Network Marketing Journey

Learning the way of online marketing takes a great deal of time and effort. I’ve been at it for 3 years now and I’m still learning more and more all the time.

When you spend as much time investigating network and internet marketing, as I do, you quickly find out there are details which most “teachers” don’t OR won’t touch.

I’ve studied the guides, ebooks, and home study courses of numerous marketer and every one of them speaks to the importance of building a list with a squeeze page but never how to code it, for example.

Having the ability to code squeeze pages from the start would have given me the power to leverage my search engine marketing skills to a greater degree. Instead they all preach about how important it is to use them.

When Bob Gatchel initially told me about Marketing Quickies Volume 3 I was less than excited.

Until I saw the first lesson, that is.

Lo and behold, the very first lesson is about creating video capture pages. The very thing I sought for 3 years. The lessons are concise, clear and relevent to your lead generation needs.

Andrew Fox and Lee Benson have created a noteworthy internet marketing training system.

Online Profit Shortcuts

Tech-minded marketers will find undoubtedly find exceptional value in Marketing Quickies but what if that isn’t you? Have you ever heard the phrase “Forewarned is forearmed”?

You don’t have to understand all the technical aspects of creating videos and squeeze pages. In fact, you could probably start a successfully business marketing products online by outsourcing all the web design to another business owner.

However, having studied materials such as the videos provided at Online Profits Shortcuts, you’ll quickly be able to communicate your needs and know that the finished product is indeed what you desire.

And its very affordable, at $20 a month OR $197 for a full year.

I HIGHLY recommend taking a look at this service.

Go now, take a look by clicking here.

“Marketing Quickies 3 is a fast-paced video course by Lee Benson and Andrew Fox… that reveals the little-known strategies they use to pull millions of extra dollars from the Internet with ingeniously simple and quick-to-implement traffic generation and conversion-bumping techniques.”

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They aren’t concerned about your companies compensation plan, the killer products or how many mentions it has at pubmed.org. So what do they want?

They simply don’t hear it. Its all noise until some needs of their own have been met.

It probably sounds harsh but its true.

Corporate calls for just about any company will at some point tell you its important to be enthusiastic about everything you have to offer. The fact is, when it comes to belly-to-belly marketing (speaking to people face to face) this is true. In many cases, these people are going to know you, or be brought to you by someone they know and trust.

However, as an internet marketer, you are working to develop a following of people who don’t know you and have no previous knowledge of you. No frame of reference, therefore the level of trust has yet to be established.

All those people you’ve worked so hard to reach out to have their own concerns.

Before you bury them in details they don’t need to hear, let alone evaluate the gravity of your offer, take some time to answer their needs for some basic information. Make sense? Put their needs before your own and you’ll be taking the first step in proper prospecting.

• Who is this person trying to sell me on this business opportunity?
• What do I need to do to be successful, if I join?
• Why should I work with this person?
• If there are X-many thousands of distributors in the company can I be successful?
• Is this something I CAN do?
• Is this something I WANT to do?

Answering these questions doesn’t take a great deal of time but it does require a different mindset. Instead of approaching them as another somebody to add to your downline (Yah! Another sign up!) seek to meet their needs and decide if your opportunity is right for them. Doing so will equip them to understand, digest and move forward with you.

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In a word, no.

You don’t have to purchase a domain but — forgive me for being a little blunt here — it could be one of the potentially painful mistakes made, if you don’t buy one for your business.

When you point people to your website, your putting effort into generating traffic for your business and in the end you want to make sales or find like minded business people.

What happens if you decide a different company fits your needs better? Maybe your team moves on to a different project and you want to follow. Unfortunately, the company itself can  also have issues which cause it to close down OR maybe interests in thier market change.

All of these things do happen, after all, its a business venture, right? Well, if you use the website address (URL) allocated to you by the company, all the traffic you worked so hard to bring to your doorstep is wasted.

You’ll end up starting over again and we all know how ard it can be to start over from scratch.

Beyond brand recognition, SEO, page rank or any of the other reasons to use a domain this one is number one on my list. In point of fact, it becomes very difficult  to develop any of these without a domain.

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Over the last couple days I’ve been racking my brain to come up with some great new domain names for our latest project. As usual I was struggling until Tom told me about a website which gives you relevant suggestions (based on keywords you supply) that make sense.

Today I’m going to share that website with you but before I do I thought I’d share some of my thoughts on picking a great domain. If you are already a domain picking powerhouse already–scroll to the bottom of the page for the URL of the website.

Anyone who has spent some time learning about SEO has probably been told to have keywords in their domain name. There is something of a debate about how important this little detail is compared to the (most people saying its not essential but helpful) the overall scheme of your search engine marketing plans.

Yes, having the keywords in there adds yet another instance of the keyword but its far more important to be relevant, have a short domain (when possible), and be remarkable. Allowing people to remember and then talk about you.

A keyword stuffed URL can look like a garbled mess and will not give the user the professional impression you are likely trying to achieve. On the other hand, picking the right balance of keyword and relevance can net you more attention than you want.

As is the case with one of my YTB domain names. After 2 years I still get call after call and countless emails from networkers who contact me with the idea they are contacting the corporate office.

On that note, I’ll take this time to give you the website I mentioned earlier. It’s geared towards domains and has several tools to aide you in the quest for finding the right one.

www.domaintools.com

Note: See that? Keyword and relevance in perfect balance. Replicating this in your own domain will make your business/brand all that much more remarkable.

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Last week I was having a discussion with some friends, the typical banter you might expect among friends being shared. While this was going on I was nibbling on smome beef jerky (my Grandfather makes it and shares it with family).

Out of the blue one of them commented on my snack, saying something to, “The sasquatch didn’t catch you?”

I did a double take, of sorts, as you might imagine. It took me a moment to catch up but I eventually realized he was referring to the “Messin’ with Sasquatch” commercials.

Watching TV isn’t an activity I’ve indulged in, with much freqency, for year but I’ve seen a couple of these commercials a time or two.

My response? I thought … those commercials were for a beef jerky product? I could recall the commercial but the product associated with the obsurd line of commercials escaped me. Not exactly the response one would be hoping for, is it?

Certainly isn’t what I’d be hopping for if I were their marketing department. I’m not a marketing genius by any means but this is what happens when you create zany and imaginative commercials which are barely relevant–if they are at all.

The same goes for you when you’re creating ads, mini-sites and articles for your products. If you’re hoping to create some product awareness and sales, your prospects must remember and be familiar with the product not just the delivery system.

Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with creating zippy content intended to make people laugh but make sure its relevant, maintaining the remarkability of your product.

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This past week I had a few days to sit and reflect on how things have been going in recent days. Being sick with the flu has a way of forcing you to sit down and sit still. While I was recovering I started thinking about the direction I intend to go in the new year and I came to one conclusion.

The past few years have been about redefining myself and and discovering what I wanted from life. I knew I didn’t want to stay at Wal-Mart forever so I began looking for ways to make money which would allow me to enjoy life instead of wasting it away.

Internet Marketing turned out to be the gateway into that lifestyle. Still one problem remained.

I was still doing 90% of the work when it came to all forms of marketing for my projects. I was making money and having a blast working on these things but I was quickly headed for a decline, ending in burnout.

This year, I intend to step things up even further as a marketer but I will be looking for ways to further my business through outsourcing much of my article and web design to other individuals. This will allow me to focus on the forecasting and product creation which is so important to an evolving business.

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This time of year is often a time of reflection and change for many of us. We look back at the past year and look at how much has changed in our lives. I’m no different.

Looking back I see a pretty awesome and productive year, as a whole. I spent much of the time learning how to take my networking business to new heights. Some of it worked for me, some of it didn’t.

But that is all part of the process, isn’t it?

Unfortunately, the process caught up to me in the last few months. Or rather, the neglecting of my own needs in order to persue my business goals caught up to me. Yeah, I pushed myself pretty hard, doing most of the work myself and didn’t think twice about it.

At least, not until I reached a point of sheer burnout. Having determination is a good thing but when you’re blinded beyond seeing the toll it has on you it becomes a detriment to both you and your dreams.

You may have noticed that I’ve been rather quiet here and thats largely because I’ve been taking a much needed break away from my business, blogs and the like. I felt selfish in doing so and didn’t like doing it but its for my own good — it needed to be done.

My advice to you is to keep working on your business. Do everything you can to build your empire but don’t ignore your own needs. Take time for yourself, rest and return to your work with a renewed sense of purpose.

As the year closes, I am doing the very same thing. Before my hiatus I came to the conclusion that it was time to build something of my own. Something I could create out of my own experiences and help others to empower themselves.

My goal in the next year is to do exactly that. Its an entirely different process and I’ll continue to work on my network marketing projects but I have a new sense of purpose and more growth to seek.

Its an exciting time for me and I look forward to sharing my discoveries and experiences with you. Its once again time to begin paying it forward.

We’re all in for one fantastic year in 2009. Lets make it the best we’ve had yet!

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Promoting YTB Travel Online was the first time I had the opportunity to optimize a website and develop a substantial amount of traffic. For the first time someone had taken the time to refine the blogging and promoting I was already doing to focus my efforts and produce more ranking juice.

I devoured everything I could on the subjects of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and online site promotion because I was witnessing what one can do with a little focused effort.

You are promoting your website when you:

• Add your website to pixel sites.
• Add your website URL to blog posts.
• Add a website URL to forums posts.
• Submit your homepage to web directories.
• Add your website to your Twitter Bio.
• Edit your email signature to include your website URL.
• Use Traffic Exchanges.
• Include your website in your forum signature.
• Regularly add great content to a website (Google will love you for this.)
• Include a website URL in EVERY Press Release you write.

Not Search Engine Optimization

Each of these things are an effort in promoting your website and all of them lend to your off-page organic seach engine optimization efforts.

Online Advertising (buying advertising for traffic) and all the things above are NOT web search engine optimization. They are website promotion but as I said, they can have search ranking benefits.

What IS SEO?

When asked, most people will tell you SEO is about getting to the first page on Google for a given keyword OR getting to #1 on that page. SEO is actually the process one goes through to get there. The page one result is the goal, not the definition.

The process goes a little something like this…

• Identify your audience (Who are you trying to reach? Target market?).
• Evaluate your competition.
• Create a relevant keyword list.
• Take necessary action for both On Page (Title and Meta description tags, Anchor text and so on)  and Off Page (both free and paid website promotion).

While website promotion does have an effect on your search rankings, doing everything you can to maximize the on page factors is critical.

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I’ve been really bad this week.

My attention has been focused elsewhere so I’ve been neglecting emails, comments and phone calls but before you jump to conclusions, let me explain…

Throughout the past week I’ve gotten a number of emails from readers asking if I’m doing OK. I really appreciate the concern but I really am feeling great. This past week has been something of a marvel and I’ll try and do it justice while I explain.

About 4 months ago my Mother called me asking if they could use the video cam I had recently purchased for a project. When asked about the details of the project (what can I say, I’m naturally curious) she briskly told me she didn’t want to talk about it because she and her accomplice (a friend) didn’t want the cat getting out of the bag, so to speak.

Thankfully I don’t always take no for an answer, so she entrusted me with the mission at hand.

As it turned out, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition had been requesting nominations for project applicants in the area and my mother (along with her friend) decided to nominate a friend of the families family.

With this knowledge she admonished me not to tell a soul so I zipped my lips and didn’t breath a word. The months flew by, as they always do, and after a couple months I inquired about the status of their nomination.

Amazingly, the family we worked to nominate was 1 of 5 to be chosen, or so goes the rumor…

By this time I was starting to get really excited for the prospective winners because I knew just how much it would help them out. So, I focused on the thought of them winning and let it go (just as the law of attraction states). In the remaining time before the decision day it never even entered my mind that they would be turned down.

Now fast forward to last Monday and another phone call with her. According to what she was told, they would find out who won the following day and on Wednesday they would begin working on the house of the family they chose.

Even at this point I wasn’t the least bit concerned. I was confident they would win and that Ty Pennington would be knocking on their door at any time.

I spent the rest of my day Monday with friends and I happened to mention the show and asked if they knew about a contest of sorts going on in the area. They knew the show, and one of my friends had heard through the grapevine that the mother was a school teacher and the father was a bus driver.

Jackpot! Ding! Ding! Ding!

This fit the description of the family nominated so I was about 95% certain it was the family my mom nominated. As it turns out, I was right. After placing a few calls Tuesday afternoon and late evening I confirmed it. They won.

On Wednesday they sent the family on vacation, Thursday they started by bringing the house down and its been facinating to watch them build the house in a matter of days. I can’t even begin to imagine the amount of cordinating and planning it takes to make it all happen.

Best of all … in a matter of hours the family will be shown their new home.

So now you know why I’ve been distracted as of late. I do apologize for being slow with my replies to your emails, your concern is noted and appreciated.

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Tom Long, an networking associate and long time friend of mine likes to describe online marketing as ‘putting billboards up all over the Internet’. A great way to visualize this is to think of all of the billboards set up along the highway.

The only difference, in this case, is you’re on the information ’superhighway’ AND in a lot of cases the advertising is free (or next to no cost). Sometimes people find it hard to believe you can make money online without spending great sums of money but you can.

This goes right along with my post about the butterfly affect in network marketing. You start out small but if you keep at it, people will find you through many different types of advertising avenues.

As a result of the efforts I’ve put into effect in the past and continue to do today, I have gotten the attention of more than one industry leader. They all tell me they are impressed with the things I’ve accomplished but since I had only begun at the time I didn’t really put a lot of faith into what they said.

After all, I had little confidence in myself and that translated into not really believing them. However, time and my continued efforts proved them right. By continuing my blogging, article marketing, forum marketing and so on, I generated leads for the networking side of the business but more importantly (in my eyes) I began to generate between 50-100 product sales a month.

And still do to this day, with that number slowly growing over time.

Don’t underestimate the power of what you can do through accumulated effort.

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