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When starting in Internet marketing and going through the emotions there is a plethora of different feelings you may have. There may be many ups and downs, and positive and negative feelings about what you are trying to achieve.
With these factors it is important to keep you attitude in check. How do you do that? The first step is to evaluate your emotions. Are you in a good mood, happy, upbeat? Or are you in a state of negativity. By knowing what you are feeling you will be able to gauge your work productivity.
When you're in a positive state you have inspired action. You enjoy the challenges, enjoy the tasks at hand. When you're in a negative state every task you do feels frustrating, tedious, and hopeless.
Inspired action is what you're looking for; it is what you should have while working. If in a negative state there are a few things you could do:
1. Switch tasks, if your writing a blog entry switch to website development
2. Find the task you enjoy the best and work on it
3. Stop all together, get off the computer and go do a load of laundry or something that does not relate to your work.
4. If your tired take a power nap
If these or other methods you find helpful fail, I recommend that you STOP!!! Stop what you are doing, you are working from negative which will just lead to more negative.
Although your making money online goal is important to you, it should not be your life or cause you massive negative emotion. Make it fun and enjoy the learning and success!
AddMe.com is a website that I use that offers free tools to both optimize your honest Internet marketing website and submit it to search engines. They offer upgrades for more indepth assistance if it falls within your budget, but the free tools are a must for any beginner.
They offer a variety of free tools for keyword research, link cloaking, site submission and much more. This is one of the handiest tools that I've used. It is an absolutely awesome set of tools for the beginning internet marketer and I do recommend it.
I use many of their tools. The link cloaker is one of my favorites, but I recommend that you only use it for cloaking non-affiliate links. It does not hide your affiliate link in the URL of the destination page. The site submission tool will get you started and get your honest internet marketing website out there. If you use the free submission tool it will be submitted to Google, Alexa, EntireWeb and more (up to 20). All you have to do is follow the step-by-step instructions.
This handy tool will definitely make your honest online work easier.
Helping others in their pursuits in life, online and offline - is much more important than money. I realized, after taking part in some adswaps that were really profitable, that I needed to stop what I was doing or else I would lose the trust built up with clients over the years.
A major downfall with online marketers is their desperation for money. The thing is - it doesn't need to be a downfall - it can be funneled into something and used as a motivator to create success. The desperate situation I was in when I started out 5 years ago is what helped give me so much passion to make a change - and it worked. I think if you are an honest marketer and do actually care about others - your success will be long-standing and you will gain a lot more than financial wealth.
I think people are sick of the sales letters and sales pitches that are over-offering and under-delivering. If you are selling a product online - my advice is to create an anti-salespage! I am not sure if that is a real term or not - but I hope to write a longer post about this later. My book, Honest Riches, over the years I am suprised it has continually sold so many copies. I think a major part of that is word-of-mouth, but also that I am not a great sales person. I didn't have a copywriter - I just wrote it as it was - and the honest side of the story sold itself.
So if you have a product and want it to sell itself - try getting rid of any and all hype and be overly honest to the point where you tell them not to buy it unless they are serious or ready. The fact that you tell them not to buy it - will urge them even more to buy it. It is so strange how this method works - I will write a long post on this on HonestHolly today or tomorrow - so please check back. I will also post it on here as soon as possible. Take care guys and I hope to participate on the HMM way more often.
One crucial thing, which is not my strong suit, when starting your online venture is staying organized. From website logins to text documents, everyone should be in a place you can find and of course (stating the obvious here) backed up.
Roboform is one tool, I consider to be a Must-Have in the organizational category. It is a password management and web-form filler, which means it logs you in automatically with and fills the online forms with your information for you, with only one password to remember It also ensures safety and helps security. There are other similar programs like it, but in my opinion they do not touch what Roboform can do.
Roboform is Free for the first 30 days with unlimited passwords. It stays Free for you, after the 30 days, as long as you have 10 passwords and under. Like most Internet marketers or people in general, you probably have much more then 10. If that is the case then your upgrade to Pro is only 29.95. With the Pro version you also get unlimited customer support, unlimited user profiles, identities and much more.
In Holly's book Honest Riches, when she mentioned organization, I thought well I am not making money yet, no need to get to organized. MY MISTAKE!!! Believe me if this is something you may not think you need, give it a shot, it's free, it may be the one thing you thank me for:)
The minute you launch yourself headlong into the Internet Marketing business, put a "contact us" link on your new website, or sell your first product, you immediately need to be adept at yet another skill. Customer Service.
We are conditioned from the outset to automate as much of the process of internet marketing as possible. Lead capture, payment processing, product delivery, even content generation can all be handed over to one script or another. And if you think your autoresponder is doing your Customer Service for you, think again!
An autoresponder is primarily a sales tool. It follows up with people who haven't yet bought your product to help them make the decision that will put cash in your pocket. It keeps existing customers up to date and interested in what you have to say so that they are more likely to purchase from you again. It can even reduce the amount of Customer Service you need to engage in if you use it to inform and train your list. But it cannot automate Customer Service.
It's a skill that is sorely lacking in the internet marketing world, and in the last week alone I have experienced the good, the bad and the downright ugly faces of Customer Service.
On the good side, something I had ordered was delayed and the person I ordered from emailed immediately to apologise and offer the goods free of charge in compensation. I paid for them anyway, because I'm basically an honest guy, it was the right thing to do, and because this person's service is usually fantastic and I wanted to continue using it.
At the other end of the scale is a marketer who delivered something other than what I paid for (not just wrong but completely unusable). They eventually responded to my emails and agreed to send the correct items. 16 days later, no product, no response to emails and I really have little alternative but to file a Paypal dispute. Do you think I would ever buy anything form this person again?
Customer Service is all about relationships, today's stroppy customer could be tomorrows highly lucrative JV partner. It is important to make the effort to respond quickly - even if it is just to say that you will get to the problem as soon as possible. Respond in a friendly manner. Leave your personal baggage behind, nobody wants to know that you didn't respond to their problem because you stubbed your toe on the way to send their email and spent 6 hours waiting to see the doctor. Be friendly, courteous and to the point.
And if you find all of this just too much to handle - outsource it. The services of a competent VA can be secured for a very reasonable fee these days, and if you find the right person they can make you look good and really efficient! If you're not at the point in your business where you feel you can afford to outsource just yet, I have an alternative for you...
I know I said that your autoresponder is not for automating your Customer Service. But there is a way you can use it to further reduce Customer Service inquiries. First you need two email addresses. The first is the one your "contact us" emails go to. Set your autoresponder up to reply to any email sent to that address with a comprehensive FAQ on your product or service. Make it clear that this is an automated response and at the end say something like "if your query has not been answered by our FAQ, please contact us at email-address-no.2". The second email address will now only receive queries that have already been fielded by your FAQ autoresponder.
You can add to the FAQ over time so that it really does eliminate the most common Customer Service queries from clogging up your inbox, AND gives your customers an instant and very helpful response.
Excellent Customer Service wins you loyal and long-term customers, kicking yours up a gear will reward you in the long run.
I'm no angel, but I can say that as a child, the idea of lying to my parents was completely foreign to me, and I seemed to be the only child I knew who did not habitually lie. I also was in a safe environment at home and there was no need to.
When working in humanitarian fields, I have dealt with the subjects of honesty and integrity, and in fact, for several years of my life, my work was dedicate fully to these subjects. When people take unethical actions or tell harmful lies, they do not only harm others. They also harm themselves. They begin to hold themselves back from taking action - any action. As man is basically good, even when they are doing evil, they actually are trying to stop themselves. This is why people get sick, lazy, slow, and even incompetent. The more dishonest and harmful actions a person takes, the more he holds himself back and attempts (in veiled ways) to prevent himself from acting.
As an Internet Marketer, the last thing you would want is to become lazy or inactive. Even though dishonest methods may seem to pay off in the short term (sometimes) the fact is that in the long run, life is life and life follows life's patterns. We have plenty to deal with as marketers. Fighting ourselves while we hold ourselves back should not have to be one of them. So keep your nose clean and go full-steam ahead! Produce valuable services or products for people - even if it is just information. Help others in some way, in return for whatever income you generate. Be decent and treat others as you would like to be treated. Provide something valuable in exchange for whatever income you receive. There are many simple and basic principles which are easily forgotten in the marketing world. It is only when those simple basic principles are overlooked that we beging to get into complexities and dishonesties. So I will attempt to dedicate this blog to the simple basics which add up to honest marketing and valuable service. Some of the key factors of success are the ones which are too easily and too often overlooked, so I will attempt to cover them here.