Archive for December, 2011
Are You Holding On To Your Motivation?
Posted by: | CommentsWhile becoming motivated may be one the simplests thing in the world, staying motivated is sometimes a difficult task. Many times people get excited and motivated only to run out of steam later when it really counts.
If you are trying to create an income from home, motivation will be needed for the long haul.
You may be asking yourself questions like “Is motivation really neccessary?” or “What is motivation?”
Motivation is something that causes a person to take specific actions towards a goal. Other words synonomous with motivation are incentive, drive, inspiration and enthusiasm.
Do any of these words describe you and the way you set about to run your business? If not, you may be lacking motivation.
Motivation will take you far. When times get rough and tough, motivation will hold you up as you keep taking actions towards your goal.
Some people are naturally more motivated than others. Every morning it seems as if these highly motivated people, jump out of bed and hit the ground running like they’ve just had four shots of an energy boosting drink.
They just keep going and going like they are super human while others views of them range from admiration to skepticism.
A highly motivated person just seems to accomplish so much while their less motivated counterparts are dragging, procrastinating and whining and almost always fall way short of reaching any of their goals.
Their blogs are up to date, their lists are consistently being built and communicated to and they are always striving to take it to the next level.
That is my goal for 2012, to take it to the next level. The more I do the closer I get to reaching my goals.
For every one of us those goals may be different. For me some of my goals may be adding more PLR content to my site, building additional sites and increasing my list size and for you it may be making twice as many phone calls, blogging regularly, increasing your affiliate marketing profits and building an online presence.
Your goals belong to you and you alone. You don’t have to compete with others, do the best that you can do and we all know when we are doing our best or not. Our best helps us to achieve results and basically if we aren’t doing our best with that goal in mind we’re just doing busy work.
In order to reach your goals you must be motivated and believe your goal is attainable. You could be just as successful as the next person if you are motivated, believe and put to action the things that you learn.
Motivation isn’t a one sized fits all and can come in many forms. Once you find your motivation you need to hold on tight to it.
I sometimes find my motivation in the ebooks I read, in an email from someone I’m subscribed to, a motivating blog post I read or even from things I might hear in a webinar or audio. I find motivation in many places.
As a busy stay at home, home schooling mom, I simply don’t have time to waste, playing around on the internet. I’m in it to win it. May sound cliche, but it’s the truth.
Success is the only option for me or I need to pack it up and call it quits if I feel otherwise.
Where do you find motivation? Do you hold onto it?
Imagine yourself falling from a boat into a river and a few feet away there was a lifeboat. Wouldn’t you do anything in your power to reach that lifeboat and hold on for dear life.
Your motivation is your lifeboat when you are running a business or for life in general really. It will help you through the depressing times when you feel like giving up. It will help you find new ways to reach your goals.
It’s not good enough to have small bouts of motivation followed by long bouts of lack. This happens to many people in and out of the home based business world.
The more motivated you are the more likely it is that you will seek out more and reach higher for success.
You’ll make those calls you need to make, build those websites that need building or market what needs advertising.
Motivation will propel you to bigger and better things as you build on what you are already doing over time.
You will find that you are able to keep going consistently and that you are able to finish tasks and move on to the next. Success isn’t a destination.
There is always a higher level. You need to maintain and expand your success. Make 2012 your best year yet. Your motivation can take you there.
To Your Success!
Alice Coaxum
Creating Your First WordPress Blog Can Seem Scary
Posted by: | CommentsWhen you first think about creating a WordPress blog it can seem like an especially unpleasant task to undertake, especially if you are new to blogging in general.
Contemplating downloading a copy of WordPress from the WordPress.org site and tweaking your way throughout all of the seemingly endless options until it’s all finished and published, just the way you want it, can be a huge turn off if you really don’t know what you are doing.
When I first tried blogging with WordPress I was so intimidated and irritated that I gave up without really trying. It wasn’t until about a year or so later that I finally gave it another chance, learned more about it and fell in love with it.
Starting out there are some technical steps involved in the installation process that can intimidate you. First of all there are appearance issues to think about because you’ll want your blog to reflect how you want it to look. There are many free and paid themes that can help you to achieve the look that you desire.
You will also want to use SEO (search engine optimization) so you can receive a steady flow of targeted traffic as well deciding on a blogging strategy and schedule. Will you blog once a month? Twice a month? What about the topics? Only you can decide this.
Thinking about how much content you’ll need to keep your blog fresh and relevant can be enough to scare you right out of starting and maintaining the type of blog you have always wanted to have.
You can easily have the content you need by either writing the posts yourself. Hiring a ghostwriter or purchasing PLR are also other great ways to get quality content which will keep your blog updated and fresh. You can easily customize your articles to make them unique to you.
But once you are able to move beyond your fears and get your hands on a good set of tutorials, you’ll develop the confidence needed to easily create and maintain a WordPress blog.
You need confidence because if you think that you will fail at something, you are right. The lack of confidence will cause you not to work as hard because you feel it won’t amount to anything anyway.
However when you finally create your first WordPress blog and start receiving steady traffic, you’ll see why many think that WordPress is the most versatile blogging and website platform on the internet. You’ll understand why WordPress is the first choice of many top marketers.
Once you decide to start your blog or website, don’t rush, take your time and make sure you go through all of the steps correctly. This will keep you from winding up frustrated later.
As you become more more accustomed to the WordPress blogging dashboard, you’ll soon be switching, tweaking and changing it up to fit your own preferences without a moments hesitation. It will become like second nature to you, because the more you practice something the easier it becomes.
Before you install WordPress on your domain, you may take a moment to consider why you have decided to choose a blog format website instead a regular static HTML site. Some people have theorized that Google has a deep liking for bloggers because of the social elements they add coupled with regular updates of fresh content.
Others think that a WordPress blog is also much more optimized for the search engine spiders and believe that a static site can at times get stale and outdated.
Creating your own self hosted WordPress blog is an extremely good move for any entrepreneurs who are looking to build a big online presence because your blog is truly like your home on the net.
Many offline businesses are using blogs to create an online web presence because this helps to broaden their audience, connecting them with those they might not ever haveconnected with if it weren’t for the internet.
Any business type can be supported and maintained with the use of a WordPress site or blog, including information product sales, affiliate marketing, tangible item sales and promotions, services, and much more!
WordPress is my platform of choice for selling my PLR content. Instead of running a blog I use it as an online store with an automated shopping cart that handles all of mysales for me. I also use it as a traditional blogging as well as for niche websites.
When you start going throughout the process of creating your own WordPress blog it’s best if you break it down. Try smaller specific tasks instead of overwhelming yourself by trying to do everything in ten minutes.
For instance, if you are self hosting like I do then you’ll need to register a domain and get hosting before you can install your WordPress blog.
As you continue working with your WordPress site, you’ll find that at times you want to switch some or even all of the choices that you have already made. The great thing about these WordPress is you have the ability to quickly and easily switch some or even everything around when you want to or if you need to, tweaking the site to fit your personal needs and preferences.
Don’t expect a huge rush of traffic the day your site goes up and is live. While Google may index you site rather quickly, your consistent quality content and strong SEO strategies are what will draw in your target audience and keep them coming back for more.
To Your Success,
Alice Coaxum
Are Your Tasks Money Makers Or Time Vampires.
Posted by: | CommentsEver heard of the saying “time is money?” It’s true, especially if you are running a business. The tasks you perform are either helping your business to make money or sucking away at your time like greedy vampires.
There are many different aspects to successfully running a business whether it is MLM, direct sales or a self created business. If you are constantly finding that you cannot get ahead in your business because you are always running out of time that signals that there is a problem in the way that you are running your business.
You are probably allowing time vampires to suck the life out the time you have to spend on your business. There’s an easy way to figure out if what you are doing is a money maker or time vampire.
Let’s evaluate:
1. Does the task you perform help your business to earn in any way after you have been performing it for a while? After doing a task for a while you should be able to tell if it is helping you to be successful in your business or not by checking your earnings. If you are earning little or nothing, it’s time to reevaluate your pl an.
2. Does the task help your business to grow which will allow you to make money in the future? Planning ahead is definitely a good move but only if the task isn’t redundant or a huge time waster, A.K.A., time vampire.
3. Does the task help others to gain interest in your business and or products? For example if you were trying to get traffic to your website and you were surfing at a traffic exchange and your site gets little or no views this would be a huge waste of your time.
Trying to recruit the same uninterested people is a waste of your time.
4. Does the task help you to be more productive or effecient? Learning more will greatly help you to be successful. Find someone who is in a position that you would like to be in and study and observe them. Take their courses if they are in line with what you need to learn to make your business more successful. Apply what you learn or it makes no sense to learn to begin with.
5. Are you organized? Being unorganized is a time vampire because you have to work twice as hard to find things when you don’t keep your surroundings neat and orderly. You also waste time when you try to remember everything without using a planner, system or schedule and you end up forgetting important dates, details, questions, phone numbers, websites, programs and any other information pertinent to your business.
Set up a system on and offline that will allow you to easily find things, store information and save you from wasting time.
Time vampires come in many forms. Find the ones that are sucking at your precious time and weed them out so you have more time to spend on the money makers. Spend your time wisely to get achieve your goals.
To your success,
Alice Coaxum
My Opinion Of Connie Ragen Green’s – Huge Profits With Affiliate Marketing
Posted by: | CommentsI recently won a copy of Connie Ragen Green’s book Huge Profits With Affiliate Marketing: How To Build An Online Empire By Recommending What You Love. I expected that it would be a digital copy but was very pleasantly surprised when Connie asked for my mailing address. I am a lover of books so a tangible copy that I can hold in my hand is right up my alley though when it came to check out some of the included links I wished it were digital so I could easily click it instead of typing it in, but that was just me being lazy.
I really enjoyed this book and am going to share it with my oldest daughter who has an interest in affiliate marketing and anyone else interested in affiliate marketing because affiliate marketing is more than just throwing a link on a website with Click Here beside it. There is an art to affiliate marketing. I am not new to affiliate marketing but I must say that I definitely learned some things from Connie. Things I plan to implement to increase my affiliate earnings.
When I read a marketing book, receive training or some other type of internet marketing instructions I want to be able to implement what I learn or it’s pointless for me to read because I’m not interested in fluff or things that are so beyond my means that I can’t possibly pull it off. I want what can help me right now!
I love the way the book was presented. She gets up close and personal, it isn’t presented in a boring monotone way. She connects with you through her words.
She isn’t just telling you, she is showing how it’s done. As an affiliate marketer the point is to connect others with great products and services that can help those looking for them or that are wanted by others, while earning a commission for bringing the two together. This is what she is showing you here in her book.
I picked up some things from the book that I am putting into play now. I would suggest this book to anyone who wants to earn well with affiliate marketing. This is one of those books that you can refer to again and again. I’m on my second read now because the book was so helpful. I had some aha moments. Some things I read in Connie’s book I never thought of. I love when I actually take something from a book or a course and can put it to use in my business.
What you won’t find in this book are so many technical terms that you can’t understand or follow through, redundant material or scammy techniques. What you will find are jewels and tips that will help you to earn if you take the time to implement them and follow it through.
No course, product or book will help you if you lack the will power to follow through with what it suggests you do. Meaning this book isn’t a magical potion that will whisk you away into millionaire status just by you reading it. It is the implementing of tips and techniques that help us to be successful.
Best wishes,
Alice Coaxum
Are You Afraid Of Success?
Posted by: | CommentsSome may see this title and think, “Why in the world would anyone be afraid of success?” or “Everyone wants to succeed, so how could they fear that?” Nevertheless there are truly people out there who are afraid of success, myself included in the past.
When you are afraid of success you may not realize it on a conscience level. Something inside can keep one from seeing their true potential, while others may see it as clear as day when they get to know that person.
It is not as uncommon as you may think, to fear success. Their are many who are letting their lack of self confidence and fears hold them back. You could be the biggest thing that is holding you back from living the life that you want. You could be blocking your own success!
How many times have you heard someone tell you that you have so much potential or that you are exceptionally good at something only to have your own nagging thoughts plant the seeds of doubt within your head.
At that moment you are blocking your own success because if you don’t believe in yourself, you won’t try very hard if you even try at all because you already know that you will fail. How you perceive yourself will determine how well you do.
Take steps in the right direction by really examining and scrutinizing yourself the way you would observe someone else if it weren’t you. More likely than not you are more readily to accept and believe in the talents of another than you are to believe in yourself if you are one who has a lot of doubts about yourself.
Figure out what your strengths are. It’s all to easy to figure out where you are weak at. You will want to capitalize on your strong areas while building on your weak areas.
Figure out what is holding you back, change your mindset and dismiss it if you really want to succeed. Throw those nagging doubts right into the proverbial trashcan and dump it … fast.
Do you think you really aren’t smart enough to reach your goal?
Throw that nagging thought away!
Do you feel that you don’t have what it takes to live out your dreams?
Throw that nagging thought away!
Negative thoughts will not help but they will hinder.
Figure out what your dreams are if you have one. If not think about it and develop your dream. It’s okay to not know everything. Some dreams start out as one thing and develop into a whole new dream over time.
Find out what your passion is and what makes you happy. What’s the biggest goal that you have? Is it running your own company, designing your own products or writing a book? It could even be starting a successful website, speaking at a conference or gaining leadership in your MLM company. Passion varies from person to person so only you can figure out what your passion is.
You can do it! Don’t tell yourself any different. Learn, apply and grow if you don’t know something. We all start out as newbies.
Give yourself permission to feel good about yourself. Send those negative thoughts away by replacing them with postive thoughts. Allow yourself to feel that you are worthy of success. No one is better than you because no one can be you like you can.
I’m working on trying to live my dream now even though it can be a struggle at times because I’m not perfect. I’m giving myself permission to feel good about myself and acknowledging my strengths. I want to be successful at what I do and I’m willing to make myself a little uncomfortable to get there.
If you are shy like me than you may at times have a hard time expressing yourself for fear of what others may think. I’m working hard to overcome that. I have thoughts and opinions that people can benefit from and the only way they will is if I open my mouth and speak or write it down to be read.
I’m facing my fears and you can too. Many times it is the build up of thinking about the fear and the “What ifs?” that is scarier than the actual act itself.
It’s not cocky to feel that you are good at something. We all have different talents that are worthy of appreciation. We need to bestow the same compliments on ourselves as we would another and stop being our worst critic, going overboard with self examination.
Take a moment to step back out of your own way and take a step toward success. You’re worth it and so is your dream.
To your success,
Alice Coaxum
