Issue #2108
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
Issue #2107
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
Imagine if There Were Only 6 Numbers to Choose from When Buying a Lottery Ticket!
Wouldn’t that be great?! Of course, the fewer the choices, the more likely your chance of success, right?
How many choices are there when buying and selling shares? Errmm… a LOT! Hundreds… One of the reasons I enjoy such consistent success from trading is because I only have 6 options to choose from! Except this is even better in a way, because the lottery is pure luck…
… I only have 6 choices AND have a VERY good idea about which choice to make because of the insider signal. Click here to learn more…
Make Room for Cheapskate Companies
You won’t find a "cheapskate companies" category in financial websites or analyst reports. That’s a shame, because they make great investments.
Cheapskate companies – which you can find by doing some digging – are simply companies that have the ability to keep costs down. While skimping on employee pay and benefits is not a key piece of the equation, the following are:
Keeping down costs takes as much ingenuity as increasing sales. And it’s just as important. Some companies don’t know this or don’t care. You should only invest in those that do.
[Ed. Note: Andrew Gordon, ETR's Investment Director, has authored several books on energy markets, global countertrade practices, and the hot growth sectors of China and Russia. A former professor of marketing and finance, he is the editor of INCOME, a monthly financial advisory service that uncovers income-generating stocks that promise safety (first and foremost), along with much-higher-than-average profit potential.]
"In almost every marriage there is a selfish and an unselfish partner. A pattern is set up and soon becomes inflexible, of one person always making the demands and one person always giving way."
Iris Murdoch
How to Stop Your Partners from Taking a Mile Each Time You Give an Inch
Being successful in business is often a result of the deals you make. As I said in ETR #2033, if you bend over backward to make every deal good for your partners – and not just for you – you’ll find that people will want to do even more deals with you. And when everyone wants to work with you, it is much easier to grow a profitable business.
But what happens if the person on the other side of the negotiating table doesn’t understand that concept as well as you do?
When you create relationships and strike deals, there is rarely an exact point of fairness, a precise set of conditions that make all responsibilities and benefits balanced. Most business deals involve an input of capital, expertise, and other resources, the value of which can be difficult to measure.
I never try to make a deal exactly fair, because I don’t believe in exactness. I think of fairness as a range. Imagine a measurement device (such as an applause meter or a thermometer) with a colored bar that covers a portion of it. That colored bar is how I think of fairness. It is a range, not a point.
When I do deals, I imagine that bar before I negotiate. At one end is what I think is fairest to me. At the other end is what I think is fairest to my negotiating partner. I mentally prepare myself to settle on anything in between. By doing so, I benefit in four ways:
This process has been enormously helpful to me in my career. It has allowed me to have productive partnerships – enjoyable and profitable joint ventures – with people who had reputations of being "difficult."
And there has been an unexpected, ironic compensation as well. Several times, after settling on the "other end" of the range of fairness, I found that, after a few years, my partner’s contribution turned out to be much more substantial than I thought it would be. Consequently, the deal that I initially thought may have been a bit more in his favor turned out to be much more advantageous to me.
This strategy will make it easier for you to negotiate deals and easier to keep them. But, there will be times when you will not be able to make a deal. No matter how far you extend the range of fairness, the guy on the other side of the table will want more. I call this type of person a "more-for-me" negotiator.
It would be easy for me to say "Just avoid such people." But the truth is that they are usually very seductive – especially to people with big hearts. (Could that be you?) They are also very skilled at making their "more-for-me" deals look pretty good to you.
One clue to watch out for: You feel that the deal isn’t very good for you, but you want to do it anyway because you really want to make the other person happy.
As someone who falls into this hole constantly, I can tell you from experience that doing something against your gut instincts purely because it will please someone else is not a good idea.
Don’t get me wrong. You want your colleagues, associates, and partners to be happy with the deals you make. In fact, wanting the deal to be good for them is necessary for its long-term success. But when the deal is off-balance – and you are fundamentally unhappy because you know that the other person has pushed you into an "it’s-better-for-him" arrangement that you don’t think is fair – you must sit back and wonder whether the entire relationship is worthwhile.
More-for-me behavior is easy enough to detect. But how do you protect yourself against it? This is what I try to do:
[Ed Note: Teaching you how to make good deals is only one way Michael Masterson can help you grow your business. Join him this fall at ETR's Info Marketing Bootcamp and learn how to take your business to new levels of success.]
Are You Too Busy Chasing The Markets To Make Any Real Money?
Most investors go about getting rich the wrong way. They work hard, instead of their investments. But I’ve discovered a laughably easy strategy that:
… and lets you build your profits starting in the next 60 days without risking one thin dime.
Click here to find out more.
How to Control a Silent Killer
If you’re unhealthily overweight, you probably know it. You also know if you have unhealthy habits, like smoking or excessive drinking. And if you’re not as fit as you should be, you probably recognize that too. But high blood pressure – the silent killer that can lead directly to heart attacks and death – goes unnoticed every day.
Australian researchers have found an easy way to control this silent killer.
The researchers had three groups of men complete a mental stress test before and after a 12-week diet program. One group of men changed nothing in their diets, another group ate a diet high in fruits and vegetables and low in dairy products, and a third group ate a low-fat diet. By the end of 12 weeks, both groups that had changed their diets lost an average of nine pounds, while the control group remained at about the same weight.
The subjects who lost weight also reduced their resting systolic blood pressure (the higher number in the normal 120 over 80 blood pressure reading). Furthermore, in the groups that had changed their diets, blood pressure returned to normal six minutes faster after the stress tests than in the control group.
The scientists concluded that weight loss helps men control their blood pressure better during times of stress, which is likely to lower the risk of cardiovascular disease in the long term. So if you have high blood pressure, add more fruits and vegetables to your diet and lose weight. And if you don’t know what your blood pressure is, get it checked immediately.
[Ed. Note: Craig Ballantyne is an expert consultant for Men's Health magazine. If you're looking to burn fat, build muscle, and quickly step into the body you have always wanted with just three workouts each week, check out Craig's fat-loss system, Turbulence Training for Fat Loss.]
Quick Internet Marketing Tip: What’s Working in Google AdWords?
By Bob Bly
At a recent weekend Google AdWords seminar, sales and marketing specialist Perry Marshall presented a list of tactics he said are worth testing in your pay-per-click ad copy:
[Ed. Note: Master copywriter and best-selling author Bob Bly is the editor of ETR's ETR's Direct Marketing Masters Edition, a program to help you start your own successful direct-mail business. Sign up for Bob's free monthly e-zine, The Direct Response Letter, and get more than $100 in free bonuses.]
It’s Good to Know: About American Pets
By Lori Allen
Americans are likely to spend over $40 billion this year on their pets – an amount that has nearly doubled over the last decade. They will spend nearly $3 billion on grooming products and boarding services alone.
According to a survey by the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association, 63 percent of American households have a pet. That’s nearly two out of every three households, and that number has gone up 13 percent in the last nine years.
[Ed. Note: You can earn six-figures each year by snapping photos of household pets as a pet photographer. Learn how at AWAI's pet photography workshop this September.]
Do You Need To Start Out Small?
If you don’t have an Internet business yet, or if your company is smaller than $1 million then you need something different… something that lets you start off small.
One man I know turned $10 into over $500,000. How’s that for starting small!
Let me show you how to get a similar Internet income stream running for almost nothing.
- Patrick Coffey
To "abjure" (ab-JUR) – from the Latin for "to deny under oath" – is to abstain from or shun. (The word is related to "jury.")
Example (as used by A.B. Yehoshua in A Journey to the End of the Millennium: "He closed his eyes as he raised the goblet to his lips and took a small sip of the cool liquid, and then his face paled as he understood how sublime the taste of the forbidden drink was, and how easily one might become enslaved to it. There and then he resolved to abjure it totally."
[Ed. Note: Become a more persuasive writer and speaker ... build your self-confidence and intellect ... increase your attractiveness to others ... just by spending 10 VERY enjoyable minutes a day with ETR's new Words to the Wise CD Library]
Michael Masterson
Copyright ETR, LLC, 2007
Issue #2106
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
You Already Know Fortunes Are Made from Trading. The Question Is: WHAT Are "They" Trading Most? (And It’s Not Shares or Commodities!)
… Thirty times more trading going on than the stock market and mostly investment banks doing it. Ummm… Maybe "they" know something you don’t? Click here to learn more…
Success, they say, is in the margins. And in most businesses, those margins get very small. Unless you are vigilant about spending – unless you are willing to scrimp and save, nickel and dime, cut and cut again – you will almost certainly overspend your budget.
Think about this: A typical $10 million business struggles to show a million-dollar profit. That means it spends, on one thing or another, $9 million to produce a 10 percent bottom line.
Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that a third of that $9 million is spent on product cost, a third on sales and marketing, and another third on customer service. That’s roughly $3 million on each. If you overspent your product budget by a mere five percent, you’d have $150,000 less in profits at the end of the year. If you did the same with customer service and marketing, your net profit would be $550,000 instead of $1 million. You’d make about half as much overspending each expense category by only five percent.
Never think for a moment that you need to spend more to make more. That is a bad idea invented by lazy marketers. What you have to do is think more and work more and care more.
The truth is, tight budgets promote creativity, and creativity promotes profits. As Jeffrey Fox says in How to Become CEO, "Look upon a tight budget as a challenge. Find new and less-expensive ways of doing things. The corporation will be improved. You will be appreciated."
[Ed. Note: Michael Masterson and his team of extraordinary entrepreneurs will be revealing all their strategies for getting a brand-new business of the ground… and making an existing business grow like crazy. Reserve your spot at this fall's Info Marketing Bootcamp today to get the benefit of their expertise.]
"Travel is the frivolous part of serious lives, and the serious part of frivolous ones."
Anne Sophie Swetchine
December 1988: No job, no money, and seemingly no prospects. Maybe you’d rate delving around an organic vegetable plot in western Ireland as a fantastic prospect, but not me. I can tell you that organic gardening is bloody hard work for little reward. Rain… mud… frostbitten toes. Slugs… snails… rabbits. The end result? Lettuces and cabbages that resemble lace curtains.
Today: The most glamorous job in the world, enough money to give me a very comfortable lifestyle, and the prospect (no, the certainty) of expenses-paid trips to China, Estonia, Barcelona, Malaysia, and the Cape Verde Islands.
That’s my upcoming itinerary. Already this year I’ve visited Thailand, Argentina, and the fabulous city of Granada in Spain.
How did I go from the no-star lifestyle to becoming a globetrotter who stays in luxury hotels, dines out on gourmet meals, and knows how to order wine in at least 15 languages?
Easy. I became a travel writer.
How to Crack the Market
You can do it too. I have no qualifications whatsoever. I never went to college. And I’m certainly not a trust-fund baby.
The secret to becoming a travel writer is simple. All you need to do is WRITE. Write with color, pay attention to detail, and, above all, write with enthusiasm. You’ll soon build up a catalog of writing samples ("clips"). And eventually there’ll come a day when you won’t even have to look for assignments. Editors will be asking you to visit the Cape Verdes and other far-flung shores.
Now, I won’t pretend I set out to become a globetrotter. Back in 1988, all I was seeking was a way to earn some money. Writing seemed to offer a solution – and I soon discovered I had a knack for telling a story.
The first piece I ever wrote got published by an English newspaper. It was real estate-related, but you could say it was travel-related too. It was a humorous tale about my search for a bargain cottage in Ireland (where I live). I’d had to travel around three western counties to find it.
Whilst I was building up my clip file, I traveled around Ireland some more. I got more real estate pieces published in English newspapers and with International Living - and they all involved traveling somewhere in Ireland. I wrote about Irish pilgrimages, horse fairs, and oyster festivals. And after my stories were published in England, I sold the same ones to American and Australian publications.
For a local publication, the Irish Press, I wrote about a Buddhist monk in county Cavan, a biodynamic therapist in county Mayo, coal-pit closures in county Leitrim, and an 11-year-old traditional storyteller who’d won major prizes at festivals.
So here’s my first piece of advice…
Start out by writing about your own city or locality. It’s definitely one of the easiest and most cost-effective ways to kick-start your career. What fascinating events or festivals are happening? Has a new restaurant opened? Are there any interesting people you could profile? Whether you live in Nebraska or Hawaii, there’s a whole swathe of regional and local publications that are always hungry for new stories and fresh slants.
And think of it this way. Ireland is my home, but it’s a foreign destination for many of the editors I write for. Even way back when, I guess they regarded me as a travel writer!
Someone who lives in West Virginia may regard New York, Chicago, and San Francisco as fairly exotic destinations. Just because you’re writing about your own hometown doesn’t mean you’re not a travel writer.
How to Turn Your Compost Into Gold
But let’s rewind and go back to the early 1990s. Given my own experiences with worm-infested compost heaps, you’d think I’d have run a mile from anything to do with organic gardening. But no. I traveled down to county Kildare near Dublin to write a story for the Irish Press about WWOOFing (working weekends on organic farms).
Second piece of advice…
Write about what you know. It doesn’t necessarily have to be travel-related – though if you can tie in travel, that’s great. You might be knowledgeable about antiques, fishing – even beer. (Any micro-breweries in your area?)
When you’re starting out, the most important thing is to build up clips – to show editors that you can tell a story.
Write for Web magazines, small publications – anywhere you can place your story. They might not pay a lot, but you have to be realistic. You’re unlikely to get an assignment to investigate the vineyards of New Zealand from a prestigious dollar-a-word travel magazine until an editor has some proof that you can write.
The Importance of Relationships
By this time, I’d had around half a dozen pieces published by the Irish Press. And I’d managed to scrape together enough money for a jaunt to Portugal and Spain. Would they be interested in articles on Lisbon and northern Portugal for their travel section? Indeed they would. For those two articles, I got paid the equivalent of about 350 U.S. dollars
I asked Columbia (a Catholic publication in the U.S.)if they would like a story about the Spanish pilgrimage city of Santiago di Compostela. I was going to be there on the Feast of St. James, the city’s major feast day. (Columbia had already published my story about the annual pilgrimage to Croagh Patrick, Ireland’s holy mountain.) The editor said "Send it in." He offered me $500 with more money for photos.
International Living? Would they be interested in Portuguese real estate? I got another "yes." Another $300 in the bag.
With those four assignments, my trip to Spain and Portugal almost paid for itself. (Back then, those countries were incredibly cheap to visit.) But I just wish I’d known then what I know now. At that time, I didn’t have a clue about the freebies and perks that are readily available to travel writers.
So, third piece of advice…
Build relationships with editors. Once you’ve had one article published, go back to that same editor with an idea for another story… and another… and another. Once they know that you can come up with the goods, they’ll think of you when a juicy assignment comes up.
That’s how I landed my first-ever all-expenses-paid trip. One day, completely out of the blue, the editor of the Daily Telegraph, an English newspaper that had published some of my Irish travel-related stories, asked me if I’d be interested in going on assignment – to the jungles of Borneo. Rather than a staff writer, they wanted a freelancer who had never been to Asia before… someone who would see things "with fresh eyes."
Would you have turned down an offer to meet headhunters and orangutans… to snorkel in the South China Sea… to loll about on a hammock in the Shangri-La hotel, sipping gin slings?
Welcome to the desperately hard life of a travel writer…
[Ed. Note: Steenie Harvey gets paid to visit white-sand Caribbean beaches ... wildlife sanctuaries in Borneo... Indian Ocean hideaways... Rome... Paris... and beyond... To find out how you can do the same, join the "Get Paid to Travel" teleconference, and learn real-world strategies you can put to use now to access this lifestyle.]
It doesn’t take a lot of time. You don’t need a lot of money to get started. It doesn’t require a lot of work. Best of all, the returns you’ll pocket will shock you (how does 724% sound?).
Get all the facts right now at here.
If you’re in Miami, you might want to stay inside.
Why? Because Miami, according to an AutoVantage survey, is the city with the most road-raging drivers. The survey, which ranked 25 cities based on the number of road-rage-related incidents reported, included New York City, Boston, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. in its five worst cases.
Nearly 1,500 incidents of angry or aggressive driving kill or injure people each year, according to the American Automobile Association’s (AAA) most recent study. With all this road rage going on, what can you do to keep out of danger?
First and foremost, be a good defensive driver. Pay attention to the people who are sharing the road with you. And if you see someone driving erratically, get out of the way.
Be courteous. According to the AAA, that means staying out of the far-left lane unless you are passing, refraining from following too closely, using your horn sparingly, keeping your headlights on low beams, and using your turn signals before you change lanes.
The AAA also suggests that you avoid decorating your car with bumper stickers that might incite someone – like a confederate flag – and try not to make eye contact with aggressive drivers. And don’t bother to make obscene gestures at other motorists. The possible consequences (getting shot, stabbed, or beaten) aren’t worth it.
[Ed. Note: Untangle yourself from all of life's most perplexing situations, in business, your personal life, or on the road, every time. Just pick up your free copy of ETR's Unscrew Yourself e-book and get 223 pages of our most practical insider information.]
By Jason Holland
For many people trying to beat the heat this summer, flip-flops will be de rigueur for the next several months.
Flip-flops may be comfortable… but wear the wrong kind and you might suffer a variety of foot and leg ailments, including joint and heel pain, shin splints, tendonitis, or even more serious injuries, such as torn ligaments and twisted ankles.
In fact, the American College of Foot and Ankle Surgeons reports that it sees an increase in injuries every spring and summer. It’s no coincidence, says the organization, that more people start wearing flip-flops at that time.
The main problem with flip-flops is the lack of arch support in most of them. This interferes with the normal ability of your feet to absorb the shock of your bodyweight as you walk. And because flip-flops have flat bottoms, you stretch your calf muscles and strain your Achilles tendons when you walk in them – which can lead to pain.
The lack of stability and ankle support in flip-flops can also lead to slip-and-fall accidents – the cause of the worst injuries. My flip-flop-clad mother-in-law, for example, seriously injured her ankle when she slipped while trying to navigate a grassy slope.
It’s a good idea to wear your flip-flops only at the beach or poolside. At the very least, don’t wear them all day, every day, and never run, play sports, or engage in any other strenuous activity while wearing them.
I’m not suggesting you throw out all your flip-flops. Just exercise some common sense when deciding what to put on your feet when you head out the door.
The biggest-selling cause-related song of all time was "We Are the World," headed up by Michael Jackson. Jackson tried to repeat this historic feat after 9/11, when he enlisted Mariah Carey, Ricky Martin, and other stars to record a song he said would raise $50 million for several charities. But the whole deal fell apart when the record label discovered that the executive producer was a porn-filmmaker.
Join a respected group of successful men and women who regularly earn a doctor’s or attorney’s income. You can easily increase your current earnings without changing jobs or having an advanced degree… adding $50,000 or $100,000 or more each year to your current salary. Click on the link for more details.
- Patrick Coffey
A "nebbish" (NEB-ish) – a Yiddish word of Slavic origin – is a weak-willed, timid, or ineffectual person.
Example (as used by Evan Hunter in The New York Times): "He is a nebbish who might be played effectively by Woody Allen. He attracts the sympathy of lower-echelon mammals but finds it difficult to relate to dogs and human beings."
[Ed. Note: Become a more persuasive writer and speaker ... build your self-confidence and intellect ... increase your attractiveness to others ... just by spending 10 VERY enjoyable minutes a day with ETR's new Words to the Wise CD Library.]
Michael Masterson
Copyright ETR, LLC, 2007
Issue #2105
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
I wanted to buy a how-to video for a partner-dance called the West Coast Swing, so I went to Google and did a search. As you’d expect, I instantly found 2,480,000 results, including quite a few sites that looked like they might have the professional-level show dancing that I was looking for.
What you wouldn’t expect was that a number of those websites were actually extension pages for YouTube.com.
Unless you’ve had your head buried in the sand for the past few years, you’ve probably heard of YouTube. It’s a website where anyone can post a video on almost any subject and make it available for the world to view.
At one end of the YouTube spectrum, you’ll find videos posted by silly teenagers to show off their pranks and shenanigans. At the other end, you’ll find serious "audition" videos posted by folks who are hoping to break into the entertainment industry. I know of many struggling actors/dancers/singers/comics who posted a video that became wildly popular – and, as a result, wound up with a deal with a major network or studio.
Based on my own experience, I can tell you that YouTube also has the potential to turn producing instructional or specialty videos into a fun and very profitable business for you. In my first video venture (where I was a partner), we began with under $100. Now, 10 years later, that business still makes over $250,000 annually.
If you are an expert in almost any field, you can produce a video to teach others some of what you know. You can star in your own video – or, if you’re camera shy, hire someone else. One of my most profitable videos features a certified exercise trainer teaching back stretches.
Almost anything that people might be interested in – from cooking to fishing to chess – can be a possible subject for your video. All you’ve got to do is produce it, market it, and reap the profits.
That’s where YouTube comes in. This free Internet phenomenon is a perfect marketing tool for instructional videos.
When I was searching for that West Coast Swing video, I assumed I would find a site where I could buy one. But, on a lark, I decided to take a look at some of the YouTube postings.
To my surprise, I found some excellent footage of the kind of thing I was looking for. Several of the postings had links to websites where I could then buy the full-length video. And because I’d seen samples of the material, I was confident that those videos would have what I wanted, so I ordered one.
It didn’t take me more than another 10 minutes to realize that I could be using YouTube to promote some of my own videos. I have several – including a basic instructional ballroom dance video – that I market. I posted a clip from that video on YouTube and, to my pleasant surprise, it immediately started getting views… and a few sales.
I don’t expect to get an avalanche of sales from this marketing strategy, but I do believe it will continue to be a steady source of extra income for me. Sweetest of all, these sales cost me nothing. There are no pay-per-click fees or profit-sharing deals. All the profits from YouTube-driven sales are mine to keep.
If the idea of using YouTube to market instructional or specialty videos interests you, here’s how you do it:
1. Go to YouTube.com.
2. Register yourself, and create a user name and passcode.
3. Upload a clip of your video. (YouTube provides easy-to-follow instructions. I did it myself – and I’m not very Internet savvy.)
4. List some keywords or search terms that are applicable to your video.
5. On your profile, write a little something about your credentials and put in a live link to your website (so interested viewers can learn more or buy the video).
Using YouTube as a marketing tool is a fabulous way to earn some extra cash. Take a few minutes to try it out and see how it works for you.
[Ed. Note: Paul Lawrence is a produced screenwriter, direct-mail copywriter, and business author. He is also the creator of the Learn more of Paul’s video-business secrets HERE.]
Issue #2104
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
Issue #2103
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
To double your money every three years, you need an average yearly profit of about 26 percent. Does 26 percent seem like an easy target? Or a hard one?
When I look at my own investing track record, here’s what I see.
Start-up businesses have given me so much – a steady growth of income, a base of wealth that has doubled every three years, the opportunity to get involved in so many other, interesting investments, and a rich and stimulating business life.
Because of the nature of what I did – getting involved in dozens of start-up businesses, including two direct-marketing companies that were essentially holding companies for start-ups, I’ve had the chance to participate in hundreds of launched businesses over the past 25 years. I’ve seen, and made, every mistake that you can possibly imagine. And I’ve seen some very successful launches too.
Although I sometimes grouse about working too hard, I have to admit that I love starting new businesses. It’s so much fun. And it’s something I know how to do. When I start a business these days, I am confident it will work. I didn’t always have that confidence. And I didn’t always deserve it. But gradually, over 25 years, I accumulated a little guidebook in my mind that gives me good advice on what will work and what will not.
For the past year, I’ve been trying to transcribe that mental book onto paper. The result is going to be my next book: Ready… Fire… Aim, being published next January by John Wiley & Sons.
So if you were to ask me, as an ETR reader recently did, "What is the absolute fastest way to become rich?" I’d have to answer: by starting a small business.
That’s my answer. It doesn’t mean it is your answer. You may not want to invest the time, creativity, and energy that it takes to be a successful entrepreneur. You may be retired already and determined not to give up your daily golf game. If investing in your own small business is not for you, then I recommend you look into stock investing and real estate. I don’t think you should expect to safely double your money every three years that way, but you can certainly do as well as or better than I have.
But if you do think you’d like to be an entrepreneur, you will be rewarded for it. Not only can you double (or even triple) your money every three years, you can also enjoy the many other benefits of being your own boss:
My friend Anna W. asked me to help her start a business based on her love of music. She’d been looking over her current retirement plan, and figured out that if she keeps her present job and continues to increase her responsibility and her income, she will be able to have a comfortable retirement in 14 years (at age 67).
That’s not bad. Most people in her age bracket won’t do that well.
But if she puts her energy and resources into creating a successful business of her own, she can look forward to a much better return on her "investment."
Anna is going to start her new business on the side, working evenings and weekends. She’s going to find a partner to back her, develop her product, and take it to market. When we went over the numbers, it became clear to Anna that this secondary business – if it is successful (and I’m pretty sure it will be) – will allow her to achieve her retirement goals in five years instead of 14, while she is still relatively young.
At that point, she can do whatever she wants to do with the rest of her life.
That’s what a business can do for you.
Think about your own financial situation. Are you okay as you are – or would it be helpful to triple your money every three years?
If you need that kind of way-above-average ROI in your life, you simply have to consider starting your own business. Don’t quit your day job. Just get something going on the side. You don’t have to invest a ton of money or work endless hours. You can do well starting small.
Here are five proven (and absolutely true, in my experience) secrets of highly successful entrepreneurs that will help turn you into a business-building genius.
Secret No. 1: Don’t spend too much time planning.
When you are entering a market, you don’t know (and couldn’t possibly understand) the hidden problems and challenges you will face. You won’t understand those problems until you make a few mistakes. And you won’t solve them (and go on to making a success of your new business) unless you are capable of changing directions quickly.
Most successful new businesses (probably 90 percent of them) end up following practices that are different than anticipated. That’s why it doesn’t pay to spend too much time and money planning. Do a reasonable amount of noodling. Figure out the big strokes and give yourself a bail-out option. Then go for it. He who can adapt wins.
Secret No. 2: Don’t spend too much money.
The vast majority of business start-ups that succeed do so on a limited budget. Almost none of them have the benefit of venture-capital funding.
The great majority of new businesses are hampered (and enhanced) by flying on empty. People involved in businesses that have limited funds must think harder, work harder, and (most important) sell harder. Their primary initial effort is to bring in the cash. And that’s how it should be. There is only one thing that will surely stop any business in its tracks – and that’s a lack of money. Ironically, limited capital usually means a quicker and stronger cash flow.
Secret No. 3: Get operational fast.
The most common reason for new product/project failures is wasting time getting ready. Between making overlong and expensive business plans, endlessly tinkering with the product, fooling around with focus groups, and second-guessing yourself, it’s easy to let a good product/project lose its steam.
Bootstrappers don’t mind starting with a copycat idea targeted to a small market. Imitation saves the cost of market research – and the start-up entering a small market is unlikely to face competition from large, established companies.
Secret No. 4: Go for the quick cash first.
Contrary to what some business books tell you, successful entrepreneurs admit that they take the fastest route to cash when launching a new venture. They do so because they don’t have a choice. (See Secret No. 2.) After the cash starts coming in, they have the time and funds to improve the product, enhance customer service, and refine operations.
Keep in mind that the best-laid plans are often arrogant. You don’t know for sure how to best serve the market. When launching a new business or product, figure out how you can get to breakeven fastest. This kind of noodling will force you to pay closer attention to the market.
Secret No. 5: Forget about the crack team; you are it.
Successful entrepreneurs don’t hire experts to run their businesses. They figure it out for themselves. When it comes to making your new product/project work, rely on nobody but yourself to make sure it gets done right. It may be stressful and time-consuming to do a lot of extra work, but it will pay in the long run. You will understand the project in an intimate, extremely valuable way.
[Ed. Note: Michael Masterson and his team of extraordinary entrepreneurs will be revealing all their strategies for getting a brand-new business of the ground… and making an existing business grow like crazy. Reserve your spot at this fall’s Info Marketing Bootcamp today to get the benefit of their expertise.]
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Every day, I receive spam e-mails from marketers trying to sell me "Human Growth Hormone" boosters to help prevent aging. HGH does have anti-aging properties, but you don’t need to buy anything to increase your own levels of it. There’s a natural way to do so.
It’s called strength training.
Researchers from the University of North Carolina found that when they compared the amount of growth hormone released as a result of a 30-minute aerobic exercise session or strength training, significantly more was released with the strength-training workout. So if you are looking for a way to fight aging naturally (and increase fat burning while you’re at it), don’t neglect strength training as part of your exercise program.
The best strength-training exercises to use are multiple-muscle and total-body exercises, such as step-ups, lunges, and squats. You can do these with your bodyweight only, or while holding dumbbells in both hands.
Do three sets of eight repetitions two to three times per week. And add a pushing exercise, such as push-ups or dumbbell chest presses, to get a fast, total-body workout that builds muscle, burns fat, and boosts growth hormone.
[Ed. Note: Craig Ballantyne is an expert consultant for Men’s Health magazine. If you’re looking to burn fat, build muscle, and quickly step into the body you have always wanted with just three workouts each week, check out Craig’s fat-loss system, Turbulence Training for Fat Loss.]
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Okay, so you have a website. You’ve spent time and money getting this thing up. You’ve used all your creative juices to get the words just right. And you added some nice graphics to make the site aesthetically pleasing. Now what?
A website is of little use if nobody can find it.
Mastering organic search ranking has proven to be a fundamental part of the online marketing mix. (By "organic," I mean the "natural," as opposed to "paid/PPC," listing that appears when someone conducts a search on Google or other search engines. Optimal placement is typically within the first 20 listings or three pages.)
Search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO) – the ability to increase your site’s visibility in organic search listings and refine the content structure on the site itself – are critical for market awareness and customer acquisition. According to WebProNews, 66.3 percent of searchers click on organic listings before they click on a sponsored link. Even more important, a recent study by CreativeWebsiteMarketing.com indicates that most people who buy online start with a search engine.
Don’t let your site get lost in Internet obscurity. Here are five simple ways to help boost your website’s traffic and optimization.
1. Create online buzz about your site, product, or service.
You can do this by generating online press releases. There are services on the Web, such as PRWeb.com or Free-press-release.com, that do this for free or at a nominal cost. Another idea is to post comments to high-traffic blogs, bulletin boards, chat rooms, or forums.
Do a Web search for top blogs or news forums that are related to whatever it is that you’re selling. Go to each site, one by one, and post a comment. (Start a new topic or reply to an existing one.) This helps in two ways: One, you create buzz in the marketplace. Depending on your tactics, your message can even go viral. Two, you get a "back-link" to your site that helps when the site is indexed by search engine spiders.
An important note: Your post should be relevant and genuine. Your comment should be relevant to the question you’re replying to, have some sort of value to the readers that view it, and be in the proper area/subject matter on the forum you’re posting to. Stay away from posts that are blatantly self-serving. These posts are viewed as spam by forum webmasters and could get you banned from the forum, or at least be deleted.
For example, MaryEllen Tribby (ETR’s Publisher) had the good fortune to interview Newt Gingrich in March. Immediately after the interview, we posted a press release to several online press distribution services. We also uploaded comments about the interview to news-aggregating services, blogs, and political forums (with a back-link to the release posted in our Investors Daily Edge archive).
Within the weeks following the initial interview, website visits and traffic ranking more than doubled and conversion also showed a spike. Three months later, this release is still being picked up by the media and through syndication… and the Investors Daily Edge website is enjoying residual traffic and back-links from this effort.
Year-to-date, these techniques and the others I’m about to go into have helped increase traffic nearly 80 percent with a monetization of more than 150 percent ROI.
Which leads me to my next strategy…
2. Initiate a relevant inbound link program.
Set up a reciprocal link page or blog roll (a listing of URLs on a blog, as opposed to a website) that can house links from industry sites. Contact these sites to see if they’d be willing to swap links with you – a link to your site for a link to theirs. Again, relevance is key. Search engines shun link harvesting (collecting links from random websites that have no relevance to your site), so these links should be from sites that are similar in nature to your business.
3. Give Web searchers great content and a link back to your site.
Upload relevant content to sites that make such information available to other sites that want to publish it, such as ArticleDashboard.com or ArticlesFactory.com. This is a great way to increase market awareness as well as establish an inbound link to your site. There is also a syndication opportunity, as third-party sites may come across your article when doing a Web search and republish your content on their own websites. As long as third-parties give your site editorial attribution and a link, getting them to republish your content is just another distribution channel for you to consider.
4. Website pages should be keyword rich and related to your business.
Make a list of your top 20 keywords and variations of those words, and incorporate them into the copy on your site (avoiding the obvious repetition of words). Search engine "spiders" crawl Web pages from top to bottom, so your strongest keywords should be in that order on your home page and sub-pages (the most relevant on the top, the least relevant on the bottom).
You’ll want to do the same for your tagging. Make sure your title tags (the descriptions at the top of each page) and meta tags are unique and chock full of keywords. And your alt tags (images) should have relevant descriptions as well.
5. List your site in online directories by related category or region.
This is an effective way to increase exposure and get found by prospects searching specifically for information on your product or service by keyword topic. Popular directories (like Business.com) typically have a nominal fee. But there are many other directories (like Dmoz.org, Info.com, and Superpages.com) that are free.
Most important, before you start your SEO initiatives, don’t forget to establish a baseline for your site so you can measure pre- vs. post-SEO tactics. Upload a site counter (which counts the number of visits to your website), obtain your site’s Alexa traffic ranking at Alexa.com, or get your site’s daily visit average (from Google Analytics or another application) – and then chart your weekly progress in Excel. Understand that it typically takes two to three months for a site to be optimized… so be patient. You will eventually see results.
[Ed. Note: Wendy Montes de Oca, MBA, ETR’s VP of Marketing and Business Development, has over 15 years of experience in law, financial services, and marketing. Enjoy the success you’ve always wanted with ETR’s Direct Marketing Quick Start Kit. This 4-CD program is the most effective, quickest, and least-expensive way to move you toward financial independence.]
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