Work Yourself Up!

Need Money for Your Online Business?

One of the big advantages of marketing your business online is that, compared to doing something offline, it doesn't take as much money.  You can do a lot with some time and effort.

But if helps if you have money.  You can outsource a lot of the work, get more done, and get where you want to be faster.

If you need money for your online business, you should take a look at Prosper.  It's perfect for the self-employed, because the money comes from people just like you...people who understand what you are doing through.

Take a look via the link below and let me know your results...

The Logo for This Site...and How it Came to Be

In October, I decided to create a logo for this site and the other stuff I'm releasing under the "Work Yourself Up!" name.  Decided to do it via a "contest" on SitePoint.com.

Here's a thread I posted about the process as well as the entries which were submitted.

What happened...

I picked a logo I wanted, only to find the designer was from Israel and was unable to accept Paypal or a standard check.  Wanted me to get some kind of special money order and send it to him via registered mail.

A huge pain in the ass for me, but I liked his work and wanted to deal with him.  And because I hadn't been specific about how he would be paid, just assuming that everybody has Paypal or can accept a wire, it was only fair. 

But when I asked if there were other options to send him money, such as Xoom.com, I never heard back.  A couple more emails... Never heard back.

So I ended up getting the logo I've been using here for the last 5-6 months from a guy on Scriptlance.  Gave him the elements I had used an an example and he did the rest...and for a lot less money, too.

Mistakes I made with SitePoint...

1. I didn't get in and leave feedback for the logos which were being submitted, as they were coming in, just assuming that no feedback meant I didn't like it and that I'd make my final selection after the contest was over. 

But these guys, from what I can tell, are willing to work with you to get the project and expect to get feedback as the contest process is happening.  That's a good system, so if you're willing to give good instruction to people and comment on logos which are submitted, SitePoint's "contest" system might work for you.

Giving feedback and being more on top of the process would have probably gotten me more submissions and better quality submissions, which probably would have gotten me better results.

2. As I mentioned above, I didn't get specific with how I was willing to pay people.  I've gotten so used to sites like on Scriptlance, which has a built-in escrow system, I didn't think anything about it.

I still think SitePoint is a good system and would recommend it.  It's very cool to see the amazing things that people from all over the world come up with.

If you guys use SitePoint, or have used it in the past, please let me know. I'd love to see the results you've had! 

Thoughts on Stuff

Literally...

This is a great article on stuff.  And I feel the opinion, even if you don't agree with him, is really needed in this community, just to have something other than the "I've got a garage bigger than the average house and it's full of luxury cars" sales pitch so common with online marketing gurus.

Feel free to post thoughts below...

3 Steps For Instant Traffic

So you have finally found a profitable niche, after hours of research and you’ve created a content based website for it. Or maybe you’ve worked a couple of weeks to create the ultimate e-book or report, have spent hundreds of dollars on graphic design and thousands on a killer sales letter.

You’ve clearly done your homework and have developed a small online business with high potential for great success. The only problem is, no matter how good the sales letter, the graphics or content, you won’t make a cent if potential customers never get to see your website.

Here are 3 proven steps on promoting your high quality website for instant targeted traffic:

1. Pay Per Click Advertising

This is without doubt the fastest way to get your site in front of thousands of potential customers. While most people use only Google Adwords it would be wise not to ignore Yahoo’s Search Marketing or MSN’s adCenter. Many internet marketers make this mistake and miss out on tons of top quality, low cost traffic.

If you don’t have a lot of experience with PPC you should read as much as you can on the subject before spending money. This type of advertising is very powerful, but if done incorrectly can lose you a lot of money. Read many articles on article directories such as ezinearticles.com and also do a search on Google for “perry marshall adwords” to learn more about PPC.

While doing PPC you will generate opt-ins, sales and even affiliates from your site – this is extremely valuable information so make sure you gather it.

2. Solo Ads

When you have a top quality site, with good conversion rates, buying a solo ad can be the easiest way for instant profit.

A solo ad is an email ad that you write (or hire someone to write it for you) and pay a webmaster with a highly developed subscriber list in your niche, a one time fee to send the ad to the entire list.

This is why it’s very important to have conversion data. Let’s say that after Step1, you realized your site has a conversion rate of 5%. This means that if you buy a solo ad for a list with 2000 subscribers, you’ll make somewhere around 100 sales. Depending on the price of your product, you can make a very nice profit with practically no extra work on your part.

To find places where to run solo ads, just use Google and search for “solo ads”, “buy solo ads” or “yourniche + solo ads”.

You can also search for sites in your niche that appear in top spots on Google, Yahoo and MSN and have an opt-in form. Contact the webmasters show them your product and offer to pay them in exchange for a solo ad.

3. JV Partners

We’ve practically started to talk about finding JV partners at the end of step2, but in step 3 we’re going to go even further with our proposal.

While solo ads are a great way for generating instant cash, wouldn’t it be great if those webmasters would keep promoting your product on their site and to their list on a regular basis? And with no extra effort or cash spent on your part?

It may sound too good to be true but actually it’s very achievable. After you run a few solo ads on different lists you should update your conversion information. Be sure to make a small report about this because you’ll need it.

All you have to do now is to approach the same or different webmasters and ask them if they’d like to become your affiliate. Give them a high commission percentage, the conversion report, the link to your site, banners, and the e-book or report you are selling.

If you do everything correctly, business owners will be more than happy to become your affiliate and practically do all the work of sending commissions your way.

Find The Best Places to Buy Links

It’s undeniable that inbound links can help your online website tremendously. After all, the more websites that are linking to you, the more traffic you will gain. What’s more, you can actually boost your rankings in search engines.

However, building your links can take up a lot of time making it harder for you to concentrate on other aspects of your business. One of the quickest methods of building link popularity therefore is to purchase some links.

Here’s how you find the best places to buy them:

1. Search them through search engines.

If you have no company in mind, you can simply search for them in the World Wide Web, particularly in search engines. For instance, if you only type “buy links” in Google, you will be able to see numerous websites that are actually selling their links in bundles. Prices may vary, though. You can save hundreds of dollars if you purchase them in bulk rather than as individual links.

2. Go to message boards.

There are already numerous Internet marketing boards. Here you can find several traders who are willing to give you a space in their well-established website. All you need to do is to pay up. You can also advertise your need for inbound links, and you can surely get excellent responses from other members. This is a good way if you want to broaden your options when it comes to the links that you’re trying to purchase.

3. Buy text link ads.

This is becoming one of the well-implemented traffic-generating link popularity methods. You simply have to create your own text links, but before you can actually spread them virally, you have to purchase them first. You don’t have to worry. They’re very cheap. In fact, you can spend less in this technique than when you do Google Adwords. 

4. Apply for a PPC.

Pay per click campaign refers to a technique wherein you only pay the advertiser every time your ad gets clicked by Internet users. The good thing about this is you can actually select a landing page, a part of your website that can help you generate the highest return on investment, such as your Product Page.

Whatever technique you have chosen when it comes to buying links, however, you should be very careful. Search engines, including Google, despise people who succumb to such tricks, as it basically eliminates the very reason why you’re linking with other websites: you want to give more resources to your Internet visitors. If you want to play it safe, don’t buy links. Do it the slowly-but-surely way.

Goal Setting System for Online Entrepreneurs

If you're looking to get more done, you're going to love my new book.

"How To Get From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be" is a goal planning system especially designed for entrepreneurs.  You simply define the goal and then go after it, step-by-step.  Easy.

If you're looking to get the most from your day and accomplish more than you've imagined possible, this book is for you.

Everything is in the distribution channels now, so this should be available everywhere, both online and offline, by the end of the month.  I will certainly keep you posted.

This is the second book in the WorkYourselfUp.com series and I have more on the way.  To keep updated, please subscribe to the feed and/or bookmark this site.

Advantages And Disadvantages Of Link Building Software

Building links could have been easy—if that was the only thing you needed to do for your business website. Unfortunately, this is only going to be a fraction of your entire to-do list. What can you possibly do then? You make use of a link building software.

The main purpose of this program is to speed up the process of building links. Just like any other software, at first glance, it has a noble cause. But it doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its own disadvantages. Are they going to be good or not? You decide:

1. Control

There’s always the issue of control when you’re utilizing a link building software. Because everything is already automated, it will instantly add you link to other website. The problem is you may have no control as to where your links are placed. If you want to ensure that it’s the right page for a specific link you may have to manually approve it. The good thing is you can generate hundreds of backlinks in a day.

2. Price

Compared to buying text links, you can definitely save hundreds of dollars with a link building software. Usually, one program will cost between $50 and $150 for over thousands of links. That’s definitely way better than purchasing packaged links from websites or webmasters.

3. Acceptance in Search Engines

This is the major disadvantage of using automated link building. In general, search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN are encouraging webmasters to link to other websites not so much for traffic or increase in search engine ranking but to provide additional resources to their Internet visitors. Automated programs seem to defy such norm. In turn, search engines don’t hold themselves in giving punishments, sometimes severe, to these websites. If you’re doing this technique, don’t be surprised if you can no longer find yourself in Google.

4. Incoming Links from Poor Websites

Keep in mind that whatever link is going into your website is vital to its success and failure. Manual linking allows you to properly choose the websites that you can link with. You can monitor their page rank, traffic, and, most of all, their content. It may take some time, but once you get an inbound link from a reputable website, you can expect positive results in your traffic and ranking. What’s more, there’s a tendency that you’ll gain permanent links with manual link building.

4 Tips For Better One-Way Linking

There are different ways on how to build your link popularity, but what’s considered as the best and the most effective is one-way linking. What’s a one-way link? It is basically a link going to your website. There is a webmaster who links to your site without having you doing the same thing for him.

Here are the different benefits that you can derive when you do one-way linking:

1. You’re not compelled to get links from bad websites.

If you’re going to scour search engines, you’ll notice that there are actually websites with bad design and content and yet obtaining a high PR. Oftentimes they are employing black hat techniques, or search engine strategies that are being frowned upon by Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Because they have such impressive page rank, you may be tempted to buy a one way link from them for the sheer purpose of benefiting from their rank. This can actually work, but it’s only going to be short term. Once search engines will discover them, they will likely get banned or placed in sandbox. Thus, you’re going to hurt your page rank in the process. You’ll even have damaged credibility, just like them.

2. Know how to approach webmasters.

When you’re doing one-way linking, you’re still putting the same amount of energy and time as when you’re building your links through reciprocal linking. Approach webmasters with free reports, articles or any other form of content they could profit from, and ask for a one way link in return. If you give them quality products, they will give you a one way link in return.

3. You will have long-term links.

If you have developed a great website, some webmasters will find your site and link to you without asking anything in return because they believe that you can be an excellent resource to their visitors. Thus, it’s almost impossible that they’re going to remove your link from their website, unless, of course, you do something outrageous in your website, rendering it completely useless to them.

4. There are plenty of methods to generate one-way links.

Today doing one-way linking has never been this easier. After all, you can choose among different strategies. You can submit your link to directories and search engines, embed a link in your articles and in resource boxes, participate in online forums and social networking websites, or develop your own blog. All these can boost your rankings in no time. Most of all, they’re completely free.

Are You Betting Everything on One Product or Income Stream?

My post a couple of days about about Amazon vs. Lightning Source got me thinking...  I see way too many entrepreneurs with a business based on one product or income stream.  This is the reason why it's such a big deal when Amazon drops Lightning Source.

How many people do you know who were making a killing with Google Adsense, only to have it all taken away when Google changed their search results, shut down the account, or changed how the game was played.

It happens all the time...  Ebay just changed its policy on selling products which are delivered online. No more ebooks, no more software, or anything which is instantly downloaded.

Makes me wonder what the people, like this guy, who were making a killing selling downloads, are going to do now that they can't do it anymore.  Sure, they can package everything up and mail it, which is probably a pretty smart idea, but will that hurt sales?

Bottom line, whether you're involved with Adsense, anything related to SEO, Ebay, or ANYTHING, you need to diversity.  You never know what will happen and it's a huge risk to put all your eggs in one basket.

Would you invest all your money in one stock?  Probably not.  But that's exactly what you're doing when you've only got one product or means of income.

Amazon Screws Independent Authors

Thinking of publishing a book?  Amazon just made a decision about print-on-demand books, which may make you think twice.

It's short-sighted...

1. Most self-published authors market their own books and send traffic to the bookseller.  Rather than be forced to use Amazon's printing company, they'll just send people who want their books to Barnes and Noble or somewhere else, which will result in no business for Amazon.

Yes, I understand the benefits of having a POD book printed in the same warehouse as the toaster which was ordered.  But if people are buying books somewhere else and never visit Amazon in the first place, they'll buy a toaster somewhere else.

2. This deal cuts into profit margins for self-published authors, which aren't much to begin with.  And if people aren't making money at something, there is less reason to continue to do it.  If this deal happens, in the long run, Amazon will make less money, because there will be fewer titles to sell.

This is what really pisses me off about the whole thing.  The information within books is important to society and we all benefit because of it.  As far as I'm concerned, when you hurt the creation and production of books, you hurt everybody.

This deal is like Wal-Mart refusing to sell goods which aren't made in a company-owned factory.  It will limit options for consumers, which is never good.  It will also hurt a lot of independent authors, which until this time, I always felt that Amazon had a soft-spot for.

My thought is to let the book publishers decide where to print their books.  If Amazon can a build a "better mouse trap" and do things better than Lightning Source or other POD companies, authors and publishers will follow.  There is no need to force anything.

Agree with me?  Sign this petition.