Month: August 2019

Choosing the Right Niche for You

Alright, the first thing you need to do is choose a niche to focus on. This method is so much easier than the micro niche method, because it doesn’t involve hours upon hours of researching products, affiliate networks, and keyword tools. You just pick a niche and go.

Okay, so it does involve SOME research, but the research is faster and easier using this method and using a few free tools you can complete this in an hour or less in most cases. The first thing to do is figure out a niche that has voracious buyers but NOT a ton of competition. This is the toughest part, because most markets with voracious buyers are insanely competitive. (Some competition is good, but too much competition makes your job much harder.) I use a program called Jaaxy for this.

Golf, for example, is a popular niche for internet marketers to get into. This is especially true for beginners. Yes, golfers do tend to have excess income to spend. Yes, they do tend to spend a good chunk of that excess income on their hobby. But because pretty much everyone knows this, competition is ridiculous. There are just too many established golf websites for the average marketer to compete.

I use this tool for my keyword research, and I find it second to none. Try THIS.

Is it possible to compete? Absolutely. But unless you are extremely good at marketing and/or have a huge budget for advertising and content creation, you’re not likely to make a whole lot of headway in this niche. It’s just far too over-saturated. A great idea is focusing on a broad interest group rather than a more competitive niche. Look at DIYReady.com (http://www.diyready.com), for example.

They have a niche—DIY—but it’s broad enough that they have a huge number of topics they can focus on within the DIY spectrum, which also gives them a broader range of products they can promote. Because there are so many individual topics under the DIY umbrella, virtually anyone can compete in this niche.

People who enjoy this type of content typically frequent multiple DIY websites, and those users are easy to access because they are prevalent on Pinterest and other social websites. This is the type of niche you should try to locate. You want something broad—but not too broad—with voracious buyers and fans that are easy to locate.

Some examples include:

DIY, crafts, home improvement, gardening, etc.

Prepping, survival, outdoor skills

Model building (cars, ships, airplanes, etc.)

Various careers

Pets (specific breeds, or types)

The great thing about this method is that if you discover one aspect of a niche isn’t working for you, it’s easy to switch to another one as long as you get a domain that covers the whole, broad niche. For example, if you decided to market to model builders and want to focus on model cars, you might want to register a domain like model builders.com instead of modelcarbuilders.com so you can branch out into planes and ships later. (I’m sure those domains are taken; I’m just using them as a basic example.)

Worst case scenario, if you create a large amount of custom content in a niche and it doesn’t pan out the way you hope, you could sell the website or articles to someone else in the niche to recoup some costs you incurred, and probably make a good profit. Once you’ve chosen a niche and bought a broad domain, it’s time to move on.

An Introduction to Amazon Affiliate

Amazon has been a great income earner for affiliates for many years, but changes to a variety of factors such as SEO and the habits of your typical web surfer have made it a much different environment than it was a few years ago.

It was once possible to create micro niche sites that focused on a very specific niche subject, or even one single product, and make very good money.

Google seemed to love those micro niche sites, and it was very easy to rank them and make a lot of money quickly.

But times change. Google apparently decided they wanted that most micro niche sites were spam, which was mostly true, and decided it wanted to rank sites that had huge amounts of quality content instead.

It destroyed a lot of businesses, and domains began expiring left and right because they lost their rankings and were no longer profitable. With all these changes making old methods difficult, if not nearly impossible, is it still possible to make money as an Amazon affiliate?

The answer is a resounding, “YES!”

The methods may be different, but it certainly is possible to earn very good money as an Amazon affiliate, and you’re going to learn how in this guide.

So let’s begin.

Getting Started

The first thing you need to do is toss out your old notions of micro-niche sites. These sites are a lot harder to make profitable, and it requires a lot more marketing and promotion. It’s simply not feasible. Google doesn’t like tiny websites, because tiny websites are generally nothing but spam.

For this reason, it’s incredibly difficult to rank a “thin” website, meaning the original purpose of micro niche sites (to bring in a large amount of traffic to promote just one or two affiliate products) is pretty much dead unless you’re willing to put in a ton of time and effort into other marketing methods.

Instead, it’s important to focus on wider niches, because if you’re going to put so much effort into promotion, you might as well have a lot more products that you can potentially sell. Another thing that is practically dead is the review site. Review sites just aren’t going to rank in Google, and most people just go to Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart, Target, or some other major retailer to find reviews.

People online are more savvy than ever, and they have learned that the average “review site” is nothing more than a thinly-veiled affiliate site. While review sites can work, it’s just so much harder than it once was. You can no longer easily rank these sites, and they require a lot more promotion, and since people no longer trust them like they once did, they really aren’t as profitable.

Fortunately, there’s a better way.

 

It does NOT involve:

 

• Creating “thin” affiliate sites with little to no original content
• Focusing on single products or narrow niches
• Spamming Google and other search engines
• Registering dozens of domains (or more)
• Intense keyword research
• Paid advertising

This method is actually easier and more fun than the old method, and requires less financial investment than the old micro niche method, because you only need one domain, or maybe a handful, instead of dozens, hundreds, or thousands.

You can focus on a broader niche, while still attracting Google traffic and getting traffic from other sources. In fact, this is actually the type of method Google prefers, because you’re creating REAL website with REAL content and REAL benefits to your visitors!

LinkedIn’s Ad Specs & Advertising Guidelines

You launched your first Company Page, and we’re sure that your fingers are itching to start making some cool ads to start promoting your content. That is great news, and we have made room to give something special to you before you start.

In this article, we will teach you how to apply some ideal ad specifications in advertising with LinkedIn, as well as how to follow and comply with the LinkedIn guidelines.

LinkedIn’s Ad Specs

For LinkedIn Advertising Specifications, my advice for you is to go straight to www.linkedin.com/help/lms/topics/8154/8155 and right here you will be able to see all the advertising specifications for each one of the Ad Types LinkedIn is actually offering you.

First, take a look at the Sponsored Content and the Text Ads Ones.

Sponsored Content Ads are updates that promote your content to an audience beyond people that are following your profile or your company. You can use them to target a specific audience, and help you reach LinkedIn members wherever and whenever they are engaging on the LinkedIn platform across desktop, mobile, and tablet.

For Sponsored Company Content and Direct Sponsored Content Specifications, we find: Link sharing, Embedded Rich Media, Ad policy notes, tracking capabilities, and Click flow. Text Ads are a tailor made for reaching any type of potential audience on desktop devices on any type of budget.

For Advertising Specifications for Text Ads, we find: Links, Text, Image and Placement.

You can also take a look at the other Ad Specs, depending on your plans for advertising with LinkedIn.

LinkedIn Advertising Guidelines

The following advertising guidelines have been created by LinkedIn to protect their users and the integrity of its platform. Failure to comply with these guidelines will get your ads removed from the platform.

LinkedIn can also restrict you from further advertising on it, so take note:

• Your in-ad content must be accurate and true to the actual content being promoted. Do not ever deceive or lie to LinkedIn members through advertising.
• Keep your in-ad text concise and well formatted. Do not use non-standard grammar, spelling or capitalization.
• In-ad contact information must be kept to a minimum. Add only one link, one email address or one phone number per ad.
• Do not ever use inappropriate, suggestive or outright offensive language in your ads.
• In-ad links must lead to clean and non-deceiving sites.
• Do not use trademarked material that you are not legally allowed to promote.
• Do not promote sensitive content such as adult and dating websites, gambling related material or websites, hate related or violent content or religiously inflammatory content.
• Do not promote prohibited products and services such as multi-level marketing schemes, affiliate advertising, alcoholic products, animal products, counterfeit goods, copyrighted content, private data, drug related content and paraphernalia, fake documentation, cracked or pirated software, tobacco related content or products and weapons or firearms.

IM Business Models:Blogging

Of course the first thing that comes to mind for many people when discussing ways to make money online is blogging. A successful blog is an incredibly valuable tool because it essentially provides you with a platform through which you can promote any other type of business model. For instance, if you chose to become an affiliate marketer, then building up a popular blog with a large, regular readership is one of the very best ways to sell those products.

Likewise, if you want to be a drop seller, then you can really benefit from a blog by simply creating an e commerce store and using the blog to promote that. We’ve already seen that you actually need to have a good website or blog in place if you plan on CPA marketing. The same goes double for subscription sites. There are more options with blogging too. One is to use PPC advertising such as AdSense. AdSense are ads from Google that pay out each time someone clicks on them.

You simply add some ‘ad script’ to your website and then it will show different adverts at different times. Or perhaps you just want to use display ads? Get big enough and many brands will pay you monthly to feature their adverts on your site. Likewise, you can use a blog to launch all kinds of other business ventures or you can get paid by sponsors to recommend products.

A website can even be used to sell a service – if you provide web design or writing services then your website can be a great place to demonstrate your talent and your knowledge. There are countless examples of people who have become very wealthy through running a blog. Pat Flynn who owns (www.smartpassiveincome.com) is one such example. Pat is a guy who talks about making money online and who actually owns several blogs and websites including one aimed at food trucks which he publishes his earnings from.

Pat’s blog is very easy to read and provides a ton of great information and as a result, he has achieved almost superstar status and is invited to big events. This is just an ordinary family guy! Pat makes his money mainly through adverts on the sites and via sales of information products. Another great example is The Art of Manliness (www.artofmanliness.com). This blog was founded by Brett McKay in 2008 and focuses on a range of topics relating to what it means to be a man in the 21st century.

It’s a unique niche that allows him to cover diverse topics ranging from beard trimming, to weightlifting, to how to smoke a cigar and drink whiskey. The site is now highly successful and provides far more than a full time income to Brett and his family. He makes his income through various types of advertising, possibly commission on physical products and through sales of his own products through an e commerce store.

How to Get Started, And Succeed!

The problem with running a blog is that it’s not easy. In order for a blog to become profitable, it’s often necessary for you to be getting hundreds of thousands of views a day and to have a smart form of monetization in place.

The question is, how do you get to this point?

Setting Up a Blog

Thankfully, actually setting up a blog is a relatively easy process. To do this, you’ll need to find a hosting account and a domain name and you’ll probably want to use a CMS such as WordPress. A hosting account is basically what gives you the ‘space’ to store your files on the web. You’ll be paying a monthly or yearly fee in order to rent space on a ‘server’ which is a giant computer that remains constantly connected to the web at all times.

You place your website files on that and it ensures they’re able to be served up when someone wants to find them. In order to find those files though, your visitors will need to use your domain name or URL. This is the address that people will type in order to find your website and this address is going to point at the specific directory within the

server so that people are shown your website when they navigate there.

Fortunately, finding hosting and a domain name are both relatively easy tasks and shouldn’t set you back too much more than $200 a year to begin with (tops). This is where creating a SaaS business would be much more complicated as you’d need a lot more space and speed from the server in order to let thousands of users upload and edit files as they needed to. A great example of a hosting site that also offers domain name registration and web hosting is Blue Host (www.bluehost.com).

A quick search on Google though will yield many, many more. Next comes the CMS. CMS stands for ‘Content Management System’ and essentially what this is, is a tool that will allow you to easily change the look of your website and to add and delete pages of content. The best known CMS is WordPress and it’s highly recommended that you go this route. WordPress will allow you to create a website in minutes rather than months, it will manage your files and it will look highly professional.

WordPress is not a ‘beginners’ tool by any means but rather is a professional piece of CMS software that is actually used by many of the biggest brands on the planet. Huge websites like Forbes, the BBC and Mashable use WordPress, as do the aforementioned successful blogs we mentioned. Using WordPress also ensures your site will be compatible with a ton of useful tools and features including the aforementioned WooCommerce and Amember.

It also means you’ll have a community of people out there who can help with any technical troubles you may be having and that your site will be easy for most web developers to understand and edit. In short, WordPress makes

life much easier for you and also makes your site far more professional. It is tried and tested and known to succeed… so why go with anything else?

If you choose a prominent hosting service like BlueHost, then the option to install WordPress will even be right there in the control panel meaning it takes literally just one click. All that said, there are other CMS options if you would prefer. One is Joomla! (www.joomla.org) which is similar to WordPress and offers a lot of flexibility. It’s a lot more fiddly though and there’s less support available mostly it is used in house for companies creating backend software.

Another popular choice is Drupal, which is again much more complicated.

Of course, you could always create your own CMS or forego having one at all, but either of these choices will drastically increase your workload while actually putting your business at more risk. Be very limited in terms of space, bandwidth and the other elements of your website. Blogger is also highly limited in terms of the features it offers for building your own web design.

In other words, if you want to create a proper website with the potential to grow and scale into something that will

earn a lot of money, you can’t use something like Blogger.

CPA Marketing

CPA marketing stands for ‘Cost Per Action’. This is an interesting alternative to affiliate marketing that is similar in many ways. Basically, what ‘cost per action’ means is that you get paid every time someone carries out a certain action. Now, in many cases this might mean that you get paid when someone buys something – in which case it is

working similarly to affiliate marketing (except that you’re getting paid a flat rate most likely). In other cases though, the ‘action’ might mean subscribing to a mailing list or joining a membership site.

Another difference is that CPA is often managed more similarly to PPC or display advertising. In other words, rather than promoting a product you might simply place adverts on your website. Instead of being paid for every click though, you get paid when someone clicks on the advert and then takes the required action.

Getting Started

Similar again to affiliate marketing, the first thing you need to do to get started with CPA marketing is to find yourself a platform where you’ll be able to track down the different offers and start promoting the adverts/links.

Currently, CPA marketing isn’t quite as big as affiliate marketing which is both a good thing and a bad thing. It’s a good thing because it means less competition for you but it’s a bad thing because it’s a little harder to find good options.

Likewise, there aren’t as many networks that have quite risen to the top of the heap like JVZoo or Clickbank. Some CPA networks are actually a bit poorly made and in some cases even disreputable. Make sure you do your research then before choosing one to go with! That said, some good CPA networks to choose from include Max Bounty (www.maxbounty.com), PeerFly (www.peerfly.com) or Clickbooth (www.clickbooth.com).

Make sure to read the reviews and browse through what’s available in order to find the right products and deals that you want to promote. What you’ll find when looking at these is that the whole process is a little simpler and more automated versus affiliate marketing. You simply sign up as a publisher and then post the ads/promotions on your site without having to deal directly with the brand that is offering the CPA promotion.

In other words, this system is a lot closer to using AdSense or other ‘Pay Per Click’ adverts.

How to Get Accepted Into a CPA Network

One of the tougher parts of CPA marketing is that you need to be ‘accepted’ into the network and into the specific deal. In order to make sure that they are offering their clients the very best service, CPA networks make sure to vet the publishers they work with closely. They want to make sure that you are representing the offers you’re

promoting well and that the brands they work with will be proud to be associated with your business.

All this means that if you have a website that looks like it was made by a 13-year old, you’re going to struggle. Likewise, if you have no prior experience or examples of your work then you may also struggle. So the solution is to make sure that you have a good website that you can demonstrate to those networks that you’re delivering good value and you’re reaching a larger audience.

This does mean that CPA might not be the best choice for those who are starting out with their first online business model – as they’ll need to build up some traction first. Another tip for getting accepted into CPA networks is to pick up the phone and give them a call. Ask to speak with an affiliate manager and this way you can put forward your strong case for why you think you should be accepted. This essentially fast tracks you and it’s certainly much quicker

and easier than waiting for lots of emails to come through.

 

Irving

 

Step 1: Register Your Business Name

It will benefit you in the long run to register your business with a legal business name to ensure everything is legal. By doing this you will also keep other people from using your business name and benefiting from your hard work.

Do a little research on the tax benefits of being incorporated (INC) or being a limited liability corporation (LLC) versus the disadvantages and see if either of those will give you an advantage for your business.

Get a second address for your business for privacy and to keep your personal and business mail separate.

Consider renting a mailbox from your local post office to use as your second address. Make sure you get the best size for the mail you will receive. You may also have the choice to pay in 3, 6, or 12-month incremental payments.

Step 2: Open a Business Bank Account

Open a separate business bank account to keep your personal and business expenses separate.

You can open a business bank account anywhere, but having a local branch nearby can be helpful, especially if problems arise and they can only be resolved in-person.

Explore different merchant accounts to take credit and debit card payments.

There are several options: Traditional banks, PayPal, Stripe, etc. • • Banks will require more information about your business (including a business plan and forecasts) to grant you access to a merchant account.

Virtually anyone can apply for and get a PayPal or Stripe account (without providing the level of information a traditional bank requires), so you will be able to take payments more quickly.

Step 3: Open a New Google Account and Services

Set up a Google account to take advantage of Google services such as:

Gmail

Google Analytics

YouTube

Head over to JVZoo and set up a free account.

You can set up a free JVZoo account to sell your own products and to promote other marketers’ products as an affiliate.

Step 4: Get Your Domain

Name and reliable Web Hosting To set up your own business website, the first thing you will need is a domain name.

Here are a few domain name registrars:

GoDaddy

Namecheap

Don’t forget about reliable Web hosting

HostGator

BlueHost

You can forget about web hosting if you use my method.

Try to register a domain name that has your main topic or keyword in the domain name. Doing this will help with your site’s ranking in the search engines and be easier for prospective customers to find.

Try to register a .com, .net, or .org domain name if possible – arguably, the three most-recognized domain name extensions.

Be sure your Web hosting provider provides good customer service whenever you have an issue via online chat, email or phone.

Also, be sure your Web hosting provider has reliable up time for your site. You can’t afford to have a provider that can’t always keep your site up and running.

Step 5: Create Your Website and Graphics

Decide which website creation software you plan to use to make and edit Web pages. Most web hosting providers have website creation software you can use or use a content management system (CMS) like:

WordPress

Drupal

Joomla

Doing it yourself will save on costs and time in the future if you learn how to effectively work with the software you decide to utilize. When adding products to your website, be sure to create cover graphics to give a nice visual representation.

When doing this, people will be more likely to click on them and check out the offer. Most Internet marketers provide their affiliates with graphics and sales copy to promote their products – use them in your promotion of such offers and place them appropriately on your website.

Step 6: Send Some Traffic to Your Site

Traffic is the lifeblood of your business because no traffic equals zero sales. Quality traffic is especially vital. There are free and paid traffic-generating methods. You can use any combination of them to get quality traffic to your site.

Here are a few to get you started:

Social media marketing

Viral marketing

Content marketing

Facebook advertising

PPC advertising

Solo advertising

Step 7: Count Your Profits and Pay Your Taxes

Don’t spend your early profits frivolously because the tax man will come knocking before you realize it.

Remember: Be sure to put enough money aside to pay your yearly business taxes. It will always benefit you to invest some of your earnings into yourself. Increase your knowledge of current marketing methods so you can stay profitable.

Irving

Can you really ‘think yourself rich’?

I’m here to tell you that it is not only possible, but that it is also actually the best chance you have of making a lot of money. Many of us dream of living in a large luxurious house in a sunny country, we imagine wearing smart suits that exude power and confidence and we wish that we didn’t have to make so many hard choices because our funds can’t support the lifestyles we want to lead.

If that sounds familiar, then you need to make a change. And as with ALL things, that change starts with you and your mindset. If you want to be wealthy, then what are you doing about it? And is there any chance that you may, in fact, be going about it the wrong way?

Wealth and Your Career

Ask the average person in the street what they would hypothetically need to do in order to become richer and 99% of them will tell you the same thing: get a better job. Okay, fair enough. They are not wrong per say. Indeed, getting a better job won’t hurt their income and that in turn will likely mean they get richer at least a little.

But in fact, this is not the whole story. And what’s more, be that this isn’t even the main part of the story. Wealth and salary are not inextricably linked. They are related sure, but only to a small degree. If you wanted to see an equation telling you how to get wealthy, then it would really look like this:

Wealth = Income – Outgoings

So, let’s say that your income is determined solely by the amount of money you are making at work. Even in that scenario, you still have another, equally important factor. That is your outgoings. If you are earning a cool million dollars a month but you also waste a million dollars a month of lavish trips and on nights out and clothes, then you are ultimately not going to be very well off. Rather, you’re likely to lose money over time.

But if you are earning a more normal $2500 a month but you only spend $500, then suddenly you are saving $2000 per month. In 12 months, you’ll have $24,000 saved away. That’s a decent down payment on a house! So, you now have two options. Two ways to get richer. One be that you seek to get a better job and increase your income and the other be that you save more money and spend less.

How to Spend Less

When I was at university, my summer job was working at a yacht club. Specifically, I was a waiter in one of the restaurants there that was actually paid for and owned by the clientele of the club. The club was in Sandbanks, England – an area that is also sometimes referred to as ‘millionaire’s row’ because it has among the most expensive real estate in the world along the seafront.

So, these are people who own yachts and who belong to a club that is situated in one of the wealthiest parts of the world. Suffice to say that they were not struggling for cash. And of course, what many people would point out to me be that this should likely result in pretty big tips!

Except that’s not what happened. In fact, I received some of the worst tips I have in any job. I had a lady call me over to secretively give me 20p (around 30cents) for my hard work. She literally told me to buy myself something nice. And this is bearing in mind that it is standard practice in England to tip 10%. The meals usually cost close to $150.

I told my Mum this and her response was: how do you think they got rich, dear?

Makes sense

Look, I’m not here to tell you should become stingy with tips. But what I am telling you be that the wealthiest people recognize that every little bit adds up and makes a very big difference in the long run. Your aim now is not to fritter. That $3 coffee you have every morning on the way to work is $15 over the course of a week. $60 over a course of a month and $720 over the course of the year.

That is a tiny amount and that’s before we have even considered all those other things you likely pay for that you don’t really need. Maybe your Spotify account, Netflix, 100+ TV Channels, gas for the car for all those trips you don’t really need to make. It adds up. Worse are all those larger purchases we make on an impulse.

These are things like clothes that we think will make us look smart, games consoles, PCs, overly advanced phones. How much did your phone cost you? If you’re on a contract, then chances are you’ll be paying $700 or more for it. Now ask yourself how much more that phone really does than something for $300. Do you really need the fastest processor around? Considering that even an old phone can play everything in the app store?

Do you really need a 30-megapixel camera? Or a 4K screen? Can you even see the difference between 4K and 1080p? The real problem here is marketing, the internet and other people. We have unfortunately been conditioned to associate these items with success and to find them highly desirable. We want to get the latest phone, car, computer etc. because it looks so sexy in those adverts. But the reality be that these things don’t really bring us happiness.

Likewise, we are told that we need to buy a large house, go on lavish vacations. Is this really for us? Or is it so that we can look successful to others? I’m not telling you to cut back on all the things that make you happy here. There is no point in having wealth if you aren’t going to enjoy it and have a better quality of life for you and your family.

All I’m telling you, is to make sure you are certain of what it be that does make you happy. And that often means deciding what you don’t need and what you should be prioritizing. Have you always dreamed of a beautiful big house? Then why not stop going on those big holidays for a while? Why not stop buying widescreen TVs? And how about considering getting that big beautiful house in a less expensive area?

Heck, if you move to Spain, then there are places where you can live in a five-bedroom home with swimming pool and roof pool and it will only cost you $200,000. You could almost buy that in cash and think about how much money you would start making then once there was no mortgage!

Conversely, if all you want is to travel the world, then you can change your accommodation to something less glamorous. How about moving to quiet neighborhood and living in a spare bedroom for a while? Your outgoings will be low, so you can enjoy going on more holidays and still save up that wealth. Know what you want to achieve with that money. Know what wealth means to you and then you can focus on being more efficient with your money.

Financial Modeling

This will also help you to set up a budget and/or a plan. If you know how much you have coming in and how much you’d like to be making per month, saving per month and spending on things that make you feel wealthy per month, then you can create a budget that will help you to reach that point within a specific time frame. This then is where you can look at those small things you can cut out to save money.

If you have a spreadsheet that contains all your income and all your outgoings per month, then you can look at what kind of impact cutting coffee from your routine would make. You’ll be left with a total profit at the end of each month and you can decide how much of that you want to put into savings and how much you intend to spend on other things.

You can even set up standing orders in your accounts so that money saved automatically gets transferred to a savings account. With such a spreadsheet, you can then multiply the savings you are making by any given number of months and see projections of what your finances are likely to be at certain points in the future. Need more money for an upcoming expense?

Then look at something else you can do to cut your expenditure. This is called ‘financial modelling’ and it’s a powerful tool for building your wealth rather than just letting it ‘happen’ without your direction or input.

A Couple More Ways to Save Money

And what if you have run out of things you can cut in order to save money? What if you are living on as little as possible? A few other options include changing your providers for bills, selling off old items, or even moving money between accounts in order to receive bonuses. A friend of mine does this religiously and will even take out credit cards with 0%APR, just so that he can put all that money into an IRA and then make profit on it.

If he gets a cash incentive to signing up for anything then he will sign up! And he never buys a new piece of tech or even clothing without taking one of the older items to sell and thereby offset the cost. Something else to note be that if you have a dream of a wealthy future, then you might need to ‘be okay’ with living a little more simply for a while in order to get there.

You need to put the work in now, to reap the rewards in the future. And this is hard because it often once again means forgetting the conventional signals of wealth and success. Once again, you must do this for you and not be worried about what others might think. So, for example, if you want to someday have a beautiful home, one of the very best things you can do is to live with your parents if they will let you.

Sure, it’s not glamorous and it’s not fun, but if they charge a small amount of rent, you’ll be able to save so much per month that it will help you to get on the property ladder MUCH faster. You could then buy a smaller home in a less attractive area but flip the property to make a big profit. You need to put in the graft and have an eye on the future.

Likewise, you might need to learn to stop trying to demonstrate your wealth and stability to friends. Have you ever met up with a friend and eaten in a restaurant that you can’t really afford because you want to see them and because it is embarrassing to suggest eating somewhere cheaper? As you can imagine, this isn’t exactly conducive to getting wealthy quickly! Again, you need to be willing to tell them that you can’t afford it and to go elsewhere.

How about you suggest they meet you at your house?

Setting Up Revenue Streams

Next come the revenue streams. We’ve seen how you can become richer without changing your job, simply by spending less. The other strategy is to become wealthier by having more than one income stream. Once again, your salary isn’t determining your wealth! So, what might this mean? One simple option is to take on another job, such as a weekend job.

If you are happy to work on a Saturday, then you will have potentially $150 extra to spend each week! That’s $600 per month or $7,200 per year! Save that and in a couple of years, you can be living in a nice house – or you can use it right now to feel that bit wealthier and wear those fancy clothes. This is a big sacrifice though granted. So, what would be better for most people would be to earn money online for instance.

Tim Ferriss describes creating a ‘muse’ in his book The Four-Hour Workweek, which is a small online business that generates a passive income. This can be as simple as finding an affiliate product (a product that you sell for commission) and making a simple website recommending it, then sending people there with ads. This is very low maintenance but can potentially make a fair amount of money.

You could try matched betting alternatively (a form of betting that ensures you can’t lose – it uses only the free bonus amounts that you get given for signing up) or you could look for a simple online job. How about selling photography online? Working as a writer or a web designer? Or, like a friend of mine, try commentating on sports for websites? You could create niche websites. Here’s how I do it.

You can also make money from arts and crafts of course and sell some things you make on the side, or you can buy and sell items in bulk on eBay! Then there are the other options that work offline: these include such things as renting out rooms to students, such as mowing the neighbor’s lawn, cutting hair, teaching an instrument etc.

All these options will help you to make an income that will be additional to your current income.

Not only does this of course give you a better total, but it will also help to make you more ‘resilient’ so that if anything ever happens with your main job, you’ll of course still have some money coming in. Another tip? The more you make, the more you’ll make. Try to look for investment opportunities, whether that means buying a second house and letting it out to someone else, or whether it means moving to an area that you know is up and coming.

A strange thing to think of here is board games. If you’ve ever played Monopoly, or any other game where you must amass a kind of resource, then you might have found that it pays to invest wisely early on. To get the card that will pay out just a little bit every round, or that will prevent you from losing a little bit every round.

These seem like small changes in the short term but over the course of the game, they ultimately put you in a position of great power and help you to win decisively! It’s the same in real life. Make a few right choices that will build up over time. Know what you want. Be patient. And avoid the temptation to splurge on the short-term gratification. That is how you get into a wealthy mindset!

Regards,

Irving

Using Pinterest for Online Growth

 

This still leaves us with one problem though. If your board is about great interior design ideas and your company sells furniture and decorative items, then it’s going to be very easy for you to include images of your products that people can click through to buy. But if you sell life insurance and your board is about ‘fun family days out’ then you still won’t be able to easily sell directly through the board. So how do you make sales from that?

Overall, your objective here is not going to be to sell directly. Instead, the aim will be to raise awareness for your brand and to build trust and authority. The hope is that your audience will come to think of you as an expert about families and life insurance and as such, they will follow your links when they do want to find out more about getting a policy.

This of course is not as direct a way to sell but in the long term it can be a lot more effective as you’re building a long-term relationship and as you’re establishing yourself as a thought leader in your field. At the same time, you need to think about the comments that you’re adding to your pictures. This is your opportunity to directly link the image back to your site and to promote your product.

For instance, if you’re uploading images of people doing home workouts to provide inspiration and ideas to your followers, then you can sell through those images by adding a note at the bottom explaining that they can find more similar moves in your eBook at THIS link. The great thing about Pinterest is that it really does leverage the viral power of social networks.

If your board is really delivering great value, then this fact alone will be enough to ensure that it grows naturally. People will repin your pins, they will comment, and they will discover what you’re posting through the search button. If you’re offering new content, if you’re staying on topic and if you’re providing real value by offering a genuine service of some kind, then people will gradually gravitate towards your brand and you’ll build your following.

But that is not to say that there aren’t also other things you can do to further accelerate your progress.

Here are some ways you can grow your following more quickly:

Post Regularly: The more regularly you post, the more often your images will be found in searches. At the same time, they’ll also come up in homefeeds more often, which means other users will be more likely to repin them and thereby share them with their audiences giving you more exposure.

Choose Your Tags Careful as on Twitter, choosing the right hashtags is one of the most important ingredients when it comes to gaining maximum exposure for your images. The tags will dictate which searches bring up your images and this means that they’ll be directly responsible for the number of people finding your brand.

When choosing your tags, make sure that you think about the types of things that commonly get searched for on the platform. Remember the kinds of things people use Pinterest for and remember that the audience is 85% female. Remember to that people are looking for images. ‘How to’ isn’t as applicable here (‘life hack’ is a more suitable string).

Write Comments: If you upload an image without any comment then you give it no context. This means you won’t be getting the very most from it, simply because people won’t know what you’re trying to say with the image. If it’s a bodyweight exercise, then explain how to do the exercise!

If it’s a decoration for the home, then explain how people can use it, what it’s made from and where it can be bought. Make sure to link your brand to the image, otherwise people might just appreciate the image but never engage with your profile as the person who uploaded it!

Interact with Others: On social media, reciprocity is a very underrated tool. This is still a social network and therefore, it should be used as a communication tool. The more you talk to people, the more likely they will be to check out your profile and to look at your boards. So, make sure that you’re interacting, following, repining and more. If nothing else, this helps to build good will as you’ll be helping those users to promote themselves too!

Integrate Your Website: One of the most important ways for you to spread your brand across Pinterest and to get found by more people be to properly link your website and your Pinterest account. There are a few ways that you should do this. One is by adding a link on your homepage to your Pinterest account.

This way, someone who lands on your website for the first time and decides that they like your content, can decide that they want to follow you on social media as well and can then decide to check out your Pinterest and follow your account or your boards.

Another tip be to use ‘Shareabolic’ or a similar social sharing tool on your website. If you have a WordPress site, then these can be installed very easily, and they will then allow people to quickly and easily ‘Pin’ an article that they found interesting along with an image. This then means there will be more people sharing your images and you’ll gain more exposure as a result.

Cross Pollinate: You should also make sure that you occasionally try to cross pollinate between your social media channels. If you have a very successful Twitter account for instance, then occasionally tweet about the ‘inspiring boards’ you’re creating at Pinterest. Likewise, you can share your pins to Facebook for people to see. Do this occasionally to help grow all your accounts at once.

Think About Pinterest When You Create Content: If you’ve heard of ‘clickbait’ then you’ll know how a lot of website owners are now creating content specifically to encourage shares on Facebook. This is content that uses an obtuse title in order to make people curious and to encourage more clicks as a result. It’s frustrating but it works and sites like Buzzfeed have built their business off the back of it.

So, the point is, that thinking about how you’re going to share you content before you create it is a good move. The same goes for marketing on Pinterest. If you’re going to make an article successful on Pinterest, then what does it need?

Simple: it needs a great image that will make the article more compelling (this will also help when other people share your images and your pages). Make sure that you are creating unique images for your site and that they’re designed in such a way as to really sell the content of your article or blog post and to encourage people to follow the URL.

Some things that can work well are tips that can be portrayed through a single image, memes or inspirational quotes. Note as well that certain images automatically attract more attention than others – we are psychologically hardwired for instance to notice pictures of faces!

To learn how to fully use Pinterest to grow your online presence, I use the following:

CLICK HERE

 

Irving

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