Business Opportunities Weblog - Recommended

Hello biz tips readers! Hope you are having a glorious day!

Today's free home business tips post is going to be short and sweet. Basically I just want to direct you to one of my favorite and highly recommended weblogs. It's called, "Dane Carlson's Business Opportunities Weblog" and it is full of great business information.

Taken right off the home page:

Since 2001, we've posted about 6001 different business opportunities and ideas, so you're sure to find something here to inspire you!

They have all sorts of categories, including: Affiliate Marketing, Work at Home, eBay, Franchise, MLM, and much more...

You can find it here: Business Opportunities Weblog

Alright, that's all for today!

Dedicated to your home business success,
Trent Brownrigg

Did you enjoy this post? Show it some love...

Five Big Reasons Why Internet Marketing Newbie’s Fail

Five Big Reasons Why Internet Marketing Newbie’s Fail

It's no secret that thousands of people make money online as internet marketers. Some internet marketers make HUGE amounts of money and live amazing lives, some make just enough money online to replace their full time job, others make a good part time income, and others don't make much more than a little extra spending money. The point is that there is money to be made as an internet marketer, whether it's a lot or a little.

The problem is that for every internet marketer making any amount of money online, there are hundreds upon hundreds that never make a cent. In fact, most spend more than they ever make and end up quitting.

So why is it that so many internet marketing newbie’s fail? Here are five big reasons...

#1 - New internet marketers tend to set unrealistic goals for themselves. Set goals for yourself that are attainable. By setting and achieving reasonable goals, you build confidence in yourself and your abilities. This allows you to confidently set ever increasing goals which you can regularly meet. People who set unrealistic goals often fail in internet marketing because they get discouraged when they do not achieve their goals. After getting discouraged month after month, they often believe they can not succeed and they end up quitting. Don't let this happen to you!

# 2 - New internet marketers usually don't have their own product. While there are many ways to make money and be very successful as an internet marketer, creating your own product is probably the best. Having your own product allows you to harness the power of affiliates who will promote it and allow you to multiply your efforts tremendously.

# 3 - Internet marketing newbie’s often lack a true desire to succeed. If you want to be successful in internet marketing you have to be absolutely committed to success. This means setting time aside each day for your internet marketing activities, and more importantly, performing those activities each day without fail. You can not expect to achieve any level of success in internet marketing if you can't commit yourself to doing the very things that you need to do to be successful each and every day without exceptions. It's that important.

# 4 - Internet marketing newbie’s sometimes get caught up in doing too much. It is important that you know what kind of tasks you are good at. Don't make the same mistake that countless other internet marketers make of trying to do everything yourself. Outsource tasks that take up too much time or that you are not good at doing. There are many places online where you can hire inexpensive help, on a per project basis, to perform these tasks. For instance, if you are good with web design, then go ahead and design and build your own site. Otherwise, contract the web design out and spend your valuable time doing something you are good at, like marketing.

# 5 - New internet marketers seem to like to plan themselves to death. If you want to be a successful internet marketer you need to take action. Come up with a plan and then put that plan into operation. There are too many internet marketers who think up a good idea, formulate a plan, and never put that plan into action because they are constantly analyzing and refining that plan or waiting for the right time to start. Don't sit around and wait for the "perfect time" because it will never come! This is referred to as "paralysis by analysis."

I am by no means saying that your marketing plan doesn't need careful consideration and analysis because it does. But at some point the planning must stop and the action must start. Don't be afraid to take that first action. You may fail at first, but get up from it and do it again. You will be amazed at how much easier each successive action becomes.

To conclude, it is important that you do not make the mistakes outlined above. You will stay ahead of the competition and give yourself a huge jump start on making money and becoming a successful internet marketer if you follow my advice. Finally, DO NOT GIVE UP! You will fail at time, that is certain, but you will also succeed if you learn from those failures and keep going.

Who the heck wrote this anyway?

His name is Trent Brownrigg. He is a successful internet marketer and home business mentor. You can find his home based business opportunities website at http://www.work-at-home-jobs-iowa.com and his Work at Home Business website at http://www.home-business-team.com

Browse around both sites. You can learn a lot about internet marketing and making money online from them. Find a home business opportunity that interests you and he will personally help you succeed with it!

Did you enjoy this post? Show it some love...

Setting Yourself Apart From Other Affiliate Marketers

Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to make money from your own online home based business.

There are many reasons for this... A few of the big ones are that you get to skip the research and development stage, and the product creation and the copywriting for not only the sales page but all the subsequent advertisements. By not having to invest in these early stages of product development you save a lot of money and time.

This leaves you, as the affiliate, the task of simply marketing the chosen product or service.

Easy enough, right?

Well my friend, this is where it gets a little harder that it sounds.

The fact is that there are many people just like you entering the internet marketing circle every day looking for the so called "easy money." And since that is exactly what most people think affiliate marketing is, there tends to be a lot of competition in most niches.

The trick to affiliate success, no matter which market or niche you may choose, is to separate yourself from all the other affiliates who are using the exact same marketing materials as you are.

Your first order of business is to get your own domain name along with a website. make sure your domain name is closely associated with the niche of choice. For example, If you are targeting the work at home and home based business niche you may want to choose something like www.work-at-home-based-business.com

Next, you will want to find a template that you can use as a basis of your website or find another site for ideas to create your own site (don't copy them). If you have more than one page on your site, it is very important that the look and feel of your site stays consistent throughout.

You can really set yourself apart from all the other affiliate marketers by writing a special report (ebook) or review of the product or service you are going to promote. Not many affiliates will do that and it is a very good marketing tool. Now get this report out to as many people as possible.

The report should be given away for free as an enticement for the prospects name and email address, which should be submitted into an autoresponder. Set up several messages, somewhere between 7 to 10 (or more), to go out at 2 to 3 day intervals. Each message should give an explanation and the benefits derived from the product, as well as some other useful affiliate information and your affiliate link.

The autoresponder opt-in form should be prominently displayed on all of the pages of your site along with a little sales pitch telling your visitors why they should download the free report. You can easily set this up in the sidebar of your website, usually on the left hand side towards the top.

By building this list of prospects you can communicate with them as often as you want (but don't flood them with emails). Send them alerts when a new product comes out, when upgrades are available to existing products or when sales on their favorite products are being offered. You should also send them good, free and useful information such as affiliate marketing or home based business articles. This will build trust with them and keep them on your list.

There are many reasons to build your list when running an online home based business as an affiliate marketer, but by offering a special report you label yourself as an expert in your field, and you set yourself apart from all the other affiliates. You also build your list and that is a crucial part of internet marketing success.

Dedicated to your home business success,
Trent Brownrigg
http://www.work-at-home-jobs-iowa.com
http://www.home-business-team.com

Did you enjoy this post? Show it some love...

The True Power of Sharing

It has been said that, "If you give, you shall receive". This saying is often used to refer to giving of your time, your effort, your money or other material things before you can reasonably expect to receive any of these things from others. All of these things can be very valuable, but one of the most powerful things to share, and also one of the easiest, is thoughts and ideas.

When we consider sharing something, we often think of this as parting with something. Share some of your money and you will no longer be able to spend it yourself. Share some chocolate and whoever you share it with gets to taste this delicious substance, not you. At least you won't taste all of it. Sharing, in these cases, means parting with. It means you give something away that you will no longer benefit from directly. This is not the case with thoughts and ideas. When you share a thought or a good idea that doesn't mean you lose it. It doesn't even mean there is any less left for you. As a matter of fact, quite the opposite is true. You can truly be enriched by the thoughts and ideas you share with other people. Share some wisdom with someone else and now two can benefit from it. Even though there was no cost involved for you in sharing it, to the person on the receiving end it could represent a huge value.

Unfortunately we often try to keep things for ourselves in order to keep a competitive advantage. To 'keep the edge' so to speak. This is understandable and can sometimes be a good strategy. Certain information can be extremely valuable and if it really gives you this 'edge' then keeping it to yourself may be the smart thing to do. In reality however most of us don't possess any information that really offers sustainable advantage over others. The truth is that the real advantage in this day and age, with the Internet at everybody's fingertips, is no longer in any single piece of information. The people that have been most successful have done so by combining ideas and concepts into combinations that others haven't thought of. From this perspective not sharing your ideas may actually rob you of many opportunities and as such cost you a great deal.

In business, as well as in personal life, breakthroughs often come from a combination of ideas. Rarely is one man's creative idea completely fabricated by his own mind. The tossing back and forth of ideas and concepts usually plays a critical role in the development of new ideas. In discussing the potential application of a certain technology with a customer, this customer can come up with ideas that you would have never thought of. After all it's the customer's business and he probably knows more about it than you do. Especially when you're talking to an entrepreneurial type of individual. Most entrepreneurs are always looking for new opportunities to improve their bottom line and expand their business. Now why would he share his ideas with you if you haven't shared anything with him? Good question. You could of course turn the situation around; why share anything with him if he hasn't shared anything with you? Although this may be a fair question, it isn't really relevant. After all this is exactly the deadlock situation that hampers so much creativity. Of course there is always a risk of someone running off with one of your ideas. So it wouldn't be a bad idea to protect your idea or at least a part of it. You could for instance leave out some details that aren't necessary to paint the big picture but would surely be critical in bringing the idea to fruition.

The human brain makes connections based on our frame of reference. Since every person’s frame of reference is unique it's possible for a group of 1000 individuals to listen to one and the same speech, talk or idea and yet, have all of them interpret it differently. As a matter of fact, this is not just possible; it will inevitably be the case. Since no two persons share the exact same background, body of knowledge and life experiences. These differences in interpretations could therefore lead to very different concepts and ideas a person could come up with. That is where one of the most powerful aspects of sharing comes into play. Your ideas may spark a new idea in someone else that you would never have thought of by yourself, which in turn sparks another idea in you that they would never have thought of by themselves. Of course this doesn't have to be a conscious sharing of ideas. Most of the time it will happen without you actually being aware of it. A thought will come up that you think is your own when in fact it was initially put their by someone else. In your quest for ideas your mind dug up this idea and perhaps linked it to some other fragments in your memory banks that, put together, formed a new breakthrough idea.

Even though this is mostly unconscious, it's still a good strategy to share more ideas on a consistent basis. Think of it like this; every time you share something a number of things happen. For starters, you deposit something into someone else's memory bank. You never know what this little piece of information, this concept will do for the person you share it with. Perhaps it does nothing for them but it eventually does for someone else they share it with. This person may or may not share something with you in return. But there is a universal law that states that: "If you give out, something is coming back". The law doesn't say that it's coming back on Friday at 10:00am, when you might need it the most. It just says "It's coming back". In many cases when you share something, that person will feel obligated to share something with you. Perhaps right away, perhaps a month from now. Not necessarily out of obligation, but out of human nature. This is the law of reciprocity at work. Whenever they share something with you, that concept will be stored inside your head. Perhaps you may not see an immediate use for it. In many cases you probably never will. However you never know when and in what situation their idea may turn out to be useful. Perhaps in combination with some other ideas that have yet to be shared with you by other people.

But guess what? If you don't share your thoughts with them, they may not share theirs with you. And because you didn't share you missed out on that one little idea that you needed to put everything in its place. Who knows how much you will miss out on because of that? It's safe to say that not sharing could cost you infinitely more than keeping it all to yourself would ever earn you. And that is just too much of a price to pay. So whenever you have the opportunity to share some worthwhile thoughts with another person, do so. It may work wonders, for you and them, and it won't cost a thing.

Dedicated to your Success,
Trent Brownrigg
* Home Based Businesses
* Home Business Team
* Work at Home Based Business
* Honest Income Program

Did you enjoy this post? Show it some love...

How to Promote Your Home Business by Public Speaking

As a home business entrepreneur, speaking in public can be one of the most effective ways to market your home business. There are countless opportunities out there for you to get yourself in front of your target market. There is no better way to have a captive audience full of prospects and it is one of the fastest way of establishing yourself as an expert.

You don’t have to be an expert public speaker to present to the public. Just doing a reasonable job is better than not doing anything at all.

Prospects are much more likely to engage your services if they’ve seen you speak. Let’s look at the following example; Say you were looking for a doctor. Would you be more inclined to trust someone you had found in the Yellow Pages, or someone you had heard speak knowledgeably at the local Chamber of Commerce?

Look into opportunities in your local area where you can offer to speak for free. Professional associations, networking groups, Chambers of Commerce, educational bodies and Rotary Clubs are all potential public speaking venues. They often look out for speakers for their events, meetings and workshops.

Also research the audience that is going to be at your speech. For example, what industries are they likely to represent? Are they from large or small companies? What would interest them? What angle should your presentation take?

When it comes to finalizing your speech topic, be sure to make it sound enticing and interesting. People often decide whether to attend a talk based on just the title so put some serious thought into this.

Practice is key to coming across in a professional manner and reducing nerves. Write your speech out in full, but never read it verbatim. Have an outline prepared and available for you to refer to.

Check with the event organizer how long you have for your talk. Include timing in your practice runs. There is nothing worse than having a speaker run over time. And it will be embarassing for you if they have to cut you off half way through.

Get the most mileage out of your presentation by having some promotional material at the back of the room, for example some business cards, flyers or brochures that people can take with them if they wish.

You can be even more proactive and set up a newsletter before starting to give speeches. At the end of your presentation you can encourage your audience to sign up for your newsletter in exchange for a promotional gift or free e-book. That way you have also added valuable contacts to your database.

Many entrepreneurs swear by public speaking as a way of building and maintaining a steady stream of clients for their businesses. Give it a try, you have nothing to lose! At the very least you will improve your communication skills, meet some new people, and probably get some good business prospects and business contacts.

Did you enjoy this post? Show it some love...

5 Quick and Easy Business Newsletter Tips

Ok so it's no secret that you need to stay in touch with the people on your mailing list, but you have some concerns about starting a business newsletter. Will it take up too much of your time? What if you run out of things to say? Can you maintain quality over a period of time? How long should your newsletter be? Etc...?

One thing you should do, without a doubt, is to offer useful and interesting information based on the niche that your subscribers signed up for. If you run a home business opportunity website then that is what your subscribers want to know about, so don't send them gardening tips. If you don't follow that rule, you won't have your subscribers for long!

Another thing you should do is keep your newsletter fairly short. Remember that most people are flooded with many emails every day so they actually prefer something they can skim quickly and then put to use.

Spend some time thinking about the best format. You need a model that will be easy to reproduce week after week, month after month, year after year. Any one of the following five newsletter ideas will make your job much easier. Choose one and keep it as a regular format, or combine several of them. For example, you could use the "tip of the week" format for two weeks each month, then give them a "top ten" on week three, and offer a "checklist" every fourth newsletter (or any other combination you want).

1. Tip of the Week

This one speaks for itself. You can easily brainstorm enough content for six months of weekly newsletters. If you send this format every week you will need to come up with 24 tips. Anyone with a certain degree of expertise on a given topic should be able to do this without any trouble. A handy way to organize this is to first explain the problem then offer the tip which will solve it. The length should probably be anywhere from 200 - 500 words.

2. Top Ten

This is a tried and true format, and easy to create. Example: if you are an expert on home business, you could offer advice on the "Top Ten Home Business Opportunities," or the "Top Ten Ways to Market a Home Business," or the "Top Ten Tips for Starting a Home Business." Make sure you keep a tight rein on word length - just offer a couple of sentences for each tip, not half a page.

3. Three Ways to...

Sometimes it can be a bit of a challenge to come up with ten ways to do things, whereas just three ideas are easy to come up with. You can also explore three ideas in more detail. Alternatively, you can alternate the "Top Ten" format with "Three Ways to..." format; the two of them will work together nicely.

4. Before and After

This idea works in a similar way to the "tip of the week" in that you present a problem and then provide a solution to it, but the "before and after" approach lends itself better to case studies.

This is a good way to interact with your subscribers. Invite them to send in details of something that needs some fine tuning: an article, a website page, a product, etc... Then present your solutions. Alternatively, you can ask for "before and after" examples from readers who have managed to do this themselves, then showcase it for the rest of your readers.

5. Checklists

When you're learning to do something new, a checklist is the best way to be sure you don't leave out a critical step. Checklists can save a lot of time, and your readers will be delighted to get one. Write a brief introductory paragraph, present the checklist, and then follow it with a few final tips. You can either base your entire newsletter on the checklist format, or present one at regular intervals as a change from the standard article format.

And a bonus tip for you... Set up an email address at yahoo or gmail just for newsletters. Spend a few hours checking out sites related to your own business niche, and sign up for any free newsletters they have. Every so often, check your new email account and browse through the newsletter, looking specifically to see what approach other editor’s use for layout, articles and information. When you see a format you like, save it in an "ideas" folder. Then you can take ideas from different formats to create your own perfect newsletter format. Unsubscribe from any that are constantly filled with junk or endless sales pitches, these won't help you and you don't want to send that kind of stuff to your subscribers.

Dedicated to your home business success,
Trent Brownrigg
http://www.work-at-home-jobs-iowa.com
http://www.home-business-team.com

Did you enjoy this post? Show it some love...

Creating High-Impact Sales Letters Using Testimonials

Sales letters are a very effective marketing tool when you use the right ingredients to develop a sales letter that is directed specifically toward your target market. When you write a sales letter, you should introduce your product or service, outline its features and benefits, differentiate the product or service from those of your competitors, tell the reader why they need it, and convince him or her to make a purchase. The catch is, you need to do all of this within a fairly short, persuasive, sales piece. One of the best tools you can use to show readers that they need your product or service is testimonials from satisfied customers.

When a customer is satisfied with your product or service, ask the customer if he or she would be willing to write a short testimonial outlining their experiences with the product or service. Perhaps your product saved the customer 50% off of their normal materials expense because the product utilized materials more effectively. It could be that the client that utilized your marketing consulting services has experienced a 35% increase in the number of leads derived from the marketing campaign you developed. If this is the case, let your clients tell your story in their own words. This is one of the best methods of persuasion. Everyone likes to know what others think about something before they spend their money on it.

Never use a copywriter to write testimonials for you and NEVER put fake testimonials on your sales letter. These testimonials will never sound as genuine as those that can be given by customers. Another danger when using false testimonials is that the voice of each testimonial sounds the same, making it look like the same person wrote each and every paragraph. People can spot a fake from a mile away!

When you ask for testimonials, ask for a long testimonial in the customer's own words. Many advertisers use very short testimonials that encompass one or two positive words about a product or service. This makes potential customers suspicious because it looks like an editor has cut down a lackluster testimonial into a rave review. You can always edit your customers' testimonials for grammar and spelling, but you should keep the wording intact. This will further help you to maintain a genuine appearance when using testimonials.

Use specific testimonials that describe how using your product or service has changed the lives of your customers for the better. Instead of "this is a great product," find a testimonial that says something like, "I used XYZ Tools and saved 50% of my business materials from going to waste." This is a specific and measurable result that can show prospects what they could actually gain by making a purchase. If your business is service-based, let customers talk about how your service has improved the quality of their lives, saved them money, saved them time, decreased waste, etc...

Using testimonials from satisfied customers may not have occurred to you when you first started to write your sales letter. Once you solicit some genuine testimonials from customers and use them in your sales letters, you will start to notice a real difference in the inquiries about your product or service. Your sales should go up and your income increase!

Dedicated to your business success,
Trent Brownrigg
http://www.work-at-home-jobs-iowa.com
http://www.home-business-team.com

Did you enjoy this post? Show it some love...

How to Cure Home Business Ad Writers Block

Welcome back biz tips readers. I apologize for slacking off on posts over the holiday season. Im back now! Today's free home business tip is about how to help you cure writers block when trying to write ads for your online home based business.

Enjoy...

So you're running a fairly successful home based business but it requires you to constantly write ads to keep the customers or traffic coming. Why? Because on the Internet, ads get old very fast. Once somebody has seen the same ad a certain number of times they build up immunity to the ad. That's why online business ads have to be freshened constantly.

So what happens when you sit down to write your weekly or monthly home business ad and all you can do is sit down and stare at a blank piece of paper or a blank computer screen? Nothing is coming. You couldn't write your name and address if you tried, let alone write an ad.

What do you do?

Well, there are a couple of things you can do. The first is easy. The second is also easy but something that very few people think of. Hopefully, after you've read this article, you'll have a couple of decent ideas for handling home business ad writers block.

The first thing you can and should do, is look at your ad writing from a different perspective. I'm not talking about trying to write a different kind of ad or ad style. I'm talking about looking at the ad itself from another point of view. Primarily, the point of view of the customer or potential customer. Put yourself in their shoes. If you were looking for this particular product or service what would YOU want to see in the ad? What assurances would you need to be given in order for you to take a chance and make a purchase? Sometimes we have to walk in another man's shoes before we can understand what it is that makes them either buy or not buy something. Just by doing that little thing alone, you have a very good chance of writing an ad the likes of which you've never written before. It may just turn out to be your best yet.

But if divine inspiration doesn't come to you, there's always another method you can use to come up with a new ad.

Go to your old ones.

If I just lost you, let me explain.

Over the course of time that you have been promoting your product or service, you must have certainly written a few ads that got you a decent amount of sales. Then after a while you noticed that the ad didn't get you any sales anymore. Well, there's a reason for that. The ad itself was still good. The problem is that is was overused.

So how does this ad help you now?

Simple. You need to go back to the ad and reread it. It's probably been a while anyway so it's doubtful you know what's in it. After you reread it you can do one of two things. If the ad is not too old then you can take parts from it that you know are good and come up with a new ad from it. But, if the ad is very old (and this is where you don't have to do any work at all) you can simply rerun the ad.

How's that possible? Didn't the ad already stop working?

Well, yes and no. It may have stopped working 6 months or even a year ago, but one year later, nobody is going to remember that ad. So, if you rerun the ad, there is a very good chance that you'll have some decent results with it. Try it some time.

There you go. Two great ways to get rid of Home Business Ad Writers Block.


Written by Trent Brownrigg
http://www.work-at-home-jobs-iowa.com
http://www.home-business-team.com

Did you enjoy this post? Show it some love...