How To Make Your Internet Marketing Business Stand Out?
June 16, 2008 | 2 Comments
I had just went shopping for new clothes in MetroJaya with my girlfriend. This was not a planned event as we only saw the big sale while we were walking past the entrance of the store.
Since I was looking for a pair of cotton trousers, we decided to walk in and try our luck.
We browsed and tried several pair of trousers and the shopping experience led from buying pants to shirts.
At the end of the tiring but fruitful day, I only managed to get a couple of shirts which my girlfriend was convinced that its a good buy.
We paid at the cashier and left. On our way out, my girlfriend was telling me that the sales staff we met everywhere and the cashier were very polite and accommodating. She said that all the while, the staff there were rude and unhelpful. She said probably the company had finally gave the staff some customer relation training to improve their service.
This got me thinking, hmm yeah the staff were helpful and were friendly and that actually made my shopping experience a pleasant one. I would have left early if I can’t find any trousers while meeting unhelpful or rude sales people. After all, why stay in a place where you don’t feel welcomed.
In all business whether its small, medium or large, customer interaction is the first and only point of contact which will result in a satisfied or unhappy customer. There is truth in people saying that one unhappy customer is worse than having 10 satisfied customers.
Build Your Internet Marketing Business Now!
June 14, 2008 | 4 Comments
Yesterday I received a shocking news that a friend of mine had passed away while hiking up Penang hill. He had a heart attack on the way up.
Last night while my friends gathered together at his wake, we were reminded again the frailty of our lives. We were also thankful that everyone met up a month and a half ago. In the end we concluded that we should live life to the fullest each day and meet up more frequently.
We are so used to planing ahead that we take today for granted. Our ability to plan ahead also breed a very bad habit…that is procrastination.
We always think that we can “do it later”, “do it tomorrow”. But we fail to see that tomorrow may never come.
This is most apparent in Internet Marketing. Many people may start an internet marketing business as a side business on top of their main employment. So they attend internet marketing courses and bootcamps. They will learn a lot of useful things but everything stops there! They never take action.
This is the scenario…People come back home after work around dinner time or after dinner. So its a shower and then there is 2 alternative. Whether you have children or not. Those with children will spend time with their children, those who are single or childless will be deadbeat and would want to relax a short while in front of the TV, Astro or go meet up with your friends. By the time it is almost bed time and you decide that maybe tomorrow you will sit down in front of the computer to do something. But the next day, the same routine repeats. Then we realised its been a month or year and we forgotten what we learned. Then we think it takes too much trouble, effort and time to run thought the notes again and leave everything on the shelves.
Taking action in building a home business in addition to your main employment or business is not easy. Granted that it takes a herculean effort especially at the end of the day you are drained of energy. But If you have studied all the successful people, they don’t get rich and successful by doing comfortable things. They always push themselves over the limit and realised that they can still go further.
Take one step each day and day by day your internet marketing business will grow slowly but surely. You need to put in the effort everyday and push yourself out of your comfort zone and grow your home business. Keep reminding yourself that today is precious and utilise it to the maximum. This is the reason why everyone says start something that you are passionate about. With your passion driving you, even though you are physically tired, you still are motivated to do your internet marketing business.
Time is running out, start your internet marketing business now!
Whether you think you can, or whether you think you can’t, you’re right ~ Henry Ford
How To Measure Your Blog Traffic
June 13, 2008 | Leave a Comment
How do you measure the traffic to your blog? How many readers do you have? These are the questions that every blogger will want to know.
Since I am using wordpress, I’ll only talk about measuring traffic in your wordpress blog.
There are a few tracking scripts that you can use to track and measure your blog traffic. However, it is known that all these tracking scripts are not very accurate. The accuracy depends on browser settings in accepting scripting or not. Other factors such as spiders also affect your true readership number, because software spiders can also be counted as readers.
Despite its inaccuracies, you still need to track and measure your blog traffic, at least to get an impression or an idea how it is progressing.
As wordpress users, you can install a wordpress plugin to track your blog. It is a simple no fuss plugin that gives you a brief summary of your traffic from your Dashboard. Installing it is easy, download it from here, unzip it, open the “stats.1.2.2″ folder and upload the “stats” folder into the wp-content/plugins directory using your ftp program. Log into your blog and activate the plugin. You need to use wordpress’s API key to activate it.
Click on “Akismet Configuration” near the top navigation bar and copy the API key to use the same API key for your stats. If you haven’t got your Akismet activated, then you should get it done now. This helps to filter out spam to your blog. Follow the instructions to get API key from Akismet plugin.
I also use Google Analytics to track some of my other sites. You can use Google Analytics but you need to edit your theme files.
Open an account with Google Anayltics here and set up your account. Add a new website in Google Analytics and use your blog url as the new website address. Then you copy the tracking code.
Use the theme editor to edit your “footer.php” file listed on right hand side of the window. Copy the tracking code to a line above the tag “</body>”. Update your footer file and check if your have inserted the code correctly. Google Analytics will check for you whether you have inserted your code correctly. If it is receiving data, then you have done it correctly. If Analytics is not receiving data, then you have inserted the code incorrectly.
Try to start your tracking now, so you can keep a record of the number of people visiting your site. This way, you know that your blog is being appreciated.
How To Post On Your Blog Everyday (Final Part)
June 12, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Welcome back to my final instalment on how to consistently make a post on your blog everyday. I promised to share with you what is my favourite way of getting ideas for my blog. My favourite way is to “Keep Your Eyes & Ears Open“.
To maintain a blog, you need to also develop a journalistic streak. If you keep a lookout on your daily life, sometimes small things that happened to you or your surroundings can be related back to your topic. This is one my my favourite way of getting original ideas to post in my blogs. Some time, just talking to your friends casually can give you an idea for a topic. You just need to keep thinking how can I relate this to my interest. Believe me…”Like Attract Like”, so even a casual chat with your friends can give you ideas. After all, to be your friend, there must be some common interest.
Carry along a digital camera wherever you go. Sometimes you will see something that catches your fancy. Just take a good shot of it. You can worry about how to put it in your blog later. Its better to collect lots of ideas then sort them out later. As you develop a habit of looking things through the eyes of your topic, you will be able to spot opportunities for you take a photo of something that interest you. If it is interesting to you, then it is related to your passion.
Using photos in your blog can help your readers visualise what you are trying to say. It also adds colour and breaks the monotony of reading blocks and blocks of words.
You can also carry a small notepad to take down certain ideas during the day when you are doing something else. Noting down a brainwave immediately will ensure that you won’t get frustrated at the end of the day trying to remember what you thought about earlier. You can also use your cellular or hand phone with a personal organiser to take the ideas down into your phone instead of using a notepad.
Once you do this as a habit, your daily life will be much interesting because you will be more mindful of what is happening around you and you will get lots of ideas from catching up with your friends, while doing the laundry, grocery shopping, reading a book or even having lunch with your colleagues!
This is more difficult habit to cultivate in the beginning, but once you are used to it, you’ll be able to spot so many things to blog about.
How To Post On Your Blog Everyday (Part 2)
June 11, 2008 | 2 Comments
I’m back to continue on what I left off the last post. Welcome back to learn more on how to post your blog consistently everyday.
3. Search For Forums
This is the same as searching for blogs with similar topic with your own blog. You can search for forums that discusses about problems, issues or just to share and update each other on current issues. Forum is a great place to get an idea of what difficulties people face. It is also a source of discussion on how to resolve the problems raised by members or to get a deeper understanding of the topics involved.
Learning the problems and getting the solution to those problems is a good post for your blog. People are always searching for solutions to their problems. Once you understand the underlying problems or issues and have a workable solution to it, you can even do a 2 post series. The first post to highlight the problems or issues. The 2nd post provide the solution. This way, you also create suspense and readers’ anticipation for more information.
Reading forums is also a good way to build your knowledge on your interest or passion. You will be able to learn more when you participant and ask questions or discuss with other members.
Take some time to read the forums first, and assess if the topics raised are inline with your interest. Once you are comfortable with the forum, you can join as a member and slowly participate in the discussion and also help out those who have problems. This is again making friends through the forum. Having friends in forums can also help you to attract traffic to your blog to increase your readership.
4. Read Magazines and Newspapers
Magazines and newspapers are a good source of current issues. You can subscribe to a specialised magazine that is inline with what you love, eg a car enthusiast will subscribe to a few car magazine to read up on what’s hot now or to learn more technical stuff.
How To Post On Your Blog Everyday
June 10, 2008 | 3 Comments
Every blogger will face a challenge to blog everyday. Some bloggers will have a ton of info and have to sort out the better ones to post. Some may not have as much info and will struggle to keep posting everyday. Then they space out the time between posts and as each time frame between each post increases, they will finally give up blogging.
So how do you keep writing and posting everyday?
There are many ways to researching for content for your blog. But before we proceed, the first and most crucial step is to understand yourself. Take some time and think about what is your interest. What do you have passion for? It may be buried deep inside you laying dormant because of all the stress and workload at your office has caused you to give up or forget about your interest and passion when you were young. So take a weekend off your daily routine, let your mind be free and explore the inner child in you again.
Once you have discovered your long lost interest or passion, you have automatically defined your blog theme. Why is it so important to blog about your interest or passion? Your passion or interest is the undying flame within you that will keep you going, even though the going gets tough. There will be times when you will hit dry spell of words or content, but those are just temporary dry spots which will not extinguish the spark within you.
Because you are blogging about something that you love, you will enjoy researching more or learning more about your niche. You will gain more experience in it. We will pursue to deepen our knowledge in what we enjoy even though there is no monetary rewards. Take artists as an example. Many artist draw because they love to draw. and if you sit them down, they can go on and on about their experience etc.
If you really don’t have any info, experience to share in your blog, then you can do the following to research for info:
Fabian Lim’s World Internet Academy
June 6, 2008 | 5 Comments
This weekend I’m starting my training to be a certified mentor for Fabian Lim’s World Internet Academy. World Internet Academy is an multilingual internet marketing training portal which teaches people how to create and sustain online business.
World Internet Academy training will cover 6 modules namely Market Research, Website Creation, Traffic Generation, Website Conversion, Create Affiliate Programs & Joint Ventures, and Automation & Tracking. Any student armed with this training will have the know-how to start a home based business on the internet successfully.
Being a certified mentor for this program I’ll be able to assist students both online and offline to progress on their internet marketing business.
Stay tuned for more updates on this exciting portal.
An Important Blogging Tool
June 5, 2008 | Leave a Comment
“A picture is worth a thousand words”
We know that people are drawn to photos because it’s nice to look at. If taken properly, it freezes everything at that point of time. Pictures also help people to visualise the moment or situation at that point of time. Regardless of how proficient are you in describing a scenario, nothing beats a photograph which does the same thing but with better effect.
How does this related to blogging? Blogging is about producing unique content which interests the publishers. Blog posts and pages contains a lot of written content as the blogger diligently writes his or her posts. It is good practise to include a bit of photos to help readers get a better picture of what you are saying. This makes the blog a more pleasant reading experience. It adds colour and ease the readers’ ability to visualise what the blogger is trying to describe.
Photos also help the readers to remember the experience, points or fact that the blogger is trying to make. People tend to remember pictures more than words. So by including relevant photos into your blog, whenever the readers see something similar, they’ll remember what they read in your blog.
Taking your own photos is the best way to make original photos that you don’t have to worry about infringing any copyright. There are many online sites with free photos so you can copy them if you want to. But I always prefer to take my own photos and ensure I am the only person in the world with that shot. This makes the photos even more original and unique. Also, each photographer will interpret differently the same scene, the photo reflect more of what each photographer sees. So if you want to describe something or an experience or to teach something, it is better to show pictures through your own eyes. This way the photos and your posts in the blog compliments each other better.
So how do I take my own pictures for my blog? Well first thing is, you need to have a digital camera. A digital camera is the most convenient way of taking a shot, download it and upload to your blog.
For blogging purpose, you don’t really need the latest high end digital camera. A normal 3 to 5 megapixel point and shoot digital camera is more than enough to take good photos for your blog. Its not necessary to put in large size photos because it takes too long to load up and your readers may get impatient and skip it. You don’t want that to happen.
There are also digital cameras with reasonable video recording capability. You may want to consider those models too since you can also record short clips for your blog. Again, you don’t need the latest high definition video camera to make videos for you blog.
Some hand phones or cellular phones comes with camera features. They may be good for you when you are just starting out. When you become more expert in taking photos, then you will want to upgrade to a digital camera. This is because the camera phone has very limited capability in taking various lighting situations. If you are happy with the quality of the phone camera, you can still stick to it.
There are many new terminology and setting which you need to be familiar to operate your digital camera properly. There is a cheap but good ebook which explains the various functions and adjustments you can do to your digital camera to take good photos. The ebook, Guide To Digital Photography is easy to read without getting into too much technicalities. Do buy it and start understanding your camera better and take good photos to enhance your blog. You readers will definitely appreciate your content more.
Are You Attracting Negativity Into Your Life?
June 4, 2008 | 2 Comments
Last week I learned an important lesson from Steven Pierce, an internet marketing legend. What I learn explained all the “bad” things that happened to me recently.
When we are exercising the law of attraction, it is always about good things and about something that we want in our life. It is all the wholesome and positive aspect of our life, career or relationships. But why do “bad” things happen to us even though we have been actively attracting positive thoughts and goodwill while eliminating the negative thoughts and feelings within us at the same time?
Steven explained that some times in order for us to achieve the results we want, the universe need us to get over some residual negativity within us. Think of it as a hurdle to jump over to get to the finishing line. To many law of attraction veteran, they take these “bad” stuff positively as valuable lessons or exercises needed to grow and strengthen themselves. However, for new students, they give up easily when faced with some negativity thinking that the law of attraction doesn’t work. No! The process of going through the negative is a process by which you need to go through to get to your desired results. Getting over the “bad” stuff is what is lacking in order for you to achieve your dreams. So take it positively, learn from it and strive on.
Applying the law of attraction in your internet marketing business is vital for you to succeed in your business venture. You visualise the huge traffic visiting your websites and they convert like crazy. However, you don’t see the results. What is happening? Isn’t the law of attraction working?
The law of attraction will enable you to attract the opportunities to enable you to fulfil your desire results. But you need to spot the opportunities and take action on it. If you don’t take action on it, you will keep missing the opportunities that are drawn to you. Many would like to make money online are scared of being scammed or are sceptical about it. This will in fact be a self fulfilling fear. However, if you take action and stick with an internet marketing business, you will achieve the results you desire. In the process you will face difficulties or issues. Don’t take it negatively and give up. Take it positively as a process which you have to go through in order for you to achieve your desired results. These processes are just the universe’s way of giving you more knowledge so you can grow and be better equipped to enjoy your results.
Remember, those so called negativity you think you are attracting is really good for you. It is a process by which you have to go through to reach your goals and desires. So take it positively and learn from it.
How To Build Multiple Source Of Income Cheaply
June 3, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Written By Tan Hai Liang
“Don’t put all your eggs in a basket”. There is much wisdom in that saying. Many people heard this before but they do not apply it in their business or income. Building multiple streams of income is important to everyone regardless of whether you are a small, medium or large business owner or just working as an employee. You don’t need to earn a lot of money to build various source of income.
Those who are in business or have been laid off before will fully understand this old saying. If we rely solely on one income stream, then if that income stream disappears, we will lose all income. That is why in business or if you are employed with only one salary source, it is vital to build a couple more income streams. This will help grow your financial networth, buffer you from significant income loss if one source disappears, and accelerate your objective of being financially free.
Those who are already enjoying an income source, can consider starting another income stream through affiliate marketing. For those who are unemployed or would like to switch to a job that can grow multiple streams of income, can also join affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is one of the easiest business to build and duplicate.
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