTemplates I would actually pay for a custom made design which of course will cost more.

Web 2.0 templates: If the idea of a normal website isn’t one that takes your fancy, how about choosing one of the cool web 2.0 templates from over 14 categories. You will be the envy of your business colleagues with these interactive designs.

Logos: There are also a wide range of ready made logos for you to choose. Just bear in mind that most of them might not suit your business due to their topic and nature. Again, if you don’t want to part with $39, you can always order a custom logo template from the company.

Custom CMS themes and website design: This is what is says, if you found a nifty web template you can get the team of YesTemplates to design you a custom WordPress blog, Joomla or Drupal theme to go with that. A great option for businesses who fell the need to blog but don’t want to lose the look of their corporate website.

My recommendations

One thing I’d like to see is a portfolio of their premium service designs from past clients. While their featured logos and corporate identity designs are ok, I know that the designers of YesTemplates are capable to design more stylish web 2.0 logos. Before I’d order a custom design and part with $200 I would want to see examples from within that price structure.

By featuring these examples on a separate portfolio page perhaps, they could further their credibility online as a valuable and able template design company.

Other than that, I think YesTemplates has managed to come up with an affordable premium website templates service that is designed for a vast range of businesses.

Their website design is clean, easy to navigate and informative enough for anybody who is looking for a template. You can also phone them if you prefer on 1.888.398.4234. Alternatively they have a contact me page and an email listed on their site.

If you still have questions, please visit their FAQ page to find out more.

(original article)

Entrepreneurs and discipline are polar opposites like day and night, black and white or yin and yang. Funny enough, despite their obvious differences they actually fit together like a fit to measure glove to a hand.

The strange thing is that most entrepreneurs struggle with discipline to the extent of failure. I wanted to know why that is and why we can slave away our days for a boss without so much as a complaint whilst we start to throw tantrums at the earliest convenience when we are in business ourselves and work our butts off.

Looking for a case study

I didn’t have to look far. I was the perfect model for my own study since I have battled with discipline for some time in the past before I (nearly) mastered the art. In that time, my business life was like a freaking roller coaster.

One day I would be up near the clouds, enjoying the sunshine, traveling at massive speeds while tumbling down into absolute depression hell the next.

At the same time I tried to build my first business I also happily run into the open hell of my part time job whenever they needed me, because I was paid a good hourly wage. Despite the fact that I hated my job with a passion, I still kept going back for the money.

Funny enough, at work I was disciplined and as usual a perfectionist while all around me other staff threw sick days, came to work late, didn’t show up at all or even moved at the pace of a snail. And these guys had only just started out in the industry mind you. I felt that I should be the one taking it easy after near 22 years in the job and not them. But here I was, running around like an idiot while getting more and more frustrated.

How stupid is that?! Instead of biting the bullet for good with my business I took the easy way out and continued on a path or self destruction that would send me further into depression. Luckily for me I’m strong and quite thick headed and I managed to pull myself out of this hole without any professional help.

But it could have easily gone the other way too. The question remains, why is it that we struggle to make things happen for our own business while we often give everything in a hated day job.

Crunch time

When I was able to be honest with myself (oh yes, I did kid myself some) I realized that the biggest issue I had was the uncertainty of whether the business was going to work or not.

Also, knowing that I had a guaranteed income kept me going back, despite the fact that it ruined me emotionally. Eventually I couldn’t take any more and that was when I seriously pulled myself together.

In fact I saw myself still cooking and half heartedly trying to build a business when I was 60 and that wasn’t a pretty picture. By then I would have truly had to succumb to a shrink and I wasn’t going to have any of it, so pulling together was the only way out for me.

And so I did. That was back in January 2007. I made (for once) a new year’s resolution that I was going to abide by. To be honest I couldn’t stand myself anymore, my half assed attempts of trying and not doing and I’m sure most of us could improve in some areas in their lives right now doing the same thing.

Being an entrepreneur does require a healthy portion of discipline. The really cool thing is that once we master this it really does become a lot easier. I’m happy to say that I go to bed on most days feeling a huge sense of accomplishment, knowing that I have done the best I could on that given day and looking forward to the next.

After all, I am human and do stuff up occasionally doing nothing too when in fact I should, but even then I see those days as well deserved days off. Keeping discipline is not easy, but it can be done. Discipline is also a must ingredient for success.

Once you master discipline don’t forget to add balance in healthy doses.

Make discipline happen for you

If you are one of the thousands of entrepreneurs who struggle with discipline allow me to give you some of my insights.

• Do it doucement (slowly, very slowly) (not sure whether this is a Bond movie line actually). We often fail when we try too hard. Take it one step at the time and incorporate necessary tasks week by week.
• Don’t measure yourself against others in competition. Use them as a guideline if all. You will only set yourself up for early failure when you try to compare what they have and you haven’t achieved.
• If you run a business besides working a day job, invest more emotional energy into your business. After all, it is your future and deserves your full attention.
• Don’t be put off by setbacks, keep persisting!
• Do something for your business every single day, regardless how tired you are.
• Use personal visualization techniques to day dream. They are very powerful.
• Don’t spend your time with negative people and business dream wreckers. They are poison, especially in the early (failure) stages of your business.
• Be proud of your achievements, however small they seem.
• Learn from your setbacks and mistakes and do it better next time round.
• Don’t try to complicate things - keep it easy.
• Have fun.

Discipline mustn’t be so hard

We are often our biggest negative influence when it comes to staying focused and disciplined. Negative self talk is like rape to your mind. Don’t do it.

I’d love to hear about your own trials and errors with discipline and what helped you to master it. Even better, what was the turning point in your life that prompted you to take your business serious?

(original article)

On Monday when I posted about preparing to pursue internet marketing full-time, I got a series of questions about what my favorite business model is. I started to reply to a couple of the comments, but before I got very far I realized it’s not a very easy question to answer.

I’m kind of a business junkie anyway so asking me to name my favorite business model is like asking a chubby person to name his favorite flavor of ice cream. It’s not easily done.

I’d rather not tell you my favorite business models, and give the impression that my preferences define what is best for you. I think I’d do you a favor by telling you how I think you should choose a business model for yourself. The best way to do that is probably to look at the elements of business models you see used on this site, and pick which of them would be the best fit for your personality.

At the core of every business is the single question: Which of its core activities are most closely related to making money? Let’s answer that question in terms of business models you’re seeing on this site. You’ve seen us talk about Keyword Sniping, Flagship Blogging, BANS (via Vic), and you’ve also seen Court offer his own personal coaching services.

Activities Most Closely Tied to Income:

Keyword Sniping/BANS*:
- Keyword Research and Selection: the ability to consistently find new niches to target is key to success and income with this strategy.
- Link Building: Sniping is all about Google traffic, and Google traffic is all about links. Whoever gets the most and best links wins.

*I’m no authority on BANS, but the reading I’ve done on Vic’s site tells me that it’s all about keyword selection and links, just like Sniping.

Flagship Blogging:
- Content Creation: as I’ve been part of Court’s Internet Marketing School I’ve seen his name and audience explode as he has found something he can teach (with authority) that solves a real problem for a lot of people (actually achieving rankings on Google and making money off those rankings). If you can write content that achieves the same thing, you’re on your way to doing what Court (and many others) have done.
- Networking: when this blog was new, I remember Court commenting on 50 or 60 blogs per day, sending emails introducing himself to people, and making friends like crazy. At the time I didn’t get why he was doing it. Now it’s pretty obvious right? Flagship Blogging is about people knowing who you are.

Being known and having problem-solving content will bring links, traffic, and subscribers, and income.

Coaching and Consulting:
- Flagship Blogging: Yes it sounds odd, but the entire Flagship Blogging model fits right inside the Coaching and Consulting Model. At least it should in my opinion. I used to work for a coaching company that sells its services to people without creating a relationship of familiarity and trust first. My take is that this sets up the client to always doubt what is being taught. If you successfully create a Flagship Blog first, you’ll position yourself to give your personal clients real value because they’re learning from someone they know and trust.
- Interacting with Clients: Court spends a few hours each week on the phone with our personal clients. He really enjoys it (mostly because we’ve been lucky to work with nothing but high caliber, hard-working people). He also responds to emails answering our students’ questions. Interacting with our students via phone and email are the core of the model.

Which Of These Activities Appeal Most To You?

Whichever model you pursue, you need to understand that successful businesses are highly repetitive in nature. You should pursue the business whose core activities best fit your personality and preferences. If you can’t see yourself performing these activities day in and day out for an extended period, without becoming miserable, then that model isn’t for you.

Court has been coaching people one-on-one for years now and he really enjoys teaching and building relationships with his students. I’ve been doing keyword research and building links for over two years now, and I’m far from sick of it. That’s why these models work for me and for Court.

Which models and activities appeal to you and why?

(original article)

After creating the latest version of the Dateless Sniper theme (Dateless Sniper 2.0), I thought that it might be a little difficult to implement everything that the theme can do. In order to help you guys to get the most of this theme, I decided to make a little video that shows you how to install and configure it. Guys please watch the video, it will help you to understand more about getting ranked in search engines. Please comment on this post if you have any questions!

Links I referred to in this guide:

Download Dateless Sniper 2.0

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How To FTP Using FileZilla

(original article)

Freelance writing has been the business model for many online entrepreneurs to fuel their dreams of a better life. When we dream of making money online it is often to escape a life that has lost its spark. While many succeed, most never will and the dreams die as quick as they are born.

Hopefully after reading this article, you will understand that you too can make money online with freelance writing if you feel passionate about it.

As some of you know, I came to freelance writing more by accident than by design. After a failed business venture in MLM I discovered that I wasn’t cut out to be a die hard sales person, but more so a writer who enjoys blogging and writing about a vast range of topics, while expanding my ever growing knowledge.

I basically slipped into my business and I will be eternally grateful for the opportunity, regardless of what happens in the future. I thrive on writing about many subjects and every time I do, I learn something new.

The fun part of this is that you can too!

Here are some of the characteristics you will need (in my eyes) to make this work.

1.) You need passion for the written word. That means you mustn’t flinch at the idea of having to write a 600 word article, regardless of the topic. As a matter of fact, on an average day I write about 4,000 words for clients.

2.) You also need to be a voracious reader and learner. I’m convinced that reading hundreds of books has helped me to understand English grammar without having to study the subject.

In case you wonder, I grew up in Switzerland and what I know today is the result of years of reading and learning. Plus, I never feel that I stopped learning and am always soaking up new information. I guess I am like a sponge.

I simply crave new knowledge.

3.) Get into action. You’d be surprised as to how many people wish to be a freelance writer but never actually do anything at all to make it happen. Action is the magic word and the sooner you jump into the cold water, the quicker you will be able to swim. To help you get started, I created a freelance writing guide for new freelancers. In the guide I touch on many subjects to do with freelance writing so if you are interested to learn more, feel free to take a peek.

4.) Brand early. Branding is everything in our business. If people don’t know who you are, you make it complicated for them to find you. The best way for a freelance writer to brand himself is to use his own name.

The sooner you actively do this, the quicker clients can recognize you. More recognition = more work!

5.) Use an online portfolio. Show the world what you are about. Make a statement, like McDonald’s. Be proud. When you are good in your field, there is no room for false modesty but always, always stay humble.

There is a difference.

6.) Build step by step. No new freelance writer will be run over with tons of work when he first starts out. As long as you are prepared for this, you can build your business as it grows without the need for speed and pressure.

7.) Look for expansion. There will come a time in your business when you need to expand. You might need to outsource, or cap your clients to keep on top of all your assignments. The sooner you weigh up your options, the smoother your business will move into the next chapter.

8.) Never stop looking. Even if you business is flying along, it pays to keep a couple of options open. The nature of freelance writing determines that you won’t always be fully booked. Plan for those quiet times and work that plan.

9.) Network. Networking has been my biggest income source. Without networking, I wouldn’t have half of the clients I have now. Every day I am amazed at the power of networks and how they help my business. Before you wonder though, networking didn’t come easy. It required months of hard work to stay in the loop and connect with other bloggers to eventually get noticed by them.

A comment here, a blog post there and more will be required to build a strong network of other business owners who might be prepared to recommend your services to third parties.

10.) Hard work. I said it before, I say it now. Working hard is part of making it happen for any online business, regardless of the industry. Long hours, repeat work, frustration and success are all part of any serious entrepreneurs daily life.

The question is, do you want your own slice?

(original article)

Since I quit my full-time job about a month ago, I’ve had quite a few people ask me how I prepared myself to make the transition to being self-employed and working from home.
I want to make two points about the personal finance aspect of making this move:

1. Debt creates stress that clogs your creativity and creates a need for income that your fledgling web business may not be able to realistically provide. So before you try to quit your job, work yourself into a solid internet income and use it to pay down your non-mortgage debts.

Not only will you experience a huge effective increase in your income (as that money is no longer going to your creditors), you will feel a big boost in your confidence and creativity because you won’t have the burden of debt weighing on your mind.

2. Get a sense for exactly how much money you need to reasonably earn to maintain your lifestyle. I don’t believe it’s realistic to say you’re going to change years of spending habits when you become self-employed. Look at how much you’re currently spending, try to trim the excess where possible, and then set your income goal equal to your current lifestyle. Trying to figure out entrepreneurship while simultaneously trying to adjust to a significantly reduced lifestyle will do nothing but frustrate and discourage you.

Now, about the work of being a full-time internet entrepreneur:

1. Find Your Best Method For Making Money Online

When you quit your job it’s not time to learn what will work. It’s time to scale up the effort you’ve already been investing in a system that is producing results. It doesn’t matter whether that’s Keyword Sniping, BANS, consulting, or freelance work.

Any of those could give you the full-time income you need to stay job-free. But you need to have momentum and success behind you before you expect any of those methods to sustain you as a full-timer. An extension of this advice is that your chosen method has to be one that will reasonably scale up to a level that will pay you what you need to live.

Let’s say you right now you have an internet income of $200 per month, and it takes you 15 hours per month to maintain that income. If your monthly income requirement is $4000, you’ll have to increase your current income 20x. If you can’t introduce some new efficiencies into your business, you’ll need to invest 300 hours per month (or about 75 per week) to make that $4000 per month.

That’s probably not realistic. So make sure you can grow your income to the level you need without having to put in outrageous work-weeks. Hundred hour weeks aren’t bad if a few of them create a more passive income. But if you’re not seeing your income grow as your work hours decrease, you need to improve your money-making methods.

2. Develop the Discipline Necessary to Work At Home Full Time.

If you want to prepare to quit your job and work from home on the internet, you have to start thinking of your home as the place you work. You will have no boss other than yourself, so you have to require yourself to complete tasks.

For me the toughest part of entrepreneurship is imposing deadlines on myself. But if you can say “I will not let today pass without accomplishing x,y, and z” you are really setting yourself up to succeed. I’m working at this one every day, because I still often let myself push things off until ‘tomorrow’. The real danger of that is you can’t have today back. Once time is gone, that’s it. If you have real goals and no boss to force you to complete the necessary tasks, you have to develop the ability to complete the work - today.

3. Consume 90% Less Information

I’m going to confess something here, and I hope it doesn’t ruin our business. I don’t use an RSS feed reader. Why? Because I only read two or three blogs. I read everything Court says, I check in on SEOBook once or twice a week, and sometimes I pop over to Blogger Unleashed to see what Vic is up to. I read Grizz’s site whenever he posts, which isn’t often.

I don’t read many blogs because it’s not the way to get the highest ROI on my time. Since I have found my method for making money online, I spend my time working my method and I ignore 99% of what’s being said in the blogosphere.

There is good information out there; I’m just ignoring it because I can’t afford to be distracted. As my income settles in and becomes lower maintenance, I think I might start some BANS sites. Until then, I’m just going to do my thing.

I know many of you are on information overload, and I completely understand. That’s why I’m saying you have to work one method until it yields a result, then keep working it until you hit your goal, then start looking for additional methods. You should read only as much information as is necessary to hit that first income goal.

I really don’t believe subscribing to 50, or even 10 blogs in a reader is necessary. Find your mentor, do whatever she/he says, and ignore everybody else until you’ve reached that first goal. If your mentor is on this site - great. Spend 10 minutes a day reading this site and the rest of your work time building content and links so you can increase your income.

If your primary mentor is not on this site, I suppose you’d have to leave us for a few months until you hit your first income goal. See you when you get back.

(original article)

I think one of the best aspects of SEO is that it’s both cumulative and compounding in nature. It’s cumulative because every time I put a page on the internet it has potential to rank, bring me traffic, and make me money.

As long as I don’t let the domain expire or let it go stale with a lack of links, it stays on the web forever (basically) with very little maintenance. If I add 500 pages per year to across all my sites, the net I’m casting on Google gets a little wider with every single page I add.

Your Authority on Google Can Grow Exponentially

The compounding element of SEO comes from our ability to add pages and links within one domain, and with each new link and page, the entire domain becomes exponentially stronger.

So while my Google net is getting incrementally bigger each time I add content, the entire net is also becoming stronger and more effective every time any one of my pages gets new links. This compounding effect is why sites like this one can achieve high rankings for keywords they’ve never really targeted with nothing more than internal links.

So how can you enjoy the full compounding benefit of your SEO efforts? There must be hundreds of answers to that question, but the answer I’m offering today is deep linking. As you strengthen the individual pages of your site by getting them links, you increase your entire site’s ability to rank exponentially.

How to Drive Link Strength Deep Into Your Site

The real question, then, becomes “How do I build links to the individual pages of my site?” We’ve posted in the past about strong internal linking strategies and also the use of the related posts plug-in. Internal linking is powerful, but if your deep links are going to help the entire site get to a new level of authority, they need to come from other sites. So here are the two strategies that are guaranteed to yield results:

1. Blog Carnivals

For any of you not familiar with blog carnivals, they’re basically group writing projects hosted by sites as a way of sharing good content and community building. You can find carnivals relevant to your topic at the Blog Carnival website. It will walk you through the simple submission form you see below. What you’re going to do is submit a post of yours that best fits with the theme of the carnival.

The deep linking power comes from that fact that if the host of the carnival likes your submission and accepts it, you’ll get a link from that site directly to your post. And very often you’ll get another link to your home page. It’s not uncommon for authoritative sites to host these carnivals, so there are some quality links to be had if you’re willing to do the work of regularly contributing posts to the carnivals in your niche.

**Blog Carnival Bonus Tip**

On the submission form after you’ve pasted in the permalink you’ll often see a space for you to enter your name or the name of your blog. Find a way to get your desired anchor text into that name and it will make the link pointing to your homepage that much more effective for SEO.

Be warned - there are some carnival hosts who feel this is spam and will refuse your submission based on your use of a keyword as the name on your submission. Others will understand why you’re doing it, and as long as your submission is high quality and relevant, they’ll give you the link with your anchor text.

The big upside of blog carnivals is they usually give you both a link to the post you submit and to your homepage. They can also be a source for traffic and more links. I’ve had people find my other blog this way and like it so much they added it to their blog roll. That may not happen often, but it’s nice when it does.

The downside of blog carnivals is submitting to them can be time consuming and tedious. It’s a low leverage method for deep linking, but it’s a good way to get started when your site is newer. Eventually the goal is to have your content be good enough to attract links of its own (Court’s post on starting a blog has received over 1400 external links - a lot more than blog carnivaling will ever get me). At that point, submitting to carnivals doesn’t make sense anymore from an SEO standpoint, although you may still want to do it occasionally for community buidling purposes.

One last thought on Blog Carnivals: DON”T SPAM THEM. You’ll quickly ruin whatever name you’ve established for yourself if you aren’t submitting posts with the intention of contributing to the quality of the carnival. This can be a good supplemental link building strategy, but if you take it too far you’re not going to make friends.

2. Article Marketer

Yes, it’s our old friend Article Marketer. Sometimes Court and I feel like A.M. is the nerdy kid in high school that nobody else will talk to, but we know he’s cool, so we’re going to stick with him even if everybody else thinks he’s a loser.

So in this edition of Article Marketer Does Not Suck, I want to show you how to use the html Author Bio on the article submission form to give a link to both your home page and one of your subpages every time you submit an article.

It’s pretty simple. On the form you see where you can create the html author bio with up to two links. All you have to do is have one of the links (with your main homepage anchor text) point to your homepage, and use the other link (again with the anchor text of your choosing) to the page you’re trying to build. Repeat that process as many times as you like. Remember to vary your anchor text to avoid Google Bombing.

Here’s how it will look (sorry it’s so small):

And that’s it. Using this strategy I was able to get the ranking you see below for my ecommerce site. It’s a #9 ranking and the keyword isn’t particularly difficult, but it shows the power of linking to a subpage.

Now that page of my site not only ranks on its own, but it passes authority back to the rest of my ecommerce store. That’s the compounding effect of deep linking.

There are more deep linking strategies out there. What are your favorites? I’ve heard of people using squidoo lenses, hubpages, and obviously social bookmarking to accomplish the same goal. What have you tried and gotten results from?

(original article)

Guys I am REALLY excited about the release of the newest version of this theme. To say the least, it has some major upgrades from the last version. Here are the changes I made this time around:

• Dateless Sniper 2.0 is fully Adsense-ready and has four easy-to-use options for Adsense placement
• Moved the ‘Filed Under’ section below the posts
• Added the ‘Sponsors’ section for optional banner support with Got Banners
• Changed links from blue to underlined black
• Added ‘Tag’ section with support for a non-list-style tag cloud (the old tag could was very annoying)
• Added tag support to single post pages that adds tags below post content

Download Dateless Sniper 2.0

Download Dateless Sniper 2.0

(original article)

Being an entrepreneur sounds so cool to many people who are forced to slave away their days for a boss in the cubicle. These people dream of a life spent working from home, while actively building their wealth without having to answer to anybody else.

While the thought of entrepreneurship is one that has inspired millions before us and will no doubt do again long after we are gone, it isn’t as smooth sailing as you think. To be an entrepreneur, it requires certain disciplines and habits that will help us along on our path to business bliss.

These are often reasons enough to stop many from even trying. While they might sound scary for you, think about the alternatives instead. What do you prefer? A boss and no control about your professional future, or hard work and a chance at success.

The choices are entirely yours.

Not everyone is an entrepreneur by nature. That’s perfectly fine too. In the end, it is all about happiness and being truly excited about our life on a daily basis. For most, it is when unhappiness strikes and we hate what we do when we start thinking about owning our own business. Whether it is an online or offline business is irrelevant.

For some minor few though being an entrepreneur is an inborn passion, a drive that keeps them going until…

To see whether you are suited for this type of life see the pointers in this article and whether they resonate with you or not.

1.) Uncertainty

Entrepreneurship is uncertain business. When you become self employed you don’t know whether your business will take off or not. But if we never try, how do we ever know? This could especially be a problem in the beginning stages. In a young business it is hard to tell whether our ideas will eventually work out.

The problem with many businesses who fail is that they give up way too early. They totally underestimate what it takes to run a successful business and fail to plan accordingly. Many failures could be avoided, if only proper research were done upfront.

In the end though all we can do is try.

2.) Risk of failure

Being afraid isn’t bad as it instills a healthy respect into our conscience. When we are aware of certain challenges in business, we can prepare against them and increase our chances of survival.

Most of us are afraid of things, situations or even people. Being in business for yourself won’t change this. Especially when our own capital is involved we tend to get very scared. The secret here is to plan in stages.

Don’t throw all your venture money into your business upfront. You will be much better served by starting small and expanding from there.

3.) Hard work

If somebody ever told you that being an entrepreneur is easy, they were lying. It isn’t easy. What is easy anyway. Picking your nose perhaps. If you want to step into your own entrepreneurial shoes you need to understand that there is hard work involved. Not necessarily hard as in physical, but mental and tiring. Which brings us to the next.

4.) Long hours

As an entrepreneur myself I work long hours. While some might say; what is the purpose of slaving away from home with the worries about business, if you can work for a boss instead and do half the work, I understand.

Entrepreneurship is perhaps not the right thing for you then.

But for all the rest of you, think about this. When was the last time you got a pay raise? Or are you one of the not so lucky ones who has to work back regularly for your boss. How about job insecurities, inflation, downsizing, automation, outsourcing? Shall I go on?

To be honest, I rather take my chances with my own business. I actually feel more safe than I ever did being employed for 22 years.

Plus I can give myself a pay raise whenever I feel like it. Come to think about it…

5.) Irregular income

There is no doubt about this. Owning your own business will expose you to income fluctuations. It is just the nature of doing business. Depending what industry you launch with, this could be seasonal, dependent on the time of day, or even fueled by an ever changing economy.

As long as you are prepared and put some pennies aside for the slower times you should be fine. Problems start when entrepreneurs burn all their money, thinking it will just keep flowing. While the thought is one I rather like, nature has shown us that it won’t always work that way.

6.) No benefits

When I say no benefits I don’t mean tax. As a matter of fact, business owners have huge tax benefits and they should peruse them.

But we don’t get sick pay, holiday pay or even 401k benefits. Life insurance is also another topic to consider, as well as work cover if that exists within your country. Basically any benefits we take for granted as an employee will fall away when we go into business for ourselves. Therefore it is best to be prepared and informed.

That is another reason why you should never sell yourself too cheap. Nobody else will pay your bills for you.

7.) Marketing

Ah, the dirty word. Many see marketing as an evil side to doing business. But it doesn’t have to be. You can market yourself without driving away potential customers or clients.

One problem is that hardly anybody is a born marketer. That means we all have to learn and adapt to our industry as an ongoing learning experience. We can’t afford to rest and have to keep our eyes on the ball to stay competitive and in the game.

8.) Lack of quality time

Ok, this is a biggie. If you have family, pets or friends that are used to seeing you around on birthdays, Xmas and other common holidays, then you might be in for a shock. Sometimes in business we have to keep working when the world parties.

Yes, I know this is hard and we all face the same tests and tribulations. The thing is, that the earlier you build your business up the quicker you can allow yourself to be back in the party zone whenever you want to (ok maybe not that often).

9.) Missing funds

Depending on the business you seek to run you will need some major funds (even if you start small). Sometimes those funds are simply not available to us and that could be the first major hurdle to face as a budding entrepreneur.

Especially in today’s economy, it is getting harder all the time to obtain funds from official sources like banks and credit institutions. But fear no more. Think about alternative ways to get “cashed up”. Short of robbing a bank, think about that rich uncle who might be willing to borrow you the money with interest, or a JV partner that has the money, but no idea on how to run a business. Even a quiet investor who wants to sit back, collect parts of the profits and see you work might do the trick.

In the end it is all about grabbing available opportunities and run with them. During the life cycle of a business there will be mistakes, maybe even failures and tons of headaches, but in the end it can be and is for me the most rewarding thing I have ever done in my life.

If I haven’t scared you off just yet you might have what it takes to become an entrepreneur after all. Good on you. Grab the opportunity and run with it.

(original article)

Not all affiliates become expert in affiliate marketing the moment they begin. Even those individuals, who are expert in affiliate marketing or have been practicing it for quite sometime, may also face problems in promoting the affiliate links. There is no hidden or big secret for the art of affiliate marketing. The only secret behind successful affiliate marketing is planning and executing some wining strategies so as to successfully carry out the affiliate programs.

Here are certain guidelines and tips that would certainly help beginners to promote affiliate program and earn great profits.

1. Provide exclusive content

You must have heard people saying that content is king, actually this a half-truth. In reality any content is not king but the unique content is. Provide informational content to your audience to read so as to attract their attention. The best way to promote your website is through writing articles and adding them to the website. It is one of the effective tools of search engine optimization.

2. Customer friendly website

Design a user friendly website where there is proper co-ordination between graphics and text. Always give professional look to your website so as to make the brand image on world wide front.

3. Make certain that your content is quite printer-friendly

Visitors love to read offline too. So provide with the option of printing.

4. Create simple to navigate web pages

In order to make the website easily navigable, always make the option of site map in the website. A site map helps the visitor to navigate and choose the section of his interest out of the whole website.

5. Offer complimentary features on the site

Perks are always well liked as well as well received. You are actually creating nice value for your prospects to persuade them to spread the remark regarding your website. This is by now is the most effectual affiliate program marketing secrets.

6. Make all the links of your website clickable

Make sure to check them out first, so that there is no broken link. Conked out links are breeders of misplaced opportunities.

7. Make a FAQ page on to your webpage if you are selling an in-house product

Think and turn up with a catalog of possible questions which visitors might ask. This is important in order to assist your potential customers to understand your brand in a better way. Affiliates fail to apprehend that it could be used for pre-selling too. Furthermore, the FAQ pages save your time in answering the queries related to products.

8. Make it handy for your visitors to get in touch with you

Contact option should contain varied options so that the visitors can have the choice of selecting the most comfortable means to contact you.

9. Permit your guests to give suggestions and opinions on your website

The suggestions of visitors would help you in making the site customer friendly.

10. Promote your site by creating links to your website

Creating backlinks help in search engine optimization and increase the page ranking of the website in search engines.

This way you will have a great website that will drive tons of new visitors – from search engines, other websites to read your content. When you have such website, all you have to do is just to place your affiliate program links in some places of your content and people will click on them. This way you can easily earn money. All you have to do is just to find the affiliate programs that suit your website’s content. You can easily find such programs on networks like Click2Sell.EU (http://www.click2sell.eu) and place affiliate links on your websites, so your website visitors would buy from you. If you want to make money online, you need to put some work. The more work you put into promoting your affiliate links, more money you will earn online.