One-third of our day is taken by work, another third is taken by sleep (if we do that at all) and what we do with the remaining 8 hours makes all the difference in the world.  We should really focus our efforts on becoming independent of a J.O.B. (Just Over Broke).  If you have heard that before and you are still working there well maybe this is just for you!

Live life to the fullest!  We were not put on this planet to make someone else rich but put here to live our lives and live our life more abundantly!  Make a positive decision to better yourself and help benefit those around you.  The more you give the more you will get back in the end.  I hope this little excerpt is able to help someone move forward instead of moving backwards.

But I finally struck gold: I came across someone who explained the basics of internet marketing, DIDN’T promise overnight wealth, and most amazing of all, didn’t ask for any money. Did he have an ulterior motive? Yes — he did have some internet marketing tools to sell. But because he spelled out exactly how the tools could help me earn money online, I was more than happy to buy them — and sell them!

Which brings us to the very first — and most important — thing you need to learn about profiting online, and I’m not charging anything for it. You must grasp this concept immediately, because if you can’t, don’t (or don’t want to) understand it, you should forget about online marketing right now. Ready?

Online Marketing CAN work, but it IS work.

Online marketing is research and tenacity and link-checking and patience and back-linking and self-motivation and cutting and pasting and rewriting and self-discipline and bookkeeping and a little seed money. But it’s not overwhelming if you know exactly what to do and when, and are willing to learn.

And now for Lesson Two: it’s also vitally important, because it quite literally spells the difference between success and failure:

Start small.

Most people fail at online marketing because they’re in such a hurry to cash in (which is, of course, exactly what those scammers and con artists I mentioned count on). I myself am not rich — yet. But that’s because I haven’t learned everything you need to know about profiting online — yet. What I have learned, however, is beginning to earn me a steady income, and it’s the result of investing time and effort, nothing more. Lose the “get rich quick, something for nothing” mentality, and your chances of succeeding will skyrocket.

Slow and steady (plus the right tools) is what wins the race when it comes to profiting online. And that’s the truth.

They are the cause of failure for most online Marketers. It applies to anything and any niche. Do you still remember how charged up when you attended an Internet Marketing seminar or workshop? Do you still remember how you wanted to change your life and live the lifestyle that you wanted through Internet Marketing? You wanted to write articles, create blog, join the forum, create your own product and etc.

But when the seminar or workshops ended, and you go back to your routine, your mind will start to play trick on you. You might be doing something (e.g. article writing, blogging). You might be exploring (e.g. join forum, exchange ideas and etc). However, I am sure you will encounter these three things.

They are: -

I think it is NOT working. There is no results.

I do not have time to do it now. I will do it tomorrow.

I do not know how to do it. I will get someone to teach me.

Do not turn away. You know you have use at least one of these excuses while pursuing your dream lifestyle in Internet Marketing. It is not a crime to use them. However, it becomes a habit to use them if you use them frequently. And the end results is “NO RESULTS”. It is that simple. Why not, using this method of suffering from bad habits (and using those excuses), you use this method to create good habits and change your mindset…

I think it is working but I need to be consistent to see results.

I have to do it now or never.

I may not know how to do it, but I will try, one step at a time.

Do you think it will work? It works for me. Once you start to shift your mindset, start to adopt good habits, results will start to show. These are just the tip of the iceberg that you could apply on your Internet Marketing business.

I can hear what you might be thinking, “Are you absolutely insane? I don’t know what planet you live on, but here on Earth in the United States we’re experiencing the worst recession since the 1930’s. We have 10% unemployment (17% if you calculate those who have stopped looking for a job or taken involuntary, early retirement). We have historically high business failures and mortgage defaults. Every day we hear about people right in our own neighborhoods losing their jobs and their homes. So what opportunity are you talking about opportunity mister? The opportunity to go broke?”

No, I’m not nuts or delusional. The opportunity to start your own business is real and it’s never been less expensive to do so. I believe America’s future lies in small, decentralized businesses involved in a variety of markets. The opportunities include a wide range of professional skills and specializations. To take advantage of these, all that’s needed is a PC, a telephone, and internet access. You can run your business from anywhere, in the comfort of your home to your local coffee shop. The potential market is huge and for the first time ever, businesses as small as one-person operations can participate in global commerce.

Virtually anything you can do in an office job, you can do internet . Consulting work of every type as well as most forms of sales, teaching, tutoring, counseling, advising, accounting, representing, marketing, engineering, writing, research, legal work, and retailing can be done either online in a home-based or in a small business office. All that’s required is imagination, courage, positive foresight, and the willingness to risk some time and energy on a new, unproven venture.

Despite what the pundits think, I believe America is bankrupt only in terms of the loss of our “can do” attitudes, our pioneering spirit, and the ability to imagine a bigger, better future. Many of us seem to be stuck waiting for a rescue. We’re waiting for our economy to magically improve. We’re waiting for the government, Wall Street, big business, or the housing market to lead us out of our economic malaise. The solution, however, does not lie elsewhere. The solution is in our own hands.

All we need to do is change our attitudes. We need to stop waiting to be rescued and instead we need to begin a proactive search for our own unique opportunities to flourish. If you don’t have a business, start one this year. Even if you are working a full time job, think about what you can do part-time during your time off.

Instead of worrying about your job and future, do something TODAY that can supplement you present income and perhaps may become your big opportunity. Nothing you can do? HOG WASH… you’re just not thinking hard enough! Think of all the possibilities. Think in terms of your knowledge and experience. Think about how your hobbies and pastimes may be offer potential business opportunities.

If you are already in business for yourself, consider extensions of your current products or service offerings. I run a sales and marketing consultancy. My primary business is ad and exhibit sales representation. The future is in electronic marketing, so I have started the process of educating myself on new the media and electronic marketing. I have acquired a new client that produces iPod and Webcasts and will be selling sponsorships for them starting in just a few weeks.

Although extensions of your present business are probably the best sources for expansion, you can also start an entirely new business based on your hobbies or interests. For example, a CPA friend of mine started an online energy drink and supplementary food business for cross country bicyclists and runners. He started the business purely by chance.

My friend Bill is an avid cross-country bicyclist. He and fellow cyclists regularly go on 100 to 500 mile treks. These grueling rides demand high levels of stamina and energy. Bill found a number of energy bars and drinks that are helpful. However, they are sold in very few specialty stores that are not close by.

He sought alternative online suppliers. The online suppliers also offered additional products also not available in stores. Bill purchased them and shared them with fellow cyclists and other friends involved in aerobic sports. Friends began to ask him to buy these products for them as well. This triggered the idea to start an online sports energy food business. He has been doing this business for more than five years and although he doesn’t make enough to quit his day job, he certainly earns nice supplemental income.

I have another friend who raises pedigreed Doberman show dogs. Recently, Joyce retired from her full time job as a Vice President for a large medical organization to pursue her equestrian passions full-time. Her Doberman enjoy rawhide chews. Concerned about canine health, Joyce purchases only the most sanitary, high quality products on the market. Recently, friends introduced her to new organic chews that her dogs really enjoyed. She inquired about becoming a distributor and is now selling the chews on a drop-ship basis from her Florida condominium.

Think about what you can do or what’s of interest to do. Spend some time on the internet to see what others are doing. Need a further nudge? There are many good resources available to you. I just read an excellent book on internet marketing, entitled Inbound Marketing by Brian Hallign and Dharmesh Shah. The book provides insights on the latest no cost techniques to effectively market your business. Serious reading for anyone serious about their business.

So what are you waiting for? Read the book. Determine what you need. Find a niche. Make a plan, set a goal and just do it. Take action today!

The future is in all our hands. Let’s not let another day pass without considering the possibilities and taking action! Like the Nike slogan states, “Just do it!”

Artistic individuals often want to market their goods online because there is a large general audience. Through the use of keywords and search engines, individuals can easily find what they are searching for. Lots of individuals have created their own online career chances through shops such as Etsy.

For those individuals who enjoy writing, but aren’t dedicated to doing it daily, article marketing has many online opportunities. Article marketing provides readers with valuable knowledge. If you are able to connect with someone through your writing, they might check out a website that is in your author’s signature and buy something. Directories such as Squidoo and Hubpages also have enabled AdSense for authors to gain extra money through the advertising that is on the page.

Online jobs are available for almost everyone. Even if you don’t like writing, creating a small pay per click advertisement is a simple option. If you don’t have a product to trade, you can become an affiliate online. An affiliate is nothing more than a salesman that earns a commission by referring individuals through a link. Affiliate marketing is all over the internet. You can find it on twitter, Facebook fan pages, Craigslist, and MySpace are all places loaded with affiliates. If there is a product or service that you find useful, why not become an affiliate? You will earn a commission when you write about it and post your link to the site. If it is something that you truly use and think others will benefit from it, your testimonial will go a long way towards a sale. To truly succeed with online career chances, be sure to educate yourself. You may consider joining an affiliate marketing program with a forum of people sharing ideas or educate yourself about online marketing by reading a book.

But for the beginner who doesn’t even know where to start its even more challenging.

So to continue in this series: here are the next three discussion topics.

What Do You Want?

Simply deciding that you want to make money online is not enough. In order to be successful online, as with anything, you have to clearly define exactly what you want.

Do you want to earn money on the internet on a part time or full time basis?

How much do you want to make? What is it going to take and how much time will you have to commit?

These are just a few of the questions you have to ask yourself.

When you define exactly what you want out of an internet home business, if forces you to construct your roadmap and then plan of action.

This is an important part for the newbie because the journey to earning income online is going to take some work, so being clear on exactly what you want helps to keep you focused and zeroed in on your ultimate purpose.

How will you achieve your goal?

After you have figured out exactly what you want you then have to figure out how you are going to achieve your goals. Making money online involves providing some type of good or service.

Are you going to provide physical goods to your customers or are you going to provide an informational service of some type, like your own eBook? What marketing methods are you going to use?

Will you use free marketing methods, which are highly recommended, or are you going to use a pay service?

To achieve your goals with internet marketing means putting a lot of consideration into how you plan on marketing yourself and reaching that goal.

Belief

Belief in yourself is an obvious trait that you will need to make things happen and at first glance you might not even think it’s the kind of thing that should be mentioned.

Many would put belief in yourself at the top of the list in terms of importance, and who can argue with that. Its easy to overlook and avoid talking about it because of course if someone has decided to learn how to make money online, they believe they can. Right?

If you think you can or if you think you can’t, then you’re right. Believing you can do something is really the battle itself, especially if you are brand new to internet marketing and don’t even know where to start. So, if you have made a true decision to do something and you believe you can, then you will take small steps towards making it happen.

After you’ve set out your plan on paper here are 3 critical factors that you need to pay close attention to
before getting started:

1. => CHOOSING A BUSINESS MODEL

There are many different kinds of business models to choose from on the online . Because of this, you need to at least have an idea as to what business model you would like to build your business in. Some of these could be:

. Auction businesses like eBay…
. Creating and selling your own products…
. Selling knowledge and information using e-classes and seminars…
. Freelancing your skills for money…
. MLM/Network marketing…
. Affiliate Marketing…
. Blogging for profits and others…

Choosing a business model might come about from what is appealing to you based on your experiences, offers a proven track record, provides quick and easy start-up and have the potential for unlimited growth, etc…

While selecting a business model that is appealing to you may not be a major requirement, it is important for you to choose a model that you like or have an interest in. This will be a motivational factor to keep you going when the going gets tough.

Still, some people have chosen brand new territories to build their business in that have been very successful. If you choose a model that you’re unfamiliar with, you will just have to make a commitment to learn everything you can about it.

Remember, being your own BOSS comes with major responsibilities and one of them is to consistently increase your knowledge base.

2. => IDENTIFY YOUR MARKET & FIND A PROFITABLE AFFILIATE NICHE MARKET WITHIN THE GENERAL MARKET

What you have to learn here is how to identify niche markets and determine the potential of that market in terms of profitability. This might look difficult at first, but it’s not. You will need to brainstorm here to identify topics that you are probably already interested in.

For example this could be:

Music -> Country ->…
Sports -> Baseball ->…
Cooking -> Vegetarian ->…

The idea here is to choose a general market at first, but to find your niche within that market you will have to narrow down your search to a small part of the general market. I’m sure you get the idea from looking at the examples above.

If you choose a market that is too broad, you might have difficulty making sales as there may be too much
competition. This could lead to a drain on your time and financial constraints.

The easiest way to start your research is to use the search engines, like Google and Yahoo. These are all free and will provide you with many possibilities. Don’t be afraid to experiment with your ideas as the more unique you are, the more money you will make.

The key here is to find out what people want and provide it to them.

3. => CHOOSING AN AFFILIATE PRODUCT

Now that you have decided on a business model and a profitable niche market for your business, you will now need to find affiliate products that you can promote within your niche to make money.

As a guide, it would be beneficial to look for an affiliate program with products that provides the following
incentives:

. Offers a good quality product…
. Is easy for you to make a sale…
. Pays good commissions…
. Tracks correctly and pays on time…
. Provides a variety of marketing materials…
. Good conversion from the sales letter…
. Good customer service, etc.

The easiest place to get information about affiliate products to promote is to do searches in Google. Just have a pen and paper ready to jot down your findings so that you can fine-tune them later. You can also visit affiliate directories like ClickBank (best source), Pay Dot Com or Commission Junction to find good affiliate programs.

VERY IMPORTANT: Your internet marketing home business cannot survive, unless you make a concerted effort to acquire the appropriate knowledge and information that you need. With your computer and the internet you can access any information you want, but if you get stuck with an issue just ask someone. That is how we all learn.

Let’s start with a USP. Many people who start a business think that people will buy their product or service simply because they are offering it. But let’s be practical about this. Very few businesses have a monopoly on the market. Almost everybody has some kind of competition. So when you have something to sell, no matter what it is, there is somebody else out there selling a similar product or service. So my question to you is a simple one. Why should ANYBODY buy from YOU?

Think about that for a while. How many REAL reasons can you come up with for a customer to purchase from you? If you can’t come up with at least a couple, you are in some serious trouble. Because dollars to donuts, your competition has plenty of reasons why customers should buy from them. This is why it is so important to come up with a USP or universal selling proposition.

Take a look at some of the top commercials on TV for some of the biggest companies and you will notice some kind of slogan or catch phrase that neatly sums up their USP. With Geico, it’s “15 minutes could save you 15% or more on your car insurance.” With Burger King it’s “Have It Your Way” inferring that you can get your burger any way you like. These are all USPs and they’re important to helping define your company. So if you don’t have one, get one. Take a look at your product or service and see what makes it stand out.

Okay, real quick about ROI or return on investment. Too many marketers get too hung up on sale dollars without actually looking at their ROI. We see this all the time with big PPC marketers bragging about $10,000 sale days. What they don’t tell you is that those days cost them $9,500 in PPC costs. The ROI is almost non existent. Personally, I’d rather make $200 a day without having to spend the money to get it. Remember, your income doesn’t come in right away. There is a lag between when the sale is made and the money is actually in your account. In the meantime, those PPC costs have to be paid…BEFORE you get your money. Cash flow, or in this case, negative cash flow, can kill many businesses.

It’s not how much you make. It’s how much you actually get to keep and how much you had to spend to get it. You should always be looking at your ROI. If I can get a higher ROI with a cheaper product, I’ll take that over a negligible ROI from a higher priced product…especially if I have to spend a fortune to promote that higher priced product.

Anyway, there you have it…a couple of quick thoughts on USP and ROI.

Do YOU know one from the other?

This is where White Hat and Black Hat SEO come in. White hat SEO is actually more of the “organic” SEO, wherein high rankings is achieved through “natural” means like providing useful content in your website for your visitors and in effect, would hopefully gain you a good amount of traffic and more links from other sites that also appreciate the information you provide. Search Engines such as Google strongly encourage white hat SEO practices and these are what are considered to be ethical in the internet. This is understandable since Search Engine Companies wish to provide resulting websites that are going to be useful for their users so that their users will have a better internet experience and will be more likely to continue using their search engines.

Black Hat SEO allows for quicker attainment of SEO goals through taking advantage of loopholes in the search algorithms of search engines. This could be considered to be “artificial” search engine optimization. Each search engine has a certain formula for computing rankings for every web page for each keyword. Search engines do not disclose this formula to the public and is a closely guarded trade secret. However, many have still been able to find ways around this search algorithm through experimenting and which has led to Black hat SEO practices. Some internet marketing companies offer such an Internet Marketing Service. These practices, though not illegal, are highly discouraged by Search Engine companies and if a site gets caught exploiting the technical loopholes in the search algorithm, the website will not be displayed in search results any longer.

In my opinion, it is always best to go for white hat practices. This will definitely prove to be beneficial to all of us that use the internet since we will have access to more reliable information and less useless content. Imagine not having to filter through junk sites just to get to a website that provides the content you were actually looking for. That makes for an even better internet experience for all of us.

Besides, all search engine companies do their best to make sure to crack down on the websites that are exploiting the system they have set up. One of the ways they do this is by making adjustments to their search algorithm every once in a while, which would expose a number of sites that depended on some technical loopholes in the algorithm. The algorithm shift is also done to ensure better, more accurate search results for the users.

An Internet Marketing Service that would be best for you is the one that puts your site visitors’ needs first. Having useful content will have them most likely revisiting your site and better yet, more likely to avail of your products or services.

Hope we have enlightened you enough that you would help in making search engines better able to serve the needs of internet users. Go for an Internet Marketing Service that does not indulge in black hat SEO.

Your mindset is the foundation of anything you do. For any building, if the foundation is not constructed correctly, the building can not stand for long.

So what is a marketing mindset?

The core values that determine your life will set your message for the business setup you start. If you are looking to be an affiliate (marketing someone else’s product) then you want to represent a company with similar values. If you develop your own product, this product says a lot about you, and you want to back that up. If you provide a service, this service is a direct representation of who you are and how you provide this service.

You are first marketing you before any product or service.

The economy has structured itself recently where home based businesses flourish. Many individuals search the internet for opportunities to work out of their homes. This provides many advantages; such as no commuting costs, not searching for employment or services, etc.

Internet marketing provides options that many can do but if you are looking to do this as a hobby; your mindset is not invested in the game. To be effective, you must commit to the process, the correct mindset. Going through the motions as the sole proprietor, you starve quickly.

The importance of marketing is instilled in everything we do for income. This is clearer when you understand the involvement of communication in marketing. To develop any marketing strategy, the mindset of the planners has to be solid. If they are not solidified with the business foundation and the company message, it will be impossible to pass this message to your market.

Your Mindset Sets Your Message

Reasons for marketing stem from the need to prosper. If you are not providing a solid message that consumers in the target market want or understand, you starve. When you begin your business online, it is extremely important to develop a strong mindset to continue for the long term. Time is required to become sustainable. To do this with a less committed mindset dooms the business.

Success is related to your will to be successful. It is a belief in oneself that moves them forward. If you don’t have personal confidence and the knowledge of your capabilities and talents then your chances of survival in this industry is suspect.

Only you know your habits, your actions in both good and bad times and how you will adapt to negativity or setbacks. A strong mindset means you find ways to improve; find ways to move ahead with positive actions and research; find ways of adapting to setbacks by using them to educate you and your business; and, making the decisions on what needs to be modified or improved.

When building your Staircase Marketing Concept plan, begin by thinking about your mindset; how you can strengthen and improve it; what means of education may be available to assist; and, finding a mentor you can trust. By doing this you will be able to determine the goals to reach (placing them on their respective landing areas) and develop the steps necessary to take to reach them.