Author Archive | Brian Bearden

One of the biggest obstacles holding you back from success online could be the fear that your writing is lousy. But let me ask you… can your readers understand your meaning?

Or are they as flummoxed as I was when I read this YouTube comment?

The unwieldy downtown conjecturally suffer because belt seemingly buzz vice a jumbled goose. scandalous, adhesive september

I don’t know if this came from one of the early bots, or perhaps someone who knows no English but received a dictionary for his birthday, or just someone who drank a few too many.

Whatever the case, it received two replies (both positive!) within three days and I’m betting your writing is better than that.

So, stop sweating your writing skills and just write. You’ll find the more you do it, the better you get.

And have fun. If you don’t find at least some pleasure in creating your posts and products, maybe you’re in the wrong niche.

Content marketing isn’t supposed to be that hard. After all, if you find that your belt seemingly buzzes vice at a jumbled goose in a scandalous manner, then sticking to September might be the right move after all. 😉

Relax. Have fun. Make some mistakes.

And just write.

This one is so simple, yet diabolically effective…

When you first introduce a new product to your list or your blog readers, do you simply pop a link on there with a line of text and hope they click?

Of course not. You introduce the product. You tell them what’s good about it, how you use it, why it can change their business or help them achieve their goal, etc.

In other words, you’re introducing the product and warming up your readers BEFORE you send them to the sales page.

Now here’s the mistake I see marketers making all the time…

…when they first introduce the product, they take the time to do everything we just said.

And they make sales.

Later they decide to promote the product again, only this time they forget a crucial step.

They slap that affiliate link or product link up on social media and figure people will click it and buy the product.

But they don’t click.

Why not? Because there’s no introduction to entice them to click and learn more.

So here’s what you do…

Take the copy you wrote in that email or post that introduces the product, and give it a page of its own on your site. Add your affiliate link or sales link to the bottom.

Now when you advertise the product on social media and other venues, send visitors to your intro page first. I’ve seen this little technique increase conversions 4 fold.

Ouch! You’ve got a great product. In fact, there’s never been another product like yours in the history of the world. Your product is going to sell like GANGBUSTERS because, well, because you just know it will. Because it has to. Because you just sunk the last 6 months and several thousand dollars into building the product, but, it’s going to all be worth it as soon as these stupid, snobby, too-good-to-talk-to-you big shot marketers come down off of their high horses and promote it for you.

Whew.

Okay, maybe that’s not exactly how you see it.

But you do believe you’ve got a great product that will sell well, and you know you’re doing these other marketers a FAVOR by offering them the chance to promote it for you. Because after all, they have nothing to do and nothing to promote. They’re just waiting for you to come along and give them a chance to double the millions they’ve already earned…

Yeah. Right.

I remember all too well how hard it was to get anyone to take a look at my offer, much less promote it for me when I was new. And do you know why? It’s because like almost every new marketer out there, I had it backwards.

Imagine a man knocks on the door of a woman he’s never met before. She opens the door a crack to see who it is and realizes she doesn’t know him from an axe murderer. Through the crack in the door he says to her, “Hi Baby, I have a fantastic deal for you! I’m going to do you a huge favor by letting you drive me in your car to an expensive restaurant where you’ve made reservations for us. I’m going to let you buy me dinner with cocktails and a bottle of wine, and afterwards I’ll let you take me to an expensive Broadway show that’s booked six months in advance. And after that, I’ll do you an even bigger favor and let you sleep with me. What do you say?”

Seriously, what do you think she’ll say to this stranger at her door? I suspect she slammed the door shut when he got to the part about the expensive restaurant and reservations.

And yet new marketers take this exact same approach all the time when asking established marketers to act as their affiliates or JV partners.

“Hi Joe Marketer, I have a fantastic deal for you! I’m going to do you a huge favor by letting you devote several days of your precious promotional schedule to selling my product to your list and followers. Sure, you don’t know me, you don’t know my product and you have zero reason to trust me or my product. But I still expect you to drop everything and instead of promoting something you KNOW will sell and you know your customers will love, I want you to take a huge chance on promoting a product that might not sell at all, that might be awful, that might alienate your customers and ruin your reputation. Because hey, that’s what you should do for a total stranger, right?”

Now imagine receiving one or even several of these requests every day. Is it any wonder that seasoned marketers stop answering their email, and new marketers have trouble getting anyone to promote for them?

Let’s go back to the guy and gal analogy. What if that guy were to come up to the woman – not at her front door, but at work – and simply introduce himself and maybe thank her for something she did at her job? Maybe he comes back in a couple of days and comments on something she wrote or asks a relevant question. He starts following her on social media and engaging her there.

A little bit of interaction here, a little bit there…

Then maybe he does something nice for her – shares one of her links, tells his Facebook Fans about her business – or he simply buys one of her products. She’s starting to take notice of him. He’s not scary and in fact he seems like a nice guy. What’s this? He’s got a website. She checks it out. Hmmm… this might be someone worth getting to know better.

The following month or maybe the following year, what happens? She’s promoting his product. Or maybe she’s not, but maybe she introduced him to a friend of hers that’s an even better fit for a joint venture.

You already know the point I’m getting to here – don’t pounce on strangers and expect them to do you a huge favor when they don’t even know you. And yes, promoting your product is indeed a huge favor.

The 3 Secrets to Landing Big JV Partners:

1. Build the relationship before asking for the favor, whatever that favor might be. (You already knew that, right?)

2. Build your own audience through social media, list building and so forth. Then when your product is ready to launch, launch it to your list first. Take note of the clickthrough rates, conversion rates and refund rates. Now you’ve got something to tell potential affiliates and JV partners other than, “I think this will sell well.”

3. Realize that not everyone is going to promote your product, no matter how good you are at building relationships first. Maybe they only promote their own products. Maybe they just don’t think your product is a good fit for their list. Maybe they’re having a bad day/week/life. Don’t worry about it. If you build enough relationships with others, you’ll find that some promote, some don’t and it’s all good.

Refunds cut into your sales, right? And they’re darn annoying, too. You work so hard on your product and then someone tells you that it’s not worth their money. Sigh.

But we have to offer guarantees to keep our conversions high, right? Maybe not, because human psychology is a strange thing.

Let’s say you sell a $1,997 course with a full 60 day money back guarantee. What your guarantee has inadvertently done is tell your customer that it’s in their best interest to sell themselves against your course and get their money back.

And some of them will do exactly that.

But if you don’t offer a refund and instead demonstrate how valuable your product or service has been to others, how they’ve used it to get results and how there is nothing else like it on the market, then maybe you don’t need a guarantee.

After all, a guarantee is supposed to be a way of showing that your product WORKS. But if you can demonstrate that users get actual proven results, isn’t that so much better than an offer to refund their money?

It’s something to consider. You can either let your customers convince themselves that your product isn’t worth what they paid…

… or you can demonstrate up front that this is the bargain of a lifetime and you want serious buyers only.

Goal setting is great in theory. Write down your goals, maybe write them down every day, carry them with you… And in a year nothing has changed. Let’s be honest… Most of the time goal setting simply is not enough to get things done.

Even when you break BIG goals down into little steps and then gradually work towards those goals, it still doesn’t work for many people.

If you are one of those people who can routinely achieve the goals you set, then congrats – you can stop reading right here. But if you’ve set goals – and set more goals – and set even MORE goals – and you STILL don’t have what you want…

…or maybe you don’t even like setting goals…

…then I’m going to propose you do something a little different.

Stop sweating the goals and instead focus on systems.

Yes, SYSTEMS.

You thought I was going to say habits, right? Habits are good but they’re not always flexible enough to get you to where you want to go.

Here’s an example of the difference between a habit and a system. Let’s say you want to bench press 250 pounds. You can make it a habit to do weight lifting at 6am on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. But if you don’t have a system for increasing your reps and weights over time, you’ll never reach your goal.

Habits are repeatable actions you do without thinking, like going to the gym at a certain time on certain days. A system is a series of actions you take, like systematically increasing reps and weight to reach your goal. If you’re just lifting weight without a system to increase reps and weights, you’ll never improve.

Goals alone without systems can be detrimental and limiting. Princeton’s theology school did an experiment: Theology students were told to go to another building on campus and teach a class on The Good Samaritan. You’ll recall that the Samaritan story is about a man who was beaten and left by the side of the road. Others walked past him, but the Good Samaritan stopped and helped him.

Students were told to go teach the story of the Good Samaritan to another class. But they were also told they were late and must hurry. An actor was planted on their path, lying on the ground, hurt, moaning in pain and even screaming twice.

Every single theology student ran past the injured person to go teach the class on the Good Samaritan. One person even stepped over the person in pain to get to the class.

The goal was to get to the class and make the presentation on time and the students were blind to any other possibility. They were so focused on that goal that they missed the bigger picture and personal perspective to help the injured person. But if these students had a system by which they lived, that system would likely have prioritized living the story of the Good Samaritan rather than just teaching it.

If you have a goal to earn a million dollars a year, you might bend rules, break laws or even hurt people to achieve that goal. But if you have a system that says you make money by providing real value to others, then you’re going to stay on the right path.

I think of the difference between habits and systems like this:

A habit is, “I write every day from 8am to 10am.

A system is, “I work on writing a book every day from 8am to 10am for two months, at which time I’ve completed a book. For the next 3 weeks I market and promote the book during this time, and for the fourth week I do research and outline my next book during this time. And then I repeat the system.

This might be an oversimplification, but the point is the system has more flexibility than a habit, allowing you to adapt as you go. Figure out what you want to achieve and then create systems to get you there. Build flexibility into your system so that when something unexpected happens, you know how to get back on track.

Lastly, focus on your system (the process or journey) and not on the goal (your destination). When you give your attention to where you are now (the system) you’ll find you’re much happier in the moment than if you are continually wishing for the goal itself. You’ll be able to celebrate little victories every single day by using your systems, rather than putting happiness off until you finally reach your destination.

Plus when you do reach your destination, because you have systems in place, you also won’t experience the paradoxical and yet all too common experience of feeling empty or sad because you no longer have that big goal to look forward to.

A man sets out on a journey of a lifetime.

The problem is, he doesn’t know where he wants to go.

So he spends the next 40 years wandering the back roads, never really going anywhere.

Another man chooses his destination. It’s a promised land, far, far away. The dangers he faces along the route are great and the challenges seem almost insurmountable.

Yet because he knows where he wants to go, he is able to find his way, overcome the challenges and eventually reach his destination, where he retires in 10 years’ time.

One man didn’t know where he was going, and so he wandered for 40 years and achieved nothing.

The other man knew exactly where he wanted to go, and because of his belief and determination, he was able to overcome every obstacle and reach his destination in 10 years.

Which person are you?

Most people won’t define what they want until they have clarity on how they will get there.

But because they don’t know what they want, they don’t have the clarity, and thus end up doing nothing.

That’s why you’ve got to decide first what it is that you want, and be totally clear on what that is. Write it down in detail.

Only then will you figure out how to get to where you want to go.

One more thing: Once you begin your journey, take time every single day to revisit your goal.

Just like a builder continually consults the building plans, you should continually go over your goal so that your subconscious mind knows exactly what it should be doing to get you to where you want to go.

This will also help you avoid time wasting activities that you don’t need.

Advanced Tip: Measure what you treasure.

Whatever your goal might be, take daily measurements of how you’re doing.

For example, if your goal is to reach a certain income level, you’ll want to track your profits daily.

If your goal is to exercise and eat right, you’ll want to keep a journal of everything you eat and every exercise you perform.

Whatever your goal might be, measure what you treasure and you will get more of what it is that you want.

All too often when people think of success, they think that they should be the best in their field. Or they should have the biggest house or the flashiest car… or millions of dollars in their bank account.

Success in life goes beyond material possessions and the number in your bank account. Real success is about living life to the fullest and knowing that you gave it your all. To live life on your own terms, pursuing your own authentic purpose and dreams is success.

The concepts of what it takes to be successful are very simple. Anybody can understand them and most people do. Application of these concepts, however, is quite another story.

In this article, I’ll share 10 important success tips with you. While they may not be mind blowing, rest assured that if you apply them daily, success in any endeavour will be yours.

Even during those times when you do not get what you want or despite your best efforts you fail, you will still push forward and succeed in areas you never even imagined.

Don’t think – Know and act.

This is without a doubt the most important tip of the lot. Success is not a coincidence but a consequence and it’s a direct result of your actions.

The majority of people who never succeed in life invariably have one common trait. They don’t take sufficient action. They hem and they haw and never put their plan into consistent and committed action. Planning does not get results. Only doing does.

Do not keep thinking about what you’re going to do or what you will do. JUST DO! This is the key. Form a plan, do your research so that you know what you’re doing and then EXECUTE the plan. Don’t wait, just start!

Instead of taking notes about which exercises are the best for weight loss, put on your shoes and start running. Instead of hanging out in online forums reading advice from other clueless people, take action. You can learn and learn and learn, but go nowhere…

The best thing is to start doing and learn as you go. Most people are stuck in a kind of inertia where they just never get started. By consciously forcing yourself to take action, you’ll attenuate this lethargy and inertia that’s holding you back. This and only this will catapult you to success.

Define your goals clearly.

You must know what you want. If you’re undecided about your goals and have a flippant attitude about how you’re going to achieve them, you will be like a sailboat without any course that’s just tossed around by the prevailing winds.

Write your goals down in a list. Make them as specific as you can. State why you want to achieve them and how you’ll feel when you do reach your goals. You must define your why and be absolutely clear about it. Give yourself a time frame to achieve your goals.

Look at your list often so that you remember what you need to do… and then go do what you have to do so that you can see success and then be able to do what you want to do.

Don’t rest on your laurels.

This is a very common mistake that can turn a successful person into a failure. If the phrase “Resting on your laurels” could be summarized in one word, that word would be COMPLACENCY.

There are so many examples of people who did succeed at what they set out to do and once they got there, they were so happy and content that they relaxed and assumed that things would always be rosy. After a while, they realized that while they were resting, the roses wilted and the weeds took the garden.

You must always be alert. If you’ve lost all your excess fat and you have a fantastic body now, that’s great. Enjoy it and be proud of yourself… BUT… do not assume that you’ll stay lean forever.

If you let your diet slide and sneak in a doughnut here and a milkshake there, it’s only a matter of time before all those pounds come sneaking back in. Next thing you know, you’re fatter than you’ve ever been before.

The same applies to your spouse. Give them the same attention that you did before you married. If you let that slide and think you closed the deal by tying the knot, it’s just a matter of time before you’ll be signing the divorce papers.

Always keep moving. A rolling stone gathers no moss.

Continually motivate yourself.

This is of paramount importance. Everyone is excited at the beginning of the year when they’re listing their goals and resolutions because of the promise of what is to come. The truth of the matter is that it will take time to achieve your goals.

During this time, your interest will start to wane and you will lose the drive to keep going through the hard yards. This is where most people throw in the towel and fail. They’ve lost sight of the promise.

The key to staying on track with your goals and succeeding in life is motivation. Do not renounce your personal responsibility of motivating yourself. Nobody else is going to do it for you.

You could attend a seminar by some famous motivational guru and be pumped up for a week, but you can rest assured that the high you’re feeling will dissipate.

What then? Who is going to motivate you?

The answer is you because you’re all you’ve got. Write your goals down and most importantly, write down why you’re doing what you’re doing. What is the emotional reason behind it? Write it all down.

Whenever you feel like the journey is just too much effort, look at your list of goals and ask yourself why you started. This should give you the impetus to keep going.

You MUST motivate yourself regularly, and take consistent action toward your goals!

Don’t be afraid of failure.

Always realize that failure is not the opposite of success. It is a part of success. Far too many people never do what their heart desires because they’re stifled by fear.

The lady who loves art chooses a career in finance because of job security. She hates her job and is miserable all her life.

The man who wants to travel the world and blog about his experiences as a global wanderer ends up tying the knot at 24 and has 2 kids because all his friends are getting married and settling down. It just seems crazy and immature to do what he wants to. Years later he’ll look back and wonder, “What if”?

Don’t end up in a “What if?” situation. You’ll find success if you pursue your true calling in life and not miss life-changing opportunities just because you were trying to be practical or following the herd.

You must follow your heart and your dreams without fear of failure. That’s the only way to live a life without regret. You can’t succeed at what you don’t do.

In the event that you do pursue your dreams and fail repeatedly, don’t let these failures discourage you. Fall seven times, get up eight.

The difference between the winners and losers is that the winners failed more frequently, and kept going. Learn from each failure, correct your course and keep moving forward. This is the only way to succeed and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Don’t compare yourself to others.

This is a simple one. Stop worrying about what others are doing. It’s human nature to measure one’s self against others.

Guys at the gym look around to see who can bench press more, and who has bigger muscles.

Women tend to judge other women’s bodies very harshly just to feel better about themselves.

Businessmen compare their earnings and net worth with their peers to evaluate their own worth.

None of these is necessary and can in fact be destructive. All unhappiness starts with comparison. There will always be those who are better off than you and there will be those who are worse off. Know this from the beginning and you’ll save valuable time and energy that you can apply toward making your life better.

If you constantly measure yourself up against those better than you, you’ll be bitter, discontented and miserable. That’s no way to live life.

If you compare yourself against those who are worse off than you, you’ll not be motivated to do better for yourself since you already think that you’re a success. This will lead to complacency.

So, your personal motto should always be to better your own personal best. You are your biggest competition. Always strive to be better today than you were yesterday.

If you focus on beating your own achievements, you will reap success over and over. Your only limit is you.

Keep your calm.

We live in a world where the majority of people are very quick to react. They’re often just waiting to get offended by others or curse at their own misfortunes.

In Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If”, his very first line was “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you”, and concludes with: “Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!”

In simple words, do not be quick to anger or become overly emotional. Do not make decisions based on haste or fury. Millions of people have been to prison because they lost their minds for a split second and did something they regretted.

Extricate yourself from any unfavorable situations so that you can keep a level head. If you’re struggling to lose weight and give in to temptation and eat something you shouldn’t have, don’t curse yourself and give up on your goal. Move on, and get back on track.

In times of failure, take a deep breath and stay focused. Analyze what went wrong and remedy what you can. Don’t run around screaming and blaming everyone else. If you truly want to be successful in life, reining in your emotions and staying cool is a skill you must develop.

The same boiling water that softens potatoes hardens eggs. It’s all about what you’re made of, not your circumstances.

Eat, sleep and spend in moderation.

This may sound simple but millions fail at it. Eat clean and eat in moderation. Food is fuel, not therapy. So many people eat when they’re happy, they eat when they’re sad, they eat when they’re bored… It just doesn’t end.

Eat only when you’re hungry. It’s fine to occasionally indulge but know your limits. Obesity has reached epidemic proportions because of poor diet choices and overeating.

Sleep soundly but don’t sleep your life away. 6 to 8 hours of sleep a day is adequate for most people. Don’t sleep 14 hours a day like a baby. At the other extreme, try not to burn the candles at both ends and leave yourself in a quivering mass of exhaustion because you’re only sleeping 4 hours a day.

Spend your money wisely. One of the most common traits of successful people is that they save money and live beneath their means. Don’t spend money that you don’t have to buy things that you don’t need to impress people who don’t care.

While these 3 pointers might seem commonplace and almost inane, you’d be shocked to know that millions have ruined their lives just by not getting these three points right.

This is the real world and these are hard truths. To succeed in life, you must master yourself, and stay balanced.

Keep your promises to yourself.

When you make a promise to yourself and don’t keep it, on a subconscious level you’ll lose respect for yourself. You’ll feel like you’re not worthy of success.

One common example is people who struggle to lose weight. They have the same weight loss resolutions every year and they never succeed. They try a hundred different programs and thousand different slimming pills and whatever they do, weight loss eludes them.

The reason for this is that they break their promises to themselves. If you say that you’ll not drink soda today, then you don’t. Do NOT make an exception and tell yourself, “It’s ok. I’ll work it off tomorrow”.

Yes, you can work it off but you broke a promise to yourself. The next time you tell yourself, I’ll restrict my carbohydrate intake today, on a subconscious level your mind will tell you, “No, you won’t. You always give in”.

And guess what? By noon you’ll give in and have 2 slices of pizza. Your resolve was already weakened by earlier broken promises.

When this process is repeated over and over, it becomes a habit. You tell yourself one thing and you do another. Your self-esteem and confidence in achieving the goals you set is diminished in this way.

You decide that the ideal body weight is just not possible for you. You tell yourself that you have poor genes, no discipline, etc. There is one thing you are succeeding at when this happens, and that is FAILURE. Many people are very successful at failing.

Always remember. Do not make exceptions when you commit to a goal. Do not skip the workouts. Do not indulge in foods that you said you wouldn’t. Stay focused and exercise self-discipline. Keep promises to yourself above all else!

Believe and have faith in yourself.

In order to succeed in life or business, you must believe that you can do it. If you didn’t, you’d never begin. You must believe that whatever you desire is within reach. After all, if it wasn’t, why bother?

Start believing it, and you’ll be on your way to seeing it. Have faith in yourself. There may be times when you’re dogged by failure and nothing seems to work. It’s during these times that it’s imperative that you do NOT give up.

It is always darkest before the dawn. If you stay on track and keep at it, success can be yours. You must stay the course, believe in yourself and your vision, and never stop working toward it until you have achieved the success you desire.

Conclusion

These 10 tips are simple to understand and you’ve most probably heard them before. Yet, you’re still reading because on some level, you know it helps to see them again.

Keep these tips in mind at all times and apply them over and over. Initially, it may be difficult and you’re bound to fumble and flounder a bit, but with practice and repetition, it will become second nature and you will be a living embodiment of success.

One of the most important decisions you’ll ever make in your life is what kind of career you are going to have. Many people out there plan their career from the time they are in high school and work diligently to make sure they have the education that they need to make their dreams come true. There are also people out there that haven’t had the opportunity, for whatever reason, to get the education they need to work in the field they have always dreamt of working in. These people will often take whatever jobs they can find in order to make ends meet and survive.

Once one starts in a job, even one that may not pay sufficiently or be very satisfying, many people end up staying there while. In order to make a change, one must make a decision to break the cycle and do something that is different from what they know or are comfortable doing. Some people will take on extra jobs in order to get the money they need to go back to school and find a better career while others will adjust their lifestyle to fit the amount of money they have coming in.

There are still others out there that decide to take things into their own hands and start a home based business. These people tend to believe in themselves and are motivated enough to make sure their dream of working from home can be turned into a reality. Frankly, these are the kind of people that will do whatever it takes to make sure they are successful in the line of work or home based business they choose.

You see, building a successful home business doesn’t really require more work than building a successful career in the workforce. The difference between those who work for themselves at home and people who work for a boss in the “real world” usually comes down to a self-motivated mindset and unwavering commitment to work until you are successful. An employee might be motivated to work until their shift is over, while an entrepreneur is compelled to work until they have achieved their goals.

Working from home can be highly rewarding if you are willing to put the effort into making it work for you. You are going to find times when you are pulling long hours and not getting many days off when you start out, but that is part of the appeal of working from home. You don’t have to worry about doing those long hours and then commuting home only to go back to the office in a few hours. You can also take breaks or days off when you want once you are successful because the only boss of you, will be yourself.

Working from home isn’t usually like what some people fantasize about where you walk around in your pajamas all day looking like you just got out of bed… In fact, if that’s how you are dressed while you are working, then you probably aren’t taking your home-based business career very seriously, and your results will be half asleep as well. Just because no one else is around you doesn’t mean that you have to let yourself go and become unprofessional in your dressing habits. Maintaining your professional attitude is the key to having your home based business become a success and is something that you should strive for on all levels whether you work a job, or your own business at home.

Making the decision to build a successful home business is really the primary key to success. Just remember that the word decision means to “cut off from” all other possibilities. When you truly decide that you are going to build a successful home business, you surely will. And if you fall short of the success you dreamed of, well, you didn’t really make a decision, did you? That’s just a hope and a dream, and that won’t take you very far down the road to home business success. Think about it, and go all in.

If you have been thinking of becoming a green marketer – that is, turning your existing business into a greener one in order to attract customers interested in green issues – it is important to understand whether or not your existing customers are green already. If they aren’t yet, they soon could be if you lead the charge and set a good example of how to become more eco-friendly.

What Is Green Marketing?

Green marketing is all about marketing products and services which can be considered greener than what is readily available on the market at present. For example, if you were going to open a green dry cleaning business, it would use less harsh chemicals, recyclable plastic, reusable hangers and shirt boxes, and so on.

You would also need to educate consumers about why green dry cleaning is as good as, if not better than, existing dry cleaning. By explaining what the difference is, you can justify any price difference related to your new green product line.

Studies have shown that customers have indicated they would be willing to spend 10 to 20% more on a green product versus a traditional product – provided that it gives the same level of performance, if not better, than what they usually use.

A Few Tips on Running a Green Business

Green marketing is also about being conscious of waste in the business and trying to have as small a carbon footprint as possible in the running of the business.

The easiest place to lead the charge here is to stop creating paper catalogs and other paper-based sales materials. Instead, create an online catalog with full details of all of your products, and keep it updated frequently. Drive people to the site with classified ads in your local paper or niche-related or industry-related magazines.

Make the most of your email marketing lists to remind people to come to the site and see what’s new. Have regular product launches and promote them on social media and online press release distribution services. You will be spreading the word about your new green products and services, but without having a significant impact on the environment.

Around the office there are likely many things you can do to make it leaner and greener. And in this way, you can show your target customers that you are not just trying to cash in on the green trend, but are genuinely concerned about the environment. For example, use recycled paper in your printer, along with soy-based inks. Use recycled toilet paper, tissues, and paper towels as needed.

In terms of paper towels, consider buying cotton hand towels and washing them regularly rather than using up a lot of paper towels. Use mugs instead of disposable cups. Use a regular coffee machine instead of those pod thingies to reduce your daily plastic waste.

Use a stainless steel reusable filter in your coffee machine basket so you don’t have to waste paper on coffee filters. Buy water filters and filtered water jugs to cut back on bottled water use. Use BPA-free plastic (or stainless steel) water bottles and travel mugs to cut down on trash and plastic in the environment.

There are many things you can do to educate your customers about green issues. But first you have to learn about them yourself. Once you do, you can take a 360-degree look at your products, services, office, and vendors. In this way, you will be able to clean and green your company, and impress customers who are interested in green issues.

Affiliate marketing is one of the quickest ways to start making money online. However, like all businesses, there are many potential pitfalls in an affiliate marketing business. The most common mistakes can cost an affiliate marketer time and money. Avoid these 3 common affiliate mistakes and you will be a lot more successful in a faster period of time.

1. Choosing the wrong affiliate program to promote.

Many people want to earn from affiliate marketing as fast as possible as soon as they hear there is money to be made. In their rush to be part of a lucrative affiliate program, they often choose a product that is not in strong demand, doesn’t have a high-paying compensation plan or even a product the affiliate is not really interested in.

To be successful, it’s important to do quality research first and ensure that the products you want to promote as an affiliate have a strong and growing demand in the marketplace, that the affiliate program has a generous compensation plan that will reward you well for your efforts, and that you truly have an interest in the products you will be promoting as an affiliate. When these criteria are met, you will have a much greater probability of success with your affiliate marketing endeavor.

2. Joining too many affiliate programs at the same time.

Since affiliate programs are very easy to join, you might be tempted to join too many affiliate programs at the same time in an effort to increase your earnings potential. You may think that there is nothing wrong and nothing to lose by being part of many affiliate programs at the same time.

It is true that developing multiple streams of income is an important key to financial success as an affiliate marketer, but the cost of joining too many programs at the same time will be a loss of focus and concentration on the primary program or programs that are providing your opportunity to earn additional income.

The result? The maximum potential of your affiliate program is not realized and the income generated will not exactly be as much as you were thinking it would. The best way to maximize your results is to join one core program, or a small handful of related programs within a specific niche market and focus your efforts primarily on learning how the programs work, and then implementing an effective marketing action plan to start promoting your affiliate products effectively.

The idea is to roll out your marketing strategy consistently, day-by-day until you are making the sales and income you aspire toward with the affiliate program or programs that you have joined. Once you have achieved your goals, you can always expand the portfolio of affiliate programs you belong to, and with your well-developed marketing skills, success in new affiliate ventures will always come easier. The key in the beginning of an affiliate marketer’s career is to become an effective online marketer.

3. Not buying the product or using the service you’re promoting as an affiliate.

As an affiliate, your primary purpose is to effectively promote a product or service to potential customers. For you to achieve this aim, you must be able to share the benefits of the product or service convincingly with the correct target market. This is a lot easier to do if you have purchased the product yourself, and have your own experiences with how it has benefited you. It also adds to your personal integrity and credibility as a marketer.

Some of the most effective affiliate promotions of all are personal reviews. Many successful affiliates setup review sites or videos online to promote products and services they believe in by sharing their personal experience (story) that they have had with the product. Most consumer’s buying decisions are either influenced or motivated completely by a personal recommendation they have received from a trusted source. If you can establish yourself as a trusted source by writing or recording honest and insightful reviews for products you are promoting as an affiliate, you will be far more effective than simply trying to advertise the product through other means.

Therefore, buy and try the product or service personally first before you sign up as an affiliate to see if it is really delivering on what it promises, and if it’s something you would be proud to promote as an affiliate. Your prospects will then sense the sincerity and truthfulness in your recommendations and this will lead to more product sales.

Many hopeful affiliate marketers fall prey to the 3 affiliate marketing pitfalls above, and don’t succeed in their affiliate marketing business as a result. Now that you are informed, you have the knowledge required to avoid these common mistakes and get your affiliate marketing business off to a profitable start and successful future.