Saturday, June 29, 2013

How I turned $5 into $5000 at the push of a button.



So many of you are probably skeptical and debating on even reading this article.  Let me ask you this, how many times have you been asked by someone to do a project with them and missed out on making tons of money?  This is one of those times.

Recently while browsing the web, I stumbled upon a website claiming to only charge me $5 and saying that it would give me all the secrets to the universe of online marketing.  It was posted on Yahoo News, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and even on NBC.  Plus with only the push of a button I use their affiliate marketing software to reach hundreds of thousands of consumers all at once.  I was in disbelief. But since it would only cost $5 to try out their product I was more than willing to attempt it.

Lets just say it worked, has worked and I only see it working even better in the future. Don't miss out my friends, I'm dead serious. I want to help you all succeed in this terrible times we live and see you thrive.

Click the link and check it out for yourself:  CLICK HERE

IT WORKS...

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Entrepreneurs

10 Best Reasons to Be an Entrepreneur

When the work is hard and the hours are long, these are the reasons founders keep doing what they do.


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I recently asked fellow members of the Young Entrepreneur Council--an invite-only organization made up of the world's most successful young entrepreneurs--just what it is that makes them work so hard. Money? Success? Autonomy? Or do entrepreneurs just have big egos?
Being an entrepreneur myself, I wanted to know why others work with such persistence and dedication. I know that for me, it's not about money. Money is just a byproduct. So is it the same for others?
Not one of the entrepreneurs I spoke to mentioned money as the motivator.
Surprised? Don't be. When I write about company culture, I often note author Daniel Pink's philosophy that once money is off the table for people--meaning it's no longer a stress point or constantly on their mind because they're paid enough--they become driven by autonomy, mastery, and purpose.
So what are entrepreneurs driven by, if not money? I got more than 20 responses from the entrepreneurs at YEC. Here's what they had to say:
1. Opportunity
Susan Strayer Lamotte, a leader in talent acquisition and HR, says she's motivated simply by "doing great work. That's the difference," she explains. "All the other stuff is gravy, but as an entrepreneur, I can decide what the work is like. What I get to do. And that's the mecca for me."
2. Autonomy
Some entrepreneurs simply want to avoid the daily grind that comes along with a career that isn't self-sustaining. Says Aron Schoenfeld, founder of Doitinperson.comand DreamArtists Studios, "Fear of failure is what motivates me to keep going. [I'm] scared of going back to corporate and being a robot again."
3. Freedom
Aaron Pitman, president and founder of API Domain Investments, agrees. "Freedom is my driver," he says. "I always wanted to be able to call my own shots, be in charge of my destiny, and have the ability to set my own life."
4. Responsibility to society
For other entrepreneurs, there are bigger societal issues driving their work. "For me, it's also about an alignment of story," says Josh Allan Dykstra, a consultant, author, and speaker. "As entrepreneurs, we are always analyzing the state of the world, examining the larger stories that are playing out on a macro/global level. While we strive to make sense of these big-picture stories, we are also searching for the places our personal strengths and passions can make a larger impact on the world. We make the most difference when we find where the intersection point of the thing that makes us feel alive also lines up with the bigger story, allowing us to improve society in some meaningful way."
5. Impact
Justin Beegel, founder and president of Infographic World, explains: "[I love] knowing every action [I] take truly has a direct impact on the outcome of the business. When you're an employee...what you do has limited impact. When you're running the company, each and every thing you do can make or break it."
6. Family
Ari R. Meisel, an entrepreneur, author, inventor, and triathlete, says what drives him to entrepreneurial work is simple: "[I love] being able to spend as much time with my family as possible."
7. Change
Trace Cohen, founder and president of Launch.it, says what drives him is seeing change. "My current and previous company have all been about providing value to our users to enhance what they are currently doing to either make it better or more efficient."
8. Legacy
Forging a lasting legacy is important for many workers. Both Dave Kerpen, CEO ofLikeable Media, and Lewis Howes, lifestyle entrepreneur, noted that leaving a personal legacy is a huge motivator in their decision to do entrepreneurial work.
9. Accomplishment
"That is what truly makes people happy, a sense of accomplishment," says Pablo Palatnik, CEO at ShadesDaddy.com. "That's why I do what I do every day, to accomplish my goals, and that [means] building a successful company."
10. Control
Some entrepreneurs are driven by the sense of security that comes along with being in full control of their work. Joey Ricard says control of his own destiny--"or as some people like to call it, security"--drives his entrepreneurial efforts.

I'm a big believer that money is not what drives people to work hard. If you want successful, happy workers, take a cue from what drives you. Freedom, flexibility, social responsibility, the ability to do great work? Provide your workers with opportunities to thrive in these areas, and you won't have to deal with workers who are motivated only by money.



Original Articl Found At: http://www.inc.com

Online Marketing for Dummies—and for People with Better Things to Do


I know plenty of people who have all of the ingredients for business success today, save one. They have a keen talent. They can turn out cool products or services. They know how to line up financial backing and keep account books. They’re “people people,” meaning they actually like to interact with others all day (something I can do only for so long before I need to recharge in solitude). Often, they’ve even run successful businesses in the past. But they don’t know the first thing about online marketing.
How could a little missing Web knowledge be the downfall of an otherwise talented small business person? Well, if the business owner wants someone like me as a customer, he or she had better have a website, and it had better be more than brochureware. It had better show up in the major search engines, or I won’t find the business at all. The proprietor had better give me a way to interact with the company directly through e-mail or an information request form. And it would sure be nice if the site told me more about the real people and passions behind the business.
All of this has been common wisdom for years, at least since the publication of Web marketing masterpieces like The Cluetrain Manifesto and Seth Godin‘sPermission Marketing and Purple Cow. But a shocking number of businesses still have static, lifeless, hard-to-find websites that look like they were built by seventh-graders on summer vacation and that do nothing to collect the vital information that can be used to turn one-time visitors into real customers. Hubspot, a Web startup in Cambridge, MA, is all about saving these businesses from their own ignorance.
It’s nobody’s fault that the rise of the Web has changed the way people find products and services in urban America and left so many entrepreneurs stuck in the era of direct-mail marketing or the Yellow Pages. But for a reasonable $250 per month, Hubspot will bring them back to the present, or most of the way, anyway. The company’s Web-based software, which is designed for non-technical users, automates many of the headaches involved in “search engine optimization,” or SEO, the soul-draining game of trying to beat out other businesses in searches related to your business’s products and bring customers your way.
For example, Hubspot’s system will help subscribers set up a hosted website that’s configured to draw in traffic by including the keywords most likely to get the site a high ranking at Google, Yahoo, and other search sites. The software can also help users decide which keywords are worth bidding on at Google Adwords and other contextual ad services, and allow them to set up special “landing pages” for visitors who find the site via those keywords. (An accountant’s website, for instance, might have special landing pages about tax time for users who click on AdWords ads targeted to the keyword “taxes.”)
With Hubspot it’s also easy to set up forms that visitors can fill out to receive newsletters or other information—permission marketing at its finest. Subscribers can also build and administer a blog that adds a timely, human voice to their business’s site.
Hubspot marketing vice president Mike Volpe calls this whole combination of tactics “inbound marketing,” and if it’s done right, he says, it can convert 20 to 70 percent of visitors into customers, compared to the 1 percent conversion rates typically expected from direct-mail campaigns and other more classical marketing techniques.
Hubspot’s services aren’t for everyone. If you have a bit more experience with website design, content management systems, or online ad buying, you can probably do a lot of the things that Hubspot automates on your own. The question is how much time you’d need to set aside, and how much you enjoy the minutiae of Web publishing. “Sometimes people look at a Hubspot website and say, ‘I could kinda build that myself,’ and yeah, you could,” says Volpe. “But how long would it take you?” And more importantly, couldn’t you be doing something else that would more than pay for the $250-per-month investment?
Hubspot launched its site in late 2006 but has been aggressively pursuing customers only for the last couple of months, Volpe says. (The company eats its own dogfood, to use the Web lingo, making heavy use of its own SEO, permission-marketing, and blogging tools.) The company recently overcame the all-important hump of winning its first round of venture funding, though Volpe won’t say how much or from whom.
“There’s a huge segment of the small-business market that is simply not consuming SEO services,” says Volpe. That’s understandable, since hiring a professional SEO consultant can cost tens of thousands of dollars. But using Hubspot, Volpe says, small business owners “can get 80 percent of what they’d get from an SEO professional, just using the tips and tricks we can give them.” Considering that Hubspot’s services can be had for not much more than the cost of a postage meter or a stack of business cards, that would seem to be a wise investment.

Original article can be found at: http://www.xconomy.com/

11 Tested and Proven Web Marketing Offer Strategies

If you are now marketing or intend to market your services or products on the Web, you must design your Web site offer creatively just as you would an offline offer.
Like any other advertising medium, your offer can contribute as much as 50% or more to the success or failure of your Web campaign.
Far too many marketers have considered the Internet as being completely different than traditional offline media. Their opinions seem to be, “I may have to use our traditional offers offline, but they must be different on the Web.”
This is just like saying human psychology for business and consumer marketing is different online. It’s a drastic error to assume that a person’s basic psychology changes online.
Many marketers are disappointed with their results from the Web simply because they often violate some of the most basic direct marketing offer strategies.
Here are 11 key strategies to help you enjoy greater success on the Web. These strategies apply to any product or service. You’ll cripple your response just by omitting one of them.
If you are skeptical about this, just test your online offer as you would in any other advertising medium.
Marketing Strategy #1 
Use an introductory discount to boost your sales…
People love to look for perceived bargains. A discount can be a great motivator that causes your prospects to believe their purchasing decisions are wise…not frivolous.
Your discount can be 10%, 20%…or even half off. This discount offer can easily help you drive in many new sales! And this rule applies to high and low priced products.

Marketing Strategy #2 
Test to find the optimum price for greatest possible profits…
Price is a vitally important part of your offer. A higher price will lower your response. A lower price will increase your response. Every product or service has it’s own price point where you get maximum possible profit.
You can only find this optimum price point by testing many different price variables.
And, if you can get your prospects to use their credit cards and automatically charge for additional products or services, you may discover that an additional very profitable relationship has already developed.

Marketing Strategy #3 
You’ll get far greater response with a “soft” offer than with a “hard” offer…
With offline marketing, a “soft” offer increases your response over a “hard” offer. However, a “soft” offer may not pay off in the long run. This same strategy applies to online offers.
That’s another good reason why testing is so vitally important.
A “soft” offer is an offer where buyers are given the opportunity to order without paying with cash or credit card before receiving their merchandise. They merely check a box on the order form which reads, “bill me later.”
Or if you’re generating a lead, a “soft offer” is usually used for an expensive product.
A “hard” offer is an offer where payment by cash or credit card MUST be made with the order before it is shipped.
This strategy is usually used for an inexpensive product requiring a payment by credit card.

Marketing Strategy #4 
Use a STRONG guarantee to get the greatest possible response…
The higher your price, the stronger your guarantee should be for offline marketing. A strong guarantee helps increase your response. Online guarantees are just as important.

Marketing Strategy #5 
Premiums help boost your response and sales tremendously…
Almost every marketer who uses powerful premiums offline should also use premiums in online marketing. Powerful premiums help increase sales and your customers’ perception of value.
For example, I created the following premiums for a one-year subscription to the Psychopharmacology Update Web site:
  • “Today’s Top 10 Trends in Psychopharmacology”
  • “AHHD: Subtracting the Mystery from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder”
  • “Dangerous Drug Interactions”
Be sure to use the following exclusive offer strategies which have been especially created for online marketing…
These offer strategies work exclusively for online marketing. Make sure you always use powerful sales copy to reinforce your benefits…

Marketing Strategy #6 
Your customers can take advantage of the privacy and security of online buying…
Be sure to list your privacy and security policies right next to your ordering information and instructions.
These policies are very important to many of your potential customers. Don’t let the layout or copy dominate or inhibit your prospects from ordering.

Marketing Strategy #7 
Create an offer to collect e-mail addresses from all viewers…
Capturing e-mail names and addresses (even from those who do not order immediately) gives you extremely valuable data you’ll need for a conversion campaign. Be sure to include a “no, not at this time” box in the ordering information.
If your prospect clicks on this information, your prospect comes to a page that provides the option of free, additional, value added information for the future.
Make this offer interesting and appealing…but not as attractive as your offer for ordering.

Marketing Strategy #8 
Here's how FAQs can increase your response on the order page…
Frequently asked questions (FAQs) are often used on the home page or entry page of a site. This is not good for marketing navigation. FAQs should only be used at the point of sale.
FAQs can help increase your response and should be used only on your order page. An estimated 40% of people who are ready to buy will go to FAQs. This means you must rationalize your price, resell your premiums, and reinforce your guarantee.

Marketing Strategy #9 
Get more sales by keeping your Web site navigation simple…
Make absolutely sure the navigation of your Web site is simple, uncluttered and without too many options. Don’t give your prospects options that will steer them away from ordering.
Be sure it’s always quick, easy, and simple for people to buy from you.

Marketing Strategy #10 
Acknowledge every online order immediately…
Make sure your customers or leads receive an immediate acknowledgement every time you receive an order online. This makes them happy knowing you have received their orders and are getting ready to ship them FAST!

Marketing Strategy #11 
Increase your response with a value added offer…
A value added offer obviously boosts your response more than anything else you can give to a customer.