Now that you have developed the right mindset and a simple business plan in place, you’re ready to take the next steps in starting your online business.  Before we discuss some of the technology you need, I’d like to share a video interview with Chris Farrell, an Internet Marketer who has made millions since coming online in 2008, and who has a wonderful teaching style.

In this interview Chris explains that it is possible to make money online, but there are some things you need to be aware of so you do not become discouraged easily.

As Chris mentioned, you must treat your online business as a business, and like any other business it takes time to start making real money in your online business because there are systems that need to be in place first.  We start discussing those in my next post in the series.

What are your thoughts on the video? Do you believe Chris Farrell painted a realistic picture?  Please share in the comments.

Starting an online business is not hard, but there are two sets of challenges that the new online marketer faces.

1)  Knowing what to do to move forward quickly as far as systems and technology go.

2)  Having the right mindset and a plan.

Perhaps the right mindset and plan should be listed first since your plan will determine what systems you will need to implement and what technology you will need.  Why is mindset so important?

Entrepreneur vs Employee

1)  Will this be just a hobby or do you plan to build a real business?

2)  If you are or were employed, someone else told you when to come to work, when to take lunch, and when to stop working.  Whether you’ll be transitioning from a full-time job while you build your online business, or you’re going full-force into your online business, you will now make those decisions.  You will be your own boss.

3)  Closely tied in to #2) are self-discipline and self-motivation.  These have to come from within, but positive groups of people in forums, Facebook and LinkedIn Groups, as well as a Mentor can contribute to your success in these to areas.

4)  You may be like me when I first started.  I knew it was possible to make money online and I knew I wanted to share my message with more people when I started my online business, but did not know exactly how I should go about it and what the most effective methods were.  I learned those as I continued to grow.

The same may be true of you.  You may have an idea of where you want to focus, but you do not yet know if that will be your main niche or market, or even if you should niche it down even more…be more specific in your target market and your marketing message.

Basic Plan

At the very least you should have a basic plan with a goal of what you want to achieve.  This is why I recommend that before you actually set up your first website, you spend some time doing research to see what others in your intended market are doing , and if there is an area that’s not covered, how can you fill that gap?

In my next post on this topic, I’ll discuss some of the systems and technology you need to get started.  What challenges did you experience in getting started with your online business? Please share in the comments.

Today I reflected on the fact that I came online at the end of 2008 and really started building my business in the summer of 2009.  You may wonder why there’s a gap of about seven months between coming online and really building my business.

Think back to when you graduated from Middle School or Junior High and went on to High School.  In some countries, as in Jamaica, you graduate from Elementary School and go  directly to High School.  In Junior High you may have been a ‘big cheese’; you were on the Honor Roll and in the Top 10 in your grade, or maybe even school.  You may also have been ‘Teacher’s Pet.’

Now here you are at High School and you realize your security blanket is gone!  You realize that in a sea of faces from various feeder schools, you may not see any familiar faces and it feels as if you’re in a foreign land.  Many of your classmates are much older than you are and as the days progress you realize you have a lot of new things to learn and no one has time to spend teaching you individually; you have to learn as you go.  Can you relate?

That,  basically, sums up my first seven months online.  I had been a confident, knowledgeable, and experienced employee, at times supervising others.  I had managed three of my own offline businesses successfully, but it was a different world coming online!

I spent hours in front of my computer and took several courses, some were fluff, some were very good, but  I wasn’t always ready for them because I needed the foundation on which to build first. I finally connected with  a Mentor who guided me, and in August 2009 I made my first affiliate sale.

In my next post on this topic, I’ll share what I wish I had known at the beginning and perhaps it can help someone avoid the anxieties of starting high school again…umm…starting an online business without knowing where to start.

What was your experience when you first started your online business?  Did you have a huge learning curve?  Did you make mistakes, or was it smooth sailing? Please share in the Comments.

It takes a lot of people to make you truly successful in most fields of business, but this is especially true when you work online.  No one can claim success without attributing thanks and appreciation to many.  Relationship building has to be an integral part of our online business.

Content Creation

Writing your own content is always the best and is recommended, but if you are writing blog posts regularly, you’ll eventually need help with generating ideas for your topic.  I sometimes use Private Label Rights (PLR) to trigger ideas on a given topic.  Once I determine the direction I’m going, often based on the PLR product, my thoughts will begin to flow and generate my own ideas on the subject.  If it’s a topic that I’m not very familiar with, then I depend more on well-written PLR articles and reports to guide me in laying a solid foundation that I can build on.

Private Label Rights content are great for filling in the gaps, but never use them for article content that you submit to article directories.  These reports, ebooks and/or articles are written by ghostwriters and sold for use by whomever purchases them.  It’s important to be selective in the source of the material and be sure that these are sold in limited quantities.

Your Blog

You have lots of valuable information to share with the world, but if no one is reading your blog posts and sharing your information, your visibility will be greatly reduced.  Becoming part of the blogosphere and make meaningful comments on other blogs will result in other bloggers coming to your blog to check out what you’ve written.  When they leave a comment on your blog, retweet your post on Twitter or share your post on Facebook or LinkedIn, your visibility will be greatly increased.

I’ve only covered two areas of our online business, but it’s clear that for us to be successful in just these two areas, we need other people.  We must engage in relationship building.  It’s therefore important that we reach out and connect with others and seek to daily expand our online community because we  need each other for success.

What are other areas you’ve found it very helpful to have people who support you in your online business?  Please share below.

The business book I began reading over the weekend is, “5 Levels of Leadership – Proven Steps to Maximize Your Potential by John C. Maxwell.  In his book, Mr. Maxwell dispels the theory that leadership is a position. “Leadership is a process, not a position, because it deals with
people and their dynamics, which constantly change,” states Mr. Maxwell. So leadership is really an action.

Having and managing your own business requires that you  take action to identify your
most productive times, your strengths and weaknesses so you can outsource what someone else can do for much less so that you can focus on what’s essential to your business. This self-knowledge is the foundation on which our business will be built.

Here is a direct quote from the book,

“Successful leaders work hard to know themselves.
They know their own strengths and weaknesses…
They know their work habits, their daily, monthly,
and seasonal rhythms…They have a sense of where
they’re going and how they want to get there.”

Authentic leaders know and show the way to productivity. They finish what they start and
deliver results. They know the value of prioritizing, doing the right thing at the right time for the right results.  Those are qualities that everyone of us who is a business owner want to incorporate in our business.

A couple of final points that Mr. Maxwell highlighted as part of good leadership and which
I believe are essential qualities for entrepreneurs are:  Live by the Golden Rule, and
always be willing to keep growing yourself.

Is leadership an essential quality for entrepreneurs?  I say a resounding, Yes! What do
you think?  I highly recommend this book to enhance your ability as a leader but also
as a tool for self-evaluation.

I’ve never considered myself a ‘pack-rat’ but I must admit I have a challenge with throwing things away – ‘just in case I’m going to need it.’ We are shaped, in part, by our childhood and I often wonder if I hold on to things because of my mother’s painful experience when I was a child. I grew up hearing about the unfortunate day she cleaned out drawers and destroyed some very important documents that were irreplaceable and were closely tied in to her family history. That may have created my reluctance to throw out papers.

Are you a hoarder or is your philosophy like my husband’s, “If you haven’t used it in six months, you don’t need it?”  What does this have to do with our business?  A lot!

What is your work environment like?  Is it cluttered? Even if there is a resemblance of order, are you surrounded by outdated and irrelevant materials that take up space but have no real value?   As I look at the shelves in my home office they are weighed down with three-ring binders of different sizes and colors, neatly arranged but packed with lots of files. I’ve finally come to grips with the reality that I need to go through those binders and get rid of files that are no longer relevant.  I have to make office decluttering a goal!

When I started my online business at the end of 2008 I basically stopped buying shoes and started buying programs, packages, and training manuals  of all kinds that I hoped would guide me on the path to  success with my online business.  I printed everything!

Unfortunately, with the passage of time and changes in technology, etc. some of these are no longer relevant. For example, there is a binder filled with an entire training series – free and paid – on Facebook.  Facebook has undergone so many changes in just the past year alone that there is very little value in those files anymore.  There are other binders that contain information I can refer to that can help with research, but will I ever take the time to do so?

In addition, before starting my online journey, I had offline businesses, and there again are several binders with information on prospects and customers, training materials, etc. Those will be on their way out!

Of course, my shelves are also filled with valuable eBooks and training like Dennis Becker’s $5 Bucks a Day Report, Willie Crawford’s 20 Ways to Make $100 and Denise Wakeman’s Online Visibility Secrets.

My paperback collection of business books include Connie Ragen Green’s Huge Profits With Affiliate Marketing, Michele Scism’s Makeover Your Business in 6 Weeks or Less and Bob Jenkins’ Take Action Revise Later among many others.

This decluttering project is one of my projects for the first quarter of this year. How about you?  What is your working environment like?  If you work from home, does it motivate you to produce your best or does it sap you of your energy.  Make decluttering a goal rather than  a ‘New Year’s resolution!’ Set a goal with a completion date. You will be glad you did.

Is decluttering a challenge for you? If not, what suggestions do you have to keep this recurring? Please share your experiences with us and leave your comments below.  We can support each other

“Success is just around the next corner…

You may have heard that statement many times, and if you’re a new online business owner you may have doubts about ever seeing that success because there seems to be so much to do.  And yes, it can be confusing and daunting unless you have someone to guide you.

I remember when I first started online, in one of the first classes I took we were told we could model the trainer’s optin page, which was great as it would have reduced a lot of planning and designing.  However, I had no idea how to get that site from my computer to the Internet.  I’d never heard of FTP and wouldn’t have known what to do with it. Have you faced any situation like that in your business to date?

It’s important to believe that you can experience success in your online business.  Adopting the following five “attitudes” for success can play a significant role in  finding your success around the corner regardless of how deep the corner is:

Have a Positive Attitude:  It’s important to cultivate a positive attitude in how you approach your online business and in your life in general.  ‘Cultivate’ means that this attitude may not come naturally; you may have to work very hard to achieve it.  You may have to change your mindset and learn positive thinking, then nourish it as it grows.

Develop a Business Mentality:  While there are some internet marketers who had successful offline business and are now transferring those skills online, the majority of persons who start an online business had no previous business training.  Research indicates that people who succeed are people who approach their online business with a business mentality instead of treating it as if it were a hobby.  Allocate time to work in your business at the outset so eventually you can work on your business.  Identify what you need to do on a regular basis and set a schedule of when to do it.

Have Fun With Your Business:  This may sound like a contradiction to the previous point, but is not.  When you enjoy doing what you need to do, it will not feel like work.  Take time to find the fun in your business so you’ll enjoy doing the things that make for success.  Be excited about taking action to move forward.

Expect Success:  There is thin line between success and failure.  Persons the world over have sabotaged their success by thinking they could never achieve success like So and So.  Invariably we compare ourselves with someone who is doing very well forgetting that they likely were at the point new business owners are at right now.  Their success was as a result of identifying what to do, how to do it, getting help from a Mentor or a coach to provide guidance.

Be Realistic:  While success may be just around the corner, it does not come overnight.  You must be realistic about how quickly your business will grow.  There are no shortcuts and any thoughts of getting rich on the Internet in a short time will only lead to disappointment. Work is required and sticking to one thing and getting good at it before moving to the next thing will lay a foundation for success.

Starting an online business can be challenging, but working with someone who has been where you are and is willing to hold your hand and guide you forward can help to give you the momentum to move your business forward in 2012.  Celene Harrelson will do that in her new membership program as she covers more than 12 steps to increase your momentum and take you to profit.  Check out Celene’s program at http://yoursuccessbiz.com/celenepm.  By adopting these 5 attitudes for success, coupled with the training Celene provides, the new online business owner can experience success just around the corner.

Every person who has an online business wants to get traffic to their website. There are many ways to do this using effective SEO strategies – some are paid while others are low cost SEO or even no-cost SEO.  It follows that the foundation for getting traffic to your website rests on a well-optimized website so that it can be found by the search engines and receive high rankings.

Whether you’re just starting out, or if you’re on a shoestring budget, following are 3 effective SEO strategies that you can apply to your website to improve results.

1. Link exchanges

Link exchanges or linking to and from other web sites is a no-cost way to improve your website rankings. This can be done in various ways:

i) Contact the author or owner of the web site you want to have a link exchange with.

ii) Get high-ranking links from Article Directories like ezinearticles.com by submitting well-written articles that meet their standards.  At the end of each article is a Resource Box of Bio where you can provide content that points back to your website.

iii) Write Press Releases and submit to sites that have a ‘Follow’ policy. Again you’ll want to link back to your website.

2. Write keyword rich articles

i) Writing truly informative and keyword rich articles is one surefire way to make your online business more visible than ever. You may write your own articles as recommended above, or you can get them from article directories that allow you to post these articles on your website as long as you keep the resource box or the author’s byline in tact.

ii) Do research, if necessary, and write good quality content on your website, which should have a blog, that have your main keywords in them so they can be found through organic searches.

3. Domain Name

Another low-cost SEO strategy is an easy-to-recall domain name, which may be harder to find.  Something sweet and short will prove to be very invaluable, but you may have to get creative and place another word at the end of your keyword rich domain. Sometimes it’s as easy as adding your city, other times it may take a little more creativity.

You will have to purchase the domain name, but you can get really affordable domains at http://yoursuccessbiz.com/domains.

Your goal should be to take advantage of  effective SEO strategies that may involve low-cost SEO and no cost SEO to drive traffic to your website as much as possible so that your site can be found through organic searches.

My Internet Marketing Mentor has often recommended the value of viral marketing with ebooks or reports and so far I started but have not completed my first viral report.  She highly recommends this as a means of getting your information into the hands of many more persons that you normally would.

I’ve been focused on building my new niche, but this is one of my goals for October. Would you like to join me?  Ok, you may not be familiar with viral marketing or need a little more information in order to start, so I’ll discuss the topic in two three posts.

Normally when you write an ebook or report you’ll place a copyright on it and expressly state that it should not be copied or forwarded without your permission.  In the case of your viral report, you want people to forward your report to others and you give permission in your report to do so.

I did additional research on viral reports and found some interesting information which indicate that there are many ways to accomplish the objective of creating a successful viral marketing campaign. 7 (Seven) avenues of distribution are:
1)  E-mail: You can create a report and give this away to your community on your e-mail list and encourage them to share it with two or three friends.

2) Newsletters: If you include enough timely and valuable information, a good newsletter can drive up the number of visits to your website. Included in the newsletter could be excerpts from your report with a link to the full report.

3) Blogging: Providing the tools on your website to enable bloggers to interact with one another is a terrific way to get the message about your product of service out there and being talked about. Bloggers are usually on the lookout for good products and services.  Blog about your report.

4)  Forums: When you visit Forums, have the URL for the report as part of your signature line.

5)  Tell-a-friend Script: If you add this with a statement saying that e-mail addresses supplied will never be shared with third parties, you can increase your potential customer list greatly. (Part of 1. above)

6) Video Clips: Including cool video clips on your website that describe a couple of  points from your report will keep the interest up and increase traffic to your website and downloads to your report. These can be Powerpoint videos.

7)  Other People’s Lists: If you have built a good relationship with several marketers, you could ask them to give your report to their list.  This is especially effective if you’ve included a link to one of their products or services in your report.

Now that you understand the avenues where you can use to distribute your viral report, will you join me in creating a viral report in October?  We could be accountability partners   If this is something you’d like to do or hear more about, please share your thoughts in the Comments field.

Do you ever feel like the hamster? Your business isn’t growing at the pace you’d like and you seem to be just spinning your wheels?  I’ve felt that way from time to time.  In order to take your business to the next level, there are five areas of focus you should not neglect.

1.  Content: This is the only way people will get to know what you do and what you have to offer.  Your blog should be your home for your content, and should allow you readers to get to know you through informative topics where you share your knowledge.

2.  Traffic:  Traffic or readers are essential to our business.  We want to invite and encourage visitors to our website to read and comment on our posts.  At the same time we want to return the compliment by commenting on the blogs of fellow bloggers.

In the interest of growing our knowledge a strategy that was recommended to me quite some time ago, and which I’ve found beneficial is to take time to visit authority sites in my niche. This may not necessarily result in traffic from these blogs directly, but by leaving thoughtful comments, other readers of those posts may see my comments and decide to come over and check out my blog.

3.  List Building:  This takes traffic a step further because it’s a way to capture this traffic so that you can build a relationship with them and market to them.

4.  Product Creation: Every marketer should have the goal of creating your own product.  This is so even if your niche in internet marketing is affiliate marketing. This can be a lucrative form of marketing, however, you will experience a different sense of accomplishment when you’ve created your own product.

5.  Repurposing Content: You always want to seek ways to leverage your time and an effective way to do this is repurposing.  Once you’ve created content for your blog, you can repurpose that content by sending it in an email to your community of subscribers; you can use the content, along with other posts, to create an ebook.  You can also add to the post and make some changes to the content, which you can then submit to article directories.

Article writing is a great way to get more visibility and accomplish all four of the above points. Connie Ragen Green who’s written over 1,000 articles  is offering a free report on “How to Write A Keyword Targeted Article.”  Visit http://mysuccesscircleonline.com/crg-ampw to claim your free report today.