10 Deadly Business Mistakes

My good friend Daniel Scocco of Daily Blog Tips has just released a new free ebook in preparation for the re-opening of his Online Profits course. Last year, I had the pleasure of interviewing Daniel about his program and you can read that interview by clicking here.

Daniel’s new ebook is called, “Ten Deadly Business Mistakes” and it’s both a very good and a pretty quick read. You can download it by clicking here and following the directions on his site.

Mistakes number 2 and 8 in his book are the biggest mistakes I have made in the past that really held back my business. Go read the ebook and let me know your biggest mistakes.

PS. Yes, Daniel is a friend, and yes most of the links in this post are my affiliate links that will pay me money if you sign up for his course.

Three Steps to Business Success in 2009

In 2009, my wife Jill and I launched a business that is, so far, surpassing our expectations. Here are three of the main factors that contributed to our success in 2009…

1. Commitment
Early this year (May) I was laid off from my 9-5 job. I had two choices at that point; go look for a job or start a business to make enough money to support my family. After much prayer and discussion with my wife, we decided to start our own business. Prior to being laid off I had been creating websites and marketing them in my spare time, but I never COMMITTED to making my business a success. I always had my 9-5 job to fall back on for money, which kept me from ever totally committing to the business.

All of the people I have known who have had a successful business online have committed to it. Many of them even quit their jobs before starting their business because they understood the importance of commitment. While I don’t recommend you leave your job, I do recommend that you commit yourself to making your business successful. Without commitment it will likely fail. Set some hard deadlines and stick to them.

2. Focus
I have talked about the importance of focus before (see this post). Until I focused on making money with one business (our web marketing and design business), success was elusive.

Now that my wife and I are running a successful business I don’t want to lose focus on that business or it might stop growing. Focus is one of the biggest factors in our success this year and it will continue to be one of the biggest factors in our ongoing success.

3. Time Management
Changing the way I managed my time has made a huge difference in my productivity. Now that I only check my email after I have completed 2 hours worth of important work, my productivity has greatly increased. I learned this and other techniques from various sources, including a very good book on the topic. If you are looking for great time management tips without spending a ton of money, I highly recommend the book, “Getting Things Done”, by David Allen. You can buy a copy at most bookstores or check it out for free at your local library.

One of the other things I did to improve my time management is to create a daily and weekly todo list. I manage the todo list with a very simple free online tool called Voo2Do. At the beginning of each week I create a new todo list with the highest priority items being done earliest in the week to make sure that they get done. In my case, that means that marketing tasks for our clients are done at the beginning of the week. You can also organize your days that way, with the highest priority items being done first and your less high priority items (like checking email) coming later in the day. I also leave some space towards the end of the week for those tasks that get bumped down the priority list by things that required immediate attention, like proposals for clients. Making good use of your time makes a big difference in your business success.

Now, there was a fourth factor that both Jill and I consider to be a bigger factor than any other factor… our belief in God. While everyone may not embrace this view, I do believe that prayer played an important role in our success.

Those were the three things that I did to have a successful 2009, what were the things you did to improve your business?

PS. This post was part of a my friend Daniel’s writing project (Daniel is one of those people I knew who quit his job before starting an online business). You can read all about his project by clicking here.

To Start A Successful Online Business Your Mind Has To Change First

Before you can start an online business, your mind has to change.

I don’t mean “change your mind”. I mean your mind has to change. Online business as a freelance entrepreneur is an example of thinking outside the box. Your personal “box” may take the form of…

• “I can’t make money in any way except a job.”


• “I’ve never tried anything like this before.”


• “I don’t know what I’m doing.”


• “This is a dumb idea.”

Maybe one or more of these apply to you, and these sorts of thoughts have to go. But before I repeat the cliche’ of “thinking outside the box”, how about a real-life example?

For a few months now, I’d been sick of turning on my television set with nothing ever being on, especially given what I paid for cable. Several hundred channels of programming, and it was all miserable. So, I did something that most people wouldn’t even consider: I canceled cable without replacing it. I no longer receive television of any sort.

Now, television tends to be a household staple even if it’s pointless. So this would be my own personal example of “thinking outside the box”. I’m saving a boatload of money, and it’s not as though I’m without distraction or entertainment with cable gone. In other words, net gain for me.

It was a benefit to me to do something most people would not consider, or at least not consider seriously. Online business is the same way. It’s a world of opportunity waiting that most would not even give thought, but it could wind up benefiting you greatly. This is what I mean when I say “First, your mind has to change”. If you don’t seriously believe you can make money online, you’re not going to get anywhere attempting it.

Slow and Steady Builds the Business

Here’s a deep, dark secret of online business: There’s no silver bullet to getting one up and going.

Yes, some things work much better than others. But there’s no magic out-of-the-box anything that you can buy and suddenly, you have a successful and lucrative business. Yes, I know a lot of products bill themselves that way. It’s an annoying bit of background noise you’ll have to tolerate if you’re trying to learn how to make money online.

Throwing money at a business without a plan won’t help you either. You can spend a lot of money and not get anything for it. It works the same way for time and effort if you’re not doing anything but expending time and effort.

But there is something simple you can do. In fact, anyone can do it. It works like this:

• First, you find a business model that works for you.


• Then, you work it steadily until you get where you want to go.

Slow and steady builds the business. A successful technique applied regularly over a period of time will make your income grow. This could be list building, making sales, your approach to earning affiliate commissions, or whatever. Not a single burst of time, effort, and money, but a steady, continuous effort. Spend enough time each day for you to actually accomplish something with your chosen technique, and keep going.

You don’t have to be a business prodigy. You just have to be like the tortoise in his race with the rabbit. Find something that works, and then just keep going.

Thinking Outside of the Box

I have a little gadget called an oil filter wrench. For those of you have never seen this particular type of tool, it looks like a loop of steel hinged to a handle. Mine has grip padding on the inside, though most I’ve seen don’t. Anyway, to make this wrench work, you bend the handle in the right direction, which tightens the loop around the oil filter and helps you to remove it.

I’ve never used mine for that reason. I use mine to remove the larger stuck twist-on lids from containers like pickle jars. As it turns out, it’s just as handy for that as it would be for an oil filter. So basically, I’m a smart wimp that reincarnated a gadget to a new purpose.

I thought outside the box, which is also a good idea in your online business. You might have old work just sitting on your hard drive. You might have a problem which, at first glance, you can’t afford to fix. You have goals you supposedly can’t meet. Any of these call for a little original thinking.

Here are some questions you can ask yourself to get started on that whole ‘box’ thing:

• Can you be doing something else with your old stuff? You did work to make it, so if you’re not using it for its intended purpose, could you be using it for a purpose you haven’t thought of yet? Freebies, traffic, and promotional uses all come to mind as good ways to reincarnate old stuff.
• Is there a cheaper way to solve a problem if you come at it from a different direction? So what if you can’t get a custom web site or blog design, for instance. There are plenty of ways around that.
• If the obvious solutions to problems are out of reach for you, try and make your own solutions. If you succeed, it might make a good topic for your next tutorial product!

If the normal things can’t help you, remember the lesson of my oil filter wrench. You can do more than the obvious when you think outside the box.

Breathing Your Passions

The other day I read a post by Cris Garrett called “Just like Breathing”. In the post, Chris talks about a short conversation he had with Terry Starbucker, who also posted about their conversation here. In the conversation, Terry asked an AWESOME question that prompted Chris to ask the same question of his readers in a slightly different way. Here is Chris’ question:

What is so natural to you that it is like breathing? What aspect of yourself, which behavior, skill, activity, talent, is so part of you that you could not imagine yourself without it?

That prompted me to brainstorm a list of answers to the question. Here is the list I came up with:

Playing with my kids
Playing video games
Playing tennis, basketball and football (when I was younger)
Being silly
Coming up with funny kids stories
Making kids laugh
Playing games
eating
sleeping
researching
talking with people one on one

I talked with my wife Jill about the list and one of the things that I realized is that there were two common skills I used in all of the things that are “like breathing” to me:

1. Problem solving
2. Creativity

I love problem solving and I love being creative. You might even say I love creative problem solving.

There were quite a few things that almost made my list because they involved creativity or problem solving but the reason they didn’t get on my list is because they also involved doing things I hate. For instance, writing almost made my list. I love writing creatively, and I love writing about solutions to problems. However, I DON’T LOVE GRAMMAR RULES! I don’t love writing about just anything. So writing couldn’t make my list.

The things that did make my list were things that when I do them I ONLY did them in a way that allowed me to be me. For instance, when I played basketball. The thing I loved doing was being creative. When I was kid growing up some of my African American friend’s might have called me “Bird”, but that is about where the comparison ended. I worked hard at emulating Dr. J’s moves and then adding my own twist. I loved to play a very unorthodox style of basketball, driving to the basket and finding the most creative way possible to score. It was fun. I would never have enjoyed basketball if I had stayed on the perimeter and just shot the ball from long range. I wanted to be creative and solve the problem of getting past all the shot blockers and scoring over people I should never have been able to score against. That was fun.

So, getting back to the list. It’s kind of funny because after I made the list I thought to myself,
“I should write children’s books.” Now where have I heard that before… hmmmm….

If you know of anyone that breathes drawing comic illustrations that would work well with children’s stories then you might want to send them my way… who knows maybe we will both breathe a bunch of awesome books to life.

For now, I am going to take some time to think about this some more, but it was a very interesting answer to a very AWESOME question. I suggest you try answering the question as well. You might be surprised what you find. I was.

Membership Site Mastermind And 3 Reasons Most eBooks Don’t Sell

I wanted to quickly tell you about two cool pages you should check out.

First, Yaro Starak just opened his Membership Site Mastermind training program and he’s taking
students for one week only. He’s also offering some bonuses that are only available TODAY.

You can join right now by clicking here! (WARNING: it’s a long page, so watch the video instead if you don’t like long sales pages).

The next thing I wanted you to know about is a FREE video by Eban Pagan that reveals the reasons people have such a hard time selling information products.

Click here to check out the video.

Life Is To Short To Twitter It Away

A few months ago I heard a Television executive admit that the purpose of tv is to:

1. Replace relationships
2. Provide people with an opportunity to escape from reality.

Neither of these purposes is ideal for our personal growth.

That got me thinking about the impact of social marketing and the Internet in general on our business success.

The truth of the matter is that many of the most successful websites manage to achieve the same purpose that a good tv show does:
They replace your relationships and provide you with an escape from reality.

While this is a good thing to keep in mind when trying to make a successful website, it’s also important to keep this in mind to keep yourself productive. Don’t spend all your time online. Don’t let your online activities ruin your relationships or keep you from having any. Don’t use it to constantly escape from the REAL world. Otherwise, you will never have time for the things that are really important in life.

Social media marketing is a fantastic way to drive traffic to a blog or website. On the other hand, social marketing can take up a lot of your time.

So, what’s an Internet marketer to do?

Schedule the amount of time you spend online. This is especially important for interactive time (social media, email, forums, commenting on blogs, gaming, etc), but also true of all your time online. If you want to make money online you need to focus the bulk of your time on activities that actually make you money. Checking email usually doesn’t make you money, writing a tweet about your favorite song usually doesn’t make you money, etc..

If you are working a 9 to 5 job and trying to make money online you can easily spend all of your spare time on activities that don’t make you money and don’t help you in other areas of your life. If you are trying to make money in your spare time it’s crucial that you spend most of your time doing productive activities that will lead to making more and more money online.

Life Is To Short To Twitter It Away

Jay Abraham Reveals 42 Free Ways to Prosper in This Recession

For those of you who don’t know who Jay Abraham is…

Jay has spent the last 25 years helping businesses make TONS of money. When I first started learning about marketing Jay’s name came up everywhere I turned because he is so well respected in the industry. In fact, he was named one of the top 5 executive coaches in the country in the March 6, 2000 issue of Forbes Magazine. I could write a full article on his credentials alone, but suffice it to say that Jay Abraham is considered to be one of the top business experts in the country.

Jay recently come up with a list of 42 different ways you can rapidly profit (and prosper) during this economic recession and he is going to share them with you for free!

It doesn’t matter whether you own a business, work for someone else, or want to find an income source that can rapidly pay all your bills.

If you want to secure your financial future, find a fresh recession income source, or help your employer earn more profits…these recession-based income strategies can provide the financial security blanket that you need to handle all the problems this bad economy is causing you.

Please don’t let fear stop you from prospering in these uncertain times.

Go sign up now for Jay’s FREE teleconference to find out 42 ways to prosper in this recession by clicking here!

You’re about to experience first-hand (for absolutely nothing) the same information a group of beleaguered real estate investors just paid Jay Abraham nearly $200,000 to hear about.

In all of two quick hours, via a convenient teleconference re-broadcast, Jay Abraham, himself, will show you 42 different ways you really CAN prosper from this recession, Right now—- not someday in the future.

None of these strategies will require one dime of capital invested on your part. None bear any downside financial risk, either and none are focused on real estate.

I just reserved my spot because I want to know how to increase my profits during these uncertain times.

Don’t wait! Click here right now, to reserve your spot on the FREE teleconference and learn how you can prosper in these difficult economic times.

Duplicate The Success Of Others

A few weeks ago in my free website marketing newsletter I revealed how to find successful online businesses to emulate. In this post we are going to discuss how to duplicate their success.

The first step is to find out what keywords they are using to advertise their products and services. You already know some of them because of the previous exercise. There are tools that will tell you all the keywords they are using to advertise with. One example of this is KeyCompete.com

Next, you need to figure out what they are doing to sell their products.

Do they have a newsletter?

If yes, how do they entice you to sign up for it?

Sign up for their list and make note of often they email you, what they email, what products and services they promote.

What kind of copy do they use?

Does their website look professional or homey?

What colors do they use on their website?

How is the website layed out?

How many pages do they have?

Do they use pictures? How?

Do they use video? How?

Determine everything they are doing and compare this with all the other sites on your list. Once you are done you will find some common themes. The things each of the sites have in common are things that you should absolutely be doing!

Several years ago I compared the top ten Technorati blogs in a similar fashion. Some of the things I found were:

1. They all made use of images in their posts.
2. A majority of them had their navigation on the right side.
3. A majority of them used either the color green or blue as their main color.

etc.

I didn’t do an in depth study, but if you wanted to emulate the top 10 blogs you could do an in depth of study of them and duplicate what they are doing. You could find out how many posts per day they write, what they write about, how they market their blogs, etc. Then you would know how to duplicate their success.

Emulating the best businesses in your niche will shortcut your path to success.

Note: If you want to read my previous newsletters on this topic just sign up for my newsletter by clicking here. Then enter your name and email and you will get the entire series in order over the course of a few weeks. Plus you will get other free advice that I don’t provide on this blog.

Stop The Background Noise And Start Making Money Online

If you want to make money online, you’re going to run into a lot of background noise.

It’ll be something along the lines of “My program is the best,” followed by “No, my program is the best,” and “Really, we’re not a scam. Plus, we’re the best.” After a while, you become seasoned enough to filter it out and go on about your business without jumping at it. In the meantime, you’re saturated by background noise.

Plus, we have that whole recession thing going on, or so everyone tells me. Everyone is saying everything is so bad, and as far as I’m concerned, it’s just more background noise. Something else that gets in my way, and what good comes of it? None.

Now, this isn’t to say you should deny reality if it’s staring you in the face. If there’s a downturn, things might get a little trickier for your business. There really is a problem if no one wants to spend as much as they did before. But I’m not telling you to ignore the truth, just the noise.

Why is that?

• Background noise will cause you an emotional reaction which will interfere with your problem solving ability.
• One of those emotional reactions could well be panic, which solves nothing. No matter how bad things get, it’s nothing panic can’t make worse. That gets you nowhere.
• Reality is what it is, and you have to handle it. Background noise, however, does not clarify that reality. It makes it seem worse or more impossible to overcome than it may actually be. Again, that’s of no use to you.

That’s why you should learn to filter through the noise. Much of it isn’t helpful, and at best, is merely irrelevant to what you should be doing to make your business grow. Handle your business based on conditions as they actually are, and don’t succumb to the noise.

Formula 5 Review And Bonus

I have gone through the Formula 5 preview materials, and the folks at StomperNet have created another winner. It is coming out on January 19th, Monday afternoon, so I wanted to give you my honest thoughts on Formula 5 before the doors open on the program.

For starters, they released some really good videos to promote the product. You can watch the videos for free by clicking here.

Paul Lemberg, creator of Formula 5 is a well known business coach who has helped clients create over 350 million dollars in profits. He created Formula 5 to help you increase your business revenues quickly. Formula 5 is taught over a 15 week period and includes DVDs, action plan worksheets, and a printed transcript of each lesson. Plus there is a special members only portal that I have checked out for myself. The members portal is loaded with information. It reminded me a lot of the StomperNet portal – tons of information, forums, blogs, and mastermind groups. I was a bit surprised to see them offering so much to go along with the lessons that you get in the mail. The lessons themselves are good enough to help you increase your revenue, but I suppose the extra information on the portal won’t hurt.

Formula 5 works on 93% of all businesses that try it!

That is the highest success rate I have seen for any product like this.

If you are having trouble making a good profit in your business, then I highly recommend checking out Formula 5. While you might confuse Formula 5 with Formula racing because of the speed at which you can make more money in your current business… I don’t recommend Formula 5 for beginners. Formula 5 is really geared towards those people who already run an online business. On the other hand, beginners can learn a lot from the free videos. So, whether you are a beginner or you already have an online business I suggest you watch their free videos.

My Bonus

I am about 75% finished with a curriculum for a coaching program I intend to launch later this year. One of the ebooks that will be part of the curriculum makes an excellent companion to this product. In fact, the ebook is all about maximizing your profits. If you buy Formula 5 through my affiliate link by clicking here then after you complete the 15 weeks of training, I will send you a free copy of this yet-to-be released ebook from my upcoming coaching program. It is the perfect complement for the Formula 5 training.

Additionally, when you complete the 15 week course I will give you a free 1 hour consultation to check up on your progress in the program and answer any questions you have about my ebook. All you have to do is order Formula 5 through my affiliate link and send me a copy of your receipt for Formula 5. Once I verify the sale I will send you information on getting your bonuses.

Next Page »