can i make money from home?

For as long as I can remember, I have always wanted to start my own business but I always seemed to lack the funds that are necessary to get up and running.

Starting a traditional brick and mortar business in today’s world isn’t cheap and you’ll likely need to take out a huge loan just to get everything up and running and making your first sale.

I have received a good deal of emails over the past couple weeks asking me if it really is possible to start a business if you have little to no money?

After answering this question 3 or 4 times, I figured why not share this information with everyone else by writing a detailed blog post on this topic and make this information readily available to anyone.

In the following post, I’ll be showing you guys whether it’s really possible to start a business with little to no money, or if the popular statement “You Need Money To Make Money” Is true or not.

I’ll also be comparing the start-up costs associated with a traditional offline business and comparing them to what you would need to start building a business online.

Which one is your best option?

Continue reading to find out!

Why Do Most People Fail To Become Successful Business Owners?

Before I get into things today, I want to give you guys some insight into the business world and make you aware of a few things that other people struggle with when they first get started.

This way you’ll have an idea of a few issues other people face and hopefully, you’ll be able to avoid them.

Here Are 3 Reasons Why Most People Fail To Be Successful In The Business World!

1. Insufficient Funds- Having a lack of funds is usually the most common problem that faces most young entrepreneurs today.

To Make Matters Even Worse, This Also Creates 3 Separate Issues That You’ll Also Need To Deal With:

•  Creates A Barrier For You– Think of this like a cement block that is sitting right smack dab in the middle between your dreams and reality. This sucks, but unfortunately, this is a reality that most people face and this happens to be the main reason why they fail.
•  Creates Doubt– You may begin to 2nd guess yourself and get you to thinking that maybe you should rethink your goals.
•  Adds To Your List Of Excuses- Eventually, you may start to use this as an excuse why you can’t reach your goals. If you’re the type of person who procrastinates a lot and is always looking for an excuse then this would apply to you.

2. Stress Factor-  This seems to play a huge role in running a business. (Usually The Brick & Mortar Type) The hassle of hiring employees and making sure that you have enough staff to cover your shifts could be enough to make you want to pull your hair out.

This isn’t even the tip of the iceberg, as you’ll also be responsible for balancing payroll, keeping inventory, and dealing with customers face to face.

Seems like a whole lot of work when you put it into perspective like this don’t it?

This is usually entirely too much stress for them to endure and they end up quitting.

3. Hard Work- Another key factor that plays a role in whether people are successful in the business world or not will depend on whether you’re willing to put in the time, hard work, and dedication required to build a business.

Most people don’t realize how much work is actually involved in starting up their own business and think it’s going to be a walk in the park.

They quickly realize that it’s quite the opposite and in order to achieve any kind of success, they’re going to have to work at it.

They say that only the strong survive and they have really hit the nail on the head with this one!

If you aren’t invested in your business enough to put in the time, dedication, and hard work that it deserves, then, chances are that you won’t end up making it very far in the business world.

The Costs Associated With Starting A Traditional Business In The Outside World

Like I said earlier, if you were to start up a business in the outside world, you would likely need to take out a huge loan and go into lots of debt just to have a chance at becoming successful and turning a profit.

Not to mention how much you’ll be paying in monthly utilities, food, gas, and or electric and paying your employees, providing them with benefits, health insurance, internet costs, etc……..

I could go on but I think you guys catch my drift don’t you?

Sounds like a whole lot of responsibilities to deal with, doesn’t it?

Content Marketing Is In Use Everywhere

Content marketing has been lapped up by both internet marketers and online surfers. Using this media allows one to express his ideas and allows the other to read and enjoy. No wonder there are more and more people signing up each day to blog sites and people are publishing relevant articles on their websites in a bid to attract more and more 

people.

Online Auctions

Content marketing is in use everywhere because it is only the words that allow explaining. Different channels use different types of content marketing, be it the newsletter, email marketing, blogging, publishing, website content, etc. Content is in demand everywhere.

jeans

Content marketing is virtuous by its own nature, firstly because it has the power of attracting traffic long after the content has been published. More traffic will continue if the content is good and has something visitors find interesting. Content needs to be interesting and informative however, if you want the visitors to continue coming in.

So how will you attract traffic to your website using content marketing?

designer jeans

Include links, this it is obvious all content you publish should contain related links which take the reader to your website. However, unabashed advertising of products has not yet been looked upon kindly by the ezine public. This attitude towards advertising is right and does keep the spirit of informative advertising afloat.

Bulgarian Properties

It is important to maintain information levels when using content marketing. While browsing many of us have come across articles which have practically no informative value. Obviously if you want to write more articles on the same subject, slowly the matter diminishes and what remain to be filled are the futile words.

Spinning content can provide some respite from this problem, but it is necessary that you do not publish these articles with same ezine, instead make sure the information rich rewritten articles reach as many article directories as you can. The above can help you maintain information level and attract a lot of visitors from different directories.

Copied with permission from: http://plrplr.com/29282/content-marketing-is-in-use-everywhere/

Your Need Publicity For Your Book Where Do You Start And What Do You Look For

It’s an absolute must. If you want to sell your book to the masses, you have to get out there and publicize it. You need to be on the radio, in magazines and newspapers and on TV. The more the public hears about you and your book, the more likely your book will stand out from the hundreds of thousands published every year.

As many bestselling authors will tell you, talk radio is one of the best and most cost-efficient vehicles to get your message heard by consumers. But, with different publicity firms out there competing for your business, how do you choose the right one? What factors should you look for and which are the most important?

► Experience. How important is experience? Very. You need to employ a company who has had years of experience promoting books on talk radio. A skilled firm knows how to develop an angle from your book that will get you the broadest national exposure. They will know how to write an effective press release that stands out from all the rest. And most importantly, they know how to get a positive reaction from producers that results in a booking. This is the kind of experience that will ensure you get quality media placements.

► Quality Markets. In what markets will you be heard? If you’re paying a firm to obtain media interviews, you don’t want to be booked in markets smaller than top 100. There’s no question that stations in smaller markets have value, but you don’t need to pay top dollar for someone to arrange it for you.

► Quality Stations. What caliber of stations will your interviews take place on? The criteria we use for booking interviews is nothing less than 5,000 watts or above on the AM dial. In every market you’ll find high-powered and low-powered stations. Obviously, the more power a station has, the morepeople will be listening in. So, if you’re paying for media interviews, your best return on investment will be appearing as a guest on larger stations. 

► Guarantee. What sort of guarantee is in place? In the book promotion business, you’ll find some PR firms whose fees are based on performance and others who charge a monthly retainer with no guarantee. Given a choice, your best bet is to work with a performance-based firm as your media placements will be guaranteed. 

Hopefully these four factors will help in your search for the right publicity firm. 

Having been in the book publicity business for almost two decades, we know a thing or two about generating media attention for books. If you want to hear more about EMSI’s affordable talk radio campaigns, call me or my husband Steve at 727-443-7115, ext. 208. Nothing beats a real-life conversation!

Call today – we’re looking forward to hearing from you!

Warmest Regards, 

Marsha Friedman, President

P.S. We also offer a host of other essential publicity and advertising services, including TV and radio commercials and infomercials. Once we understand more about your book, we can discuss the different options available to create the national buzz that’s so crucial to a successful book campaign.

marketing-to-marketers

Marketing to other marketers to make it easier to make money is great but many of the buyers never use the products and just try to pawn them off on other marketers. So you wind up with all these people selling scripts, programs, eBooks, and more to other online marketers and they profess how great they are without ever using them. They are just trying to make a buck as an affiliate of someone else’s idea.

I am all for new marketing ideas especially the ones that automate tedious tasks. I love submitting articles and use an auto submitter. RSS feeds provide news to my sites. Automatically creating links to Clickbank items based on keywords in my blogs is a godsend.

But, to me, if people don’t use these products and just pimp them to others, they are missing out on the long term benefits for a quick buck.

I admit that I have done this in the past and may do it again in the future – but – I only sell products that I actually use and approve. That way I can actually vouch for them since I have used them and can speak from personal experience.

Personally, I prefer to market to the average Internet Joe. I market to people who are looking for a deal on a credit card (and I use a super script to keep my site current). I recommend hotels in Thailand and can speak from first-hand experience. I post links to hotels in Thailand forums and also have 6 Thai affiliate hotel sites.

I also write articles about Thailand and list my hotel affiliate links in the author’s resource box. These are pretty easy to write since I have been traveling to Thailand for over 30 years.

I also write the occasional marketing or credit article to get some traffic to those sites. I have about 10 article sites and advertise on those sites that others submit their articles to.

I would rather make a few bucks marketing a product to people who are actually going to use it instead of marketing to someone who is only going to try to sell it to someone else.

All of this is just my personal opinion. There is nothing morally wrong or illegal of marketing to marketers. I use many of the items that are up for sale, especially those that make my life a little bit easier.

The one thing that I do object to is the folks that market to others and make false or misleading statements indicating that they use the product and how wonderful it is when they have never used it and just want to make a buck.

Anyhow, keep coming up with all those great products that marketers can use to make our lives easier. Just market them honestly.

Seven Secrets Of Writing A Book That Sells Copied with permission from: http://plrplr.com/29278/seven-secrets-of-writing-a-book-that-sells/

It’s one thing to write a book, it’s an entirely different thing to write one that’s a saleable, viable, marketable product. Ensuring the success of a book is something even the biggest publishers have never been able to guarantee. Mitigating circumstances, flash trends, and world events will all affect buyer preferences. That said, there are still ways to leverage the sales-factor in your favor and here’s how you do it. 

1. Know your readers. We’re not just talking about whether your readers are male or female. You’ll want to know myriad factors about your audience. How old are your readers (age range)? Are readers married, single, or divorced? Where do your readers live (generally)? What do your readers do for a living? What other books/publications do they read? Develop a profile that includes where they shop, what clubs they belong to, etc. 

These elements will help you incorporate these aspects into your book *and* help you unearth salient marketing opportunities (i.e., publications and stores). 

2. Know your market. What’s the market like for your book? Is there a trend out there you’re positioning yourself toward? Are you reading all the publications related to this topic/trend? Are there any “holes” out there your book could fill? What’s the future for this market/topic? For example, let’s say you’re a fiction writer looking to publish chick lit. Go to any bookstore and you can’t help but spot the cutsie, pink, cartoonish covers. Many thought this trend was dying out, but it has recently seen another surge. What do you know about trends related to your book/topic/audience?

3. Similar books. What else has been published on your topic? Have you read all ten books in your category? If you haven’t, you should. You’ll want to know everything you can about what’s out there and how it’s being perceived in the marketplace. It’s never a problem having a similar topic. When I published No More Rejections – Get Published Today, I knew there were other books out there on marketing. I read them all–then angled my book differently. 

4. Getting and staying current. What’s going on in your industry today? What are some hot buttons? What are people looking for? What’s next on the horizon for this topic/audience? If you can’t seem to gather this information through traditional channels, why not survey your target audience? There are a number of places to run free surveys, Survey Monkey is one of them: http://www.surveymonkey.com

5. Follow the media. What’s the media talking about these days? Keep track of media buzz–what they’re paying attention to and what they’re writing about. Delve beyond the front page of your paper to the second or third page and see what’s filling the pages. If you can get your hands on out-of-state papers, do a comparative review. Do you see a trend in coverage? Is there something that seems to be getting more buzz even if it’s on page six? 

6. Talk, teach, listen. One of the best ways I’ve found to get in touch with my audience was to teach a class and do speaking engagements. When I was putting together my book, Get Published Today, I found that the classes I taught provided valuable information for creating a great book because they put me directly in touch with my audience!

7. Timing is everything. When do you plan to release your tome? Are you releasing around a holiday or anniversary? Could you take advantage of any upcoming event and/or holiday for your book launch?

Webmasters Improve Your Adsense Earnings Monetize Income Copied with permission from: http://plrplr.com/29266/webmasters-improve-your-adsense-earnings-monetize-income/

Webmasters who have been there and done it have quite some useful tips to help those who would want to venture into this field. Some of these tips have boosted quite a lot of earnings in the past and is continuously doing so. 

If webmasters want to monetize their websites, the great way to do it is through Adsense. There are lots of webmasters struggling hard to earn some good money a day through their sites. But then some of the “geniuses” of them are enjoying hundreds of dollars a day from Adsense ads on their websites. What makes these webmasters different from the other kind is that they are different and they think out of the box. 

Here are some 5 proven ways on how best to improve your Adsense earnings.

1. Concentrating on one format of Adsense ad. The one format that worked well for the majority is the Large Rectangle (336X280). This same format have the tendency to result in higher CTR, or the click-through rates. Why choose this format out of the many you can use? Basically because the ads will look like normal web links, and people, being used to clicking on them, click these types of links. They may or may not know they are clicking on your Adsense but as long as there are clicks, then it will all be for your advantage.

2. Create a custom palette for your ads. Choose a color that will go well with the background of your site. If your site has a white background, try to use white as the color of your ad border and background. The idea to patterning the colors is to make the Adsense look like it is part of the web pages. Again, This will result to more clicks from people visiting your site.

3. Remove the Adsense from the bottom pages of your site and put them at the top. Do not try to hide your Adsense. Put them in the place where people can see them quickly. You will be amazed how the difference between Adsense locations can make when you see your earnings.

4. Maintain links to relevant websites. If you think some sites are better off than the others, put your ads there and try to maintaining and managing them. If there is already lots of Adsense put into that certain site, put yours on top of all of them. That way visitor will see your ads first upon browsing into that site.

5. Try to automate the insertion of your Adsense code into the webpages using SSI (or server side included). Ask your web administrator if your server supports SSI or not. How do you do it? Just save your Adsense code in a text file, save it as “adsense text”, and upload it to the root directory of the web server. Then using SSI, call the code on other pages. This tip is a time saver especially for those who are using automatic page generators to generate pages on their website.

These are some of the tips that have worked well for some who want to generate hundreds and even thousands on their websites. It is important to know though that ads are displayed because it fits the interest of the people viewing them. So focusing on a specific topic should be your primary purpose because the displays will be especially targeted on a topic that persons will be viewing already. 

Note also that there are many other Adsense sharing the same topic as you. It is best to think of making a good ad that will be somewhat different and unique than the ones already done. Every clickthrough that visitors make is a point for you so make every click count by making your Adsense something that people will definitely click on.

Tips given by those who have boosted their earnings are just guidelines they want to share with others. If they have somehow worked wonders to some, maybe it can work wonders for you too. Try them out into your ads and see the result it will bring.

If others have done it, there is nothing wrong trying it out for yourself.

Building An Awesome Audience For Your Book Copied with permission from: http://plrplr.com/29265/building-an-awesome-audience-for-your-book/

I got lucky. The month that I sold my novel was the same month that I started my newsletter, Living the Dream, for my coaching business. I had no idea that as my list of subscribers grew I would have a great platform from which to launch the book 18 months later. Thanks to that list, I was pre-selling my book long before it hit store shelves.

I was cultivating an audience without realizing it. But now I know that having a list is a goldmine, both for selling your book and for getting your book noticed by a publisher. These days if you can prove that you come to the table with a huge audience, a big advance may follow. But how do you get such a list? These tips will help you go from seed to harvest as you grow your group.

1. Start with who you know.

Most of us have some form of list already, either in your email system’s address book or your basic holiday card list that you use once a year. It may be as small as 10-25 or as big as 200-400. Start out by sending a general email letting the people on your list know that you’re getting organized and planning to send out regular notes, newsletters, whatever you plan to send. Give them the opportunity to opt out if they’re not interested. Most will probably stay on since your family and friends are interested in hearing about what you’re up to.

2. Whenever you meet new people, get permission to add them to your list.

At this point in your writing career, it’s essential that you’re out meeting people at least once a month. You can go to networking events, take classes or (and this is the best) do speaking engagements. Non-fiction authors especially should be speaking regularly because you want to establish your expertise in your topic or topics. You can collect business cards when you network or take classes and get people to sign in with their contact information at your event. Make sure you GET PERMISSION and let people know they will be hearing from you via newsletter, etc. It is truly poor form to put people on your mailing list without their knowledge. It’s also called spamming!

I know that signing people up is key because I’ve observed popular authors doing just that. I once attended a reading by E. Lynn Harris because I knew he had a huge–and faithful– readership and I wanted to glean some clues as to how he did it. Sure enough, the room was packed and every single person behaved as though they knew him personally. When it came time to sign books, he made an announcement: he would sign your book if you signed his! He made it clear you would be hearing from him via email, birthday and holiday cards. People were all too happy to sign the list. Brilliant!

3. Find a list service to maintain your list.

You’ll quickly learn, as your list grows, that your email account may not allow you to send mass messages to groups larger than 50-80. Also, it’s not a good idea to only have your list on your computer, you’ll want it backed up elsewhere. The solution: sign on for a list service. You’ll have your database expertly maintained, plus most list services will give you templates and allow you to send out really good looking HTML email messages to your list. You can also get code and links that allow people to sign themselves onto your list from your website. There are many you can try. I use both Constant Contact (http://www.constantcontact.com) and 1 Shopping Cart (http://www.1shoppingcart.com). If you’re not selling products or services, you may not need a shopping cart so Constant Contact may be just the thing for you.

4. Communicate to your list regularly.

You want to keep in touch with the people on your list so they don’t forget about you. The way you do it is up to you. As I said above, E. Lynn Harris sends notes and cards to his list. A colleague of mine sends daily inspirational quotes. I’m a big fan of email newsletters because you can provide news on your activities and useful content for your readers. When you provide content, such as tips for real estate investors, marketing ideas, or even cookbook recipes, you are establishing your expertise. You’re also giving people a good reason to stay on your list–they’re getting good stuff out of it. In the past I have offered discounts on my services, gift certificates for people to give out over the holidays and articles with career counseling and goal-achieving tips. And every issue of Living the Dream also features my book and the stellar reviews it’s received. You can see past issues by going to http://www.creativecoachingplans.com/newsletter.html.

5. Generate excitement and anticipation with your list.

When your book is nearing publication, you’ll want to start letting your audience know that it’s coming. You can generate pre-sale orders, alert your list of book reviews as they come out and let your audience know where you’ll be appearing when you start speaking and doing book signings. My book was first listed on Amazon.com about six months before its publication date. I sent out a “special announcement” letting people know it was there and encouraging them to pre-order the book. On that glorious day my book ranked as high as 3,000 on Amazon’s list! I may not be J.K. Rowling, but I think that’s pretty good. Plus, that’s the kind of information that helps distributors sell your book to bookstores. They know you already have an awesome audience just waiting to buy!

Copied with permission from: http://plrplr.com/29265/building-an-awesome-audience-for-your-book/