3 Things You Must Know To Be Successful Online
October 26, 2009
We’re all looking for the best, most effective way to make more money, get more customers, or even gain a following on Twitter or Facebook. With the advent of all this technology, and the amazing opportunity we have online, there’s always some underlying aspects that allow us to truly get where we want to go.
What I’ve down is outlined below some quick yet simple things that you can do to become more successful in your daily online efforts. Now, I’m not saying these are easy, in fact anything you do online or offline for that matter, is going to take some effort.
So with knowing that, let’s get to the 3 things that you must know to be successful online…
#1: Just Be You
This is a very big mistake I see, especially in the online world. People pretend they’re someone who they’re not and expect to make all this money and be uberly successful. It doesn’t work that way…
Sometimes it leads to people claiming “guru” or “expert” status, claiming that you know more and do better than you actually do, and in some unfortunate cases, posing as a famous internet marketer or business person and trying to cash in on their credibility.
Look: You may not be the greatest, most knowledgeable, absolutely amazing person in the world and none of that matters. People want to see you and your personality. Keep learning and educating yourself while taking consistent action, what REALLY gets you results, and never stray from who you really are, deep down inside, past all the materialistic things.
Others will appreciate that and it will allow them to create a stronger bond with you, and a much deeper relationship if you just be you.
#2: Give Great Value Or Go On Home
By value, I mean content. Chances are you may have a blog and if you don’t, get one as soon as possible. Blogs are really an extension of who we are and what we’re all about. We live in a society where people want information and it’s this information that is at the premier front of the gate. When people see how valuable something is, it grabs their attention. When they are attentive, they build an interest and a desire which leads to subscribers, followers, or even customers.
The great part is, you don’t even have to setup an extravagant blog that’s totally customized. As long as the content is good, you’re already making some significant leaps in your day-to-day online business. As well, if you have other websites, focus on giving out free ebooks, reports, case studies, etc.
Moving the freeline as some like to call it, has been proven highly effective for quite some time now. People respond well to it and it’s a great way to build some serious and massive value that shows others a little about who you are. Here’s the kicker…
When people see how valuable your FREE content is, they think to themselves, “Wow! If his/her free is this good, I can’t imagine how good their products or services are!”.
And guess what happens when they find out that you’re selling something or providing a service? They remember how much value you gave them beforehand so they’re influenced to snatch up your product or get your service.
#3: Content Is King But Relationships Are Queen
In this space, you always hear about how content is king. For starters, it is extremely important to your overall success, but it’s not all. Many times I see aspiring business owners throw up some sites, push out a bunch of content, and then wonder why no one is listening. It’s because A) They haven’t talked to enough people or B) They haven’t talked with enough people.
Relationships are very important to your overall success. To be honest, I wouldn’t go so far to say that it’s one of the most important things to your success, aside from having and giving value. With the creation of social media and sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube, it’s easier than ever to build relationships with people.
You should be building some sort of relationships through your sites or blogs, and by engaging and interacting with others using social media, you take relationship building to a whole other level.
Stay tuned for the next post where I dive into where we left off and talk about using social media in the most effective way possible.
Mike Stenger is a full-time online business owner who has a strong passion in helping others get results. You can find him here at his video blog where he frequently talks about business and life success strategies.
Blogs and the Humble Trackback
June 30, 2009
Blogs have a few interesting ways to build links that other types of sites do not. As well as being ranking magnets if you take the time to update them regularly, you can ping them, and get on the blogrolls of other blogs. But one of the easiest ways is the trackback.
A trackback is a notification sent to a blog when one of your posts links to it. In the latest WordPress versions, a single checkbox selection will automatically send a trackback to any blog to which you linked. These are very useful, and don’t cost you anything more than the willingness to show some link love to your fellow bloggers before you receive it.
Trackbacks appear in one of several forms on the linked blogs:
- Some blogs, like mine, have a separate trackback section before their comments. This puts your trackback ahead of the comments, making a link to your site more visible. If that blog happens to garner a lot of traffic, you could be looking at a piece of it. These types of separated trackback sections also attract link love, and I recommend you organize them on your blog this way.
- Other blogs post your trackback as a normal comment. It will appear as an excerpt of what you wrote, usually preceded and followed by an ellipsis (“...”). It appears in first come, first served order with the rest of the comments on that blog.
- It doesn’t appear, but the link garners the owner’s attention. A link will be noticed by anyone who takes any kind of care at all of their blog. That means you might just wind up on the blogroll.
Now, traffic from trackbacks isn’t automatic. Real people have to click through, which means you’ll have to get their attention with something interesting. Since most of what you leave is a title and blog name, be sure to give the post that’s linking to another site a title that will pull people in. Plus, try to send trackbacks to blogs with similar topics of discussion as yours, and the people will be pre-qualified for your content.
If you need links and traffic to your blog, add the trackback to your arsenal of techniques. It’s easy to do, helps build blogging relationships, and can accelerate the process of getting your blog off the ground.
My name is Ryan Ambrose, and I’m one of the co-authors of Can I Make Big Money Online.
My Biggest Roadblock To Making A Living Online was…
May 26, 2009
I just signed up to be on Rich Schefren’s free teleseminar Thursday night where Rich will be talking with a bunch of big-time gurus about some of their biggest roadblocks to success and strategies to improve your business.
So, in that vein, I decided to reveal to you my biggest roadblock to success.
First, I wanted to let you know that there are A LOT of things that can hold you back from success. I have been trained over the last year and half as a certified business success coach to teach other people how to get past their hurdles. It is often true that people who can help others with their problems don’t take the time to help themselves, and that was the case with me. On a recent trip to Dallas with my wife, I took a look at my business failures and learned that there were several things that really made it hard for me to have the kind of success I always dreamed of.
One of the things that stopped from achieving success was pride. Whenever I learned from my mentors pride would get in the way, and I wouldn’t follow their advice completely. I always wanted to do something differently than what they were teaching me to do. In spite of the fact that they were succeeding, and I wasn’t, I felt certain I could build a better mousetrap. That resulted in one thing – FAILURE!
Another obstacle for me was fear. While I never thought that fear was really a problem for me, when I took an honest look at things, I was afraid of success. Yes, that’s right. Afraid to SUCCEED!
There are other roadblocks I have had over the years, including lack of focus, etc. but the absolute biggest obstacle I found in the path of my business success was…
Commitment
I was never 100 percent committed to my success!
I would sit back in my cozy job and play around on the Internet. Experiment with different techniques and business models. When I started having some good success with a model, I would switch models and try something new. Or the second a potentially successful idea hit a bump in the road, I abandoned it. I used to think it was a lack of focus that caused this. And while a lack of focus contributed to the problem, a lack of commitment made it EASY to stop doing what worked and move on to something that was new. Plus, if I kept doing what was successful, I just might succeed and have leave that nice, cozy job.
A lack of commitment came close to killing my chances of success.
I no longer have a 9-5 job to fall back. I have made a full fledged commitment to my business success. I use two main business models.
1. Content Network
Content sites that promote affiliate programs and/or make money from advertising systems like Google Adsense, Chitika, etc. This the type of websites I currently make the most money from.
2. Services Business
I will talk more about the services I offer at some future point in time.
Eventually, I intend to expand into offering products, but it is likely that even my products will likely include services. So I leave you with this question:
Are you committed to your business success or are you just playing around hoping to hit the make money online lottery?
The Promotional Action Pack
October 24, 2008
Here in the next week or so I’m going to launch a new site. It’s a simple little squeeze page with it’s own free mini-report course, and I want it to be noticed as fast as possible. Unfortunately, the Internet isn’t like it is on television, where you put the site online and suddenly, it’s flooded with more traffic than it can handle.
I wish it actually worked that way, because my life would have been so much simpler.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t, and you have to promote your site like everyone else. The good news is that you can create your very own promotional action pack to do that. It won’t cost you a ton of money or take much time to create.
Here’s what you need:
- Several articles related to your site: I had the luck of being able to retask a few of my older articles for this one, and now I have four ready to go. Once you have them, blast them with an article blasting service if you have the money. It’ll save you hours of posting them by hand.
- A viral report: I’ve used quite a few of these, and will be making another one to drive traffic to my new site. Write a viral report related to your site, and add the link pointing to it. Once you do, other people must be able to find it so they can use it as a bonus for their purposes, and thereby distribute it for you. I put mine into distribution using the Butterfly Reports web site.
- A video: These are the same kinds of video you find on YouTube. I make my videos with Sony Vegas, but choose whatever video maker works best for you. A simple slideshow video, or a narrated demonstration of something related to your site is what you need. Remember to insure your site URL is shown during the entire video, and pitched at the end of it.
Yes, it may take some time for you to get significant traffic to your new site. But you can get ahead of the game by assembling a promotional action pack in advance.
My name is Ryan Ambrose, and I’m one of the co-authors of Can I Make Big Money Online.
7 Secrets To Making a Viral Report
October 17, 2008
Among the other uses of the PDF ebook is the ability to drive traffic with it. If you know how to make a PDF ebook, then you can make its shorter cousin, the viral report.
While you can sell reports, the purpose of a viral report is a bit different. Viral reports are designed to drive traffic by trading content someone else can use for their ‘help’ in getting your links out to interested people. You do this by creating the report and letting others use it for free. When you do this, you should keep some things in mind.
- First, you have to know where your report is intended to drive traffic. You want to write about a subject related to your site to prequalify the traffic, so don’t start writing until you know.
- The average person has to look at an ad seven times before they respond to it. So when you write your viral report, focus primarily on advertising a single link. Put it in the footer, the title page, and at the end of your report at the very least. You can also put it in the body of the report, but be careful not to spam it.
- While you want to give anyone who reads your report enough good information to earn their trust, they won’t buy the cow if they can get the milk for free. So when you write your report, keep the subject more focused than what you are selling on the site where you want them to go.
- If you want to use the report to drive someone to an affiliate product page, make sure it’s about something related to the products on that page. You want interested and targeted traffic, not generic hits.
- To make the report go viral, clearly state what you’ll allow someone to do with your report on the cover. Can they give it away? Sell it? Do other things with it? Also, make sure that you explicitly forbid them to alter it, or distribute it in any form but digital. If they do change the report, or distribute it physically, it defeats the purpose of using it to drive traffic.
- If you have an affiliate program for the site where you intend to drive traffic, make your report rebrandable. Someone is much more likely to use it if they can make money from it and get free content than just to get free content alone.
- Viral reports aren’t oversized sales copy. To make them work, they have to provide real information to anyone who reads them in a well-produced way. You also want them to be used by other merchants as list builders and bonuses for buying something else, which won’t happen if all you do with is just try to sell your own stuff in a PDF that looks like a spam site.
- Coversion Blogging
- Interview with a million dollar blogger
- How Yaro’s blog makes money online (2 videos)
- Social Media Marketing & Strategy
- Advanced Content Syndication
- Cutting-Edge Video Marketing & SEO
- Leveraging Software & Widgets
- Setting Up Automatic ‘Content Factories’
- Building An Affiliate Army
- And more.
- LIFETIME UPDATES To The Course
- Private Coaching & Mastermind Community
- Web-based ‘Action Tracker’ Learning System
- And more!
Viral reports are handy if you make them correctly, and know what you want to do with them before you write them. With a little preparation, you could be making viral reports that work for you.
My name is Ryan Ambrose, and I’m one of the co-authors of Can I Make Big Money Online.
Getting Ready To Make Money Online With The Olympics
August 8, 2008
Well, the 2008 Olympics are about to start and I wanted to share a little about what we have been doing to get ready.
For those of you who don’t know this, we made some decent money a few years ago when my wife Jill blogged the winter Olympics. We then decided to blog every Olympics, because Jill really enjoys it and it is a good way to make some decent money.
To be honest, with the new baby’s arrival we did not do as much preparation for the Olympics as we originally planned. I was going to redesign our blog to look nicer, but after redesigning this blog and watching my Search Engine rankings immediately drop 5 spots for the “make money online” term I decided I would put the redesign of the Summer Olympics blog on hold. Also we found the current design to work so well for making money with the last Olympics that it didn’t make sense to change the design without the time to test it’s monetization.
Anyway, over the next three weeks I will be very busy with the Olympics. I do intend on giving you updates about other things we did in preparation of the Olympics, as well as things we are going to do to make money with our blog during the Olympics. So stayed tuned…
Blog Mastermind Bonus
July 28, 2008
UPDATE: This post is out of date, please use this link if you want to order Blog Mastermind.
Blog Mastermind is opening it’s doors again, BUT this time it’s not closing!
Blogging guru, Yaro Starak, is opening up his Blog Mastermind training program to new members on Tuesday. Leading up to the opening Yaro released some great free videos that reveal how to make money blogging. You can see all the great videos here:
As an incentive to buy, I am offering an exclusive bonus to those who buy it through my link. For those who sign up for the Blog Mastermind program, I will put on a free teleconference to answer your most pressing questions. Because of our blog about the Olympics in China I won’t be holding the conference until after the Olympics are over.
To claim your bonus for ordering the Blog Mastermind:
1. Click here to sign up through my affiliate link
2. Email me your receipt to george @ websitepromotionbook.com
3. I will then contact you with details about the teleconference
4. After the teleconference, you will get an mp3 recording of the call
That’s all there is to it.
Blogging For Beginners – How To Start A Blog
July 21, 2008
Yaro Starak has recently put out some free videos that teach beginners how to start a blog. The site is called “Become A Blogger”.
If you are a beginner and you want to learn how to start a blog then I highly recommend you go check out Yaro’s blogging videos for beginners by clicking here.
Traffic Secrets 2.0 Is Officially Out
July 15, 2008
Just a quick note to let you know that John Reese has opened the door to Traffic Secrets 2.0.
Traffic Secrets 2.0 covers traffic generation techniques like:
What I found really cool was that those who buy Traffic Secrets 2.0 (at least for now) will receive the following…
Once you buy your license to Traffic Secrets 2.0 you don’t have to buy it ever again. Even by the time that “Traffic Secrets 100.0” comes out you’ll have gotten all of the other versions for free. Pretty cool!
Traffic generation techniques continue to change over time so it’s great to know that you’ll be getting all the updated information and strategies for free. I am very excited about the free updates!
I am going to go buy my copy soon after I finish writing this post. You can buy yours by clicking here.
Inside Look At Traffic Secrets 2.0
July 12, 2008
I just finished watching the third and final Traffic Secrets 2.0 video and it was VERY interesting. Not only does John give some great advice at the beginning of the video, but at the end of this new video John Reese reveals some great news about the price of his Traffic Secrets 2.0 course.
He also reveals (for the first time) details about why this ‘course’ isn’t simply a course like most have seen before.
You’ll have to watch the video to see how John is ‘raising the bar’ when it comes to Internet Marketing educational products. I was very happy to see what he is NOT doing with this release.
Click here to check out the new Traffic Secrets 2.0 video.
Why Doesn’t Your Traffic Convert Into Money?
July 8, 2008
Do you ever wonder why it is that you have 500 or 1000, or even 5000 subscribers to your RSS feed and thousands of visitors per month… yet you barely make any money from your blog, if any at all?
The reason is simple…
You have the wrong kind of traffic coming to your blog (or website)!
Most make money online bloggers write post after post aimed at other bloggers and internet marketers, and they try to get as many readers as possible through social websites and other things like that. However, this is not a very good strategy if you really want to make money from your blog.
The people you are targeting with your blog posts are the exact same people who are doing the same things you are trying to make money online and they are definitely not the ones who are going to click on your ads or buy your recommended products. They know what Adsense ads are and they are probably promoting the same products you are on their blogs. So why would they take any action that will make you money? They won’t!
If you really want to make money online then most of your traffic needs to come from search engines because the average person doing a search won’t have a clue what Adsense is so they will gladly click on your ads. They also don’t know what an affiliate link is so they will buy products through your affiliate link if it’s going to help them make money online.
So what do you need to do?
Stop wasting all your time getting traffic through social sites and writing your posts aimed at other bloggers in the same niche as you!
You need to start getting keyword rich inbound links with the sole intent of ranking highly on the search engines (specifically Google) so you can start getting traffic from searches. Let’s say, for instance that you want to rank highly for “how to make money online” then you need to start acquiring backlinks with that as the link text and variations of it.
Want to know what kinds of inbound links you should be getting to maximize your search engine rankings? Read my recent post on finding the perfect backlink. And read Ryan’s recent post on the subject: What Links Can You Point at Your Web Site?
You should also do some keyword research on all the various searches related to your niche and start writing some posts about the different topics that are being searched so you can get rankings for lots of long-tail keywords. The traffic you get from those posts will start adding up and can turn into a lot of visitors and a lot of money!
Getting traffic that actually makes you money isn’t rocket science, it’s really quite easy. All it takes is the discipline on your part to build backlinks and write specific keyword rich posts.
Trent Brownrigg
Owner of a highly popular make money at home website and a fast growing work at home blog.
Free Traffic Secrets 2.0 Videos Are Very Cool
July 6, 2008
One of my favorite Internet Marketing gurus, John Reese, has just released two free traffic secrets videos. I already use most of the techniques that John reveals in the videos, so I know they work.
Even if you aren’t interested in learning ways to increase your website traffic I still recommend that you check out the videos, because they raise the bar on what can be done with video.
