10 Mistakes Not To Make: Be An Online Expert

     Starting your own online business begins with deciding you need to make a change. Businesses that thrive online do so because they were started with this in mind. Whether the change you want to make is in your own life, the life of others or both it is this that drives success online.

     While the barriers to building an online income are quite low nowadays, the majority of people who start an online business still tend to fail, or at the very best make marginal profits.

     A lot of the heartache and struggle can be taken out of generating solid leads and marketing your chosen products though if you learn to avoid mistakes that in hindsight often seem obvious.

     So what are the key mistakes that people who fail or who merely struggle along make?

1. Losing Yourself In Details:

     One of the first things that any good business coach will tell you is that you need to get your business off the ground. In the beginning you just need to be making a profit, even if it is a tiny return it gives you the traction you need to keep pushing forward.

     The reason this is the number one issue facing new Online Marketers is that all too many of us get bogged down in, and sidetracked by the small, often cosmetic details that we can come back to once we have the time and freedom to do so.

     The real secret here is that it doesn't need to be perfect it just needs to be functional. So stop fiddling with your company logo, your branding and your website and start creating content and making a name for yourself.

2. Not Spending Your Money Wisely:

     The next thing your mentor is going to tell you is that if you want results you are going to have to shell out for good training and good advertising.

While you can make it online without spending a cent it is going to take you a long time and you are going to spend long hours banging your head against the proverbial brick wall, not to mention making many of the common mistakes that come from lack of knowledge about the industry.

     The best advice I have ever been given by anyone about this business is that anything you spend either in training or on failed advertising is an investment in yourself as a marketer. The only real caveat to this is that you are far better spending that money wisely on good training than throwing it away on bad advertising.

3. Selling Trinkets To Stay Afloat:

     Most of the people you see floating around online trying to sell you something are only just making their way. The main reasons for this are not lack of effort or lack of audience but are down to a lack of quality.

     High quality products usually provide you with a higher profit margin and also build the trust of your leads. After all if someone sends you an email every day trying to sell you junk you are likely to stop listening. If on the other hand they provide you with valuable information and only ever present you with high quality value added products and services you are far more likely to listen to what they have to say.

     One of the best ways to secure high end products is to get involved with groups that are already operating at a high level such as the Six Figure Mentors.

4. Not Knowing Where You Are Going:

     I don't know how many times I have heard variations on the refrain of "Marketing without knowing your product or audience is like trying to drive a car blindfolded". Basically the only possible result is that you are going to crash and it is going to hurt.

     To pull another great quote on this subject, adapted from the famous Art of War by Sun Tzu "Know thy market, but know not thy audience, find defeat in every campaign. Know not thy market, but know thy audience, find victory and defeat in equal measure. Know thy market and know thy audience, and thou shall never fear failure again".

     With access to so much data on so many platforms there is no longer any excuse for not knowing who your customers are and what they want from you.

5. Selling Without Serving:

     One of the great problems posed by the internet is the fact that it makes it all too easy to sell someone a dud product, take the profit and disappear into the night. Because of this customers are becoming more and more wary and are, very sensibly, beginning to do real research before choosing not only what to buy, but also who to buy it from.

     With this in mind it is imperative for those that want to be more than a flash in the pan that they provide great customer service, great content and great value. If a customer likes what they see and how they are treated they will come back, and, chance are they will bring their friends.

     Remember that the meteoric rise in Social Media means that a bad review can get around the internet pretty fast and a good one may keep sending you prospects for a long time to come.

6. Giving Away The Product Instead Of Generating Value:

     Personally I am a great believer in the mantra that providing good value to your clients and customers is the best way to do business. It is also true that a well constructed and useful piece of content can snag you a loyal long-term prospect.

     The flip side of this though is that many people spend so much time or effort nursing possible prospects to a sale, either with time, gifts or extras that the sale then provides negative ROI or at the very least a massive drain on your valuable time.

     The real secret here is to strike a balance. Make sure you keep giving your followers, fans and customers great content and a great overall experience with you but try not to let yourself be sidetracked especially by lone customers looking to squeeze you for everything they can get.

7. Listening On All Channels But Hearing Nothing:

     The quickest way to waste an entire day is as I am sure many of you have found out at 4am is to get absorbed by social media. No matter your poison we all do it. The marketing strength that platforms such as Facebook and Twitter provide come from exactly this, people find it hard to tear themselves away even when they have better things to do.

     For those of us using these platforms as an integral part of our business the risks of getting too absorbed are even greater still. Combine this with the fact that it is all too tempting to blast your message across every site, blog and media platform you can reach and you can suddenly find yourself drowning in a sea of posts and pages.

     The remedy here is to take a step back, take a deep breath and make a choice. Choose which platforms you are going to use and focus on them, resisting temptation to have "just a quick look at Pintrest and Instagram".

     There are more than enough potential customers on any half decent social media site to keep you in business till the end of time so don't get greedy or you'll end up getting nowhere. Remember the dog on the bridge? Don't go trying to grab another bone just to see the one you have falling in the river.

8. Forgetting Your Mentor:

     If you have followed the advice so far then you have found and paid for some seriously good training. This is an investment and if the mentor you chose was worth what you paid them they will not only be able to help you out they will want to.

     Don't try to make it on your own too fast. It is really a temptation to forget all about your coach when you see that first shiny dollar land in your bank account, I know because everyone does it even me. When this happens though it usually isn't too long until we get stuck, get lost or simply start to run out of steam. These are the moments you will truly thank your lucky stars that you had the foresight to find proper training and a strong community to help.

9. Underestimating Just How Much Determination It Can Take:

     The main reason why you are here, reading this post, is because you have heard that being an online marketer or an affiliate gives you the freedom to follow your dreams. It does, but, and this is a big but, only if you have the strength of will to do the hard work first.

     There is no secret software, no special spell and definitely no magic course that will make you a marketer overnight, never mind a successful one.

     Don't despair though. If you are willing to learn, listen and take the time to get it right you will make it. People often think it takes a "born marketer" to be successful, I'm here to tell you there is no such thing. Anyone who ever made it did it by working hard and learning well.

     I'm going to say it again. Find a proper course and if you can a community of like minded experts to support and teach you otherwise you may possibly struggle forever to get any traction at all.

10. Forgetting Your Customers Are People Too:

     Just because you might not ever meet the person you are selling to, or even speak to them in some cases, that doesn't mean you can forget for a second that you are dealing with real people. Think about the way you would like to be treated and the support you would like to get from someone you were giving money to.

     If you would not be happy with the way you treat your customers chances are they won't be either. Don't be one of those people you see and hear from all the time who'd sell their own granny if they thought they'd make a profit. Try to keep your honesty and your pride no matter what you choose to do.

     If you want to hear more about us and our training and support community you should head over to The Online Business Expert

Twitter Cards - How To Create A Twitter Summary Card

 

Using Twitter cards can raise awareness of your website or blog. By creating and using a very simple Twitter card you can funnel a much larger percentage of your followers out to your own website. Besides working as an attractive and effective business card on Twitter the Twitter Card also allows you to track URL link clicks giving you a whole new data set to use in your ROI calculations. This extra data can also help you to make more informed decisions on how to move forward with your marketing on social media sites.

The Online Business Expert

Get Your SEO Right - Using Yoast SEO for Wordpress properly

 

Search Engine Optimization is a really important part of making sure your Online Business is healthy and stays healthy. For this reason a lot of people put a lot of effort into making sure their sites and blogs are well SEOed. Nowadays thought their are many tools that can help you to make sure you are getting the traffic you deserve. One of the easiest we have found is Yoast SEO for WordPress a simple plugin that gives you a massive amount of data and feedback on how well your site or blog is doing. Yoast gives you a page by page analysis and tells you in a clear and simple way what you could be doing to make the search engines love you even more. So check out the review and get your SEO right!

For more see The Online Business Expert

How to make a Skype Button - Easiest way to make a Skype button

 

We show you the simplest way ever to add a Skype call button to your webpage or blog.

The Online Business Expert

Traditional Education vs. Digital Education

     We have all heard that information is money, but do we really understand what that means? Why is it that some people seem to make money at everything they do and the rest of us seem to simply stumble along making enough to pay rent or the mortgage?

     The answer is information. Those we think of as entrepreneurs are not any smarter, nor are they any luckier than the rest of us but they do have something most of us don't. They seek information. They drink in new knowledge. They open their minds to the changing economy and society around them.

     Ask any successful entrepreneur what sets them apart and I am sure several words will come up again and again. Words like drive, passion, need and determination. While all of these words describe the personality of the successful they still could not become successful without the knowing how to.
Education is an often forgotten side to entrepreneurship. Many of the greatest successes in our history have been made by people we could well think of as "under-educated" but that is I believe an unfair label. It is true that people such as Bill Gates, Richard Branson and many others including those as far back as Henry Ford and Andrew Carnegie were not what would traditionally be called well educated. That however depends on what education means to you.

     The traditional school and especially university education systems are proving incapable of keeping up with technology. They do not seem to be capable of teaching the skills and mindsets needed for this digital age.

     When many young people are putting themselves into crippling debt to pay for an education that not only doesn't guarantee them a good job, but which actually now almost guarantees them a bad one* we know we are in troubled times.

     So what is the solution? How do great entrepreneurs make it big? They still make sure they are educated they just choose a different more hands on form of education. They learn to use the tools they need to make themselves great. Take for example an online learning course such as this one. It costs no more than a college degree but instead of four years learning something that will have little impact on your job in the future it teaches you a wide range of skills you can apply to an even wider range of possible income streams.

I believe Alan Watts said it best:

     You see the internet should offer us more choice not less. We should be broadening our horizons and seeking to better ourselves not plodding along blindly at the same desk job we hate for years. We should be making the future better doing what we love and sharing what interests us.

     No matter what you want to sell, no matter what you are interested in someone else will be too so why not make yourself and the world a more vibrant knowledgeable place?

     It is up to us to choose our future, and you only get one life, so make it count.

Netizen Have A Responsibility

Regardless of who you are or where you come from one thing is certain. Uncertainty.

It is so easy to get stuck into a routine and think that life is just a case of plodding along and putting one foot in front of the other day after day. However we all have those moments when we look in the mirror and wonder whether we are simply surviving instead of thriving. We all want to change the world. To help the refugees. To stop crime, war, poverty and famine. To see our children grow up in a world better than ours.

When we look at the world outside the window though it looks too vast, everything is moving too fast. We watch the news and feel overwhelmed. We get to work and find ourselves buried under the here and now pressure of making it through the day.

What we forget though are those famous words, "before you can change your world, you must first change yourself". It sounds simple and almost obvious but it can be a lot harder than we think.
The future of our society, like it or not, will be digital. War and famine, politics and business are all becoming a more and more global problem. If we want to keep up not only do we have to get online we have to choose to make the online world ours. Complaining on Facebook or commenting on Twitter is a good start but we need more. We need a way to shape the internet and the digital world into a world of our own choosing.

For a long time the internet has been a a great money spinner. Even at its very beginning the enterprising were making money by selling everything from books and videos to porn and drugs. And so the internet developed a shady side before it ever developed a safer, more public minded side.
There are out there many great resources, just like in the real world, things like free libraries to help educate and elucidate, advice forums and help centres for every niche and need. While this is a great step forward it is our responsibility to make sure that these are the future and that the dark side of the net, the dodgy get rich quick schemes and the Nigerian bank scams are kept to a minimum. The best way to achieve this is to make certain that we and those who follow us are well educated.

There is no escaping it digital reality is the new norm and we are spending more and more time and money online. Which is all the more reason we should all be taking our talents, our time and our morals out onto the net but in a way that is safe and ethical and above all smart.

Be cynical but willing to try something new. Be educated but revel in learning something new. Be brave but don't forget to be kind.

It is the responsibility of every netizen to share good knowledge and to erase the scams and cons.

Affiliate Marketing is a whole new education

     Not too long ago I returned home after working in China for several years. I had been out of the job market for a full five years and this made it quite hard to get back to work. After looking around and doing some tutoring I came across a whole new industry. I was trawling the net one day when I came across an ad for SFM and with little to lose at this point I had a closer look.
     After doing a whole heap of research about the company I decided that their education and support was exactly what I was looking for. They offer an education, a system and an affiliate marketing product line that makes it possible for even internet novices to break into the fastest growing market on earth.
     My first baby steps into this industry have been both difficult and enlightening but every time I have had an issue these guys have been there to help get me out of whatever rut I have currently got myself into.
     As a life long educator myself though I have to say that it isn't the great products they offer or even the ease with which you can use their affiliate system that makes me love this system. The one thing that makes me so glad I didn't just brush past the ad I saw is their amazing ability to harness a whole team of experts to provide training that even someone like me can follow.
     Check it out for yourself and see what you think and don't forget to grab the free, no strings attached list building PDF and the basic video series.

Why are you waiting?

     So many people procrastinate. They umm and ahh and make excuses and promise themselves they’ll do it tomorrow.

      It may well be though that tomorrow is too late. Even if it isn’t too late it is just another day wasted.

     Do you believe you can do better? Do you believe you can change not only your life but the lives of others?

     You see what so few people understand is that many, if not most, of the good digital marketing mentors out there want to help you and then you can help others and so the chain goes.

     So why? Why do I and many others want to help you?

     Well for starters it’s good for our business. The more faith people have in the fact the internet isn’t just one big scam the better for all of us. Secondly many of us, myself included, have been so far down on our luck, so backed into a corner that we don’t want to see others go the same way.
Many of us have at times when we start not been able to pay our rent, or lost it all on a stupid gamble.

     Why would we want to see more people become a victim of those who nearly stopped us from earning our success?

     The last reason, at least for me personally, is I am a teacher. I love it. I love watching people grow, watching them not only to see their real potential but also to reach out to it.

     So if you want to be better. If you want to show what you’ve got go out and do it. No more ummms and no more ahhhs. I want you to be proud of who you see in the mirror.

     Learn something new everyday, if you don’t you aren’t really living. Help out a friend every chance you can, if you don’t how can you say you’re really human. Give yourself all the chances you can, if you don’t then you deny the entire world your hidden genius.

Want to know more? Visit us at www.digitaldreamlife.com 

The Next Era Of Digital Life

     With ever moving technology, and a world that has become almost entirely connected, now is the time to look to the future.

     Being given the opportunity to receive news, information and even products at unprecedented speeds also places us in the unique position of having a responsibility to use this golden opportunity properly.

     So many people have already been bitten by scams and by spam marketing around the net. So many people have become jaded and have chosen to hide themselves away from the choices and chances the internet holds out to us all.

     As digital marketers, social media experts and representatives of our various online businesses the time has come for us to step up to the plate. The time has come for us to fight back, to give back and to provide value to enrich our followers rather than seeking only to enrich ourselves.

     So many of us now owe everything we are and everything we have to those who had faith. We owe our livelihood to all the people who took the risk and trusted us to deliver on our promises. Let us not forget those promises. Let us not offer false hope. Instead let us offer only solutions to problems. Let us provide the same level of service and excellence we would like to receive ourselves.
Every time someone gets scammed, every time someone is sold a product that fails to meet it's sales pitch we lose another chance to enrich both our own lives and someone else's life. As an industry we owe it both to ourselves and to our various clients and customers to take a stand and defend the right of everyone to build, to grow and to buy without fear.

     So, how many of us will stand by our products? How many of us will choose honesty over a quick buck? Can you say you would buy your own product? Are you proud of who you are and what you have to offer?

     If you are all these things it is time to turn it all around. It is time to show the whole world that not only the lucky few can live a better, freer life.

Visit us at www.digitaldreamlife.com for more.

Back bigger, better and readier to help you join us in the Digital Dream Life.

     I am sure a few of you have noticed we have been offline for quite a while. The big reason for this was that with Asia and especially china arising as a bigger and more open market everyday we here at DDL decided we needed to head over there and see what was happening on the ground in person.
This first thing to say about my year on the ground in China is that the opportunities opening up there are truly awesome, so much so that I had a hard time even knowing where to start at first. After taking a deep breath and diving into the whole new planet that is Renren, Taobao, Alipay, Alibaba, Weibo and so many others I discovered two huge things.

     Huge discovery number one China is, despite what most westerners think, a very money oriented and capitalist society. Everyone strives to get to the top and having more money than the next guy is a mark of pride and is very respected.

     Huge discovery number two Chinese people love, and I mean LOVE, shopping online. Go to any office in any city in China and I guarantee that many if not most of the computers will have at least one, and probably a couple, of the above mentioned programs running in the background.

     What all of this means is that China has become not just a huge seller but also a huge market. So what kind of products does the worlds largest market want? Perhaps unsurprisingly one of the biggest markets is for western cosmetics and food supplements. The reason for this is the same reason there is not a huge demand for Chinese versions of these products in the West. Another major market, as China becomes more affluent, is for genuine (rather than locally made fake) high end clothing and accessories.

     The biggest roadblock however to selling to the Chinese market is simply put one of language. Many Chinese people learn English at school, in fact to the best of my knowledge all of them do to some degree. However learning English at a public school in China is not too different from learning a second language for most people in the West at school. You do it because it is on the curriculum and perhaps so you can pretend to be smart when you travel to France for spring break and can order a coffee in French. What this means is an audience in China where nearly everyone knows how to say hello but where only few can really read the language.

Head to www.digitaldreamlife.com for more info on what's new.

LinkedIn is swimming in SWAM’d

After a good friend of mine recently got added to the growing list of people SWAM’d over at LinkedIn I decided to do a little bit of research on a topic that seems to have gone under the radar.

Before I start I want to make it clear that I truly do believe LinkedIn is a great resource and one that has helped many, many people find jobs or employees over the last few years. Having a forum where professionals can find other professionals easily from all over the world can be nothing but a boon to modern society.

There is however a secret thorn hidden deep in the flowers of this particular rose and after doing my research it is one I feel needs to be explored more deeply.

I myself have a LinkedIn account although one that I use all too rarely. SWAMming however is not something I (like many other users) had come across until it happened to someone I knew. A few quick explanations may be in order at this point:

• As of writing this LinkedIn has more than 300 million members across almost every industry.

• LinkedIn groups are since the retirement of Signal the most common and important method of communication on the platform.

• Most active members are part of multiple groups (up to 50).

• Groups are often open, that is, there is no active moderation within the group as regards to posts that are awaiting moderation.

So, now we have a basic outline of the facts and figures, what exactly is SWAM and why is it becoming a major issue? SWAM stands for Site-Wide Automatic Moderation. In an effort to reduce spam (a noble goal in any social media organization) LinkedIn decided back in early 2013 to enact strong measures to protect it’s legitimate users from the flood of junk floating around the net. So far so good.

That unfortunately is where the good news ends. You see when the anti-spam initiative was put in place it was done with almost no fanfare. The original and in fact the only post to be found mentioning it’s inception appeared in a rather obscure corner of the site and would have been seen by less than 5,000 of their over 300 million users.

The basic issue with SWAM is that if someone dislikes something you say or post in a group in which they are a moderator they can choose to “block & delete” you. If a moderator in any group you are a member of does this it then means that any comment or post you make in any group you are in goes automatically to a moderation queue and must be accepted by a moderator before appearing in that group.

As you can imagine, while most people are responsible in the use of such a powerful tool, there are many who have abused the power given to them. As many LinkedIn members will attest it is all too easy for someone to push the hush button on you simple because they feel like it, they don’t like you for any number of reasons or even because they are totally unaware of the true repercussions of their actions.

Many cases have appeared where members in good standing, some of them even being top contributors, have fallen victim to SWAM. Besides the fact that any moderator in any group can do this to you possibly the worst part is that you get no explanation, no warning and no indication as to who decided to block you.

Obviously keeping spam levels down is a good thing but not if potentially innocent users can fall victim to a ban than can only be called crippling in the process.

Two other issues have arisen with the policy of SWAM as well. The first issue is that the LinkedIn help staff claim they cannot lift this ban manually and seem to have no interest in helping you with some people reporting they have even go so far as to deny there is a problem and tell you that you must have been spamming or else you wouldn’t have been blocked in the first place.

The second issue is that the only way to get out of the situation is to appeal to each and every group manager whose group you are in to individually restore your privileges in their own group. Not only is this an inconvenience for them but as your message will mark you as a spammer, whether or not you are, many group managers will dismiss or at least delay the message meaning you can be stuck on moderation forever.

According to some new information though it does look like there are possibly some changes coming with LinkedIn announcing that SWAM has been changed in a couple of subtle ways. One way it has changed is the option for members of groups to now get in on the SWAMming too by flagging posts they feel inappropriate which can lead to a temporary stay in the sin bin of up to two weeks.

So, what to take away from all this? I guess the lesson is know your platform well, consider others before dooming them to LinkedIn oblivion and try to use some common sense. As for social media sites I think the key lesson here is that putting your legitimate users in jail to try and boot spammers is seriously counter-productive.

 Want to add something or tell us something we don't know? Head to www.digitaldreamlife.com to tell us

Let me ask you one question: Are you satisfied with your life?

     If you have a quick look around you while you sit at your desk how many people do you see loving their lives? How many people do you see making a real difference to the lives of everyday people on the street?

     I bet if you are honest the answer is not many.

     If you are like me you have a feeling somewhere deep inside that tells you that even if you are working hard everyday you are just spinning your wheels. I’m not talking about money and I’m not talking about success. A lot of people have money and a lot of people have success however you choose to measure it. All of these people though tend to fail in one very important way. They don’t actively make people’s lives better.

     I am proud to say that no matter how high the ladder you climb and no matter how many awards you win I still think I do better. I have almost never been promoted, I have almost never made much more money than I need to survive. Knowing all of this though I still feel good looking myself in the mirror every morning. I feel good because every day when I get up I have the chance to help someone. I get to take ordinary people and turn them into extraordinary people.

     How do I do that? I know you hear a lot of promises and a lot of bragging about how much money YOU can make, but that is not really the issue. The issue is I know every person I introduce to the guys over at SFM has the chance to go from a worker ant to an entrepreneur. Granted not everyone does, a lot of people stumble, a lot of people fail and a lot of people are too scared to really take the first step into something new.

     I wanted you to let me ask you a question way back at the beginning of this post so now let me ask: Do you think you have the will and the vision to make a start on changing how you see the world and how you live your life?

     If you are not serious and if you have no interest then please turn back now. Go back to your T.V. show or the report you have due tomorrow and forget I asked. If you are interested though and if you want to hear some more of what I get to do everyday then put your email in the box and we will send you out a free week of videos that ought to give you a better idea of what I do and what SFM does.
   
     So, are you interested? Get the videos here.

Even if it’s not golden is it value?

     Not every word that comes out of our mouths is literary or informational gold.

     One of the big things to keep in mind about the digital era is that everything you say gets seen but that doesn’t mean it gets read. We all wish we had a silver tongue (or at least golden fingers) but content is just as important as class. Having a witty turn of phrase may get people to watch but that doesn’t mean they will bite.


     In a world of information overload one of the biggest losses is true value of information. It can be incredibly hard to sift through all the dross and one liners to find the data you really need or want.
So before you go creating page after page of fluff and padding think about the value you are giving to the poor reader who has to work their way through it all to find the nugget of gold in the proverbial haystack.

     After all time is money and in this digital era we all seem to have less and less time. So before starting a blog post, a webpage or even a tweet or status update consider this, “Would I want to read this?”. If the answer is no then perhaps you need to take another look at what you are saying.

     Adding value though doesn’t mean throwing a free mug with every purchase or a simple trial with every click. What it really means is listening to what your followers, what your customers, really want. We as the mentors, gurus and teachers need to ensure we do the hard work and go the full mile to locate, sift and fine tune the advice and information we provide so that our new digital proteges can get on with business instead of getting bogged down under a mountain of virtual verbal diarrhea.

    
So Think before you Link!

Marketing can be hard, but don’t despair

     One of the biggest challenges to starting out in the social media or digital marketing world is the difficulty of getting your foot in the door.
      It can often feel when you are first starting out that you have an insurmountable job ahead of you. The fact of the matter is no matter what you have been promised it is a long, often difficult journey to success.
      The internet no more offers instant success or success for little to no work than any other industry does. So if you want a chance at instant cash while you do nothing to gain your goals then you are best to try the lottery.
      If on the other hand you really do put the work in, do your research and keep your eyes on the prize then there is no reason at all that you can’t make it big online.
      The keys to digital marketing are really no different from more traditional industries, in fact the only real difference is in the amazing array of choices that going digital opens up to you.
      Make sure you get the right information. Make sure you get the right tools for the job. Understand your market and get help from those that have gone before.
Remember even if you want to change the world you need to start by knowing how the world works now.

     If you have what it takes find out more at www.digitaldreamlife.com