I joined the Wealthy Affiliate 30 day challenge. The idea was that the affiliate manager, Marcus, would provide personal coaching and training to a small group of WA affiliates. He would provide daily assignments that we would be expected to complete within a couple of hours a day.

So, I applied and got accepted to the program. As it turned out, I had already done some of the work that needs to be done at the beginning like getting a domain name and setting up a blog. The Wealthy Affiliate already provides thousands of hours worth of training so it was easy to get set up on my own. However, for those that needed the focused training, Marcus directed us to specific videos and training on the site.

It took me about half an hour to get my website set up with the tools provided by Wealthy Affiliate.

The next few lessons were designed to get us oriented to how to think about keywords, articles and blogs in order to get sales. I had never thought of the relationship between what I write on the blog vs. what I write about in my articles.

The idea that really hit home with me was that we need to choose keywords that we can get top rankings in, in Google then relate them with the articles and blog.

The blog is where we “close the sale” so we get paid. The purpose of articles is to provide so much value up front that the reader feels they would get even more in the blog / website.

When the article reader gets to the website, we are supposed to provide more of the “good stuff” that they liked in the article along side a temptation to check out more information on our affiliate product.

In the past, I would write good articles and good blog posts, but I would not link them like a ‘step 1’, ‘step 2’ process. It’s like building a funnel. First you get someone interested (and impressed) with your article, then you further build their interest and your credibility by providing more information related to the article (on your blog). This idea of attracting someone with value then giving them even more value was new to me.

I also learned about the myth of the “duplicate content”. Since traffic from the search engines depends on how many back-links you have to your site, you can send the same article to a 1,000 article directories and you would get link-juice from a thousand back-links to your website. As it turned out, I doubled my traffic in a month.

We also learned several other ideas during the month that really brought to focus exactly what needs to be done to drive traffic to your site, then drive sales through your affiliate link.

Despite the fact I have purchased thousands of dollars of courses over the span of four or five years this short, 30 day period really brought to focus the tools and tactics needed to successfully build a business on the Internet.

Did I get rich in 30 days? No. However, it’s been a week since the course ended and I the sales have started coming in. If I leave things the way they are, I will automatically keep getting sales every month. That’s the way the course taught us to set things up.

But I’m not about to stop now. I can see that if I keep going, I can set up a really nice income for me and my family by doing just a little bit of work every month. Actually, with what I have learned, I am hoping to be able to leave my job within a couple of months from now with the income from my affiliate earnings.

Let’s see how it goes.

Overall, I’m really pleased with the 30 day challenge at the Wealthy Affiliate. If you haven’t found a way to make some decent income online, I would highly recommend that you join the Wealthy Affiliate and take the 30 day challenge. In my opinion it is a real shortcut to setting up a real business online.

If you join through my affiliate link on this page, I’ll personally get involved in helping you (if you wish). Succeeding online is about helping people. If you go in with that attitude, you’ll make a lot of money with the Wealthy Affiliate and their 30 day challenge.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Neeraj Varma
403-620-8902.

I wonder what experience the instructors have in using social media for business.

There are a lot of people using social media these days. It seems that business people intuitively “know” that they should be using social media to promote their business.

They put their marketing department on the job to go for it and rake in the clients by promoting on social media such as Facebook, Twitter, blogs and You Tube.

After spending thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of dollars, endless meetings, social media strategy sessions with “consultants” all they come up with is a big hole in their wallet.

This is because social media marketing doesn’t work the same way as traditional marketing.

There are two things different about social media marketing: First it’s the Internet. Most traditional marketers don’t have a clue about how to promote on the Internet. No matter how hard they try, you can’t get sales from the Internet like you do from radio, TV or newspaper advertising.

The second is the fact that social networks are a special form of Internet. If traditional marketers haven’t figured out how to market on the Internet, they are sure to be lost on the social networks.

How do I know? I’m a consultant for small businesses in my city. I come across all kinds of companies who are “doing Facebook” as part of their marketing plan.

When I ask what their conversion rate is, all I get are blank stares…They don’t even know if their Facebook marketing is working or not!

Yet, they are more than willing to spend thousands of dollars “promoting on Facebook” because they have heard it is really good!

Just because someone knows how to open up a Facebook account, post to it and set up a fan page doesn’t mean they know how to get sales from it.

The same thing goes for Twitter, blogs, YouTube and more…

Sooner or later business people figure out that using social media for business is not worth their time or money. They get disappointed and walk away from one of the most powerful marketing media ever invented.

If the instructors at SBDC in New Hampshire really know what they are doing…from experience…they will be doing their community a great service. However, the likelihood of that is very low to nil.

The reason I say this is because the same instructors have been teaching marketing for years. They have been teaching the principles that have proven to be a complete failure online. When these same instructors start teaching about social media, what are they going to achieve?

What background do they have in generating leads and sales from social media? Have they ever done it for themselves or a client and produced measurable results? Do they know they can measure exactly how much money the company will make from a certain campaign? if they don’t. then in my opinion, they are not qualified to teach how to use social media for small business.

Call me jaded, but I have spent too many hours and too much money experimenting with what works and doesn’t work on the Internet. Frankly, the traditional marketing models have all had to be modified to be able to produce any results on the Internet.

After modifying them you start to get into the real Internet marketing methods for using social media for business or any other Internet based marketing system.

Rather than spending your time and money on “academic” courses you would be better off spending a little bit of time and money at the online Wealthy Affiliate University. Here you will meet lots of people with real, hands-on experience who will actually help you launch your Internet marketing campaigns.

Under the guidance of these people you will learn by doing.

If you really want to learn how to use social media for small business go to people who are actually practicing it to produce sales. Don’t go to academics whose principles have proven to be a waste of time on the Internet.

If you start exploring these links you can spend months if not years checking out and trying the different business models presented to you.

You are likely to end up spending thousands of dollars and endless hours just surfing the ‘net and experimenting with different business ideas.

How do I know this? Because I have been doing it for years…I have lost thousands of dollars and precious, valuable time on wild goose chases.

Fortunately, I did come across some good programs and finally did learn how to make money online.

I am still working part time online and have learned to make some good money surfing the sites I like and doing some basic work that makes me feel good.

The secret is to be honest with yourself and with the people who would be your customers. Give good value for their time in terms of information and product recommendations.

I tried the “get rich quick” program where I just started promoting products or services simply for the money. It didn’t work out for me. I think this was because I wasn’t committed to what I was doing. The products and services I was promoting didn’t mean anything to me.

What finally worked was when I started promoting what I was using. I started promoting the tools and information that were working for me. Somehow it made a difference. I had more commitment to stick to a plan and actually get the work done.

There are affiliate programs for just about anything these days. Just find something that you love to do. Find something that you love to read about or do. Then find an affiliate program that relates to it. Just promote those types of programs and you will have a home business that pays well, and you love to do.

Working from home part time online is very easy to do these days. The biggest thing you need to conquer is inaction. Just get started in a direction that interests you. Start writing articles about it and commenting about it on blogs and forums. Leave your affiliate link behind for people to click on for “further information”. You’ll make money.

It really is that easy.

Of course, after you get started you’ll have questions and you’ll want to know how to make even more money. That’s when you should think of buying a course or at least getting a free course on online marketing.

You can get some good free training from this site…just fill out the form on the right. You can also get some good training on how to run a home business from here.

A very good place to start looking for where the money is in any niche market is in the forums and chat groups.

When you look at forum posts you will notice that many people who post messages have a “signature” where they mention a good deal or a website.

These links lead to various products and services that relate to what the forum is about.

Simply follow these links to the product site and keep a record of the urls for each product.

Next, go to Google and search “adwords keyword tool”.

Now, do a search of the url (in the website box) in Google’s keyword tool.

Google will list out hundreds of keywords that relate to that website.

Do this process for several of the product links you find in the forums.

This way you will get hundreds niche related keywords that lead to products and services you can sell.

Now all you have to do is to take a few products you are interested in and see if they offer affiliate commissions if you bring them business.

Once you have found products related to your niche go back to the forums and chat groups and get people’s opinions of what experience people have had with them.

Through this process you will be able to find some very good quality products and services you can offer to your niche.

All you do now is simply participate in the forums and have one or more of these products featured in your “signature” box, with your affiliate link.

This is a good way to get started making a little bit of money online.

If you want to learn more and better ways that thousands of people have used to make a healthy profit online go to the Wealthy Affiliate University.

The best way to get a feel for your topic is to visit the popular forums online. Simply type in “forums: (your main keyword)” into Google and you will get a list of potential chat groups in your field. The keyword you use is from the list of keywords you got from the instructions in “How To Find A Niche For Your Internet Business Part 1”.

If you have different categories of keywords in your list, be sure to check out the popular forums for each category.

Notice I keep using the term “popular” forums. This is because you want to be where there are a lot of people taking an interest in your topic. If there is no forum or chat group where a lot of people congregate, you may not have a good topic to be used for an Internet marketing business. It might be better for a direct mail business model but not an online business.

The reason for this is that you want to be in a niche where people have a lot of passion. You want to be in a niche where people are so excited about what they do or use that they can’t help but talk about it with others like themselves.

This is very important. You want to be in a niche where people take an interest in the topic. It is not enough that a lot of people use the product. For example, a lot of people use toilet paper, but you don’t see a lot of passionate discussion going on about it on the Internet. It is important that the people in your niche are excited about the topic and are willing to talk and discuss the topic online. If there is no forum for your topic, you probably have a “toilet paper” type of niche. You can buy it in a grocery store, but as an online business, I wouldn’t touch it. It is a lot easier to make money in a niche filled with people who can hardly wait to talk about it.

So, when you to these “popular” forums go through the different discussion strings and start copying and pasting the questions people are asking, into an “idea file”.

Look for questions and discussions where you know something or where you are interested in looking up the answer to the question. Again, we come back to the idea of spending your time in a field where you have an interest…preferably a “passionate” interest.

Go through as many forums as possible and find the ones where there are a lot of active discussions going on. Contribute intelligently where you can…HELP people! Make a short list of 20 or so forums where you feel you will get a lot of exposure for your helpful comments.

By doing this you will get a good “feel” for the problems and needs you could provide a solution for.

Solving people’s problems is the best way to make friends in your field.

Making friends with your customers and potential customers is THE best way to develop a REAL, SOLID business that will put money into your bank account on a regular basis for years to come.

If you are not willing to get involved with your business and your customers, then

REALLY this isn’t for you

.

I went through the whole process of half-heartedly approaching my Internet business for years. All I ended up with was a hard-drive full of courses and thousands of dollars spent chasing unrealistic dreams.

Frankly, it took the “reality talk” that I got from the “Wealthy Affiliate” to get me focused onto a track that results in a bank full of profits from an online business.

You need to find a niche that has the potential to make millions. Then you build your business into it.

If you are serious about making money, no matter what kind of internet business opportunity you get involved with, you need to focus. A real business that has the potential to make some good money will need your time, lots of it.

The problem is that if you decide to go just for the money you may end up in a business that you don’t enjoy. If you end up having to spend a lot of time in a business that you don’t enjoy you just won’t do the work. It’s human nature. You might force yourself to do the work, but in the long term, you will end up struggling to make a profit and be very frustrated with life.

So, where do you start if you want a rewarding life and you want to make some good money?

You start with some self-analysis.

You start with an understanding of who you are, what you are interested in, what skills you have, what you could become interested in and what skills you could develop in your area of interest.

Ok. That’s fine. Let’s say you have an area of interest.

But, does it have the potential to make millions?

Maybe you don’t want to make millions, you just want some extra money to make ends meet. That’s fine but if your area of interest is profitable, you can make a little bit of money or a lot, it’s up to you. You want to spend your time in a business where your niche is so big that there is lots of room for a person like you to come in and make a few thousand a year or a few hundred thousand a month…depending on your goals.

If the niche you are interested in is too small and the competition is already dominating it, there is no sense in fighting for your corner of profits. There are much easier ways to make money.

How do you tell if the niche you are looking at is going to be profitable?

You go to Google and type in some keywords that relate to your niche and see if people are advertising on the right side of the page (Google Adwords ads). If there are lots of ads, that means there is lots of competition. If there is lots of competition, there is lots of money to be made, otherwise people would not be spending their money on advertising there.

When you do a Google search also look at the number of websites that relate to your field (shown at the top of the page). If there are lots (millions) of related websites, you have hit the jackpot. You have a niche that is big enough for a newcomer to come in and get established and there are lots of profits to go around.

Now what you need to do is to dig a little deeper.

Check to see if there are several (hundreds or thousands of) keywords that could be profitable. How do you do that? You use a keyword tool software.

There are many keyword tool software programs available, Google has a good one too. But the problem is that most of them don’t tell you how profitable the niche will be or how easy it is to actually make a profit with that keyword niche.

I found a good keyword tool at Wealthy Affiliate that saves me so much time. With just one click I get a complete list of hundreds of keywords, how profitable they could be and how easy it would be to dominate that niche and start making some real money.

I am willing to work hard for my money, but if there is a way to make a lot of money in a short period of time with just a little bit of effort, I really like that idea. The software tool at Wealthy Affiliate gives me just that.

It’s an easy, fast and reliable way to find a niche that I can use to establish a real, solid Internet business.

It’s about getting the person that lands on your website to take a single action. This is true whether you’re trying to make direct sales from your own website or if you are working for someone as an affiliate or employee.  It’s true whether you’re building a list, collecting leads for someone else, or referring people to a membership site.

If you want to keep your job or make money from your own or an affiliate website, the most important step of monetization is to get visitors to take the single most important action that you have decided they should take.  That’s one, only one action.  All your efforts need to focus on getting them to take that action.

You want people to either take that action, or else leave your site. If they do stay around, it should only be because they’re reading your sales material that will make them want to buy, fill out an email form, or whatever action you want them to take at that point in the sales funnel.  When they do that, you will make money as an affiliate or you will be able to keep your work from home programs.

If you are part of a web 2/0 social media campaign a really good way to get people to “act now or leave the page” is to make your landing page ugly.  The point of web 2.0 pages is to quickly get a high page rank in Google, attract people to your website and get them to take the action you have set out for them.  By “ugly” I mean you shouldn’t do things to make the page “pretty”.  Just concentrate on making your point quickly and effectively.  Effective communication is not at all concerned with “looking good”.

Don’t make the page very useful either.  Making the page useful may prove distracting if you are targeting a specific “buying keyword”.  Distracting them from buying isn’t really in the visitor’s best interest either because all they are looking to do is one thing:  buy!

With highly targeted keywords they may be absolutely ready to buy, or they may be comparing products. Maybe they just want to justify their emotional desire to purchase with a few key facts.  Whatever their motivation, they are definitely looking to buy!  If you want to be successful in your work from home programs, get out of the way of your customer’s buying decision.

What about the people who aren’t buying right now?  If you’re targeting consumers further up in the sales funnel where they are actually qualified leads rather then buyers, there are still only two options…either they click onto your link or they look on another website!  You will be most successful in your part time job from home if you force them to make a decision.

This is why it’s okay for your social media pages to be ugly. In fact, it’s actually the most desirable!  You don’t want to give them a reason to do anything other than to click on the link you’ve provided.

This also means that you want to focus on only one affiliate program or work from home program at a time.  I know there are a lot of programs you could be promoting, but if you really want to be successful, use as few shared revenue options as possible.

Some social media websites will have this included in the page so you can’t help but have some distraction.  But from your side, you should keep the distractions to a minimum.

If you’re targeting a “buying keyword”–the exact make and model–then you most likely want to send readers straight to your order page on the affiliate website rather than a pre-sell page you may have created.

But what if you want to target people looking for “acne cures”?  Make a page that targets this phrase, and send them to a page with links to specific cures. Make a page for each specific cure, so that a) the general seekers can click on the different cures, and  b) people who are already looking for the specific cure, can find an already targeted page!

The most important thing you should remember is to find what sells, and then sell it. Don’t keep your visitors around admiring your pretty page–get them off there so they can buy their product, and you can make money with your online.

If you are looking for good  work from home programs! this is a good source:  http://wamn.bizzinfo.org .

There are so many ways you can have a part-time work at home job!  These aren’t just little jobs that make a few hundred dollars a month.  They are real jobs that you can do and make a few hundred or even several thousand dollars a week, week  after week.

Now, of course, not all jobs are for everyone.  You have to pick and choose which jobs you apply yourself to.  Depending on the skill set you already have and the skills you can acquire, you can make a nice living working from home  part-time.

All you need is the desire to work.  Even if you can only put in an hour or two per day.  That’s enough to make a good living.

Many of the jobs we will talk about on this blog will be Internet based.  You will be able to get jobs that you can work at whenever you have time.  There is no set schedule.

On the other hand, there are jobs with deadlines and performance related criteria that you will have to meet.

We will also talk about part-time work at home jobs that can grow into a full fledged business.  Because of the Internet there are so many possibilities that never existed before.

If your goal is to make a little side money in a part-time job you can do from home, this is the site that will give you the leads and resources so you can get employed quickly.

Explore the pages on this site and you are bound to come up with some ideas that will help you.

Go ahead and comment below if you have ideas or resources you think others could benefit from.

Looking forward to interacting with you in this blog!

Neeraj Varma.