NOW AVAILABLE AS A DIGITAL DOWNLOAD!!

I just have a quick post today – because I wanted to get it up as quickly as possible!

I just received an email from the author of the “Complete Internet Marketing Moms Start Up Guide”, Kelly McCausey, letting us know that she has finally released her physical book in digital format!

This is great news for anyone who has been holding off buying this great guide – it is now available to you as an INSTANT DOWNLOAD for just $20!  The hard copy version has long been one which I have actively recommended to my readers, which is available through Amazon for $24.97.  Now, you can have it sent to you instantly to read, for even less than that!

If you have been wanting to get a copy of this great guide – which really covers all the basics of getting started in Internet Marketing and working from home – then you can read everything that is included in it here:

The Complete Internet Marketing Moms Start Up Guide

This really is a great starting point for anyone wanting to work from home on the internet – and $20 is not a lot to pay for information like this!

On another note – I just wanted to say thanks to all of you who got back to me from my email the other day.  I had some incredible feedback and suggestions for topics that you guys are interested in learning about, so just to let you know – I am working on putting together some great posts for you!

Some of the topics I had mentioned to me a few times were things like learning how to get started with Freelance writing on the internet, how to set up a blog, getting started with affiliate marketing (whether you need a website, how to set one up with no experience and not alot of money), ecommerce and finding a “niche”.

So, keep your eyes open here and I will be bringing you some great information to help you get started!  And, if there are any other topics or questions out there for any of you getting started – go ahead and let me know!  I will do my best to answer them, and if I don’t know the answers, I’ll find you someone who does;-)

But, I have made a conscious decision this year that I am going to also make sure that my business is taken care of as well – and while I am still going to be as busy as I can doing everything I need to do every day to grow my business, (sadly, at the expense of my spring housecleaning, but that is another matter altogether!), I know that I can’t possibly do everything that needs to be done.

Time For A Leap Into The Great Unknown!

So, a few days ago, I took a gigantic leap of faith, and I am keeping my fingers crossed that all will work out!

I went ahead and hired a few people to work for me that I can outsource some tasks to – link building, writing articles, and things like that.  While I enjoy writing, and write all my own content for my blogs, I do sometimes have others write articles for me which I can submit to directories or use for content on other sites.

I worry that I won’t be able to afford it, and I worry that I won’t even have enough work for them off the bat.  But, I wanted to give a couple of the people I interviewed a chance to work with me, and I am so glad I did!

It is amazing how it feels to have a bit of the weight lifted off your shoulders!  Knowing that other people are working with you, to help you.

And, I have to say, that the ones I hired all seem like genuinely nice people – and I look forward to having them on my team.

But Can I Afford It?

I will worry for the next little while, because it is going to cost me some money.  But, I had a bit of a revelation the other day, which I would like to share with you, because it could be something you struggle with in your own business as well…..

As I was getting ready to purchase yet another “system” to add to my marketing efforts, I kind of sat back and let myself really think it through.

Did I really need another system to learn?  Why not keep working with what I do know, and keep moving it forward as much as I can?

Because this is really where I believe many of us who are getting into Internet Marketing struggle – and that is always looking for more answers, more strategies, more money making ideas, without really following through with what we already know.

While it is good to always keep learning, there comes a time when you just have to trust that you already know enough that if you just take that knowledge and keep applying it – even though you might not see results immediately – and trust that you can build from it.

Anyways, while what I was thinking of buying was something that would compliment what I already am doing, I held off.

The very next day, I decided that the money I was going to invest into that new “system” would be better spent on having people working with me, doing the small tasks that need to be done, but that we all put off doing while we keep searching for the next “magic” bullet.

So – that is what I am doing.  This week, I will take that money and pay my team of people I hired, and go from there.  I don’t know if I can afford to keep doing it – but I am going to take it one week at a time.  If I see even the tiniest bit of return, then I will take another leap of faith next week and get some more work done.  And, I will just keep going from there, week after week.

If you are at a point in your Internet Marketing career, (if that is the path you have chosen to work at home), where you already have learned enough to get started with something – anything, as long as you get started – then just get started.  And, before you get ready to pull out your wallet and buy that next big thing, make sure you really sit down and decide if it will truly add to what you are already doing.   If it doesn’t – consider taking that money and investing it back into your business.

Perhaps that will be the missing link you have also been looking for!  I know I am really hopeful it will be for me

This post might get long winded, and maybe go a bit all over the place, so I do apologize.  I tend to write as though I am talking, and as happens a lot of the time I am talking, I can go in about 5 different directions by the time I am finished!  But, I will do my best to keep you with me;-)

I have been working online for a few years now – and I am proud of the fact that I have never sold myself out to make money.  What I mean is, I know there are markets, and niches I could go into that would make me very good money.  However, I can’t – in my own conscience – do it.  Not that I am saying that those who do are bad people – but I just know that it isn’t something for me.

At the end of the day, I am accountable to me, and my kids.  Truth is, my number one job is being a mom – that is first and foremost.  And, I can’t let myself go into a market that I myself am not comfortable with.  

But – that isn’t the real point of the post.  The point is, that when you are working online, as it is with any job, you need to be who you are, and you need to be doing things that are in line with your beliefs and your personality.  The experts can tell you to go and do a hundred things – but if you don’t believe that what you would be doing reflects who you are, then you will have a hard time being committed to it.

Now, I might take a lot of heat over this – but, I personally have always had a very hard time going and doing a massive social bookmarking campaign.  I have tried to do it the way the experts say I have to – but I do feel sometimes like I am taking advantage of a service that really isn’t meant to just post links to my personal pages.

Don ‘t get me wrong – I have stumbled my pages, I have “Digged” them, submitted them to tons of others, but I do still have a hard time setting up profiles on hundreds of social sites just for the purpose of building the links back to my site.

I know that there isn’t anything really wrong with it – but for some reason, there is just something about it that I feel is a bit “spammy”.

Perhaps that is why I don’t have a huge following on my blog – although it could also do with the fact that I had left it sitting idle for almost a year too…….I do have some RSS subscribers, (Thank you, by the way!), but I am nowhere near the numbers of some of the really big blogs – and don’t know if I ever will be.

Some days, I feel like I am writing to myself.  I don’t know if I am writing any useful content – I hope that I can give some entertainment to some of you, and maybe even offer some advice and tips that can help, but it is difficult to know sometimes if you are really doing things right.

I love to write – and that is the reason I am blogging.  I would love to have a huge following some day, but I will have to find my own ways to build the traffic to my site – methods that I feel comfortable with.  I want my readers to know that I am genuine – when I write something, it will be as honest as possible.  That is who I am – and I am not going to change that.

I know that some people would say that I will be eaten alive in the “Online Marketing World”, but I believe that everyone has their own way of doing things, and I hope that by remaining loyal to who I am, and who I would like my kids to be, then maybe I will be alright and carve out my own little corner on the internet that allows me to make some money, doing something I love.

I am not saying not to take any advice, or follow any techniques you are being taught – far from that!  You will not learn anything new if you aren’t prepared to try what experts are teaching you.

But, don’t follow blindly.  Make sure you are learning techniques that you are going to stick with – or else you will continue running in circles wondering why everyone else has succeeded online, when you haven’t.  The truth is, if you aren’t comfortable with what you are doing – then you won’t keep doing it.

Take blogging for example – I think one of the reasons I had such a hard time committing to this blog in the beginning was that I was being told – “You need to research keywords, write articles around them optimize everything for those keywords, repeat every day for a new article”.  And, that is great for article marketing, and for niche blogs – but for a blog that I really wanted to enjoy, and to offer genuine material for my readers – that just wasn’t something I could commit to every single day.

Now – if I post once or twice a week – I am happy.  I am sure there will be times I will go longer – and maybe some days, I just might have more than one thing to say.  I don’t know – but I will follow my gut on that one.

And – hopefully, I have put this article together in a way that makes sense.  I know there is alot of information out there – find something you love, learn all you can – take what you feel is right for who you are, and start applying it.

That is how you will “make it”.

After just one day of having the Amazon plugin installed, and completely redoing my site…….I had 3 orders through Amazon!  I only had 6 clicks – but 3 of them ordered!

I was so surprised – and I know that it does help that I was already getting traffic to the site, but it still isn’t a large amount – averaging about 40 a day.

Because Amazon doesn’t show any amounts until the order is actually shipped (I believe), I didn’t see until today what I had even made.  It isn’t a huge winfall by any means – only $8 and some change – but seriously….if you can’t see the potential in this, then I don’t know what to say!

Get enough of these sites out there working like this every day, and you will start to see something building up that will continue to make you money every month.

So – I am back to work now on another site to start building up my niche blog real estate!

There is usually a bit of shock that you – especially when you are a MOM (gasp!) – would be involved in such a shady business venture.

Well, to put the record straight for anyone who thinks that is all internet marketers do, I am going to give a bit of a run-down of some of the other possible ventures we are involved in.  And, for any of you who are wanting to learn a bit more about Internet Marketing, and start working from home – you can pick up some ideas of possible avenues you could try for earning your own income.

While I am not the official source for the Internet Marketing term – to me, it involves marketing a product, idea, or business on the internet.  There are tons of ways of doing that – and they don’t involve spam or anything else that is remotely illegal.  It is simply another means of advertising and marketing your product to get it in front of your target customers.

The internet has opened huge doors of opportunity to everyone – and has helped to level the playing field a bit for the average person who has an idea for a product, or who has a small business – to get it seen by more people than they could have before.

Here are just some ways that you can be involved in Internet Marketing:

1.     Affiliate Marketing: Simply put, affiliate marketing is when you promote and market someone else’s product in return for profit when an action is taken.  Usually, it is when a customer purchases a product – you will get a certain percentage of the sale price.  Affiliate marketing has been widely used by even the top businesses, and became a pretty mainstream way of doing business when Amazon became so well known for their affiliate program.  It is a very good way to make some extra money, or to take it to the next level and make it your sole income.  There are many people who are making very good money doing this full time – but it isn’t something you can just jump into and expect to make money.  You need to learn how to market that product, which involves a series of steps, such as keyword research, SEO for your website (if you choose to go that route), or learning how to do Pay Per Click advertising, link building, article marketing and a whole lot more.

2.    Article Marketing: I mentioned this in with affiliate marketing, and it does tend to go together.  But, you can use article marketing for your own product or business as well.  It involves writing many keyword optimized articles, submitting them to sites on the internet – which will bring traffic to your website.  This takes time, and patience, but is a very effective means to build up traffic to your site.

3.    Product Creation: While most people shy away from the thought of creating their own product, it is said by many people that this is the best way to establish a solid income online.   Again though, it involves a lot more than just going out and putting something together that you think people would want to learn about.  You need to make sure there is a market for a product, which involves at a minimum, keyword research and market research – and you need to make sure that you are putting out a product that can genuinely help people, or give them the knowledge that they are searching for.

4.   Offering Services: I made my start in internet marketing by writing articles and editing for other marketers.  I learned a lot during this time – and still do some work for a few of my original clients who have been with me for so long.  This is a great way to get started, or even to use as a full time income – but although you want to start out offering lower prices so people can see your work, you want to make sure you start charging enough to make it worthwhile to you, or trust me – you can end up burning out pretty fast!

5.    Blogging: There are a lot of people out there who are blogging and who make their entire income from that.  What a great way to make money – by writing about something you love!  But, there is a lot more to it than that – and I am not really the expert in that field.  Blogging takes commitment, and it isn’t something you can just expect to make money from overnight.

6.   E-commerce: Whether you are selling your own products from your brick and mortar business, or using a dropshipper to send goods to your customers, selling products online reaches a huge audience and has become something that is open to just about anyone who wants to sell online.

The truth is, there are a lot more ways that you can be involved in internet marketing – running your own membership site, selling on ebay, flipping websites – the list goes on and on, but the basic premise behind everything you do is learning to market so that your product, or the product you are promoting, is being seen by the customers who are searching for it.

And, that can end up being more work than most people realize.

I am not just playing on the computer every day, reading emails and chatting on Facebook – I have spent countless hours learning new strategies and trends, working on the tedious tasks like building links to my websites, submitting articles to directories and a whole lot more.

So – if you think Internet Marketing is something you would like to get into – find some people you can trust to learn from, and be prepared to put the work in.  But, it will pay off – and eventually you will end up like the rest of us, who learn to love everything we are doing.  It almost becomes an obsession – which can be hard for other people to understand.

Especially when they think that all we are doing is sending spam emails out to everyone on the planet!

PS:  Here are some great resources for you to follow and learn from:

•    Warrior Forum: This is, in my opinion, one of the best learning resources for internet marketing by far.  Pay the extra money and join the War Room – trust me, it is worth every penny, and the best part of it is the subforum of posts by Allan Says (the forum owner).  Avoid the WSO forum, unless you absolutely know what you are needing.  Some of the names to follow and learn from (that you can trust), are Steven Waganheim, Kevin Riley, Bev Clement, Michael Oksa, JayXtreme, Tiffany Dow and others who you will learn to trust.

•    If you are interested in learning more about Blogging, you can go to http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/.  This is just a really good site to follow, with very good advice.It is written by a successful internet marketer, Yaro Starak – who has great hair by the way, and is not at all hard on the eyes;-)

So – what is it that is holding us back?

Not having confidence in our knowledge, our service, our products or whatever else we need to have confidence in when we are in our own business.

Let me give you my own examples:

I have come to realize that I have been working online for over 5 years now.  I have spent that entire time learning new things, trying new things (some which worked, some which didn’t), and all this time, I have been building up a tremendous amount of knowledge about internet marketing, building an online presence…..

I have spent countless hours learning how to do effective keyword research, finding niche markets, learning everything I could about Wordpress…so much that it would have taken me at least a couple of years in full time training to learn what I know now.

Yet I still was putting myself in the “newbie” category.  I didn’t feel that I had anything I could offer anyone to teach them.

Until I started helping offline businesses around here.  I realized that the knowledge that I have spent so much time learning, trying – failing and succeeding – is useful to others, and I do have alot of information I can share to help people.

That was a huge shock for me!

I have never considered myself an “expert” in anything really, (and I still don’t believe I am anywhere near that status), but the truth is I enjoy learning about internet marketing so much, that I am constantly following with new trends and trying new strategies, which does give me knowledge that is specialized.

Do you do this to yourself?

Do you undervalue what you have to offer?  Doesn’t matter if it is a product you are creating, a service you are providing, or maybe you have a hard time believing in the path you have chosen?

We all go through that – and that is something I have learned.  I hear women talking about how they don’t believe that they can charge more for a product they created because it might not really be good enough.

Or, they doubt if they should take that course, or apply for that job, or in the case for many of us getting into internet marketing – they don’t have confidence that they have what it takes to really be able to work from home, and make a decent living.

You need to stop limiting your thinking like that.  Seriously – do it right from the start.

The truth is, we all have strengths – and if we don’t value what we can offer, or what we can do – then how can we expect others to take us seriously?

“Seldom does an individual exceed his own expectations.”  ~Unknown

EDCJVUQ9E4ZM

I have been working online for over 2 years now, and much of that time has been spent learning and watching what others were doing.  The problem I have is that I am not much of a salesperson, which obviously is essential to marketing any business.

I have taken writing jobs for way less than what I felt I deserved to be paid for my time, because I didn’t want to seem pushy and demand the same payment that others were receiving for doing the same work.

Anyway, the point of my post is that the other day I was reading something that was written by a very well known and respected marketer who is making very good money.  He basically wrote a story with a message to follow that well known formula – “do unto others…..”

What I got from reading that was to stop trying to do what I was not comfortable with.  And – that, for me, is some of the marketing and selling techniques I am seeing being used every day.

Always try to remember to treat your customers how you would want to be treated.  Show them respect and honesty – it will go a lot further than pushing them and not really caring how they may be feeling.  Yes, you may get more sales by being pushier, but in the end I don’t think it is worth it.

When I first put this guide together, I tried learning everything I would need to be able to sell it.  But, I am just not comfortable with some of the exaggerations and tactics that others might use.

I am not good at writing sales letters that will make a person need to buy without even thinking about it – all I can offer is my honest hope that I can help other women work from home like I am.  I am not going to try being someone I am not, and I am not going to resort to tactics that I would not want being done to me.

And, I hope that everyone who reads this does the same in their own businesses – whatever they may be.  Remember how it feels to be the customer, and try to treat them how you would appreciate being treated.

In the end, your integrity and the opinions of your customers are what is important.  Treat them right, and you will have customers for life – and respect that you deserve.