And the recording is up. Here is the YouTube hosted version with pretty picture, below is the full call without the fancy graphics…
and boy, apologies, the full call simply does not work on this site. So, I’ve uploaded the entire call
http://lessworkmoremoneyblog.com/recordings/JeffLandersCall5June08wip12.mp3
that seems to work…
Interview with best-selling author and expert on how to structure your business for success
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Tonight (June, 5 at 8pm London time (3pm Eastern)) I’ll be doing an interview with best-selling author Jeff Landers of
The Home Office From Hell Cure
Transform Your Underperforming, Time-Sucking Home-Based Business into a Runaway Success
fame.
The call will be all facts followed by a Q&A — this is not a sales-pitch. (oh, just to warn you, we will mention his book, hope that’s ok)
Call in details are:
Phone: +1-712-432-6100
passcode: 38489
We expect the lines to fill up quickly, so please dial in a couple of minutes before the scheduled start.
If you have any questions you’d like to ask Jeff, please add them as comments to this post (no registration required, just post them)
Jeff’s expertise is on
- creating time to focus on high revenue items
- running a home-office,
- starting a business,
- finding a niche,
- dentifying your business goals
- growing your business using your expertise
- successfully marketing your business using proven techniques
so if you have any questions around those topics, fire away.
Again: the call is tonight at 8pm London time, 3pm Eastern.
Looking forward to having you on the call tonight
PS: if you’d like to check out Jeff before the call, head on over to http://www.HomeOfficeSuccess.com
On “Adding value” (or: How to get what you want by giving others what they want)
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how often do you hear people say (pay lipservice?) to the old saying
“if you give other people what they want you’ll end up getting what you want”?
My guess is that if you attend any networking meetings you’ll have heard it more often than you care to count. And then what happens? How many of those who say it then really walk the talk? Not that many, right?
In my opinion it is because most mis-understand what it really means! It does not mean that you selflessly give up your time and energy for others and be at their service so that at some unknown time in the future the Universe will reward you for your good deeds.
What it really means is this: as a real entrepreneur, you find out what the other person really needs and wants and then you create the solution for them. Do you think if it solves a real problem for them, they are more than willing to pay you handsomely for it? You bet!
All this “give the other person … and receive” business is about creating win-win outcomes at all levels.
So, if so far you’ve either been paying lipservice to this idea (but not walking the talk) or you’ve been giving up far too much in exchange for that warm fluffly feeling that you are doing a good thing — time to re-think! Time to go out and find out what people really want and what they are willing to pay for and then create the solution and give it to them.
This incidentally is also the difference between your typical self-employed person and an entrepreneur: the self-employed usually start with a great idea and then find a market for it (and if you are honest, most struggle, right?) whereas the entrepreneur starts with a need (yes, the very first thing they do is really do the market research!) and then creates the solution.
So, if the last time you did some serious market research (and it’s easier than you think. Begin with a survey at surveymonkey for example) is, well, I don’t know, a long time ago, or even before never, time to get your skates on.
And does all this sound a bit selfish — particularly for those who have been using the ‘reward by Universe at unspecified time in the future’ excuse for working silly hours and being paid far less than they should??
I really would appreciate your views on this!
looking forward to your input
Veit
A while ago I bumped into an awesome series of free videos teaching you how to drive traffic like mad to your site. I couldn’t scribble fast enough to write down all the things I was learning watching these free videos on YouTube. Rather than go on and on, you better watch them yourself. Make sure you have a couple of hours and plenty of paper to take notes.
Btw, this guy is just about to launch a private coaching club. As a bonus, he’s giving away free search-engine optimization software and free personal coaching for the first 50 to sign up JUST TO HIS product-launch mailing list. No need to buy anything, get the SEO software and with a bit of luck the coaching. Guess what this blog is running on?;-)
Anyway, first sign up for the free SEO software, then check out the free videos.
Warning: Once you’ve seen those videos you will want to sign up to the coaching programme. I still have some explaining to do to my wife;-)
Enjoy
Veit
PS: if you’d like me to keep you up-to-date on the latest SEO techniques coming out, please leave your name and email-address below (note: I hate spam with a passion! I promise, I will never pass your details on to anyone. Ever!)
… in a few simple steps …
Welcome to my very short primer on how to make money on the internet. This is pretty much the B-52 view of the ‘earn money online’ world — but it should enable you to make the right decisions at the beginning, rather than having to try out tons of ideas before settling on the one that works for you.
The objective is to have you up-and-running (and hopefully earning a few first dollars) in less than a week. Notice that I don’t say ‘make a fortune’ in the first week. What we are aiming for is a string of small successes — trust me, a single dollar earned is a huge success compared to having an ‘amost ready, not quite there yet’ super-site that is (honestly, fingers crossed, no doubt, sometime in the future) going to create a massive income for you. Or not.
Just so we get off on the right foot:
The only guaranteed way to earn money on the Internet is by
- selling a valuable product or service
- to the right audience
- in an honest, customer-centred fashion
in other words: you need to add value to your clients every step of the way. Why? Simply because there are hundreds of thousands of fellow marketers out there who are competing for your (potential) clients’ dollars/pounds/euros….
But hey, you weren’t hoping for yet another get-rich-quick-scheme, were you? Kidding aside, the assumption here is that you want to build up a solid business that will provide you income in the long term. Most likely not make you rich overnight, but certainly get you to the point where you don’t have to worry about paying the bills anymore. With that, are you ready to be a Home Grown Champion?
If so, lets look at the three points above in turn:
The Valuable Product: What ways are there to make money online?
Right then, first of all you need to decide on your business model:
Although there are plenty more, for starters I suggest you look at these two options:
1. affiliate marketing: sell someone elses product
2. information product: sell an information product you either create yourself or you buy the resell-rights to.
The reasoning behind this choice is that they are relatively easy to implement and start and once up and running can actually produce a pretty good income. The reason for that is that you can automate a lot of the process, unlike business-models where you have to fill in questionnaires, click buttons etc.
Affiliate Marketing
The great thing about affiliate marketing is that you have almost zero startup-expenses (although I highly recommend you purchase and thoroughly test the products and services you are about to test — nothing kills your reputation faster than a dud product you recommended to your readers!). Another point is, well guess what the #1 method of generating traffic used by the gurus is?
Obviously: Their affiliates. Most of the top (if not all) of the biggest marketers rely on their affiliate programs for traffic, which means they also rely on their affiliates for leads and sales.
So, if affiliate marketing sounds like your kind basis on which you’d like to build your business, check out this affiliate marketing system.
What I love about it is that it is a great step-by-step guide of how you can get other people to submit your articles, or even better write articles to promote your products, distribute your free reports, build your incoming links and even run PPC campaigns for you.
Best of all, you don’t have to spend a penny upfront to get them to do all this work for you.
Another product I suggest you look at is the Bible of affiliate marketing.
This will show you how to avoid the top mistakes most beginners make, provides an easy to follow step-by-step business-building
process, how to create a web-site suitable for affiliate marketing etc etc. It’s very much a step-by-step (with screen-shots for those of
us who think in pictures) approach, which I really like. Highly recommended.
Here is another source of help for setting up a website There great thing about this video-course is that the first few modules are free.
Even if you are familiar with the basics, I encourage you to watch them anyway because there are a few neat little hints and tips in there.
(I’d never heard of roboform before, well there you go, now I only need to type half as much as I used to)
Information Products
as you will probably have gathered, information products (think e-books, e-courses etc) are virtually everywhere. And the great thing is: they are (in my opinion, but I’m not alone with that opinion) here to stay: the simple reason is: exactly the same thing has existed for decades in the direct-mail industry — home-study courses on VHS cassettes (and later DVDs), booklets, all kinds of How-To things, you get the idea. There are two options here:
1. you buy someone else’s product with resell rights (meaning you can sell it on without having to pay the creator a fee, i.e. you keep all the profits)
2. you create your own product.
Although the whole resell thing is attractive because you dont’ have to do any work, it does have its drawbacks. And the main one is:
many many other marketers will already have bought the resell-rights to that product, meaning you are competing in a crowded market. I therefore personally prefer the DIY e-product approach. The good news is, this is easier than it sounds. If you want to create an ebook, I highly recommend you check out this awesome system.
Of course I own this myself, and there are several things in its favour: the course itself is brilliant and gives you a great step-by-step system of how to create ebooks, reports etc, and the author provides outstanding customer-service (there is actually a person at the other end — in other words, exactly the kind of business I propose you build).
The best thing about this course is that you can use the system for many other uses — whenever you have to structure any kind of report or presentation, this stuff is very useful.
An alternative to creating e-books yourself is to have other people create content for you — check the recommended reading list for a great suggestion of how to do this.
The nice thing about e-products is that the process can mostly be automated. If you use paypal, clickbank or 2checkout, they will take your payment, process your order and even send the customer to the thank-you-page. All you have to do is wait for the cheque in the post
The right audience
once you have figured out which business model you want to pursue, the next step is to think about
1. what you are going to sell and
2. who you are going to sell it to.
When I say ‘what’, I mean: what is your niche? This is essential, you have to determine exactly what your niche is.
Ideally for a first experiment you start with something you are passionate about . This will go a long way in
determining your success, as your passion will shine through in every area of your business - whether you’re
aware of it or not! When your visitors and prospects sense your excitement, it will rub off on them, and greatly enhance your chances of success.
Just two places you can start looking for good niches are
http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html which tells you what people are currently searching for and
the best-sellers at amazon.com
Once you’ve figure out what niches are of interest to you, check out what people’s problems are for which you then provide a solution. Google-groups is a good place to hang out and find out what bothers people.
Once you know WHO is bothered by WHAT, all you need to do is put yourself in their shoes and solve their problems by using qualifiers such as “learn”, “buy” and “find”. One word of warning here: you may want to consider interests where the users have some sort of disposable income. That rules out for instance anything to do with college students — golfers on the other hand….
in an honest fashion:The difference that makes the difference: or
…. the BEST way to make money online.
To wrap up, I’d like to let you in on a secret that is going to make the biggest difference in your success on the Internet:
what do you think is the difference between you and the guys who are raking it in on the Internet?
No, it’s not their education, it’s unlikely to be their rich parents who gave them a head-start and it definitely is not luck.
The simple answer is: it’s their mindset. It’s their attitude, their focus, the way they set a goal and then pursue it until they reach it.
Why do you think so many people fall for those get-rich-quick schemes only to find that the only person who got rich is the one behind the scheme?
Enough already of the bad news, here is the good news: you can easily change your mindset to anything you like. Hey, most successful people become successful by copying other successful people. When you start reading the biographies of successful entrepreneurs, guess what they were reading from a young age? The biographies of successful entrepreneurs.
A short list of success-characteristics which are shared by almost all successful people is:
1. Always provide value far in excess of what you expect back
2. Always tell the truth
3. Always respect the person behind that anonymous “client”.
4. Always overdeliver
5. Always add to your arsenal (lifelong learning)
6. Always think on paper.
7. Always learn from your mistakes
At this point I’d like to suggest you check out the Christopher Howard companies. I have personally attended several of their seminars and I can only speak highly of them (you can probably find me in some of their video-testimonials) (and they are also the reason why I tossed in my job, moved to a different continent and started living the life I wanted). The best thing is, they do a full three day introductory seminar which you can attend for absolutely free — no strings attached:
Click here for 2 free tickets if you are in the US
and here if you are in the UK
and here if you are in Australia
Now, why am I recommending you attend one of these seminars. Quite simply, because it gives you a clarity and focus on what it is you really wanted like never before. Think about it, although you probably got to this page because you searched for some combination of ‘money’ and ‘online’ or ‘Internet’, really it isn’t the money you are after, right? It most likely is the freedom that money can buy you, the extra time you can spend with your loved ones or that gorgeous sports-car you’ve always wanted. And that is
exactly what you can expect to pursue like nothing else before after attending that free seminar.
Do yourself a favour, invest those 3 days, expand your mind like never before, network until your head is spinning and above all, have fun.
with that, I wish you the very best in your Internet ventures
God bless
Veit U.B. Schenk
PS: I’ll be attending another Chris Howard seminar in London starting this coming Sunday — so if you’re over there, come and find me in the crowd. Alternatively, ping me on facebook or follow me on twitter (VeitSchenk).