Best Small Business Idea -- It's All About You

Summary:

We've all heard that the key to success in business is to focus totally on your customers.

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Getting More Focused --  It’s All About You

Jeanna Pool from Catalyst Creative writes a great ezine on marketing each month.  In January she shared 5 Great Marketing Tips for 2006.  Number 1 was “Stop Focusing on You”.  She declares 2006 the year of the client and exhorts you to focus totally on your clients and their needs.  I think she’s right on.  And I think she’s completely wrong.  Why right and wrong?

Because if you’ve been in business for awhile and have great products and great services and aren’t getting the results you want, you may be too focused on your clients and not focused enough on yourself.  Last week, I encouraged your to revisit your vision of your business and ask yourself why you started your business in the first place.  Now I want you to focus even more on what you want.  What exactly do you want out of your business?  Do you want more money?  If so, how much?  Write down a number.  Do you want more flexible hours?  If so, write out exactly the schedule you’d like.  Do you want to change the world?  If so, write out specifically how that would look.

Why all this focus on you?  Because if you aren’t absolutely clear on what you want, how are you going to know if you are successful?  How are you going help your clients if you aren’t taking care of yourself as well.  Maybe you need to be making $150,000 a year to provide your family with the life that you wanted.  You want to send your kids to college.  You want to retire while you are still in active and in good health.  Or maybe you want to just make an extra $20,000 a year working part-time while you take care of your children until they are in school.  Or perhaps your goal is to make a million dollars a year and live a really incredible life.  Defining this is very important.  Why?

Because what you want will shape your business.  It will determine who your customers are and how you will help them.  If you want $5,000,000 in sales, your products and methods are going to be a whole lot different than if you want $50,000 in sales.  If you want to work only afternoons, that is going to shape your business as well.  If you want to sell your business and retire in five years, that’s going to affect your decisions as well.  So right now, get out a paper and pen and get ready to write.

Did you get your pen and paper out?  Answer the question, “What do I want out of my business?”   Write in as much detail exactly what you want your business to give you.  Be as specific as possible.  Write as much as you can.  Think income, lifestyle, schedule, partners, travel, location, employees.  What exactly do you want?  Throughout the week, add to this and revise it.  Compare where you are right now to what you really want.  How large is the gap?  Next week, I’ll help you create a plan to narrow the gap with:  Why Business Plans Don’t Work  -- How to Create an Effective Action Plan

Become A Super Affiliate With Clickbank

Summary:
Clickbank is an ideal place to start. Here, you can find one of the largest affiliate marketing programs in the industry. You just need to visit their site, http://www.clickbank.com and secure a clickbank ID. From the Clickbank’s home page, proceed to earn commissions and look for the products and services that perfectly fit you and your site. These products are typically ranked according to their popularity.






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Making money through affiliate marketing is one of the most rewarding careers one could ever have. What’s good about this business is that anyone can join and make their way to success. Affiliate marketing has been known to be cost-efficient, assessable method of conveying long-term results. In fact, you can start even with a shoe string budget. And with affiliate marketing, you can have the benefit of working from home and enjoying the freedom and flexibility of working for yourself.

But there are also some people who failed in this kind of business. It could be because they lack knowledge and tactics. If you are a web site owner and you want to join in an affiliate marketing business, you should know where to get good affiliate programs.

Clickbank is an ideal place to start. Here, you can find one of the largest affiliate marketing programs in the industry. You just need to visit their site, http://www.clickbank.com and secure a clickbank ID. From the Clickbank’s home page, proceed to Earn Commissions and look for the products and services that perfectly fit you and your site. These products are typically ranked according to their popularity.

Clickbank is one of the affiliate networks that serve as a 3rd party between the web merchants and the associated affiliates. It is responsible in providing the technology to deliver the merchant’s offers and campaigns. The affiliate network also do the job of collecting commission fees from the merchant and giving it to the affiliates involved in the program.

Clickbank provides you a large and increasing network of publishers or affiliates to tap into. To be more specific, clickbank has more than 100,000 affiliates who are experts in finding potential customers for your affiliate program. The reason why more and more affiliates are joining Clickbank is obvious the process of gaining commissions in this network is absolutely fair and transparent.

For web merchants, joining Clickbank is so easy. You just need to sign up in their site for free and allow them to sell your products. Keep up a promotional web site that gives your potential customers detailed information about your offered product or services. At your website, you must also maintain a comprehensive technical support pages for your product. In return, Clickbank will promote and sell your product, give customer service for your product, allow their affiliates to pass on traffic to your web site, enable you to encourage new affiliates to advertise your web site, furnish real-time sales reporting for you and the affiliates and send you and all affiliates a paycheck  twice a month.

If you’re a Clickbank affiliate wannabe, you surely won’t find it hard to be a part of this network. First, you are required to place their link on your website and if you don’t have a Clickbank account, you need to complete the Clickbank affiliate form and create your own account. Then, if you already have a Clickbank username, you are free to choose whatever marketing tools you want to use bring in more clicks and generate more sales. After selecting marketing tools, you can now get your affiliate link.

That’s how simple it is to join Clickbank. But being a Clickbank super affiliate is no minor achievement. It means you need to possess the ability to sell lots of affiliate products. You also need to have expertise in search engine optimization, email marketing, newsletter marketing, reciprocal linkage, link exchanges and other methods of promoting your merchant’s goods and services.

Among the secrets to become successful in affiliate marketing is to come up with good content based website and put your affiliate links in all your content. Your main purpose here is to give your visitors good quality content about the things they are interested in. Set aside the job of selling. It must be done by the sales letter page you are transferring them to.

Promote multiple affiliate programs in your website but don’t promote everything the world has to offer. Just choose the affiliate programs that fit your site and focus on it.  Then, it is advisable to automate the whole process, giving you more time for other ventures. Yes, you’ve read it right! Automation is another key to become a super affiliate.

Of course, you have to spend more time in reading, learning and taking up the changes in affiliate marketing business. Through this, you’ll remain on top of the trends. If you are knowledgeable with online marketing, you’ll understand how important it is to stay up-to-date.  In this kind of business, what worked and what was accepted few months ago may not work at present. So always see to it that you know what’s new in affiliate marketing everyday.

It’s really hard to be a Clickbank super affiliate, but you shouldn’t say NO to the thought of giving up. Bear in mind that in affiliate marketing business, you need to develop persistence, patience and knowledge. These traits will teach you to carry on no matter how tough the job is. Also, check your statistics. This will help you find out what is working and what is not. Make necessary changes if needed but do it one at a time and be patient.

Don’t forget that in affiliate marketing, everything won’t take place overnight. And it will not happen without blood, sweat and hefty time commitment. Again, just encompass patience, persistence and knowledge; then do above mentioned tactics. Before you recognize it, you will start gaining profits. Believe me, the fruits of all your efforts here in affiliate marketing will be way too sweet.