Internet Business Blog by Jack Keifer

Everybody has their own ideas of success.  To some its having a ton of money. To others it may be a happy family life, to others health & happiness, or maybe its a combination of all or more of these factors.  

Are you getting to where you want to be?  Maybe you're already there.  If not, what would you consider your biggest obstacle?  Is it getting motivated?  Maybe you don't feel qualified to take action.  Maybe staying in a cycle of eternal learning mode is comfortable.  This, for many is the perfect excuse to avoid success.  You can easily deceive yourself into thinking that you are taking real action because you are investing your time, energy & money into your future.  But are you really serious about building your future, or are you simply an info junkie looking for your next fix? 

Think about this for a moment.  If you're constantly "learning" but never actually applying the concepts, then your desired "future" will always remain in the future.  Only by taking action on an idea or desire can you bring that future into your present reality. 

If you're not happy with your current situation, you should realize that you created it with your past actions, or more likely, inactions.  Today will soon be the past.  Tomorrow will soon be the present.  Did you build towards your future "present" by taking some sort of positive action today?  Maybe you'd rather catch that action movie on TV tonight instead.  If so, then tomorrow should be pretty much the same as today.  Rinse & repeat until you die.  Don't like that idea?  Then do something about it.

Sometimes all we have to do is find a motivating factor to keep pushing us onto success.  Here's my motivating factor.

Here's my other motivating factor:

Need I say more?

Whatever your motivating factor, start actively building your future, even if your vision is not 100% clear.  Often times its the "push" that gets the creative juices flowing and the vision solid.  Decide on a product, create a product, build a blog, a website, sign up for an affiliate or CPA program.  Anything, just do something to begin the process of change in your future.  Now keep going.  The future will be your present much sooner than you think.  Make it a good one!

[tags]build a blog, affiliate program, CPA program, info products, creating success, self improvement, internet marketing [/tags] 

Do you find yourself getting nowhere with your internet business? Perhaps you're new to the game of affiliate marketing or creating and promoting your own product.

One of the most common themes I run into when hearing from other new and relatively new marketers is that they aren't making any money and have no traffic. Maybe the "big boyz" out there are the only ones making the money with their next "latest and greatest big opportunity".Well, in a sense that may be true, but only in a sense that their plan is well defined while you're the one jumping from "opportunity to opportunity".

That's not to say that there isn't good information out there that will give you a good value for your money. But if you find yourself buying information that's "guaranteed to put you at the number one spot on Google for any keyword", or a "secret system" that will make you a million dollars with no effort, then you may seriously need to consider exactly what your goals are. I'm also going to let you in on a secret. THERE IS NO SECRET SYSTEM!

Do you have a real plan mapped out for your business? A real vision? I'm not talking about some lofty goal like "my plan is to make a million bucks with some system that will do it all for me from the start". I mean a real tangable plan, a defined vision of exactly what it is that you want. Do you want to write e-books on Air Guns? Sell eBooks? Create software or information products? Maybe sell hard goods online using drop shippers? Or maybe you want to do affiliate marketing? There's thousands of things you can do, but first you need to make up your mind what that "thing" is. Let's say for example, that you want to sell hard goods online using drop shippers. OK, you're half way there, you've defined a goal. Now you have to take action on your goal to make it happen. This is the critical step where most people never follow through. Think about this for a moment. When you're thirsty, your body tells you that you need a drink. You naturally take whatever action is neccessary to get that drink to quench your thirst. You should treat your business in the same way. Think of your business as your body, and take action to keep it healthy, feed it when its hungry and it will grow and be strong. What do you want to sell? Is there a market for it? How much competition is there? Remember, "competition" isn't always a bad thing either. Now find some wholesaler that will drop ship. By wholesalers, I mean "real" wholesalers. If they don't ask for your tax ID, or they want a membership fee, they are NOT true wholesalers, and you'll be paying too much. Also, if you deal with so-called wholesale sites that have an online retail store on the same site, you should realize that your "source" is also a competitor. Hmmmm. You'll also want to consider how you will create your business to give you the maximum amount of freedom. After all, the idea is to leave your job, not create another one that is going to suck away all your time, right? The more automation features that you can get into your system, the better. So the next time you feel that you're drifting too close to the event horizon of another black hole called the "latest & greatest opportunity", reverse your engines for a second and ask yourself whether this really fits into your plan. Maybe you'll discover that not following the herd of lost sheep can be your real path to freedom. [tags]affiliate marketing, drop ship, drop shippers, ebooks, google, information software, marketer, make money online, wholesaler, wholesalers, internet business, business opportunity[/tags]

Creating your first website can seem like a pretty daunting task if you've never done it before. Sure, you can outsource the job to a web designer, but then you are giving up the freedom of having complete control over tweaking and changing things as you see fit. You are completly at the mercy of someone else's time table. Ok, you might be thinking, "yeah right, I can't even spell HTML, let alone learn it!" You may also have seen various [tag]web editors[/tag] out there that seem intimidating and are usually expensive too. Did you know that there are some great open source stuff out there? For example, Nvu (pronounced 'N-View') is a fantastic open source web editor that is FREE. I love that word. There are so many things out there available as open source, that you could literally build your [tag]internet business[/tag] using free tools. You can even create your graphics and logo with an open source (free) program called "Gimp". There's tons of documentation for this software and it has quite the following. I have to admit that I use [tag]Photoshop[/tag] myself for creating my logos and other graphics, but if I would have been more up on open source in the past, I probably could have saved some serious cash. Back to Nvu, if you can use a basic word processor or MS Word, you can build a web page. Nvu is very intuitive and easy to use. I also like the fact that even when working in WYSIWYG (Visual) mode, the generated code is very clean. Most [tag]WYSIWYG[/tag] editors are relatively easy to work with but generate messy and over bloated source code. I originally coded the AmazingCloaker website using CoffeeCup Visual HTML Editor. I thought it was a pretty decent product for 49 bucks, but the HTML code that is generated isn't nearly as clean as Nvu in my opinion. Sure purists will tell you to just do the whole site in HTML and forget about visually designing the site. There's a heck of a lot of advantages to knowing HTML, but saving time is my big thing, and I can knock off a basic webpage in less than 15 minutes with a visual editor. If I want to fine tune, or customize a table, I usually jump into the code editor and hand code it. You'd be surprised how easy it is to learn HTML. Anyway, I completely re-designed the [tag]AmazingCloaker[/tag] website using Nvu! I'm currently working on a new product which is a video course on how to design a web page from the ground up. This is geared for the [tag]internet marketing[/tag] beginner or intermediate level who wants to design a decent page, optimize it for the search engines and get pointers on writing good sales copy. I'll also round off the course by showing you how to set up a blog for your website using wordpress. Everything I will be using in the course will be open source software, so if you've ever wanted to get serious about internet marketing, but building that web page was too intimidating or expensive, then keep checking back. I'll be announcing on this blog when it will be available. The website where you can check out the course will be designed in my tutorial, so you will actually see the end result as the website itself! How cool is that?!

Woohoo! I was chosen to receive a USB DVD burner from James Brausch, who has a great Internet Business blog. Thanks James! It took me about 5 minutes of effort to spout off what I felt and it paid off. Putting a little effort into your internet business can yield the same results! A minor change to your sales letter can double your conversions. Taking an hour to write a free report with some affiliate links or simply to show why your product is valuable can crank your profits instantly! A few minutes here, an hour there towards your internet business goes a long way when you add it up at the end of the week. If you have a hard time getting motivated, just decide to spend a few minutes on your business today & inspiration will come naturally. You may suddenly find yourself accomplishing great things that you weren't expecting just 5 minutes ago. Nike really got it right with the phrase "Just do it".

The book Black Rednecks and White Liberals appears to offer some interesting perspectives on freedom. I feel that many people really do believe that they are free in their personal lives because they have a J.O.B. that allows them to pay their bills and mortgage, and drive a decent car. But is this really freedom? The American Dream? Being in a J.O.B. or "Just Over Broke" as the addage goes, is just that. Suppose you lost your job tomorrow. How long would you last with your current debt load? Would your life be affected dramatically? Could you just walk away from your J.O.B right now and go full time into business for yourself? No? Is this really freedom knowing that unless you trade a minimum of 8 hours of your life everyday in return for money, that you will not be able to see your dreams come true? Suppose you start a new business. What is your goal? Do you want a business that runs itself? With a new business, you could very well end up in another J.O.B. situation. I have a good friend who left her job and started a restaurant a few years ago, and she ended up working 16 hour days to the point of burn out. The business failed as a result. What she effectively did was create another J.O.B. for herself. I wouldn't exactly call this freedom. In fact, she was even LESS FREE than before! Whether it's a traditional "brick & mortar" business or an internet business you should definately not overlook the "freedom" aspect of your plan. In fact "freedom" should the the objective of your plan! After all, freedom to live your life to the fullest is what it's all about. Don't trade one J.O.B. for another. Keep your mind open to outsourcing those time consuming tasks as your business grows. The advantage of Internet Business is that there are many ways to set your model up for passive income. Working a few hours a day to create "internet vending machines" that will generate income while you sleep, while you're on vacation, etc is very exciting and rewarding to say the least. Real freedom comes from working smarter, not harder. Plan for a business system that will give you freedom. Don't trap yourself into a self created J.O.B.

Probably the biggest challenge in any new business is taking that first step. You have a vision, you want freedom and a great income. Now you've resolved yourself to make the move. What next? This is where most people experience "motivational paralisys". If you're starting on your own, lack of information on what to do next can be a real blow to that initial burst of motivation. Here's some info that may help. When you've done your market research and have that new product that you created or are referring as an affiliate, or even retailing, you are ready to get your first website. The important thing is to get your website as soon as possible. Even before you have a clue about the design of the site, get your domain and at least put a basic framework or placeholder there. Or better yet, stick a squeeze page in there and start collecting names and building your list. Now you'll have a receptive audience already primed for your product when you're ready to "go live". The main idea here is to get the clock ticking on the age of your website. Google especially, takes the age of your website into consideration for ranking. Even if you don't plan to "go live" for a few months, get something there to get the clock ticking. Besides, this will also keep you commited to your goal, now that you've invested in the domain and hosting. When choosing a domain name, it's smart to use your best keyword in the name. If you're selling pellet guns, for example, then something like "bestpelletguns.com" would be favored by the search engines when some one searched for the term "pellet guns". Did you ever notice that many of the top listings in the search engines have the keyword you typed right inside their web address? Hmmmmm Choosing a host is another thing to consider. There are many out there, and depending on your needs, sometimes you have to be careful. I use dreamhost, because I like the flexibility of having "Crontab" available for my auto responder software. Some webhosts don't offer this feature, and if you're running any web based scripts for your sites, you may need to look closer at what the web host has to offer. Dreamhost also gives me the choice of two PHP versions and unlimited domains and MYSQL databases under one account! Also you're space and monthly bandwidth is insane! You start out with something like 10 gigs and it increases every month! When creating your home page, remember to design your page around your best keywords, but don't make it obvious, or over stuff your content with them, or it will have the opposite effect. Back to the example with pellet guns. Let's say that your are specializing in antique pellet guns and "antique pellet guns" is your top choice for keywords. Be sure "antique pellet guns" is in your page title, your heading, body (of course) and even footer as a inernal link to yourself. These are some small basic things that can make a world of difference. Even for google. The next step for cranking your rankings in the likes of google is to get back-links to your website. Create a blog, write articles and submit them, get active in forums (but don't get sucked in by all the bad advice that is floating around in these places). Getting back-links to your website is essential for high "organic" rankings in Google. If your back-links are coming from sites with a high google page rank, then all the better. These basics should get you started in the right direction. Just remember, taking that first step is the most important. Without action, it will never happen.

Why the heck would you want personal and financial freedom when it's so much more comfortable to have a J.O.B.? Here's 11 advantages to keeping your J.O.B. 11. If things go wrong, you can blame someone else 10. It's nice to be patted on the head in appreciation for your 70 hour weeks 9. You can keep a low profile and blend in with 4 billion other people 8. You can avoid those menacing beaches in the Bahamas and that awful sunshine 7. You can maintain a healthy marriage with your TV set in the evenings 6. That six-pack just goes down better after a hard day's labor 5. Making someone else rich gives you a warm fuzzy feeling inside 4. Patterns of complacency are comfortable, kinda like that morning slumber 3. Invisible Handcuffs like Health Insurance, 401k plan, Vacation days are just plain comfortable 2. The alarm clock industry would be devastated if everyone quit their J.O.B.s 1. You don't have to mess with stuff like quality time with your wife and kids or that life of joy. Give that 2/3 of your life to "the Man" instead. Ok, are you ready to give yourself a promotion and devote more time to your business or keep it as business as usual? Everything in life is YOUR choice. Your current situation whether good or bad was created by your past actions and decisions. A good start is giving your TV the heave-ho. I've also been guilty of letting the TV distract me as background noise once in a while even though I'm not much of a fan. Regular mindless television will merely contribute to your complacency and brainwashing. Think of it as a life sucking vampire bent on keeping you down in the cycle of debt. If you only watch TV 2 hours a day, that adds up to 14 hours a week, or 28 days of your life every year! Now let's assume that you take this same 2 hours every day and apply it towards reaching your goal of a prosperous internet business. Maybe you're new to the game. Now you've just claimed back that 14 hours a week to learn the ropes. You have to ask yourself what's more important? Your television, or your financial and personal freedom? When you're old and haggard are you going to look back on your life knowing that you did your best, or cry about all the time that you pissed away wallowing in the world of TV? Now is the time to do something about it! Stop right now and make your master plan for what you will do today. Don't get worked up about accomplishing everything in one day. Take it one step at a time, keep focused on your goals, and stay away from the "gurus" with the latest and the greatest. If you can get a mentor who has already made it, all the better. Now go build your empire!

Ok, I know that James Brausch has been in many of my blog posts recently, but I just had to share with you something interesting that he brought up regarding your voice and how it affects your customers. Your ability to speak effectively while demonstrating your product (or anything) in a camtasia video as pointed out by James Brausch may not be as easy as it sounds. You may be someone who outsourced your sales letter to a top rated copywriter for example. Thus your visitor may have an entirely different impression of you after he/she actually hears your voice for the first time. Do you sound like a mechanical putz? Hmmm, He got me thinking about my own series of videos for the AmazingCloaker. Even though I wrote my own sales copy, I couldn't help but to wonder what type of impression my own voice leaves on the collective public. I supposed if I were to critique myself, I would have to say that I need less pauses and faster speech in some areas. I think really, the key to giving your customers a good impression is to speak in exactly the same way as if your best friend was standing behind you watching as you explain what you are doing. I think that it helps also to have someone un-biased to critique your video after you're finished as well. My wife is very good at that, because if she thinks that what I have just created really stinks, then she will give it to me straight. I respect that because she helps me see things from a different perspective. When making a video, this is what works for me. I will first list out on paper the main topic areas. Then I will make quick notes in sub-topics on what I want to cover as I go along. Whatever you do DON'T WRITE OUT YOUR DIALOG WORD FOR WORD! Remember when I asked you about sounding like a mechanical putz? It just doesn't work with video. An audio file or CD may be a different story. Ok, now that I have a general outline of where I want to go, I can convey my message in a way that my customers are going to easily grasp. Making your customers feel comfortable with your product is extremely important, especially if it's a software product. Most people are already intimidated by new software applications as it is. If you can convey a friendly and reassuring aura into your customer's computer room, they will immediately feel confident that they made the right choice in purchasing your product. Even though I prefer to create both documented and video help with my sofware, I can certainly see the point that James has with only creating a Camstasia video to explain your software. It's a major time saver to put your help files in video format. At the same time the visitor can have the sense of actually seeing the software in action. Visual tutoring is really all that most small applications require anyway. If you create your own products or if you simply wish to have a video intro to a product that you affiliate with, the camstasia video route can be a very effective strategy. Maybe it's time you beef up your marketing plan with some video. Don't let the pro's intimidate you, give it a try, you just might surprise yourself and boost your profits at the same time!

James Brausch has just recommended a book by Joe Vitale called "Attractor Factor" This book may be of interest to you if you liked my post relating to the Law of Attraction a couple weeks ago. I've read some of Joe Vitale's materials before and found them truly inspiring. Joe Vitale is one of the Big boys and a great source of inspiration and guidance. My own copywriting is inspired by Joe's material. I'm no Joe Vitale obviously, but that's the level I aspire to reach or exceed. If James Brausch finds merit in his work, then what else can I say? Check it out.

Most people starting out in affiliate marketing pretty much have the same dilemmas. What software should I use for making my web pages? What kind of products should I promote? Do I need content? And the list goes on. Well here's my two cents for what it's worth. If you're already web savvy, Dreamweaver is an excellent product for creating web pages, especially if you are doing large multi-page projects. For strictly smaller websites & pre-sell or sales pages its pretty much over kill and over priced for what you need. When I first started on-line marketing, XSite pro was my weapon of choice. This is a sweet app that is designed specifically with Internet marketers in mind. It has a simple to use built-in WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) page editor and templates to make creating a web page a snap. There are features for adding ad-sense ads, forms, navigation menus, buttons, and much more. You can optimize your page for the search engines, add meta tags / keywords, etc. Many people swear by this software and use it to generate hundreds of quality search engine friendly sites. Other great software for web page design is the Coffee Cup HTML Editor . This is my personal favorite, and is the software I used to design the AmazingCloaker website. The Coffee Cup HTML editor will allow you to design your website in an easy to use WYSIWYG editor as well, but also gives you the added convenience of having full control over the HTML code. I like to have the ability to easily modify (or clean up) my HTML code and this editor let's me do this very well. A very NICE app is also the BlueVoda website builder. You can build a web site in 30 minutes. It's easy to use and has many templates. You can layout your website exactly the way you want in the WYSIWYG editor. You can add multimedia, javascripts, plugins, the works. The only hitch is that it will only interface to a bluevoda web server. You could get around this of course by simply previewing your finished page and copy/paste the source code into wordpad and save as html. nyuk nyuk nyuk… Products that you promote should ideally be something related to what you like, but if you want to make any real money you need to diversify into many different products. Keep your web pages specific to your products of course. I use dreamhost, because you can host unlimited domains under one account! This means that everytime you come up with a new webpage/domain, you don't have to pay for another web host account to go with it. Just add it to your existing account. All you pay is the 9 or 10 bucks for the domain registration! In my opinion, this is the only way to go! Products that have recurring payment are great affiliate products to promote. Dating sites, membership sites of any kind, products that you would enroll monthly like hair loss products, anti-aging, etc are all excellent, because you get the option of residual income rather than the one time deal. Content. Yes, you need to do a little work and write content. It's really not that hard. If you've ever written an email to a friend, then you can write a review about a product. If you don't know anything about the product you are promoting, then "Google" it and find some articles and re-write the review into your own words. It's not cheating, and you'll be in business before you know it. Well, hopefully this little tidbit of info will get you pointed into the right direction if you're new to the game and feel lost and overwhelmed by all the horse-crap in the forums, junk "how to affiliate market" products designed to tease you but really steer you away from what the big boys are "really" doing, etc. Remember, 99% of any successful journey is taking that first step. You just got to resolve yourself to do it. Don't know what to write? Just start typing without trying to write a masterpiece, and you'll be surprised at what starts coming out!