Planning For The New Year
Hey Guys, My apologies that you have not seen me post on my blog in a few weeks and I can explain why. Like most people at this time of the year I have been very VERY busy with planning what exactly I will be doing in 2010.
So I thought it would be a good time to make a post and tell you what you should be planing for the new year.
Year after year you hear people making “New Years Resolutions” but do you think many people actually stick to them? The clear answer is NO. As humans we make these promises, and the worst thing is that we are promising OURSELVES, if you cannot keep a promise to yourself what luck do you have making a promise with someone else?
The main resolutions are usually:
- I am going to loose weight
- I am going to make more money this year
- I am going to get promoted
And the list goes on, but I tell you why these promises do not last, is because the majority of us do not set out a plan in order on how we are going to achieve these goals. It is all good saying we want to loose weight, but what plan do you actually have?
There is a difference with these two next promises:
- I want to loose weight
- I want to loose 10 pounds by March the 15th
By looking at those two statements which one do you actually think you would be able to stick to?
The second one off course because it has the action you want to achieve and the time you want to do it by. If you just want to loose weight you will be wanting to loose weight all your life.Then you would need to go into more detail like:
- I will go to the gym every Monday and Friday after work
- I will cut out chocolate and fizzy pop completely
- I will hire a nutritionist
- I will weight myself every fortnight
- I will keep a diary of what I am eating every day
Now how much better does that sound? An actual simple plan, if you stuck to a plan like that you will start to see results as you can adjust your plan to suit you.
This is no difference to Internet Marketing. I speak with many people every single day whether I am consulting or just having a chat, and the biggest thing I hear from most people is “I want to make more money” so I am like OK so how are you going to do it? 90% of the responses are I do not know!! This is why we need to plan because a plan allows us to:
- Have an action (what we want to achieve)
- A map (Steps in order to complete the action)
- A set Date ( Something to aim for)
I was exactly the same within Internet Marketing I knew I wanted to make money online but I did not have a clue where or how to start. It was until I started mind mapping and setting out goals and actions until I started to see the results. So for anyone who is in the same boat I have put together 3 simple questions you need to ask yourself and if you follow this simple plan that I have put together then you will be a step closer to succeeding online. Get a pen and paper and actually write down with the answer:
- How much money you want to make next year?
- The exact date (most people choose 31st December you decide)
- Why do you want to? (Freedom, Own Boss, More time with the family)
The only thing left on their is a step by step plan on what you are looking to do to achieve this. Like I said to you I have been planning out what I am going to be doing next year, I have listed out exactly everything and used the exact questions as you have also.
What I have also done is set myself a mind map out of what I need to achieve whats on the list whether its help, money you name it, and I have put down each and every step. I know from experience making money online is not an easy thing to do which is why in the new year, I will be doing more consultations with people who do not exactly know how to start making money online, and what I am going to do is guide struggling marketers out of the dark and into the light 
.
That is just one of my focuses for next year and I already know what I am going to be doing from January 1st 2010, all the way till December 31st 2010.
With a plan you also have something to focus on which is the main part of anything just imagine if we did not plan anything? Like if no one put together a plan of how to build a house? You think it would go well? Personally I do not! I will try to get a few more posts before the end of the year and I have a very special post which has been planned! In the next coming days until then if you want start a discussion about this post and leave a comment all is welcome, or go ahead and share this post with others via my big blue friend at the bottom of this post. Until then, Start planning!
Like This Post? Tell A Friend About It
The Breakthrough…
Just a late post for me personally but I thought it was a MUST,
So I am giving away the “The Struggling Marketers” Blueprint on Wednesday 18th November 20:00 (UK) in a one of webinar, this is a free event but there is ONLY 500 seats available, it may seem a huge number but word has got around and seats are packing fast! So it is going to be a great event I feel…
If you want to be a part of this event and reserve your seat just enter your name and email below
Using Article Marketing To Our Advantage
If you are seeking a way to get traffic to your desired website, or want your website to get high ranked in major search engines i.e. Google, it is well known that you need as many back links as possible for you to achieve these goals. In some sense yes it is true but there are other ways to get your website ranked and increasing traffic to your site whether its using web 2.0 properties or SEO for example.
Personally article marketing is one of the “old school” methods but still considered to be one of the most effective forms of free advertising you can do online. If you want to create good targeted traffic and increase your ranking on Google then Article marketing is the place to start.
Article marketing is a skill because what you doing are writing a article on a specific niche, and wanting viewers to come read your article which then will get people to come to our site. There are so many different directories for submitting articles these days but the top dog of them all is Ezine Articles.
Ezine Articles has a PR (Page Rank) of 6 which means it has a lot of authority within Google. If it has a lot of authority that will mean it is a popular site, which means if this site gets a lot of traffic to it, we can easily take a percentage (and remember this is for FREE) of the traffic and get it to come via our Articles. This is a short blog post as I have put a video together below showing you in more detail how we want to get the traffic flowing to our site. Check it out…
Like I said in the video the downside of article marketing is that it takes so much time. Some people feel that article marketing is a waste of time, but the bottom line is that if done correctly it can greatly increase traffics. So do not just read this and do nothing with it! Go write some articles! Or if you are as lazy as me then go get someone else to do it for you here is some great resources that I use:
Elance.com
Guru.com
Just inclosing on this post I have put together a FREE course on how you can use the same tactics I use to make at least $400 a month with around an hour and half work, and like I said I am giving you that for FREE, so look out for that in the next day or so.
Its All in The List He Says
You may have heard many internet marketers say the phrase “the money is in the list”, or another similar saying and trust me there not lying with this statement. The reason behind this is that with your list you can target customers that are interested in your product or service over and over again.
The likelihood of a successful relationship with your customers and to build your list is enhanced with the power of auto-responders.
Internet marketing is made easier with the use of auto-responders. They can fulfil tasks that would otherwise be difficult to complete or in the modern world of the internet known as SPAM and at the same time it can also be moulded to fit in with your marketing plan. For example, you may decide that as part of your online marketing efforts you would like to offer a 5-part e-course on your niche area. Without an auto-responder this would be very difficult, effectively and professionally anyway.
However, with an auto-responder in your marketing arsenal, you are able to achieve this by automatically sending out your e-course spread over a number of days, keeping your customers interested and eager for the next part of the course. You are then able to target these customers with your future products and services, and will have hopefully built up the trust with your customer and conveyed to them that you are an expert in your field.
Once your auto-responder has been setup, you can rest assured that your emails and follow-up emails are running on autopilot. This saves you a lot of time, which can be spent on your other marketing work whilst your auto-responder is set up and running (hence the reason it’s called auto- responder.
The number of uses for an auto-responder is vast. You could also set up an auto-responder to deal with invoicing if need be or just to send a broadcast email out to reach your whole subscribers list. There are many creative ways that you can use your auto-responder to build customer relations and make more sales.
It is wide belief that a potential customer must hear your message several times before they will commit and make a purchase. The saying in “Internet Marketing” terms is you need to make contact with your prospect at least seven times before they commit to buy. This is made possible with an auto-responder and most probably unachievable without one. So for saying sake after we had made our 5 part e-course, our email after that could be asking for feedback on the course, then out lucky number seven email could then be offering a web class into more depth about our e-course. Then we just keep giving our subscribers great content and keep on building that trust and relationship.
You’ve probably experienced the scenario when you have received an email from a marketer with a hard sales pitch, to try and LITERALLY force you into buying their product with one message, but you have more likely than not declined the offer and in some cases even marked the email as our naughty friend Mr Spam. By using an auto-responder and you can take a much more subtle approach to gain the trust of the prospect first off and then ease in with the sales approach.
A good idea is to build interest among prospects gradually, starting by providing information on the topic that your product is related to. You can then progress from there with each message to include how your product is going to be of benefit to the customer and how it can solve their problem. Do not merely send a few emails saying the respondent should buy your product, else they will be left with questions such as “what will the product do?” and “how will it help me?”. You need to provide informative messages on the topic and how your product is going to solve a problem to keep the potential customer interested and for an end result of convincing the person to make a purchase.
Good practice is to concentrate on how successful marketers may contact you. Keep note of the methods they use and whether they work on you, and you can then mould a plan on the most effective methods that you have encountered and put them into practice with your own efforts. I still do it today, Trust me I have to have a different email address for all the subscriptions I have, and what I see is what they do which works and in cases what doesn’t so I can stay away from that approach myself. Once you start to do this you will have enough information to start your own email campaign off and in theory “make money from your list”
