Why Tweeting Your Blog Is Not Enough For Big Traffic by Graham Jones

If you use a URL shortening script, such as Yourls, you can see “live” the people clicking on anything you add to Twitter. The statistical information reveals that within a second of posting your Tweet you get almost all of the click throughs from what you post on Twitter. A minute or so later, almost all of the clicks have dried up. You can measure the life of a Tweet in seconds; it doesn’t last very long at all.

Getting people to follow your blog takes effort

So why all the fuss about Twitter? A Tweet is clearly a single blast of a blunderbuss – you get loads of impact all over the place, but the effect doesn’t last long. Yet you can find all sorts of advice from so-called “gurus” telling you that Twitter gets you tons of traffic. If you want to get more readers to your blog, you need to Tweet, they say.

And these experts are right – and wrong…! True enough, you can get increased traffic from Tweeting your blog. But it’s not smooth traffic; you’ll get the occasional peak in traffic. Now that’s not to be sniffed at, of course, but it’s not going to achieve all you want for your blog.

Here’s the problem: along comes another piece of technology (Twitter) which appears to solve the problem of getting more traffic to a blog. Whoopee everyone shouts and before you know it there is ebook after ebook explaining how you can get shedloads of traffic to your blog if you use Twitter. The result is millions of people go “Hurray, here’s the answer” and off they trot to learn everything they can about Twitter and see those traffic numbers rise. Not.

Read more..

A Week In The Life Of Another Wealth Coach: Marion Ryan

It’s been a good yet hectic week for this wealth coach, writing to you from Tipperary where today, the sky is blue, the sun is shining – and it’s pouring with rain.  Raining so hard in fact these last few days that roads round here are starting to get flooded and outside my very gate, a deep pond has appeared that is starting to look pretty threatening to me and my water-shy motor.

So I am blessed really that I can work from home and make money with nothing more than my laptop, my phone and my coffee pot.  And, er, some chocolate.
For those of you who don’t yet know me, I’m Marion Ryan and when I’m not coaching Gold clients in the Money Gym I’m running ReadySteadyBlog helping small business owners and entrepreneurs with many different aspects of their internet marketing, whether that’s creating their website, their ebook covers and Twitter designs or their Google Ads campaign.  Love found me in my native London and brought me to this wretched wet place which I’ve grown to love for its peaceful greenness and lack of traffic jams.  More likely to be stopped by a herd of cattle crossing the road than a red light where I live.

So what have I been up to this week?

As well as being contacted by one of my very earliest coaching clients for some more coaching – we last worked together in 2001! – I’ve also been catching up with Gold client, Suzanne Barnett which is always an opportunity for exploration, insights, business planning and some giggles.  Suzanne has recently found a new business partner – via the Money Gym – and they have been pouring all their creative juice into a new IT training business – we’re expecting the launch any day now.

Though Suzanne can be tough on herself, those of us who know her find her enthusiasm, energy and can-do attitude infectious and very attractive.  Apart from any other entrepreneurial, financial and marketing skills she has, her ability to connect with people, to get involved, to solve problems quickly and efficiently, make her someone you want to help and do business with.

Read more..

Business Profits & Success | You Need A Website!

I believe that the ability to create an effective online presence is absolutely crucial for any business.  If you are in business and not online, then you are leaving so much money on the table it’s unreal.

Every business needs a website, and not all websites are created equal sadly.

I’ll go further, there is NO real world business that can not benefit from having a coherent online presence.

I have one for The Money Gym (this one!), for my speaking/writing activities at NicolaCairncross.com, one for my Greek Property business, and made one for my friends Rona & Adrian, who lent me their gorgeous holiday home for rent, in Casares, Spain.  In fact, have a business idea, I make a website for it.  It helps me think through the offer and test the market, via quick free traffic.

Just think about it, for a second.

If you were out and about, and met two interesting people who both had a product or service that solved a problem you had, but only one of them had a website URL on their card, which one are you more likely to check out online and then use?  The one with the website of course!

Especially if that website was simple, colourful, professional looking, let you know about the people behind the business, and outlined the product or service, along with giving you some useful information on the topic of interest AND gave you the contact details.  Or a free gift of some kind, in return for your name and email, if you are not ready to call or email them yet.

So why don’t more businesses do it?

Because they think it’s complicated and expensive – but of course it’s not.

So, today I want to talk to you about how easy it is to do just that, and which elements you need to concentrate on first.

Nicola’s Quick 15 Point Step By Step Plan To Get Your Business Online & Making Your Money

1.  Visit https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal and put in the key phrase you imagine your visitor would use to find your product or service

2.  It will show the results for the country you are in and the Global Search Results – click the column headers to sort by biggest numbers first on local or global.  Make a note of the top 10-20 relevent key phrases.

3.  Remember that these results are per month – this is the size of your potential market and customer base (even if you are usually very local, you can sell them SOMETHING surely!)

4.  Talking of local, while you are there, Add your business to Google Local www.google.com/local/add

5.  Buy a domain name which includes one of the most searched terms in your niche

6.  Get some decent, cheap hosting at someone like FunkyDomainNames.com or Hostgator.com

7.  Look for the link in your Control Panel to install a Wordpress blog on your hosting (it usually takes just one click – you will be amazed)

8.  Choose a theme you like and start adding information of interest to your ideal customer

9.  Find out how to enhance your blog website for customers and search engines alike with plugins

10.  Create a Facebook Page with the same name as your blog website and hook them up so that your Page shows on your blog/website and your site updates your Page

11.  Create a Twitter account in the same name as your blog website & Facebook page and hook them up with the TwitterTools plugin so they update each other

12.  Go create a profile and list your site at Technorati, StumbleUpon, Digg and any others you can be bothered with

13.  Create a YouTube channel in the name of your business and start “Favouriting” videos that would be of interest to your ideal customer and hook it up to your main site with a URL in the channel description.

14.  Hook up your blog/website to some sort of List Manager, we recommend Total Business Cart if you want to sell things or aWeber or GetResponse if you want to just recommend other people’s product or services

15.  Start selling stuff or recommending stuff and put yourself in REAL DANGER of making some money online!

Then just keep adding useful information to your blog website, which will update your Twitter and Facebook page, the search engines and blog directories.

As soon as you start making some money, invest a certain % of it into hiring the professionals to take your brilliant foundations you have built and take your business stratospheric.

How simple was that?

So why are you not doing it then?

If you did just those 15 Steps, you would be way ahead of MOST if not ALL of your competitors, I can guarantee you that!

HOWEVER!

If you STILL feel you need help and encouragement on getting going with making your business work online, then come along to our “Really Useful Internet Day” on Saturday 10th October 2009.

One day, just three experts, no bull, no hype, just down to earth practical stuff that you can put to work for you, making you more money from your business, or creating a second income for you, right now!

Seats are already flying out to our Silver, Silver Elite, Membership Club Magic and Gold clients, and the only way to make sure you get notified before the info page goes live at 12 noon on Friday, is to get on the VIP Priority Mailing list here

http://www.themoneygym.com/internetday

See you there!

Nicola

p.s. Tickets are only £25, it’s all going to the Big Issue and they are tax deductible if you have a business.  Don’t muck about, this is a day that could change your business life.

http://www.themoneygym.com/internetday

My Money Gym Week by Judith Morgan

Nicola’s still gone and its very peaceful here at the virtual Money Gym Towers.   I’ve noticed that Steve has been beavering away at a lot of chores which I know have been on his To Do List awhile and I have been enjoying the news from Nicola and Sarah who did a property deal on their first day in Stoupa!  Did you see that?   Have you seen their new property website? I’m in for a Stoupa property on a rent2own basis, how about you? Sounds like we could create our own MG holiday village in Greece!   Catch up with their remaining holiday exploits by following them on Twitter and seeing the photos and little Greek videos?   I said Greek, not geek.

This week has been rather unexpected for me.   The things I thought were going to happen didn’t and vice versa.   On Monday evening I played poker with my lawyer and won again even though I have no idea what I am up to.   Its make or break time soon, I will have to decide whether or not this is something that I’m just never going to be any good at, however much fun I have.   Still, I like spending time with my lawyer who is a gent, funny and clever and a genius at seeing the deal.   He had spent the day with my Property Boardroom which I had to miss this time around, although they are hammering out a few big deals it seems.   I should miss it more often; do they play bigger when I’m not there?

I scooted over to Red in Canary Wharf on Tuesday and learned about a couple of fascinating new opportunities they have coming up, about which more soon.   New build UK properties for owner-occupation or BTL, only £800 to get in + a guaranteed non-status 95% mortgage in three years’ time.   I told them I would take their entire stock for us Money Gymers!   Also a scheme whereby you can rent your equity to a bank and they will pay you for that with no risks/mortages/drawdowns, which will be wonderful for those on a fixed budget who want increased income and/or the risk averse and perhaps older people in lieu of equity release.   So many brilliant ideas at Red, so little time.

Regretfully, I had to put the debt collectors onto a third party who owed the Money Gym nearly £5,000 this week and I used Thomas Higgins, at the reminder of the wondrous Google Group about which we have writen this week in our Did Your Know column.   For only £2 they sent a letter before action and our debtor miraculously coughed up making me wonder why I hadn’t taken a firmer line sooner.   A lesson there.   Don’t let people owe you money, send the dogs in!

I spent a day on my own money which is always rewarding.   I did that thing where you tidy up which bank account you are using for which purpose, closed an unwanted duplicate bank account, put essentials on direct debit, and made sure only the right direct debits and standing orders were coming out of each remaining bank account.   So now my personal ones are in my personal account, my business ones in my business account, my property ones in my property account and so on.   Very cleansing.   And that gave me enough energy to go on and do something which Julia McDaid had recommended to me YEARS ago – to use Egg Money to link to all my personal current accounts, deposit accounts, loans and credit cards which means I only have to log into Egg’s website now in order to be able to control my 19 financial products spread across 8 separate banks.   Wowser!   The control.   Fabulous.

On Wednesday, normally known as webinar Wednesday, we were call free.   We had already agreed not to run Silver Elite during Nicola’s absence and then Xiosoft, who host the weekly Gold call, decided to do their maintenance between 11 and 12 at precisely the time we normally speak, so that meant I could divert my energies into the Money Gym accounts instead.   Then I went to recce a Central London venue for some 2009-2010 events and found a nice new boardroom with an adjacent hotel for Nicola, a carpark for me, and a series of lovely restaurants in which to enjoy our clients.

Peter Stanley and I continue to make strides with our Rent2Own mentoring calls on Friday mornings, although we only have two left before the end of term.   Peter helped a mate of mine do two deals last week alone in Manchester; my mate found the leads and Peter helped him to close the deals, one each as I understand it. How abundant is that?

Apart from one million emails a day, the rest of my week has evolved around Extreme Self-Care after I wrote a blog post about my Summer To Do list.   After a swift re-frame about which jobs on the list counted as ESC if I could get them out of the way before my holiday starts on 1^st August, I was able to cross three work-related items off the list this week whilst also adding a few more, but I reckon its OK to do the personal ones during the August holiday.   MG Coach Marion and I have done a couple of EFT tapping calls this week too and she’s been working on a couple of new websites for me.

My ESC activities included getting the garden gate painted and the front door fixed, getting the oven professionally cleaned, asking for a caterer on Twitter and finding two, advertising on Gumtree for someone to help with my garden and with my cat, and going with Marie Taylor on her birthday to karaoke at Lucky Voice.   Jane P Lewis, MG client, is going to arrange a singing trip to LV in Islington if you are up for it?   Let us know.

Lucky Voice? Perhaps not, but Lucky Judith most definitely.

Until next time…

Note From Judith | What’s Important?

Ha, ha! Ha, ha!  Ha, ha!   I have total egomaniacal (cue mad laughter) and editorial control this week – and possibly even next – as Nicola packs and prepares for her holiday away.

She’s going for one week to her beloved Stoupa with sister Sarah and I have given her homework: to see if it really is somewhere she could make a life.   Watch her Twitters…assuming she can get a signal.

Does the broadband work well enough?   Is the travel to and from efficient enough?   Is there a community in which she could make friends and play a  role, not to mention poker?

No doubt she will report back in her next Note from Nicola, meanwhile this is a Note from Judith.   Hooray!

So, let me see, what does she tell you?   All about her week.   Well, happily, a lot of our week this week has been in tandem since we spent Monday working together at quite a nice country house hotel near Leatherhead which shall remain nameless.   A very chatty girl in a dark suit and high heels (we in our pink entrepreneur’s flip flops) spent an hour showing us over the old bit and the two new bits and we were nearly taken with it, apart from the dreadful food at lunchtime which depressed us both.   We also couldn’t agree about the conference room itself.

But the killer question came when we returned to our little room we had booked for the day and did some projections about holding our 2010 Wealth Conference at this venue.   Nicola’s body visibly deflated as she contemplated spending two days in that room as compared to say the beautiful state-of-the art auditorium at the Cavendish Conference Centre in central London, where we have run a couple of large events recently, which perks her up no end.   So I am holding the Cavendish for the weekend of 19th and 20th June 2010 for now.   We love working there as they are very Can Do.   We still have some way to go to get all the details right but we learn every time we hold an event there.

The Wealth Conference will include a slap-up party on the Saturday night and so it falls to me (natch!) to organise that in a nearby restaurant – more venue recces upcoming this week for moi.

We talked a lot on Monday about our coaches, Margaret, Marion, Philly and Annie, who we are inviting to take a more central role in the Money Gym in 2010 and beyond, especially at Silver and Gold level and with our Let’s Talk Money events.   The Money Gym is growing up as a business.   I have just completed our 4th set of accounts since I joined Nicola and Steve in partnership.   Our learning is slow because so much of our energies go into helping, coaching, supporting clients and it can be a trap this, for a coach.  You can get stuck in facilitating great things in others at your own expense.   Because of the nature of our business, wealth creation, its vital we lead by example too wherever possible.

Trying to achieve both our own goals and those of our clients at the same time has been complex, rewarding and slow, but I really feel we are getting there now and we have a vision for the business which inspires us both.   I can’t tell you about new projects on the way although I know Nicola has already let slip to one or two of her mentoring clients, but I should be able to tell you soon enough, after all the holidays are over.   For now they remain a work in progress; we love to work on new stuff and bring you new stuff too.

The rest of my Money Gym week has been about Money Gym accounts and VAT, Rent2Own mentoring calls on Friday with Peter Stanley who is now regularly doing two deals a week.   I am also working on my own first deal which is fun.   We are in week 11 of our Silver Elite pilot and I have done at least one of my mentoring calls which are included in the programme and I know Margaret has done one too this week.   Wednesday is Webinar day with one at 10 for Silver Elite and one at 11 for Gold clients, both of which went well this week although Nicola forgot to press Record (easily done) for the first one which is an awful shame since it was about Stocks & Shares and turned out to be really interesting.   I often listen to our calls back as I learn so much more when I am listening as opposed to talking. I know, tragic.   Listening to yourself!   Good grief.   Sometimes I even find myself really, really interesting.   Sad.

Yesterday I helped out a really nice bird who had been to one of our Let’s Talk Money days a while back and was on the horns of a dilemma.  Really enjoyed that one and I am also really enjoying working with Mrs Lucky Winner who won a year’s property mentoring with me at the Property Extravaganza.   The rest of the week has been taken up with shepherding our first 30 clients through their RED investment, all but one or two are using their pensions to do it with and creating a SIPP.   This morning I had a conference call with Darren, Red’s SIPP guy, and now we have a working spreadsheet between the two of us where we are tracking everyone along the road to Pension Nirvana on only 10 years.  So its never too late to start your pension now, I am even working with a lady who is a very youthful 60 years old.

And finally there’s the minutiae, the detail of running a business, emails, queries, letters, follow-ups, liaison between the three of us at Head Office (often at cross-purposes and I use the word cross advisedly!) – could you just look this up, could you just help this person, what do you think about this opportunity, shall we diversify our focus, shall we bring forward a project or delay it?   In the end we decided that our watchword for the week would be “What’s Important?”   You often have to take up that stance before a holiday. And, come to think of it, it isn’t a bad one to run your week – or your business – by, is it?

Personally, there were more huge advances in my garden.   My Twitter followers have been baying for photos of my meadow, my tree seat, my acid bed, my climbing roses, my new shrubs, my lavender and my olive tree, but they are just going to have to wait, Twitpic being a bridge too far for me.   I mean, I’m in SOLE CHARGE here, I’ve got a business to run!   All I can say as a sun worshipper who loves the sun and as a gardener, who loves to look out of the window at Nick’s handiwork but not much else. is “bring on more of that Big Rain!” It means I am on light duties with the hose.

Until next time…

Internet Marketing | Zero To Hero Online | Matt’s Progress

As the discussions rumble on about whether internet marketing is the “Emperor’s New Clothes” ex-Navy man Matt Jones has taken up the baton, and is quietly working his way through the Money Gym Membership Club Magic tuition videos, with a bit of coaching from me.
Read the first post here >>>	Read the second post here >>>
Read the third post here >>>	Read the fourth post here >>>
He’s agreed to post his progress in becoming a newbie internet zero, to internet marketing here in the comments here – so, over to you Matt!

Internet Marketing | Emperor’s New Clothes | Part 3

Read Part 1 Here >>>

Read Part 2 Here >>>

Wow!  This debate about whether it’s possible to create a real live passive income online – defined as enough to live on without having to actually do anything, once set up – has really hit a nerve on both the blog and our private Google Group!  Several success stories, many tales of woe.

I’m going to be posting up a selection of comments from the google group later but in the meantime I wanted to let you know that I’ve decided to run two experiments.

1.  Taking an internet newbie from zero to hero with one of our products

There’s a new guy just signed up to our Membership Club Magic group – name of Matt.  Matt will tell his own story soon, but basically he’s a bright guy, who has just been made redundant, wife, two kids including a brand new baby. He’s been looking for another job and has some potential offers on the table but in the meantime, he’s come across internet marketing and specifically me and our Membership Club Magic product, and for the next two months, he’s able to work on his internet project every week day, for at least 3 hours.

I figure, being ex-Navy, Matt can “follow the bloody instructions” as Frank Kern calls it.  He’s got the desire, he’s got the time and hopefully he can focus.

I’ve offered Matt a once a week coaching call, daily focus emails as well as office-hour skype backup coaching & support  in return for his giving me a weekly update on how he’s doing, what his challenges are, how he feels about it all and anything else he wants to share.

He’s got a great idea for a specialist niche membership site, with plenty of scope for extra revenue streams above and beyond the membership fees themselves, and it’s got the potential to be licensed nationwide, if not globally, if he can get the business model right.

So, we will follow Matt’s story with interest.

2.  Taking an experienced internet marketer (me) and following a step by step system meant for newbies

Tried this  recently with the InfoMillionaire system and sorry, Trey and Frank, while your content is great and I’m going to carry on subscribing as I’m learning stuff all the time from you, your system is NOT for newbies to internet marketing.  There’s not enough support when you need it – a forum would have been good – and even I kept getting stuck.  Also, even though I’ve been using them since 2003, I managed to blow £200 accidentally on Google Adwords when I took my eye off the ball for a couple of days, because one day nothing was happening as my budget was too low, the next day your suggestions kicked in and it went ballistic.  £200 over 2 days and no sales from a site that converts at 0.6% normally, so I was doing something wrong and I dont’ know what.

So my next experiment is going to be following a system highly recommended by Martin Avis, who I like, respect and trust.  He recommended this step by step product  in 2008 and is still recommending it and describes it thusly:

“  …..‘My Online Income System’ from a lady by the name of Kimberley Hoffman.  I’d never heard of it and don’t normally buy random products ‘to order’ but was sufficiently intrigued by the sales message to stump up for it.   What I found was that Kimberley had pretty much created what I was planning to write – a beginners’ guide to making regular money from Clickbank.  It is step-by-step, very clearly written and it covers all the important stuff you need to know.  I love that lady – she has saved me a whole lot of work!  If you are experienced in Internet marketing then this is probably not for you (unless you are experienced in knowledge but are still not making any money). But if you want to learn how you can make a regular income as an affiliate marketer and eventually look forward to sizable checks arriving each week, then this course is highly recommended” Martin Avis

Well, I’m experinced all right, but I’ve never managed to crack Clickbank, either as an affiliate or as a publisher (our Money Gym book is on there) so it sounds perfect.

Actually, it’s funny how the universe throws things at you, as just this week I noticed on our Google Analytics an upsurge in traffic to our Clickbank sales page from one particular Clickbank affiliate, and we have sold one ebook per week from this traffic, so I was thinking I should turn my attention to it sometime soon.

£33 later, I’m now working through Day 1 and I’ll let you know how I get on.  It’s very step by step, day by day, so that’s working for me so far.

Hey, I might email Martin Avis and ask him if I can interview him on how he managed to “make it” in passive income online and what he thinks it takes!

Internet Marketing | Emperor’s New Clothes | Part 2

Read Part 1 Here >>> To continue the story….

Example #2 – The Money Gym Internet Marketing Home Study System.

Between Christmas and New Year 2006, I laid out the 12 Simple Steps To Creating An Online Business as followed by me when creating the Money Gym.  It’s a bit dated in terms of the delivery methods, it’s video but not lovely Camtasia Theatre video, but the content is very relevant and the principles outlined in the Home Study System are still relevant three years later.

I never got around to finishing the final module, but do you know what?

Nobody to date has ever noticed (in spite of paying over £1500 for it) because nobody “just following the bloody instructions” and worked through the system step by step.

Now, we are paying someone to recreate it in Camtasia Theatre style, because it is still a great step by step system and we want to carry on including it in Money Gym Gold and Silver and need it to be upgraded.

Aha!!

Example #3 – Guy Thompson

I forgot to point out to Judith in our meeeting that, albeit not in 90 days, one of our Money Gym clients, Guy Thompson, a really lovely man and great contributor to the Money Gym community, is “just following the bloody instructions” and is getting there on the making money online front.

(I must ask Guy how it’s going and report back to you, actually I have an idea that could help Guy and help my argument and help you too! )

Guy was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1988, but even so he spent the next fifteen years as legal adviser to online information businesses headquartered in New York.

In spite of having a demanding “day job”, Guy has written an ebook on the topic of Multiple Sclerosis , got his first sales page up for that ebook, he’s finished the first of his “Guy’s Guides” to making money online (ideal for people with Multiple Sclerosis)  and he is an active Twitterer and has even become an Ezine Articles Expert Author on Multiple Sclerosis.

Phew!  Put’s the rest of us to shame doesn’t he?  Imagine what Guy could achieve if he was working full time on this!  He’s pretty focused in the time that he has got to advance his internet business, isn’t he?

I am so determined to prove that “internet marketing” works, that I’m going to bloody well make it work for The Money Gym.  In fact, if asked what I will be doing when rich as Croesus and just about to pop my clogs, in between playing poker in Los Vegas, I’ll be working on my internet marketing projects.

By which I mean that I want to make a meaningful stream of ongoing passive income – by which I mean PROFIT – from our ebook and other passive income products.

How it works at the moment is that we get a stream of organic traffic – 4000 to 7000 unique visitors – to our website at http://www.TheMoneyGym.com from my various online marketing activities, from articles to videos, to Twitter and Hubpages, Facebook and links in from other sites.

However, I regard all our information products as front end marketing materials, rather than profitable products in their own right, because we don’t make enough from sales of said products to keep Steve, Judith and I in the style to which we would like to become accustomed, if we never wanted to work again.

So they are “marketing that pays for itself” which is great and actually the holy grail of most traditional business models….

But a true passive income business – selling totally passive products profitably – cannot depend on organic traffic alone, because any moment, the search engines could change the way they index websites and your traffic could disappear overnight.  It’s happened, to Brad Fallon with his “wedding favors” site – famous story in the world of internet marketing.

Nicola’s Definition Of A Successful Internet Marketing Business

A true passive income business depends on dependable “paid for traffic” from various sources such as Google Adwords, arriving at a website which converts that traffic at predictable levels, to subscribers and/or sales and which makes a profit for the owner, over and above what they pay for the traffic.

(Or one that drives “paid for” traffic to the sales page of an affiliate product, which converts to sales of that affiliate product, but for the purposes of this series of articles, I’m going to focus on you selling your own product)

And I’m going to set a goal now to make Internet Marketing work with the Money Gym products and also share the stories of some of our Money Gym clients – like Guy – who are “just following the bloody instructions”.

Oh my God!  I feel the “Money Gym Online” book coming on.  Written in instalments on the blog with interaction from our readers and subscribers.  Cool.

So keeping it really simple (another challenge online and for me particularly) what do I consider you need to create a successful passive income generating internet business?

1.    Successful Internet Marketing For Beginners

• A Domain name – either one with key words in (if working in a niche) or a generic one like www.ABCEnterprises.com
• Hosting – we use FunkyDomainNames.com to register our domains and provide hosting – they have a 24 telephone helpline which you WILL use at some point!
• An ebook to sell – write your own, pick one at Clickbank.com or buy one  with resale rights.
• A sales page to sell it from – if you have a resale rights ebook make sure it comes with a sales page.  If selling your own ebook, use Sales Letter Generator by Armand Morin, which breaks it down into simple parts/tasks and takes away the overwhelm.
• A shopping cart – we love TotalBusinessCart.com – to integrate with your PayPal account so you can take money, follow up with prospects in an automated yet personal fashion, manage your database of contacts, products, mailing list, broadcast facility, affilate scheme and much more!
• A blog to generate organic traffic.  We recommend Wordpress which installs on your own domain with one click via your hosting control panel (Cpanel) at FunkyDomainNames.com.
• A Twitter account to generate organic traffic – mine is second only to Google organic for traffic generation to our website.

Tomorrow I’ll cover what you will need for more intermediate and advanced actions but you could look at your internet business right now and compare it to this list.  Remember, it’s not what you do, but what you are NOT doing that’s making the difference.

In the meantime, I would love to hear what you think about Internet Marketing and hear your stories.  Use the comments box here to share your thoughts.

Resources mentioned in this article:

“31 Days To Millionaire Marketing Miracles” by Tracy Repchuk
Free membership and excellent free report

Guy Thompson’s Multiple Sclerosis Guide
http://www.multiplesclerosisguide.com/,

“Guy’s Guides” to making money online (ideal for people with Multiple Sclerosis)
http://www.guysguidesonline.com/

Guy Thompson On Twitter https://twitter.com/Guy_Thompson

Articles on Multiple Sclerosis
http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Guy_Thompson

Domain Names & Hosting (with one-click blog install)
FunkyDomainNames.com

Armand Morin’s Sales Letter Generator (preview feature works better with Internet Explorer than Firefox btw)

TotalBusinessCart.com – everything you will ever need to run your online business under one affordable roof

Twitter – http://www.twitter.com

Clickbank – to find products to sell or to sell your own products

Internet Marketing | Emperor’s New Clothes | Part 1

There are  some virtual storm clouds brewing at the Money Gym.  Judith and I came the closest we have ever been to a row the other day at our board meeting while talking about me re-writing my book for 2009 and beyond, and the topic was the same old recurring theme of Internet Marketing – Is It The Emperor’s New Clothes?

This topic has also been rumbling around our Money Gym Mastermind Google Group as Marion Ryan (one of our Money Gym coaches and no slouch at making money online herself with her Rockin’ Blogging service) asked “Is anyone out there making any real money with affiliate marketing?”

Just to clarify, when we are talking about Internet Marketing, we are not talking about “Marketing Your Business Online” which all of us at The Money Gym totally love, do effortlessly and succeed in all day every day, but “Internet Marketing” as defined as the ability to create automated flows of passive income from selling information products (your own or someone else’s) online without having to deliver a service, workshops, coaching, all those things that involve you actually doing something and turning up for work in the real world.

Judith says ”Internet Marketing simply isn’t viable and perhaps all the gurus are selling a dream, albeit one that we all want. We cannot point to any single success story within the Money Gym community, including ourselves as principals of the business, and that that simply isn’t good enough for our clients, they deserve better.   We are not in authenticity and even worse, we could be misleading our clients”.

Although Tim Ferris’ “4 Hour Work Week” book is one of her all time favourites, and leans heavily on his passive income made online by selling a product, Judith feels very strongly that when I re-write OUR book I should not imply that you can make millions online very easily.  That I should be more realistic and not hang out the internet dream in the book as, in her opinion, there is no real evidence in our circle that it works.   She considers that we might even remove it as a separate Lane Of The Wealth Highway in our teachings in the Money Gym coaching programme , including it instead only as part of our business module.

I passionately believe the opposite and I say it does work because I know a LOT of people – met at many seminars over the years – who make their living like that.  And a very good living – defined by me as more than £5000 or $10,000 per month upwards to the “millions a year” merchants.

I believe they earn that because of the lifestyles they lead,  the fact that they are able to afford to go to all the seminars, cruises, the Maverick Adventures all around the world, the houses they live in, the cars they drive and that they never seem short of cash.

Judith’s logic asks: “well, if it works, how come specifically none of our Money Gym clients while able to become wealthy, even millionaires, through the other lanes of the Wealth Highway, have ever yet managed to become an internet millionaire or even make any meaningful recurring passive sums of money working online?   If you yourself, Nicola, have been – to use your own words – diddling about online since before God was a lad, how come you are not one of the internet millionaires living the life you describe above?”

I say, because none of us ever do it right.  We never keep it simple and “just follow the bloody instructions” to quote Frank Kern.

Actually it’s very rare that any of  us simply just do it.

Example #1

Last year, we hosted a 90-day Money Gym Internet Challenge, where our clients were supposed to define their internet goals and then, with our support, achieve them in 90 days.

Some set goals to finish their ebook, some set goals to make their first $10 online, some set goals like “get my first 100 subscribers to my ezine list” and I really did my best to help them keep it real, set realistic goals and then work out how they were going to achieve them.

We were supposed to post up our goals for each day, actions taken and achievements to a special Focus Day google group we set up.

So, did anyone do that?

Some, for a while.

Did even one person finish the challenge or achieve their goals set?

No.

What went wrong?  Well, I always say that the difference between success or failure is more about what you don’t do, than what you do do.

They didn’t get focused, didn’t take consistent action, they got discouraged, they just gave up.  Sometimes life just got in the way.

Just think for a moment about one of your goals, one that you constantly fail in achieving.  Think about the one single thing, that if you did it, would absolutely guarantee success.  Now think about why you don’t do and why you don’t do that thing.

But I’m getting distracted here…one of my issues with my own internet marketing success by the way.

Tracy Repchuk talks about the fact that 92% of people who go to internet marketing seminars will NEVER succeed and it’s true.  They will buy more and more stuff, hoping for the magic wand, the secret key….hang on, this is sounding just like the people who go to property investment seminars, business building seminars, stockmarket trading seminars.   It’s sounding like wealth creation in general.

Tracy also talks about the importance of getting focused in her excellent best selling book “31 Days To Millionaire Marketing Miracles” which, incidentally, was written in days and took just 58 days to become an Amazon best seller. Focus works and she’s demonstrated that.   But Tracy Repchuk was a successful business person before she discovered internet marketing and lots of the gurus were too.   Judith would say this just proves her point; “Tracy is selling more information on how to do it rather than just selling something online like Tim Ferris for example!”

So is it possible for ordinary people to create a passive income online?  Or are they wasting their time, chasing a dream?

The Money Gym Internet Challenge wasn’t a total waste of all our time because, a year later, some are just getting to the point of finishing their ebooks, have websites up online and have mailing lists and some even have membership sites.

But hardly anyone is “just following the bloody instructions” and getting on with it, step by step.

Read Part 2 Here >>>

Property Investors Under The Hammer | £5000+ For The Big Issue!

Last week I was feeling very odd, in the lead up to our Property Extravaganza.  It was obvious by the beginning of the week that thanks to Judith’s inspired marketing emails, the guest line up and Steve’s working the “back end” so masterfully, we were going to sell out the venue, so there was no pressure there to get more bums on seats.  Judith and Steve had done all the organising and hard work, keeping me out of that aspect deliberately as detail is not my strong point!  I realised that I was experiencing the whole event as a customer and while it was most enjoyable, it was very odd.

To distract myself, I went to the ever-excellent Martin Avis’ London Lunch for internet marketers and spent a lovely hour or so on our table with Money Gym maties Susanne Jorgensen, Tricia Stone, Matt Garrett, Tim Brocklehurst and a new gentleman called Peter who had a hard time getting a word in edgeways!

Then off to the ever enjoyable Cumberland Hotel to meet Steve for drinks and dinner in the Gary Rhodes brasserie, which was nice but not all that (compared with the restaurant which is GORGEOUS!).  Lovely hotel room overlooking Park Lane and Marble Arch.

So, where do I start with a review of saturday?  It was a totally amazing day, with about 150 Money Gym clients there, both previous and current.  Judith herself, stepping into her star profile at last, and Alexis Garnaut-Miller who was a client from pre-Money Gym days even and who has just joined the Membership Club Magic programme!  From the first year or so of The Money Gym in it’s current format, it was lovely to see Sarah Mallett and Julia McDaid.  I also met people like Oliver, a property developer from Worthing, who I knew from my first ever Russ Whitney weekend which must have been 2003 or 2004….and who also turned up recently at one of our Cashflow games.

Read more..

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