Insight

Insight

The post below is a trifle long but it is so full of useful info that I decided to keep it in. There are many tips that I resonate with that are straight out of the bible of many a top level marketer, on mindset, time management and personal 'bad' habits. Well worth persisting with right to the end.
Ray

How To Start and Run a Successful Lifestyle Business Online

A Personal Insight

Congratulations! You have chosen a really rewarding option into how your business and life will coexist happily ever after." That was a little note to myself when I chose the lifestyle business option, quite a far cry from a traditional start-up that I was running in the entertainment and events industry after quitting my 9-5 job. The latter required me to be in a specific physical location of course so as to reach and serve my clients.

Today, I run a digital business model and all I need is a laptop handy and an Internet connection. I then choose when I want to do some work and where I want to get that work done. And that my friend is what I call a perfect match! My life meets my business everywhere I go, anywhere I am. The general business rules remain pretty similar and herein I will share my own golden rules that new entrepreneurs will particularly find informative... But first... if you are about to quit your job, you are probably wondering

Can Starting A Lifestyle Business Change Your Life?

No more dreadful Monday morning train commutes to work and staring into a stranger's face seated across from me wearing sunnies on a cold morning, perhaps a subtle attempt to numb the pain of the lifeless surrounding. They are having the same thoughts as me. "Friday cannot come quick enough". Then I start thinking about my email box and that Monday morning meeting that I have not prepared for. I have to fill in my boss on the current project status before he can go into another meeting with more important people than me to tell them what I just told him!

I remember having those thoughts and it just makes me queasy as I write this. I know you get the drift. I remember suffering temporary amnesia as I walked out of the house, holding car keys and looking for them all over the kitchen and lounge. I had spent a whole hour pre-occupied in thought on how I will handle the stress that was about to unfold for the next 5 days of my life.

The Road Ahead

As exciting as this new journey is about to be you want to get a few things in order straight away in your new 'house' to make this transition process as smooth as you possibly can. That business idea is looking great, you have done lots of research, consulted a few souls preferably smarter than you. You have also been making some new friends. I really hope none of them is still working where you just quit! I soon found out that these friendships only flourished over the years because of shared interests such as office politics that tended to specially thrive on Friday night at the bar when we didn't have to whisper about overwhelming love for senior management.

The reality now is, you are in an elevated consciousness phase of your life, one that these friendships cannot exist. Your mindset needs to be fed with new insights and nurtured with refreshing thoughts about living a fulfilled life. You have some money saved up in the bank and probably have an actionable step-by-step business plan. There is something of value that you have to share and a strategy to get customers lined up ready to give your 'something' a warm welcome into this new world order.

But that is the easy part. I shall be completely honest here; apart from some money that I had saved up at the point of quitting, I really didn't have much more than a rough idea of what I was going to do. I was risking it all. When I left my day job some years ago, I was at a point where it was either that or I lose my mind.

7 Golden Rules

A New MIND-set:

As with all things new, your mind is the first guy you want to put in check. Let him know there is a new sheriff in town. If you are like me, you have been spending the better part of the last 6 - 12 months buried deep in business books and ripping them apart in your spare time. At some point, you found personal development material captivating. Eventually, you started finding out why that constant nagging feeling of life and lack of fulfilment was. As an example, I had read books like Richdad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki and listened to the audio version of the same in case something was lost in translation! I had also read Think & Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill and Dale Carnegie's How To Win Friends and Influence People among others.

This is an activity that you will not want to let slip into the overflowing 'good habits to continue when I get time bucket'. I had one like that and needed no motivation adding more stock completely in autopilot. Mind food is paramount in this journey. You want to stay inspired a good chunk of the time because this is where the sowing is happening. The thing is as abstract as some of the ideas in this material may seem at this point; I found that with time, it all starts to fall into place as the journey progresses. So do not sweat any concepts that are not clear yet. Keeping the reading habit going is all you need. These books are not really designed for reading cover to cover. Think of them like the SAT NAV system your car or as you own version of a personal SIRI.

It is a known fact that our minds don't like disruption. Whether that disruption is good for us or not, it is not very welcome without some whip cracking. The mind has got everything figured out. It is a very well trained machine with thoughts and habits that shape your life and works even when you are sleeping, doing the 'regular chores around the house'.

The 9-5 routine mindset is still at this point deeply wired into your system. It's advisable to start setting up ground rules so that YOU and the MIND are both on the same page. This takes a while and certainly took me the better part of 2 years. Don't stress just know there are changes you will need to work on consistently in this area. Oh, remember when I mentioned who your new friends cannot be a little earlier?

Breaking The Bad:

I made the mistake of trying to keep a regular 9-5-like routine when I first started my entrepreneurial journey. Big mistake. What tends to happen as a result is, the mind in these early days of business life, is still largely unaware of the 'new life in construction progress'. It actively runs the old familiar version of 'code' from its 9-5 days in the background in stealth mode. You might know what happens when you try to run a new version of Microsoft Windows on old PC hardware? Yes, exactly right!

All sorts of weird compatibility issues are not unheard of.

I did not understand this myself. The mindset driving my routine was still stuck in the old version. The correct term for this is the subconscious mind. So your poor conscious mind, which is pretty much what we operate on until new ways are 'learned' runs into a constant battle. It really wants to change the world for you, it's ready to work hard, promising to cut the Friday night binge that serves no purpose other than a regular headache which eats away the Saturday morning and pinky swears to cut down on addictive TV shows.

Someone, please explain why my favourite big screen stars are also hanging out in these TV shows... like really?

The Deal With Time Management:

As a new entrepreneur what quickly comes into awareness I would say is the time management beast and what seems to be like an endless stream of unmanageable distractions. In a lifestyle business that is run from home, the park, at the beach, the airport lounge or while on safari at The Mara, this can be a constant battle. Don't get too hung up on being perfect day one with this one. The more I tried to fight it the more I stressed about it. Stress did not improve my time management skills and only added to unfinished tasks that needed more worrying about... I thought! The time drama continued until I put measures to progressively learn how to improve time management.

Keep educating yourself on what works for your schedule and what sorts of distractions are overpowering you. I can tell you now it's going to be technology related!

It didn't matter that I was an early riser who wouldn't go to bed until my eyeballs were literally unlocking themselves from my sockets in protest. Occasionally I got the odd finger in this scuffle! And sometimes I still wouldn't give up. Now, this does not necessarily equate to being productive. The actual real result was a constant feeling of exhaustion, elevated stress levels, and anxiety.

Why You Need To Design A Routine That Works Around Your Lifestyle Business

I hadn't changed my routine so my mind would expect the usual treatment, 9 am we are active at work and then at 5 pm it expects that we are on the 'winding up for the day phase'. I, on the other hand, had with all good intent, added extra hours in front of the 9 and after the 5. Now you can see where the problem was once I kept this up for a while. Insane!!! Create a new routine and optimise around what works for you.

Decide When You Want To Work... Create A Routine... Then Follow It With Military Discipline

Perfecting this phase when you start a lifestyle business, which means your physical surroundings change constantly, it can feel daunting. However, with a well mapped out daily, and weekly routine that you have the discipline to stick with, you will start to see results. In no time, this will end up running on autopilot.

There's going to be a lot of 10 to 12 hour days, maybe longer but they don't and shouldn't be in your constant daily routine. After all, it's business around your lifestyle. I have 3-hour blocks and generally leave my 'heavy lifting work' for when I get into a state of flow, usually after midnight.

Understanding Your Personal Power and Peak Performance State:

This state starts becoming more regular with practice and awareness. Understand your highs (i.e. peak energy state), lows (this is no time to do the books and usually a good time to choose pizza toppings and make big decisions like thin or thick crust?) and my personal favourite flow state (this is creation mode and a good time to change the World). Pick a block of hours that works for you. Once new habits in your routine become solid you will have an easier time telling these states apart.

It's not unusual for me to get into flow while at the shops looking at apples and kiwi fruit fresh deals of the day. This state for me comes through an insightful thought or sometimes as a series of thoughts back to back, so please keep a hardcover notebook at all times for these moments. You might just stumble on your best business idea yet!

Time management and productivity is a continuous optimisation process. All you have to do is decide how many hours you want to work. Pay attention to your body clock and maximise for times when you are at peak energy states. Then learn to induce these states through rewarding practices like meditation.

Schedule Fun Times on Tuesdays:

Although it's not how I started off, I am lucky thus far to be working on businesses that allow me lots of flexibility as to when and where I actually work. If this tickles your fancy you are on the right track here. In my case, all I need is my mac book pro and decent wifi. Tip: When I am in a location where the menu has an under $10 dollar price tag frenzy going on, I move on swiftly.

About Tuesdays

Move all the things you used to do for fun on Saturday to this day. The Keyword here is FUN guys so if mowing the lawn is fun! Okay, you get my point. It doesn't matter what the activity is but I recommend you do it in the early days of your journey. The feeling is absolutely incredible. For me, it was reading the paper and a coffee down the road.

Do you guys wonder why we still print newspapers today?

So, usually, one or two local Moms will swing by the coffee shop and that is all the action there is. The rest of the 'real' world folks are at work. This is my opinion but what I found with being Mr Tuesday is that it gives me a boost of confidence and that sense of freedom where I feel, "yeah that's right, I can do what I want when I want".

I will point out here that this has nothing to do with money. I have done this even when the reality at that time was 'cash-flow challenges!'. I am not advocating that you should smile and be happy when you are broke, no no no. When you think about it, this is when you need your mind at a 100% and if all it takes is a series of 3-dollar coffees down the road, so be it. While on this topic, my ideal Tuesday day is on a yacht surrounded by endless views of blue seas at exactly 11 am and a safety vest in close proximity! Unwanted swimming lessons are not part of this plan.

What does your ideal Tuesday day look like?

Your Inner Circle... Your Players CLUB:

This is an interesting one because if you think about your ideal Tuesday above, how many people do you know today can do that? Initially, you will probably be alone or maybe with someone close to you like a partner, wife, girlfriend or somebody else who probably does what you do, or benefits directly from what you do. I found out that the friends I used to hang out with on Saturdays and Sundays in my previous life no longer fitted in the new life I was creating. It's a delicate balance but I had to make some changes. For the same reason, of course, the folks at your old job will probably not take Tuesday off to hang out at your newly found happy place to share happy coffee with you.

I could go on and on about this inner circle area of the new life but what I realised and accepted was, I needed to decide as part of the journey, to be alone for a little while as more new quality friendships developed. This is still an ongoing process. As an example, a couple of months ago I was in HongKong for a week just by myself. I had a blast but would it have been nicer to share that escapade with someone familiar?

I met new people on that trip and did things I had never done before. I love travelling and it is one of the reasons why starting a lifestyle business was a brilliant model. The thing is, if I can make friends who also have time to be lazy on Tuesdays for happy coffee and random sun baking escapades, that is probably a good 'new friend barometer' check right there! Oh and hopefully of course what they do for money is generally not frowned upon by law!

On the real, though, I personally don't have many of these friends but I found that this is a good time for me to reflect inwards and to focus on my personal growth. If you are new into this game, this could be a good time to spend with a business mentor, perhaps meet other like-minded people in your local community, go deep into nature or maybe just hang out on social media platforms and engage and find out the latest buzz like who got a cat! Seriously the point here is, have a lot of choices in your back pocket that you can go crazy with and if you have bucket list ideas all figured out, check them off weekly without fail.

Family:

Family is very dear to me and I would imagine it's the same for you too. Perhaps, much so that you are making this decision to escape the 9-5 and really start learning new ways to make money outside the voluntary solitary confinement space (also known as office cubicle). One of my reasons for choosing this journey was my family. To be more available to them and to enhance my own life experiences. To fill those experiences with what I really want anytime I wanted it. The one thing I encountered and you probably might as well, those we love and care for dearly may not understand the new you. These moments may not be as dramatic such as waving placards in protest but you will see it vividly.

Remember how our minds don't like change?

It's not their fault and they are probably coming from a place of love for you. Embrace the response you get with love and remember your bigger mission. I had lots of strange conversations with people I love and would have like to be speaking a foreign language at the time. That way being misunderstood would have been spot on. Then one day I realised, they weren't really saying they disliked my new outlook on life and crazy ideas like giving up a six-figure income.

They were just saying, "We don't understand how to process this new information". Please show us how. You might also take consolation in the fact that how well you manage this close relationship is a reflection of how you will do 'out there' where the World is short of people like you and me, people who are lost in self-indulgence and totally unconscious of their daily actions will not understand you either!

Remember, training takes time. That's what it took for me until they somewhat understood. If you are lucky enough to get the all in response from them, great, if not, give them time and if need be, add the space element to it as well. Be kind to yourself.

At the time, I was on a roller coaster going through a myriad of changes both personal and business that required me to be very present. My first business was in an industry I did not know at all, the physical surroundings were not very familiar (I will discuss this in a later post) and a pending divorce as a result of a strained long-distance relationship. Now, this was a lot of action in one headspace!

In Summary

Your circumstances may be a little different from mine for wanting to come this way and choosing this journey. As you go along, it's reasonable to expect moments where you will be tried and tested by fate. Things will happen that will be out of your comfort zone or out of your control and sometimes both.

In the end, I find that clarity on my why I do what I do sails me through choppy waters. I embrace whatever comes my way with love. Answers to what I don't know come in the right time. I keep the bigger mission clear in my mind. Creating a life where I can live on my own terms is not free, there's a price to be paid.

Another really important thing to have a solid business system. I found my answer with the six-figure mentors. They have a step-by-step business system that shows you how to leverage the Internet and start your very own online business. What's, even more, is that if your goal is to start your own business say around your passion, the business skills you will learn are second to none. From experience with my first 2 ventures as a newbie without a mentor, I would recommend every new entrepreneur make getting a mentor, their number one priority. Looking at how I started my entrepreneurial journey, this was my single most expensive mistake up until today as I write this.

Final Thought

Along the way somewhere, I realised that I needed to give up the idea of perfection and get cosy with uncertainty about what will be tomorrow and experience some discomfort today because of the things that I don't know yet. I experience more growth as I continue to operate in that mental space. All I have to do TODAY is take to take the next best action. This post is unusually long so if you are still reading, I sincerely thank you. I hope you found some value in there. Feel free to share this post with someone else who will enjoy reading through the ideas and insights I have shared.

SOURCE

Embrace Social Media Now

Business is an ever-changing innovation. The practice of Social media has been adopted as an indispensable element in the business world. Social Networks have been around for over a decade, with a stronger presence now than ever, we see an increase in usage and effectiveness. People are connected on a global scale and this is what the world has accepted as our modern means of communication.

Today, companies have the ability to increase brand awareness and interaction to build relationships, generate new opportunities, learn about the audience, or target consumer through the practice of social networking platforms. Here is a break-down of the key reasons every business has a need for this innovative marketing.

Build relationships

Influence: Reach a group of consumers that may not have previously been reached. The interaction between business and customers is something conventional advertising cannot achieve.

Communicate the brand: Through social media, you can essentially tell your audience what you value and what you focus on through implied images, outreach, and posts, without flat-out saying "We are Company A, and we do Z." Social platforms such as Instagram and Twitter are not meant for blasting your company's sales pitch to a large audience.

Thinking ahead

Generate leads: Fill your page with gated content. Make the consumer want to give up name and contact information in exchange for some incentive.

Innovation: The use of a social network to share and interact with others continually grows at an astounding rate, so it would be in a businesses best interest to create and implement a sustainable social media strategy in order to successfully take advantage of this expeditiously changing environment.

Expectation: It is 2017, it is expected of consumers for businesses to have a presence on social media.

Lasting impression: By using social media, a business can increase their website traffic. Not only does social media help to direct people to websites, but the more social media shares received, the greater the search ranking will be. Remember, what gets posted is on the web forever.

Gain insight

Learn: Learn about buyer behavior and popular trends. Do not think social media is limited to learning about the consumer, though... Social media is an amazing way to see what your competitors are doing.

Targeting: This is used to reach the right audience. For example, if you run a Facebook ad, you can target based on location, consumer demographics, interests, behaviors, etc. The most beneficial part of a Facebook ad is that it shows the number of people reached by the ad. On LinkedIn, you can segment by things like location, gender, job title, and company to make sure the post information is as effective to you as possible.

Advertising: Social ads are an inexpensive way to promote your business and distribute content. Social media advertising services expedite your results. You can reach people across the globe instantly.

Choice: The consumers are more likely to choose the company with a stronger presence on social media over one that does not have one. A consumer wants to see an active company and gain insight about them.

Change is constant, we continually seek innovation in our everyday lives. It is the nature of our behavior. We strive for a newer, better, more effective way to do something. Social networks are just that. It is an innovation that every business needs to get on board with. If businesses do not adapt to change, they will surely become a thing of the past. Companies have the ability to increase brand awareness and interaction to build relationships, generate new opportunities, learn about the audience, or target consumer through the practice of social media. What is there to possibly lose? Master this change and reap the rewards.

SOURCE

Essential Internet Marketing Tips for 2017

When it comes to using an internet marketing company they will focus on using essential services and strategies to ensure you achieve online success in the long run. Managing your own online marketing campaign can be a daunting and time consuming process, but if you make use of a specialist company you can save yourself valuable time and energy, along with resources moving forward.

There are a few internet marketing tips you should be focusing on if you have chosen to manage your own campaign for now. As your business grows and you don't have the time to focus on your online marketing daily,, then it's time to hand your project over to a professional who can help you boost your brand, increase your web traffic and help you improve online revenue.

The first very important thing that any internet marketing company will tell you as the number one tip for success is to know your market. Know your product, know your audience and get to know your competitors. You want to focus on this in everything you do from your website design to the online marketing that you choose to do, whether it's pay per click advertising, social media advertising or both.

Next you will want to set yourself goals. Setting goals is essential to monitor your progress and ensure that your efforts are meeting your unique online needs. Setting goals should be realistic, from increasing your ranking to growing your followers on social media to setting up a blog or increasing your brand using pay per click advertising. There are so many things to remember and so many different goals to set and if you don't have online marketing experience, you may find that an internet marketing company is the best choice to help you grow your business online in the long run.

Always set yourself an internet marketing budget. You will be pleased you did. Your budget should be set if you are using an internet marketing company to identify how much you can spend with them each month. It is easier if the company you choose has set packages to take advantage of, so you can ensure your budget remains the same on a monthly basis. If you are considering pay per click advertising, set a daily budget, so that you only pay for the leads generated as a result up to a set amount, so that you are sure to not exceed your budget at any time.

Ensure that you focus on your branding. You want to have set and identifiable brand before you even start with your online marketing campaign. Your brand should be catchy and noticeable, easy to remember and something that relates to your audience. There is no point getting technological if you aren't catering to a technological audience, for example. Your internet marketing company should be able to provide you with advice, recommendations and assistance when it comes to your brand, so that you can ensure to increase visibility moving forward.

The final thing you are going to want to consider in 2017 when it comes to your internet marketing is search engine optimization. SEO has changed dramatically over the past few years and there are so many different factors to consider from focusing on your local audience to making your website mobile friendly. Then there are links, social media, keywords and more to make sure you meet in order to see your brand name increase through the rankings and dominate your market in the long run.

Cartoozo is a multiple award-winning internet marketing agency with over ten years' experience in the online marketing environment. This company has an active customer base of over three hundred with their customers being based around the world. This company helps their customers achieve online success with a host of packages designed to meet their customers' needs and budgets. Cartoozo offer a host of expert services ranging from web design to search engine optimization and copy writing to pay per click advertising, just to name a few. They have a team of experienced and dedicated technicians and the entire team focus on customer satisfaction at all times. To find out more, visit http://www.cartoozo.com

SOURCE

Direct Selling - Should I Get Involved With Direct Selling?

Should you get involved with direct selling? Allow me to explain what direct selling even is and then I'm going to list a few questions you need to ask yourself before getting involved in any way with the direct selling industry. First, direct selling is essentially cutting out the middle man. For example, big retail stores carry thousands of products made by millions of companies, this would be normal selling. Direct selling involves one company selling their products to consumers instead of giant corporations.

Questions To Ask

1. Can I Really Be My Own Boss? - Be honest. Can you really be in charge of your own work? Can you really stick to the game-plan day in and day out? Do you have enough self-control to wake up each morning and get the ball rolling? Are you prepared to accept the daily hits that every business owner to ever exist has experienced? For many people, the answer to all of these questions is a capital NO. Look, do not get involved in direct selling if you are not able to do these things. You will end up wasting your time, money, and most importantly you could potentially lose your business building confidence! If the answer is yes, continue on with this article.

2. What Do I Really Want? - What do you really want? Write down a list of the top 3 things you really want! Take your time and think about it thoroughly. If you just want money and to be rich, you are getting involved in direct selling for the wrong reasons! I've never, in my life, heard a medical doctor say they only became a doctor because of the money! Doctors became what they are because they wanted to help people and the money for doing it isn't nothing to laugh at it either. It was a win-win situation! Look at direct selling the same way!

3. Do I Like The Product? - If you don't like the product itself that you will be selling, stop immediately! I understand this industry has high payouts, however, you will never see a glimpse of those payouts if you don't even like or enjoy what you will be trying to get others to buy. Let's think about it this way, if you are constantly informing people of a product that you are trying to sell although you personally dislike the product, you're a joke! You can either lie and say you love the product or tell the truth and say you dislike the product. Regardless of if you lie or tell the truth you are not going to get very many sells! Don't get involved because you want to be rich, get involved because you desire to make a great income level from helping others!

Conclusion

So, is direct selling for you? Do not rush this decision! Take your time, breathe and relax. This industry is not going anywhere anytime soon, far from it. Take each question one-by-one and focus on answering them thoroughly. The direct selling industry isn't easy, don't allow anyone to tell you otherwise! However, it's not very difficult either. Direct selling simply requires work and this shouldn't be a shocker to you but a lot of people don't want to do any more work than they have to... even to be rich.

SOURCE

Niche Awareness - 5 Things You Need to Know

When you are first starting out in internet marketing one of the hardest things to do can be deciding which niche market you are going to target.

I know when I was first starting out I went from having no idea what area I would be targeting to being bombarded by so many different niche markets my head was spinning at the prospect of picking just one or two.

With that in mind I am going to look at some of the various kinds of niche markets available to you as well as a few other things you will need to consider, with the intention of casting a little light on the subject and hopefully as a result make the whole process of choosing a niche market that bit easier for you.

1. Try traditional niche markets

The traditional niche markets break down into three main categories

• Health and Fitness

• Wealth Creation

• Lifestyle

Each of these markets has existed for far longer than the internet has and will always be in demand. In fact, these markets have existed since before the beginning of marketing itself.

For example, people are always looking to improve their health, this could be health in general or dealing with a health condition that they have to live with such as diabetes, high blood pressure, back pain, asthma or IBS to name but a few.

Maybe you are more interested in the fitness side of things, again the scope for this market is huge and very much in demand. People are always looking for ways to work out at home or shorten their time at the gym with different ways to get the maximum results in the shortest amount of time. A lot of these gym goers are looking at ways to put on weight or build muscle.

Which brings me nicely onto what is probably the biggest area under the health and fitness banner, this is weight loss. The global weight loss market is estimated to be worth £220 million with an estimated 29 million Brits attempting to lose weight last year alone and with obesity on the rise this market is only going to get bigger. With that in mind there's always a marketplace out there that will be hungry for information in this area.

In the same way, people are always looking to make more money, maybe they have retired and want something to fill their time and top up their pension, or they could be looking for something to do as a hobby that can generate a little extra cash to supplement their wages. It could be, they have dreams of quitting the drudgery of the 9 to 5 and starting out on their own. As with health and fitness, wealth creation is a huge marketplace with numerous possibilities.

Similarly, lifestyle is an area that people want to improve constantly, this again covers a wide range of subjects, quitting smoking or drinking could also be covered by the health and fitness banner but tends to come under lifestyle as does improving sleep and stress management. You could also look at relaxation techniques and meditation as well as the very popular relationship niche. So as you can see a vast number of people will always be looking for solutions within this market.

In conclusion, the markets I've mentioned are a fantastic place to start if you're thinking of going into internet marketing, or even if you're already up and running and you want to explore a new niche then these are huge markets for you to tap into.

2. Solve peoples problems

Every single person who is in internet marketing brings a wealth of knowledge with them, and if you think that this is not true for you, then you are wrong. We all have things that we are passionate about, or are knowledgeable in, it could be a hobby that you have been doing for years or maybe you do a job in which you have gained knowledge that could be passed on to the less initiated - insider information, tricks of the trade etc. You can use what you know or love to help solve other peoples problems. Even if you don't have all the answers, with access to the internet you have all the experts in your chosen topic at your finger tips - just Google it! And if you're solving a problem, you're helping someone. If you're helping someone, then you can get paid for your time and effort.

Every single day people all over the world are looking for answers to problems they may have, in every single subject under the sun. Don't believe me? try googling 'how to get my bread to rise' and you get over 5.6 million results, or try 'How to improve my golf swing' and over 1.25 million results are returned, or try something more obscure like 'How to stop my dog barking' and you get over 770,000 results. What I'm trying to say here is that regardless of what you are knowledgeable about there is someone out there looking for answers to problems in that particular area.

If you can provide a solution to the people who are looking for answers, in a way that they can easily access, then you can get paid for doing it.

One of the easiest ways to do this is to produce an e-book and with websites such as Amazon kindle direct publishing; https://kdp.amazon.com it's now easier than ever to get your e-book out into the market place. If you add an audio or video version as well, then you will greatly improve your widespread appeal.

Do your research right and you can easily find the most common problems in your chosen niche. A very good way of finding what problems people need solving is to go direct to the market itself. One of the best places to look can be online forums dedicated to your chosen subject, you will find numerous people here looking for answers to an abundance of problems. Places like Yahoo Answers are also a great way of finding out what problems people are facing. If you want to you can always go and survey people in your chosen niche.

This is not only a great way to find out what problems people need solving, it's also very valuable to you because the people are basically telling you what product they need. All you have to do is give it to them.

3. Do your research

Research within your chosen niche is vital. It's important because it tells you what the market is thinking and more importantly what it wants. It also tells you if the demand is big enough to be worth your time and effort creating products that that particular market is asking for.

By going direct to the market you can discover what problems they face, what solutions they've tried, what has worked and what hasn't worked, you'll get a better insight into what people want and be better placed to provide a solution in a targeted way.

If you already have a list, that's great, send them a brief email questionnaire, ask them what they want to learn about, what problems they have (short term and long term), what kind of information they need.

One great way to find a niche market is to use the Google Keyword Tool https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal You can see how many people are searching for a specific word or phrase, this is an invaluable tool to ascertain if there is a demand for the niche you are considering. If there are 10,000 searches per month or more and very little competition from advertisers, you may well have found yourself a niche that's ready and waiting to be tapped into.

4. Keep looking

It's important as an internet marketer to constantly be on the lookout for new ideas and continue to search for new niches and markets that you can potentially tap into, this will not only increase the number of income streams you have but will also ensure that you are not putting all your eggs into one basket should one niche area start to wane. Having said that, don't give up on one niche just because you have had a successful product. If one product has worked, then the potential is there to sell more, keep going in that same niche until you have 4 or 5 good products all making you money.

Don't forget to keep a constant relationship with your existing buyers, send out emails at least once a month, send them offers, upsells and other products that you think they may be interested in. Remember it is easier and cheaper to sell to someone who has already been a customer than to sell to a complete stranger.

You are surrounded by places where you can gain inspiration for new niche markets. Try going to the magazine section of your local shop, look at the various magazines on sale and the subjects they cover, chances are that If there's a magazine for it, then it is likely to have enough potential buyers to be a worthwhile niche market.

As I mentioned earlier you can also find inspiration by playing around with the Google Ads Keyword Tool as well.

5. Go deeper

What I mean by this is quite simply finding more specific fields of interest within your chosen niche. For example, maybe your niche is the beauty market so then your more specific areas within this market could be hair, or nails, looking younger or even the make-up niche.

Taking the make-up niche as an example, you can narrow this down to things such as applying lipstick, foundations for different skin types, or applying eye make up.

Lets say you decide to create products about eye make-up, If you are somewhat of an expert on this subject then that's great, turn what you know into an e-book or a step by step video tutorial. If you are not then don't worry you could interview experts in this area and maybe record the interview and produce your product from this.

By going deeper and being more precise you could really get the most out of your chosen niche and because you're being very specific you can open up a whole world of possibilities to build on. Remember people love to learn from experts and so that attention to detail will pay off.

It's also a good idea to think laterally within your niche market and consider what other products or services people might be interested in. As I mentioned earlier, if people have already bought from you, then suggest other products you think they may be interested in or offer them an upsell of another higher priced product.

Finally, make sure that you take careful notes of what works and what doesn't work, then maybe look at how you can use what works in the future and whether you can fix the things that do not work or if you need to discard them and try a different approach.

SOURCE

SEO Tips to Get Your Website to the Top of Search Engines

When it comes to the success of digital marketing and finding new customers via the web, keyword optimization is one of the most important tools you can bet on. Keyword optimization or keyword research is the act of researching, analysing and selecting the best word or concept of great significance to your product, services or campaign in order to target and drive traffic from search engines such as Google to your website and other digital platforms.

Getting your website or blog on the first page of search engines can be a daunting task if you do not understand the fundamentals of optimization. Although this tutorial is not guaranteeing you the first place in major search engines, it does point out what one needs to do to be in the Search Engine Optimization game.

It is much easier than you think and this article is to guide, help and provide you with the basic and key for successful search engine optimization:

Step 1. Choose the right keywords

It is tough to be the best at everything and that includes Keyword Optimization. The first step of reaching the top of search results is identifying the right keywords. It can either be a single or multiple words or entire phrases. As you might already be aware of, most searches on the internet are made in the form of a question. Therefore, before you start writing down the keywords, you need to decide which keywords you want to focus on. These are the words people would type into the search engines in order to find your page, blog, website or product.

It is very essential that the word you choose as the keyword is broad enough for lot of people to search for on the internet, but narrow enough that you have a decent chance of getting a high search rank for it on the search engines and results.

For example, the word "shoe" is way too general. However, "Where can I find cheap shoes online" is a pretty good one. Similarly, the word "Europe" is way too general and Wiki sites will normally dominate these top spots. So, "the best holiday destination in Europe" is a much better phrase to focus on.

Here are my top tips for choosing the right Keywords:

1. Start with customers

Think about who your target audience or customers are. What are they likely to type into the search bar when they are looking for answers where your services can help them? Why not ask existing customers what they would search for?

2. Weigh up the competition

Although it is important for you to choose words that many of your target audience might be typing into search engines, they should not be words that bigger companies with the most muscles and bigger budget will compete for.

3. Use Google tools

Guess not only. Google has several good tools which can aid you find what is popular to search.

On Google Trends, a public web facility based on Google Search engine, shows how often a particular search-term is entered relative to the total search-volume across various regions of the world, and in various languages including a list of popular searches. You can also enter keywords and see how popular they are, compared with other phrases and ideas on similar terms - in order to choose the one that most are looking for.

You can also find keywords using Google's ad tool AdWords. You do not necessary have to advertise, you can just create an account and select using the "Keyword Planner" under the "Tools" menu.

Step 2. Customise Your Content

Once you have successfully chosen your keywords, there are a few other things you need to do in order get your site ranked high on search engines. One of such things is content creation. You have to create and distribute relevant and valuable content (such as speech, writing, photograph or any of the various arts) that attracts and engages your well-defined target audience. Content marketing helps us to attract new customers and build loyalty with existing customers.

For existing customers, this could also mean they take part of the relevant content that creates additional sales by learning more about your offer, and is more expensive products/ services than they have done previously. The following are few tips to consider during content creation:

1. Working actively with texts

Use keywords in the title and preamble of all the pages. Also, include the keywords in the body, the much higher up it is in the text, the better it is for your ranking.

However, be careful not to use your keywords too much. Google may interpret your site as a nonsense page which is only trying to attract traffic and you go down in search results. A rule of thumb is that your content should feel natural and interesting. Which of course is also important for your visitors.

2. Do not forget your photos!

Rename even your photos with your relevant keywords. This will make it possible for search engines index them and you can get hit even in image search. If you have the opportunity to enter an alternative text for each image, do not let go of such an opportunity.

Step 3. Get visits and links from others

The most important thing for search engines is to deliver good and relevant results, remember that's their primary business. Therefore, priority is given to websites that Search engines deems others rate high or think is good. An example is sites with links and many visitors who stay long to engage with the site. Therefore, this is really important to:

1. Make sure to get a lot of visits to the page

Ask family and friends to visit your website. Get the link or URL out there as often as possible, for example, you make a video, put it up on YouTube and the links there - but incorporate all the content on your site and link to it there.

2. Ask others to link to your site

Ask friends, business partners or customers to link to you, perhaps in exchange for a link back or share interesting tips in your field and let others get put up pieces of contents with a link to you.

3. Share your site on social media

Sharing your website and contents on social media (not forgetting Google+ Google for obvious reasons) is extremely important. It can provide visits to the website, more traffic, attention and higher rankings

4. Get visitors to share

Get others to share your site and contents on social media, using "share" buttons. AddThis is a one of the free tools allows you to instantly share or bookmark pages with one easy-to-use tool. AddThis can also get statistics on how much your content is shared.

Step 4. Revise the technical

Even how your site is built technically is important for your rankings. Here are some things you can do:

1. Use Google Webmaster Tools (Now Google Search Console)

The Google Search Console (aka Google webmaster) is an amazing tool which offers many tools that will aid you to thoroughly analyse your site. From this analysis, you can work on problem areas to make your site rank better on Search engines especially Google

2. Make Your Site Mobile Friendly,

With a good percentage of the world's population owning mobile devices these days, it makes sense to make sure that your site is mobile friendly. Mobile users also expects good mobile experience when they visit site.

If your site is not mobile friendly, it may rank lower in searches from mobile phones. Google recently Google released a significant new mobile-friendly ranking algorithm that's designed to give a boost to mobile-friendly pages in Google's mobile search results, therefore you can't go wrong with this offer.

3. Make sure the page is fast

A site that takes a long time to load will rank lower on search engines. Google has indicated in the past that site and page speeds is one of the signals used by its algorithm to rank pages.

Page speed is also important to user experience, the slower your site/page speed the more likely you will have high bounce rate and lower average time on your site. Some of the great tools which can help you with your site speed is Google Pagespeed Insights and GTmetrix. This are tools that empowers you to make decisions that increase the performance of your website.

Step 5. Use Web Analytics Tools

Use analytics to measure the outcome of your efforts or to determine which areas of your site are doing well. Google Analytics offers free and enterprise analytics tools to measure website, app, digital and offline data to gain customer insights.

Example: Google Analytics enables you to track the visitors to your store, and generates reports that will help you with your marketing.

Under the "acquisition" in Google Analytics select "all traffic" -> "Channels" -> "organic search" so you can under the "keyword" to see which keywords drive the most traffic and the "source" which search engine. Using Google webmaster tools, you have access to them in Google Analytics under "acquisitions" -> "search engine optimization".

Step 6. Use Google AdWords

Business regardless of size, wants to be found on the first page of Google. Getting seen by customers at the exact time they are looking for your information, products, services, deals or location is intent marketing (marketing based on someone intending to find your products), and it's profitable.

Many businesses use Google AdWords to archive these by creating highly effective advertising campaigns to market their products and services, drive traffic to their website, and ultimately, increase sales.

I hope this article has given you an in-depth view of keyword optimization and you find one or more of the above tips useful.

SOURCE

Insight

The post below is a trifle long but it is so full of useful info that I decided to keep it in. There are many tips that I resonate with that are straight out of the bible of many a top level marketer, on mindset, time management and personal 'bad' habits. Well worth persisting with right to the end.
Ray

Four Essential Reasons to Use Digital Marketing

The innovation of modern technologies has brought some interesting changes in every sphere of human lives. In such situations, businesses of no matter what size are trying their level best to keep up with this modified society. After years of research, business owners have realized that the only way by which they could keep up with this fast-changing era is if they invest their efforts in implementing digital marketing strategies.

In the modern times, almost every one of us has heard about digital marketing because this exceptional notion has managed to earn widespread recognition throughout the world. But how many of us really know what it is all about? Digital Marketing, also known as Online or Internet Marketing, is a wide term used to promote one's brand or services through the varied virtual channels, in order to reach a larger segment of the population. It has quite successfully replaced the traditional methods of promotion like print ads in newspapers or advertisements through television and radios.

Now that we know what digital marketing is, it is time to think that why must we use this technique. In the following discussion, we explore the reasons of using digital marketing.

Why Should You Engage In Digital Marketing?

1) In the present times, almost everyone uses the internet. Hence, if you want to reach your targeted audience and engage them, you have to do so through digitalized methods.

2) Almost every one of us tends to believe whatever is written on the internet. Thus, it is quite clear that digital reviews matter. Hence, if your brand gets some positive comments in the virtual world, you would most certainly get more loyal customers on that basis.

3) Recent research has shown that most of the consumers want brands that are reliable, companies that have a good reputation online, contents that are relevant and personalized and special offers that are custom-built to suit their needs and expectations. Well, digital marketing allows you to do just that.

4) This kind of marketing offers an analytics that is crucial for your ongoing strategies. Since, this promotional methods uses advanced tactics, you can easily comprehend what your consumers want and what they do not.

These are the four vital reasons for which more and more business owners are engaging in digital marketing. If you want maximum brand exposure, to increase sales and drive utmost traffic, you would need this technique and there is no doubt about it.

SOURCE