True Results To Replace Your Job

Do These 5 Steps In 2009 To Ensure Great Success

2008 is almost over and 2009 is coming up in just a few days… How was 2008 for you?

For me, 2008 is definitely a great year. It moves me a step closer to my ultimate goal, which is to achieve a dream Internet lifestyle.

While I’m currently enjoying a decent 4-figure online monthly income, I’d certainly want to make that to a 5 and 6 figure on autopilot as I continue to build upon my online business.

Do you want to know how I was able to quit my job and earn a nice 4-figure online monthly income?

Let me tell you a Secret…

I was able to do that because I took massive ACTION!

Rather than planning and analyzing every single possible detail, I simply took Action…Massive Action.

While my friends partied all night long, I’m sat in front of my laptop building my Internet business and online assets every weekday, at times scratching my head trying to learn new Internet Marketing skills.

Yes, I don’t know everything and I’m proud to admit that I don’t know everything about Internet Marketing.

And you know what?

No Internet marketer on this planet knows everything there is to know about Internet Marketing! If they tell you they do, they are lying to you simply just to impress you or they are simply embarrassed to tell you that they don’t know everything.

But me… I’m proud to say that I’m always trying to learn new things to keep myself updated. If I don’t do this, I’d be annihilated sooner or later by the fierce competition out there.

But hey that’s okay – we all need to keep learning don’t we?

Coming back to the topic at hand, I became a full time Internet Marketer at the beginning of 2008, and I created my first ever product in March 2008 (for the Indonesian market – which is where I’m from).

From then on till today (December 2008), I have developed and marketed a total of 6 products in the Internet Marketing niche.

5 for the Indonesian market, and 1 for the International market (Beginners Blog Profits).

I consider myself very lucky and blessed to have come this far. Although it is by no means an excellent feat, I’m still proud to what I have achieved nonetheless.

Why am I telling you all these?

You see, 2008 is almost history and 2009 is coming up in just a few short days.

I want you to have a fantastically successful 2009. Picture yourself living that dream Internet lifestyle. 99.999% of the time, you won’t be able to live this dream lifestyle in the span of just one year. It takes more time and hard work.

But that’s okay because as long as you are moving closer to your ultimate goals with each passing year, you are in good shape.

Success in any endeavor, not just in business, is built upon consistent hard work and perseverance. This is a very important fact you must keep in mind. With that said, the next time someone promises you instant riches without having to do any work, RUN as far as you can!

Okay, so these are the things I want you to do TODAY to start carving a path leading towards success in 2009:

1. Always arm yourself with the right mindset and attitude

The first step that you MUST (no exception) is to start believing in yourself that you can become a successful Internet entrepreneur.

No exception!

Think about this carefully and seriously…

If you don’t believe in yourself, how the heck do you expect others to believe in you? If you have this kind of weak attitude, your customers, affiliates, JV partners, team members will NOT believe in you either.

I mean, why should they believe in someone who doesn’t even believe in himself? I certainly won’t, and I bet you won’t either!

Let me tell you a harsh fact – if you don’t believe in yourself, you will 100% definitely FAIL!

Only when you start believing in yourself can you start to make things happen.

However this doesn’t mean that you will surely succeed even though you believe in yourself. It takes more than that, even though believing in yourself is a very good first step towards achieving your goals.

So let me take you to the next step I want you to do…

2. To achieve real Success, Failure is a MUST

Before you jumped at me shouting: “That is so not true, because I know some people who have achieved great success without experiencing any failure at all!”

Let me tell you that these people who have achieved great success without any failure at all is very, very, very, very, very, very rare.

The reason why I said “To achieve real success, Failure is a must” is because 99.999999% of the time you will fail first before achieving any success, unless you belong to the group of people who are very, very, very rare.

By preparing you for the worst (failure), you won’t be as disappointed as had I not equipped you with this kind of mindset and attitude, when you indeed do fail.

When the time comes for you to fail, I advise you to fail graciously, learn from your mistakes, and become even stronger and wiser to move closer towards your goals.

3. I want you to think ahead what you want to achieve for 2009. What are your goals?

Write them down on your whiteboard so that you can see them and be reminded of them every single day. If you don’t have a whiteboard, write them down on a piece of paper and stick it in your room.

I’m serious…

We need to be reminded of our goals every day. If not, we’ll get sidetracked and spend time and do things that are totally not related to what our ultimate goals are. When we do this, we are wasting our precious time.

There are a lot of distractions out there, and by seeing our goals every day, we’ll always be reminded what we should be doing and what we should not be doing.

Stop that useless chat on Skype, MSN or Yahoo Messenger!

Stop checking your freaking inbox every 5 minutes.

You have better things to do – and that is to build upon your business consistently, so start thinking today what you want to achieve in 2009 and write down your goals.

4. Start taking Massive ACTION

Simply having a goal or goals that you want to achieve is not enough. You need to take Massive Action.

Plan on how you are going to achieve your goals. What will you do? What strategies will you undertake?

Don’t spend too much time planning though, because if you do you’ll probably end up planning all day long without actually doing! And that is a disaster because you’ll remain where you are now come end of 2009 – still the same, old you.

We don’t want that to happen, so start taking Massive Action once you have done some kind of planning.

Remember – don’t try to be a perfectionist who needs to have every single little detail planned out first before taking any kind of action.

Just do it first, and correct as well as improve as you go. Garner the momentum and start doing first and the rest will follow.

Trust me!

5. Do It TODAY!!!

Most people who have read this far will think and say to themselves: “Yeah I agree with all of the above Welly, but since this is the end of 2008 and new year celebrations is coming, therefore I’ll just take action at the beginning of next year.”

…and you know what?

YES, these people will NOT take any kind of action come beginning of next year. They will continue to procrastinate forever…

But I know you, loyal reader of this blog, is different from them right? I know you will take massive action TODAY and start moving towards your goals!

By taking action today, you are slowly but surely building your business every single day. It is through consistent action and perseverance that one will actually succeed in his or her endeavor.

Alright, I’m going to sign off for now. Remember to do the 5 steps above TODAY to start carving your own success path in 2009!

Don’t let others determine your destiny, create yours TODAY.

Cheers, Merry Christmas and to a Happy 2009 New Year! Please leave any thoughts or comments below…

2 Proven Ways To Build Your List Fast

In any business, be it online or offline, if you want your business to thrive, you need to be able to sell products or services successfully to customers.

There are sellers, and there are buyers. This is what makes the world goes around.

With the ever increasing competition, it is getting harder and harder to successfully sell your products or services to people.

It is said that the average stranger (one who hasn’t heard or come into contact with you before) needs to see your marketing message at least 7 times before he buys from you. I forgot where I got this number from; I just remembered it from the top of my head.

This means that if you are trying to sell a product or service to someone and this person has not heard of you before, then you need to follow up with him at least 7 times before he buys from you.

Of course, this does not apply to every industry.

For example if you own a convenience store located at a local gas station, then someone who is looking to buy a cold drink to quench his thirst does not need to see your marketing message at least 7 times before he actually buys a cold drink from you.

I’m sure you get what I mean and what I’m trying to convey.

My point is this:

If you are currently marketing a product or service that is not a household name like Coke or iPod, then it would be very difficult to successfully sell to people during your first encounter.

This is precisely why you need to grab their contact information so that you can follow up with them in the future to build relationships with them and hopefully be able to successfully sell to them later on.

I’ve talked about this before in this post.

I hope by now you’ve realized the importance of getting your prospects’ contact information. In the online world, this is called building your list.

I’m sure you’ve probably heard of the phrase “the money is in the list” umpteen times. This is partially true and not exactly correct though. But I’m not going to elaborate on this post as that warrants another blog post on a different day.

For now, just remember that building your list is a very, very, very vital and important task if you want to succeed online and earn oodles of money!

Heck! Building my list, at least for me, is a matter of life and death!

So how do you build your list fast then?

Well, if you are a product or owner, the fastest way to build your list is to:

- Joint Venture (JV) with other product owners

- Create an affiliate program

Joint Venture (JV) with other product owners

If you own a product or service, then you can find other product owners who are in the same industry as you but don’t have a product or service like you offer.

What you can do is contact them and ask for a collaboration of some sort. The most common way to do collaboration is to give his subscribers a discount on your product or service and then giving him a certain percentage (usually at least 50% if the product is digital in nature) of the sales made.

For example if you sell a $100 product, you might want to give his subscribers a $30 off so that the price is slashed to $70. And from this $70 you could grant him a 50% commission, resulting in $35 nett profit for him per sale.

One important point you must take note is that you need to always stress the benefit to him. What is he getting? What’s in it for him if he promotes your product?

Most product owners aren’t going to be interested just for the sake of the commission they’ll be getting. I mean, sure, they love money. But it isn’t always about how much money they will make if they promote your product.

Your product has to demonstrate to them first that it delivers value and benefit to their subscribers.

When they finally decide to promote your product to their subscribers, not only will you be getting sales and profits, you will also be getting BUYERS and their contact information.

And you can follow up with them later on to sell your other products or services…

Talk about building your list for free, and getting paid in the process! And it’s not just any list where there are lots of freebie seekers, this is a BUYER list!

A buyer list is 100x more valuable than a freebie list!

Create an affiliate program

Apart from doing JV with other product owners, you can also set up an affiliate program for your product.

If you are selling a digital product, set at least a 50% commission rate for affiliates. The higher the commission rate, the better. This will attract more affiliates to promote your product for you.

Just recently, I opened up an affiliate program for my Beginners Blog Profits product and affiliates get 100% commission for every sale they make.

Why am I granting 100% commission? Won’t I make zero profits?

The answer is Yes and No.

Yes because if an affiliate successfully sells Beginners Blog Profits, I won’t make a single dime. Zero profits!

No because if you project a longer term vision, then you’ll realize that even though I make zero immediate profits, I’m steadily building both my freebie list and buyer list so that I can offer them my other products or services in the future.

Remember to put some kind of opt-in form on your sales page to capture the contact info of visitors, since first-time visitors who reach your sales page are very unlikely to buy from you right then and there.

Give them some kind of valuable freebie (not just any freebie) in exchange for their email address.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, so please share them in a comment below…

HTML Or Text Links?

In my last post, I talked about how email marketing can make or break your business, depending on how you use utilize it.

If you keep sending promo emails after promo emails to your list, your subscribers will soon get tired of it and they will eventually unsubscribe from your list.

Today I’m going to show you a neat little technique you can apply to your email marketing messages so that more subscribers click on the link contained in your emails.

So what is this technique?

Though nothing revolutionary, this technique, when implemented correctly, can boost the click through rate (CTR) of your links contained within your email messages by 22% (in my case).

If you don’t know what CTR is, CTR simply means how often a link or set of links are clicked.

If 100 people opened your email, and 30 people clicked the link contained within that email, this means you have a CTR of 30%.

Of course, the higher the CTR the better.

Now, the technique I’m about to show you is to use persuasive words as links within the email.

What do I mean by that?

Suppose I want my subscribers to click on my site Beginners Blog Profits. Instead of writing:

=============================================================

Hit the link below to see how any beginner can earn real decent money online:

==> http://BeginnersBlogProfits.com

=============================================================

I would write:

=============================================================

Hit the link below to see how any beginner can earn real decent money online:

==> Discover The Secrets Of Making Money Online As A Beginner

=============================================================

Can you spot the difference?

In the first scenario, I use http://BeginnersBlogProfits.com as a link to my site.

In the second scenario, I use the words “Discover The Secrets Of Making Money Online As A Beginner” as a link to my site.

The second scenario would yield better CTR because it persuasively urges the reader to take action by using the words “Discover The Secrets Of Making Money Online As A Beginner“.

http://BeginnersBlogProfits.com, on the other hand, does not really urge the reader to take action.

Put yourself in their shoes, would you be thinking along the lines of “Beginners Blog Profits eh? So what?”

I bet your answer to the above question is a resounding “Yes”.

However, there is one thing you need to keep in mind in order to properly implement this “using persuasive words as links” technique – in order for this to work, your subscribers must be able to receive your email in HTML format.

Otherwise it won’t work.

Most autoresponder services allow you to send two kinds of messages, one in plain text and the other in HTML format.

So what you can do is you can send your email in both formats, and if your subscriber can read HTML emails, then he or she is going to receive it in HTML format. If not, then he or she is going to receive it in plain text, in which case you can’t implement the “using persuasive words as links” technique.

But hey, implementing this “using persuasive words as links” technique to some subscribers is still better than not implementing at all!

Don’t you agree? As always, I’d like to hear your thoughts, so please share them in a comment below…