I am constantly amazed at the way people can be lied to deceived and conned. Everyday you hear stories of folk who have been conned out of thier life savings or had their identities stolen and used fraudulently!

On a  different level, I was watching a game show on  TV last night. The game allows the players to lie about the value of the balls they are in possession of in the initial rounds, in order to try and stay in the game. And that’s sort of OK as it’s a game.  However, only two players are lucky enough to get through to the final and eventually they have the choice of being able to share the prize money or to try and steal from their opponent. Each has the opportunity to convince the other how honest they are and of course they both always claim that they will share.

At this point I am always amazed at how different people are and just how deceptive some can be. Last nights show had a young Lady who to be honest had successfully added the majority of the money to the prize fund. She was a very religious person and made it clear to the other player that she wasn’t interested in stealing the money as to steal was totally against her religious beliefs. She went on to say that,  if they were to split, they would both be going away with a substantial amount and this would enable her to make a nice donation to her church group. The other player said she felt the same and thanked her opponent for bringing her through to the final. Incidentally, if both try to steal, both loose the lot, if one steals and the other splits then the steal takes the money and if both split, then the money is equally divided.

Now this is the point where I like to test  my instincts to see if I can tell who is genuine, honest and trustworthy. I have to admit that I do find this part of the show leaves me often feeling disappointed because where large amounts of money are at stake, a conscience definitely isn’t a part of every-ones make-up or personality!

Once again I could see this poor girl was going to loose everything to her opponent by allowing herself to judge others by her own standards. Sure enough, she chose the split ball and her deceitful opponent chose to steal, leaving her with ZERO except of course her dignity and honesty still in tact.

I know this is a game and the rules of the game allow this steal to take place, but I find this part of the game demonstrates the worst in some peoples greed and lack of honesty, especially as these two remaining players have had to work together to build the the amount of prize money between them.  It restores my faith in human nature when I see people say that they will split the winnings, and they do just that! This is sadly all too rare an occurrence on this show, but I suppose it is just that, a game show!

All this got me thinking though, about building trust with people on-line. It can be difficult, but once that trust is established it needs to be carefully protected and preserved.  Just getting a name on a list doesn’t mean you can then hit them with offers of products just because you think you’ll make some money out of it.

I know most of the e-books and services sold come with some sort of money back  guarantee, but that isn’t the point. If someone has started to read your blog or signed up to your newsletter, the chances are you’ve built some sort of trust with them and because of that, they want to hear more of what you have to say. Don’t destroy it all by simply  sending out e-mail after e-mail pushing every new clinkbank product or the latest get rich quick scheme!

I get e-mail everyday from the same people, I know that they are doing exactly what I describe above and that no real research has gone into the product they are promoting, they probably haven’t ever used it!

On the other hand, I also get stuff from people I have learned loads from and feel I can trust. These mailings are of course also trying to promote something but a couple of things are always apparent.

1. The product has some relevance.

2. They actually own and understand the product and use it in their own business.

I have to be honest and say I have recently unsubscribed from a few lists of quite prominent marketers. My reason for unsubscribing was that I felt they had stopped doing the very thing which persuaded me to subscribe in the first place, that being, to offer good quality content and advice for free and had instead, started to over sell there own product or some other heavily over priced offering from someone else.

You see it doesn’t matter how long and how well you feel you know someone, that relationship and TRUST can be destroyed so easily by one badly written or misleading e-mail.

If you don’t have 100% faith in what you’re promoting, then youn probably shouldn’t be promoting it! Remember, reputations are built on good experiences but can be more easily detroyed by bad ones. We all use the most powerful form of communication on the planet. Word spreads so quickly across the internet and your reputation beit good or bad will be decided for you by readers, subscribers and customers!

Until next time, Charlie.

There are so many processes, techniques, tools and terms to try and become familiar with and there just never seems to be enough time to do it all!

Something I often heard being referred to was the term “iFrames“, this is a classic example of something that you get to know about but it sounds more complicated than it actually is!

In reality, iFrames are really quite simple and straightforward!

OK, so what is an iFrame, where would you use one and how do you create one?

Very simply put, an iFrame is just a piece of html code which enables us to redirect to another url without the new domain name or url being displayed to the user.

So why would you want to do this?

There are several reasons why this technique is used in internet marketing, the most likely being, to hide your affiliate links. As you’ll be aware if you’ve been doing any affiliate marketing, the links we get given can be quite long and very ugly.

By using the iFrame Redirect, we can hide those links yet still achieve the desired result of getting our user to the sales page. This appears more professional and allows you to use your web address /url making it much easier for anyone to remember and adding the potential for that domain name to be passed on by word of mouth etc!

So how do you set up an iFrame?

I was passed this link by another marketer and thought I’d share it with you guys!

This is created by Cenay Nailor, who has not only created this great tool, she’s also gone to the trouble of making a  iFrame Redirect Generator Video which is  really great and covers what iFrames are and how you can use them.

Cenay has been so genourous in giving this information and easy to use tool away for FREE!

Her video will explain clearly everything you need to know about iFrames how to use the FREE tool and she even shows you how to ftp upload your new and unique  iFrame to your server.

Thankyou to Cenay for making it all so easy.

Until next time, Charlie..

It’s so important to have a plan of action and to stick to it.  I find that the only way I can stay focused is to have my list of actions and tasks written down ready and in order of importance, this allows me to work through the list one task at a time.

One of the worst distraction sources is e-mail. If you leave your e-mail on, I guarantee you will be distracted by answering e-mails or looking at the latest offers etc.  I can’t believe myself sometimes, I think “I’ll just have a quick look at my mail” then an hour later I’m still messing around with something totally unrelated to what I set out to do.

Surfing,  I  am of course refering to the web! As with e-mail, don’t allow yourself to get distracted and go off surfing. Stick to the list and get it done. Obviously you need to be on-line to research and submit articles, but you must be disciplined here and stay focussed on the job in hand.

Mobile phones, ensure you switch them to silent or set voice mail if possible. This is another big distraction source. You can almost guarantee that as soon as you get started, your phone will ring.

Family Life, you can’t avoid this one very easily, especially if you’re working from the family home. If there’s children around, pets and the normal family stuff going on you need everyone to understand that for a period of time you’ll be working and to try not to disturb you. I know this sounds obvious but it isn’t, believe me!  By agreeing a time convenient to the family when you can sit and work, you’ll be surprised at how this will be respected.

Taking breaks. This is so important and will keep you focussed on the task. The moment you start to feel tired, stop for a few minutes. I usually have a bottle of water on my desk ready before I start but I’ll often stop to take a break for a cup of tea or coffee.

Are you sitting comfortably? Another one that sounds to obvious but believe me, your posture can make all the difference. Make sure you are comfortable and sitting upright at your workstation or desk.  You may not even realize that the way you’re sitting is affecting your productivity, if you’re slumped in a chair, you’re going to feel sleepy very quickly.

Are you in the dark? It’s also worth mentioning, lots of us will be working late at night on our on-line businesses and I find it’s really easy to end up sat in the dark straining my eyes looking into a bright monitor. Always have another light source, I use a desk lamp but it’s a matter of choice, just don’t sit in darkness.

Your Own Business. You must remind yourself and those close to you, this is you starting and developing your own business, sure it’s an online business but it is still your own business and as with any offline business, it requires you to be focused by dedicating your time and concentration to it.

The majority of us, will start this in our spare time, we already have full time jobs to hold down (even though most of us dream of quitting), we constantly hear those words of wisdom from our on-line teachers and mentors “just take action” and our time is limited so we have to to take action in the most productive way.

I hope you find some of these simple tips useful, so go and Take Action Today

Charlie.

Sales copy is obviously designed to sell and that’s just what it does, in some cases extremely well. The product in question may often be very  good and well worth the money, but sadly this isn’t always the case!

The reality of starting an online business is that nobody makes millions overnight! If you really think this is possible when starting out, you’d be better of buying a lottery ticket!

There are some very experienced and long established marketers who have made a huge amount of money in a very short space of time but, this has followed the launch of their new, very well promoted and often very expensive product.

As I’ve learned and often commented on before, the internet marketing niche is very competitive and anyone just staring out or having been trying to make a success at online marketing for a while, will soon become swamped in the masses of products and information available.

Trying to sort the good stuff from the bad isn’t quite as simple as it sounds. I’ve been persuaded by other marketers who I trusted and have learned from, to buy certain products simply because they said it was a good idea, that’s not to say some aren’t good products but it hasn’t always been something I’ve needed or got value from!

So who can you learn from without breaking the bank?

I think it needs to be said that there are lots of good, honest and trustworthy individuals who spend a great deal of there time and effort providing good quality information and content to anyone who wants it for free. The only thing they will sometimes ask for in return is your e-mail address to be added to their mailing list. This is usually a very small price to pay for what is so often very good material.

Just recently, I have subscribed to a couple of list from two of best providers of free good quality marketing information online today, Jack Humphrey and Rosalind Gardner.

Jacks Friday Traffic Report is well worth a look. There’s a series of interviews with other top marketers which he refers to as his “Webside Chats”.  He also has his “Free Traffic School” covering list building,  SEO for Bloggers and his Video Traffic System.

Rosalind’s Net Profits Today.com site is once again  full of useful content ideal for begineers and experienced marketers alike. Rosalind is a very successful Afilliate Marketer who knows her stuff.  Make Money Online Action Guide, Building Your Site Guide and Success Tips are just a few of the many FREE quality resources available.

Obviously anyone who goes to the trouble of publishing information for free in this way, will be hopeful that further down the line, they can sell either as an affiliate for someone else’s product or their own product, to you or anyone on their mailing list. I don’t have any problems with this trade off and look forward to the newsletters anyway!

Hope you enjoy and find these links as helpful and enjoyable as I have.

Charlie.

Sadly, this isn’t true and getting traffic to your site will take some hard work and time.

First of all, you need to realise that just because your site has been indexed by Google or Yahoo or another search engine, it doesn’t mean that anyone will be able to find you without first being told about you!

To check and see if you’re indexed, I usually open my browser with Google’s home page and I enter in the search bar, my domain name in this format:   “www.yoursite.com” (include the quotes).

This should clearly return any indexed results for your site and it’s great if your listed but not a huge problem if you’re not!

Blogging

If you’re new to all this and have found this a steep learning curve, blogging is going to be a breath of fresh air.

The best thing about Blogs  is first of all, it won’t cost you anything other than your time.  Secondly the  results are very much worth the effort and can be  almost instantaneous in bringing the traffic, you so desire.

There are loads of Blogs to choose from, personally I don’t think you can go far wrong with wordpress. It’s free and simple to get started. You get a good choice of page designs or themes, lots of great  tools and help when you need it. Believe me you’ll be amazed at how quickly things can start to happen!

What The Search Engines Want

It’s important that you remember the reason the search engines love blogs is the updated content. In other words, you must keep it fresh and regularly add useful content for all those interested in what you have to say.

Relevancy is also very important if your looking to drive traffic to your site. There’s no point in writing a fantastic blog about dog training and adding back-links to a site about Internet marketing or whatever! Keep it relevant to what your site’s about!

A few years ago, linking was a totally different game. Today the search engines are so much more sophisticated and you must stay relevant and regularly updated to get good results and page ranking.

What’s Stopping You?

If like me, you’re a little apprehensive about starting your blog, I can tell you now that comments from some of those who read your blog can be both inspiring and also very demoralising if you allow them to get to you.

Don’t reply to any comments you find offensive or insulting. I can guarantee you that even the best marketers in the world get these comments from time to time. It’s best to ignore them and just not let them stop you from adding to and improving your blog.

On the other hand, when someone takes the trouble to leave a nice comment, it’s worth posting a reply.

Keywords

Keywords are important but just try to make your title and opening paragraph relevant and use some good keywords. Don’t get too hung up on this, writing from the heart is the best way and your work will read more naturally than trying to force keywords in everywhere.

Get Started Today, Take Action!

Try getting your blog setup now at WordPress. Write and publish your first post and don’t forget to add the back-links to your site!

Remember to check and re-check your work and ensure that your links work. Keep the links to a format and be aware that www.yoursite.com/ is different to www.yoursite.com as far as the search engines are concerned that forward slash makes it different.

Both are valid links, so just decide on the format and stick to it in all your posts, articles or lenses, this could ultimately effect your page ranking!

Get more tips and your free 5 part report on using web 2.0 for more traffic here.

Just look around you, Flat screen TV’s, computers, mobile phones and just about anything else electronic.

The Internet is another area where things are moving fast. The way we use the web today is so different to only a few years ago.

Interaction

The most frustrating thing about watching TV or listening to the radio and hearing something you may disagree with , is the fact that you normally can’t easily have your say or voice your opinion there and then.

However, reading an article or blog on-line is the complete opposite and freely gives us the opportunity to comment and interact with the author.

Some readers may want to see or learn more about what you have to say, what your promoting or offering and will happily follow a link to an opt-in page or your website.

Where can I tell people about my stuff?

Articles

Whatever the market, the subject or product is that you want to talk about, articles are a great way to get your voice heard. There are loads of article directories to choose from and the search engines love them if you keep it fresh and updated.

Ezine

I’ve had loads of success from Ezine, it’s free to register and simple to use. Ezine can take a few days to publish your articles as it will need to meet their strict editorial standards and checks. This isn’t a problem in general but there isn’t any point in trying to beat the system.

Once you’re published, your article gets viewed very quickly and if you’ve got links added (and approved), you’ll start to see traffic very quickly to your website or blog etc.

Remember Ezine needs to see unique content and will reject any submissions which look like duplicates, even if they aren’t. This has happened to me and it is frustrating especially when it’s your own hard work!

Ezine Articles.com

Squidoo Lenses

Squidoo is another great place to get writing. It’s very different to Ezine and once your article or lens (as sqidoo call it) is published, you’ll be able to make changes to it and re-publish immediately without having to wait for it to be approved again.

Squidoo lenses are easy to put together and you can add some great features all at the click of a button.  Squidoo does have editorial standards but these are not quite so stringent as Ezine. For example: you can add links to your website / affiliate link without any problem.

Another area where Squidoo is very different to Ezine is that you can add photos and video, in fact you’re encouraged to do so!

Suidoo can be easier on the eye than Ezine but I find the two can work hand in hand very nicely as links to a Squidoo lens from an Ezine article are allowed!

Lenses can get indexed very quickly and it’s not uncommon for a lens to be indexed by Google in as little as 48 hours!

Squidoo.com

Article marketing can be very effective but remember to keep your content interesting, clear and not too long and drawn out.

More information on Web2.0 and your free 5 part report

List building is often referred to by the numerous  ‘Internet marketing Gurus’ who now commonly agree that a list is one of the most important factors in any campaign.

By getting people to add their name and e-mail details and subscribe to a list, you are effectively getting qualified, quality and most importantly, solicited contacts who have by subscribing, expressed an interest in what you have to say or promote.

Free content

It wasn’t that long ago that Internet Marketers would generally agree that all knowledge had a direct $ value and the thought of giving away quality content rather than selling it, wouldn’t have been considered.  Nowadays the complete opposite is true and IM’ers will often happily give away quality material to  subscribers in order to build a relationship between them based on trust.

To get the content which may be a newsletter,  report or even an entire e-book, all the subscriber has to do is enter his or her name and e-mail address and click a submit button.

The next part of the process is is usually handled by a paid  auto-responder service such as Aweber. The marketer configures the auto-responder to send a confirmation e-mail to the address supplied in order to validate the e-mail address. This is done with the addition af another link within this confirmation e-mail which requires the subscriber to open if they wish to be  part of the list and receive the promised free content!

A quality Lead is best!

As I said earlier, a quality lead is so important. Not only has this person consciously agreed to be part of your mailing list but they have also by doing so, shown that they are interested in what you are about, what you are promoting and / or selling.

Many marketers claim that a name on a list is worth about $1.00 per month. Some subscribers will never buy anything and are only ever in search of free content but some will!

It isn’t uncommon for list builders to get literally thousands of names on a list, 10’000 members on a list can easily equate to $10,000 per month to the list holder if he continues to market and provide good content to the names on that list.

Auto-responder Services

Aweber is my preferred auto-responder but there are many services out there (some  links below).

Start building the list today.

Thanks, Charlie.

AWeber

GetResponse

Most will have heard of Web 2.0 but not necessarily know what it is.!

Web 2.0
So what is Web 2.0?
Web 2.0 is the term used to describe the second generation of web development and design. Web 2.0 developments have led to the creation of so many social networking sites such as Myspace. Video sharing sites like Youtube are other good examples of what constitutes a web 2.0 site and of course the thousands of on-line diaries or Blogs as they are referred to.

Web 2.0 isn’t actually anything new in terms of technology but instead refers to how software developers and end users alike now like to use the web. Many of the components described as web 2.0 have actually been around since the early days of the World Wide Web.

The term Web 2.0 was first used by Dale Dougherty and Craig Cline but became more widely known following the O’Reilly Web 2.0 conference in 2004.

Is Web 2.0 Important?
Jut look at the enormous success of social network sites like Facebook, Bebo and Myspace to name just a few. Video sites like Youtube are also incredibly popular and the Blog sites such as wordpress allow users to post their thoughts online for anyone else to see at anytime.

Can Web 2.0 help me make money online?
Internet marketers have quickly realized the sheer power of web 2.0 and how they are able to use the tools web 2.0 provides, (usually free of charge) to build their businesses.

Video and Blogs are regularly used to help market and promote products and services for financial gain. The reason behind these sites being so powerful is because of the user interaction available on these sites allowing anyone to post a comment or vote for example.

Trust is a very important part of any marketing campaign and internet marketers will often build trust by giving away good quality content about what ever subject or market they promote. Web 2.0 type sites are perfect for this and normally totally free to use making them even more attractive to marketers.

Making money online can be incredibly straight forward but does require effort. Driving targeted traffic to a website or building a list of subscribers to your newsletter or free reports can be very profitable and worthwhile if done properly.

The internet is constantly evolving and the techniques we use have to adapt and stay in tune with those changes.

Web 2.0 sites such as StumbleUpon, Delicious and Digg can be incredibly fast in helping to drive traffic to your site if used correctly.

Find out more about how Web 2.0 can benefit you and claim your 5 part report absolutely free.