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

Key Success Secrets – Part 1 | Introduction

In the early days of my wealth coaching career, I was always very focused on the practical, the down to earth, the “how-to” of becoming wealthy.  I’d read all the books out there on the market on the principles of wealth creation, becoming rich, the power of belief and focus, attraction principles and I was angry and frustrated!

Because none of them told you how to make money!  None of them laid out a step by step plan of  HOW TO ACTUALLY DO IT!

So my first book The Money Gym – which started as an email programme, I was not arrogant enough to think I had a book in me – was written out of that frustration;  I wanted to give you a step by step, logical plan for how to make money and even become rich.

I wrote it as I wanted it, simple, easy to understand, with pictures.  I tried to include (and credit) the best bits of all I had read or heard, from Robert Kiyosaki to Napoleon Hill, from Steven Covey to Mary Hunt, from Gill Fielding to Robert G. Allen, especially where it was helping me and making a positive difference to the way I thought and particularly to the way I acted.

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Bugs, Birthdays, Business & Beautiful Food

I got an email from Hal, my mate from Georgia, today.  The subject line got my attention as all of Hal’s emails invariably do.  Today, the subject line was “One big fat ugly rat” and I opened it immediately….

It went to to say….

“Dear Nicola,  I don’t know about you, but one big fat ugly rat in my house is one way too many!

I spoke with a gentleman a few days ago and he told me he had found evidence of a rat in his basement. He asked, “Do you think I have a rat problem?”

What?  Are you kidding me? A big fat ugly rat in your house and you’re asking me if it is a problem?

Now, I don’t know about you…but if I find evidence of a rat in my house, I’m going to take immediate action.  Rats and my wife do not mix…..under any circumstances.

NO…..not at all……no way!

Roof rats (Rattus rattus) are rampant in the Atlanta Metro Area….just as they are in all metropolitan areas in America.  They have been living in our houses for thousands of years. It’s their natural habitat.

Roof rats are referred to as “commensal rodents”.  Commensal means, “lives with man” or “shares man’s table”.

Let me suggest one thing to you.  If you even THINK you hear something in your attic or basement….if you even THINK you smell a strange “amonia-like odor” in your basement or attic….if you even THINK you have found droppings from what could be a rodent…..you need to take immediate action!”

He went on to suggest some immediate action you could take, and of course, one of the action you could take would be to call Hal.

Hal, you see, has a company called North Fulton Bug Extermination and if I lived in North Fulton, and had a bug problem, there is only one man I would call and that’s Hal.  Apart from the fact that he’s a mate of my mate Mike Stewart, the Internet Audio & Video Guy, Hal, through his emails, has established that he’s

1. Passionate and knowledgeable about bug extermination
2. A Really Nice Guy

His website bears that out  and note, he’s using video to immediately connect with and communicate with harrassed householders with a bug problem.

Now, you might be wondering how Hal became such a cutting edge web marketeer and the answer is, of course, he wasn’t, but he’s a fishing buddy of Mike Stewart, who is brilliant at internet video and audio marketing.  one of my first mentors online actually.

And I think it’s a brilliant story that shows the power of the internet to market existing real world businesses, even very local business, who have a traditional business model but open minds when it comes to marketing.

Mike’s site also has a brilliant video promoting a local carpet company.  There are well edited videos of all the staff just talking about their customer service ethos, and why they are so proud of working there.  Where would I go for carpet if I lived in Georgia?  Well not some faceless shop where nobody cared about what they do or sell, that’s for sure.

I email Hal sometimes to let him know his emails light up the inbox of someone in the UK, and he always responds with amazement and delight.  Do you think he realises he is running the risk of becoming the Gary Vay.ner.chuk of the bug exterminating world?  A cult hero….

I might start a Facebook Fanclub for Hal.  what would he make of that, I wonder?

where am I going with all this?

Dunno, except I’ve just got back from Tamkin Riaz’s and Michael Young’s Mastermind Networking event in London where I was delighted to meet a roomful of new people, all successful, positive, upbeat people who are barely registering the credit crunch let alone being affected by it.  Specialists from all areas of the wealth creation arena -from all over the world – and very nice people.

Property investors whose long term investments are making a rental profit for the first time in ages, internet marketing specialists whose businesses are booming as everyone wakes up to the fact that a “job for life” is the riskiest thing you can bank on, and that the banks are the last places you should keep your cash.  Everyone is looking for another way, so if you have a success story, you can inspire others to changet their lives too, and boy, is that needed.  Tell your story, and exchange some energy.  Make some money while those who are not looking to change their mindset panic.

All of this was contrasting sharply with the blank, grey, miserable faces on the 8.15am commuter train from Shoreham to London.

And the man on GMTV this morning who took 21 weeks of serious, full time job seeking, to find another job exactly the same, and exactly as vunerable as the one he had been made redundant from.

If only he had applied himself so diligently to finding another way to make money rather than trading your hours for a pittance.  If only he had known there was “another way”.

Today, we made a list of the challenges of the average person, when trying to get to grips with property investing and internet marketing and then we tried to brainstorm what the solutions might be, in trying to get that average person to overcome those challenges and how to get them to take action.

As you might expect from a roomful of dynamic entrepreneurs, talented speakers and business people, by the end of the day, we had abandoned the “how to make the horse drink, having led him to water” rough plan for the day, and had come up with a MASSIVE money making scheme of our very own.

Herding cats, as Greg & Andy used to say of our meetings at Passive Investments in the early days.

Great fun, and thanks to Tamkin and Michael for organising the day and changing the venue from Luton to London so I could attend.  And I think I’ve met some joint venture partners and potential event organisers for my swiftly burgeoning speaking career.

Off to Manchester at 5.45am tomorrow (man!) to spend a day with one of my first ever Money Gym clients ever, to review his wealth creation actions over the last five years, and plan the next five.  Then to Central Manchester to speak for “Build Your Wealth” – you can still book to attend this interesting two days

Flying, luxury hotels, taxis, I absolutely love it.  Effortless travel, old friends and new and just great fun.

Tickets are flying out for the Property Extravaganza now, and Judith is reaching new paroxysms of excitement as she organises the speaker webinars to help encourage you to come along and help us help The Big Issue, who help the homeless help themselves.

She won’t rest till all 200 tickets are gone, and we are a quarter of the way there, with a month to go still.

Are you coming yet?  If not, why not?

http://www.themoneygym.com/events/property

we put on bloody marvellous events and even if you come for no other reason than to do what I’ve done today, which is hang out with dynamic, optimistic, positive, clever people………well, that’s a good enough reason, eh?

Gotta go, pan fried cod with asparagus, safron potatoes and a portugaise sauce (sundried tomatoes, garlic, parsley, white wine etc apparently) on the go next door….washed down with a glass of Judith’s present to the birthday boy, Steve.

YUM!

Have fun, we always do.

Nicola

Got A Website You Are Not Using?

Do you have a niche website or domain name you are not using? Perhaps you have several…..

Not sure what to do with it?

Why not list it for auction on a site like http://www.SitePoint.com?  Think ebay for website businesses!

I can see sites on there, only established last year, with only a couple of thousand unique visitors a month, no mailing list, no Google page rank, for sale at $3000 (buy it now) or minimum bid $500.

Do you have a website that needs more traffic and inbound links?

Why not buy a related site, with traffic and Google page rank, for $50 or $100 and not only create links to your site, but then look at how you can improve the one you have just bought, using what you learn in the Money Gym?

Do you want instant online income?

Why not buy a site that is generating revenue already?

If you spend $1000 to buy a site that is making $200 a month, it will take you less than a year to go into profit, and get you a 100% ++ return on your investment.

No idea what I’m talking about?

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, why not join me at Gary & Mark Vurnum’s one day “Recession Proof Income” workshop in Gatwick on Sunday? That’s 25th January and it’s very, very affordable.

I’ll be making a surprise guest appearance – Gary and Mark put on the first ever internet workshop I ever went to, in 2003, where I learned how to use Google adwords to dominate the bed & breakfast market in Worthing!!

http://www.recessionproofincome.com?mark

Cheers
Nicola

Want To Work With Nicola?

Do you have a new or established business that would benefit from more sales, more effective marketing – both on OR offline – or new digital products to add to your bottom line profits?  If so, would you like to work with me?

There are several ways you can do that and there’s one for every budget:

1.  Free

Join me on my weekly TV show at http://www.MoneyGym.tv and ask me your burning wealth creation or internet marketing question.  Next show Wednesday 1pm.  Submit your questions in advance here on the blog at http://www.themoneygym.com/blog/2008/11/nicola-money-today/

2.  £330 per year

Join The Money Gym Silver Level – buy the ebook to get a free 30 days trial and you actually save £2.50 / $3.50 http://www.themoneygym.com/book Then come along to our great workshops at a massive discount – I host every one.

3.  £1000 per day OR A Monthly Retainer TBA

CONSULTING:  So many of our clients have asked me if I would consult with them on their overall business’ marketing & sales strategy, I’ve decided to give this a go and see if I like it.  Think of me as a non-executive Sales & Marketing director, sitting on your board.  I can visit your business or work remotely, and can be at the end of the phone, email or skype for advice at any time.   Email me about your business at nicola [at ] themoneygym.com

BRANDING:  I am the official “Wealth Coach in Residence” for Visa International Plc and Pampers Nappies iVillage.   They pay me to appear on their website (and a bit more to be exclusive to their company within their niche), to interact with their forum users and to speak to journalists about wealth creation and comment on topical issues, on their behalf.  If you would like to discuss how I could bring value to your website, just email me to discuss it further.  nicola [at ] themoneygym.com

4.  £2000 per 12 hours over three months

COACHING – INTERNET MARKETING ONLY – Yes I know I keep saying that I’m going to stop doing this, but I enjoy it so much!  And I’m saving up for something very special so I’ll go another three months at least.  I offer coaching, by telephone, using GoToMeeting (I can see your screen and you can see mine) and email, on internet marketing particularly. Check out how I like to work here http://bit.ly/internetmentoring and then email me your ideas to nicola [at ] themoneygym.com

I can add Tuesdays to the Thursdays offered on the site.

This fee is equivalent to your selling 84 ebooks at £25 and that’s much more likely with my help / mentoring / coaching.

5.  £5754 per year

Join the Money Gym Gold programme
http://www.themoneygym.com/gold

I’m very active on this, our top level programme.  Even though you would be assigned your own personal coach, for your inspiration/accountability calls, I join in and coach our Gold members via private webinar and email – either in the group on the Mastermind Google Group or privately by email.

Your choice!

Let’s make 2009 a brilliant year for your business together!

Warm regards

Nicola

Nicola Cairncross Author, Speaker & Founder of The Money Gym

Money Gym TV – Guy Levine Interviewed

Poor old Guy Levine, he just happened to drop by to view the show and lo and behold, the next thing he knows, he’s being interviewed on Skype! He SAID he didn’t have a webcam and we will have to believe him as he works in an office with 9 employees now! Not like the good old days when he got up in the middle of a webinar to let the scally in delivering his fridge!

We cover web marketing, flying your helicopter to speaking gigs, what we got up to in Vegas, and how Guy has grown his business from a one-man band with outsourcers to a proper grown up company with his very own office. Find Guy at Web Marketing Advisor

Watch the show here (click the screen) and follow wealthcoach on www.Twitter.com to get notified when the show goes live!  Ask your questions for next week, or request an interview here >>>

This post was sponsored by Money Gym Gold – the only 1:2:1 coaching programme that has been making millionaires since 1999!

Only Business Sector NOT Suffering From Credit Crunch

Helen Loveless, in The Mail on Sunday reports on the ONLY business sector not suffering from the credit crunch … can you guess what it is?  She says:

Passive Income – Google Trends Rank Us!

When The Money Gym launched it’s first “Passive Income – 90 Day Internet Challenge” and sent out our press release, little did we think that we would trigger a spike in Google Trends tracking of the key phrase “passive income”.

Here’s how we explained it:

“Whilst the coaches at The Money Gym (www.themoneygym.com) are huge believers in the importance of educating ourselves about the various ways of creating wealth, they are equally aware that nothing beats learning by doing. So, they’ve decided to encourage people to just get down and do it with The Money Gym Passive Income Challenge.

Nowadays, we are always hearing about the big bucks that can be made on the internet, millions of dollars/pounds in one day sometimes, and the concept of making money while you sleep is an exciting one — if true. Wouldn’t it be fantastic to sit at home in our pajamas eating left-over Easter eggs, watching Jeremy Kyle on the telly and stopping only briefly to see how many more sales have pinged into our Paypal account?

Just one ebook sale per day @ £20, from one one-page website, would make an extra £7300 a year — enough for a new car or a couple of nice holidays. Two or three ebooks doing the same would make £21,900 — nearly a full time wage. The beauty of the Internet is that you do the work once, and the money keeps coming.

But the reality is that many people end up making a tenner here, twenty quid there, but never get much further.

In contrast, Nicola Cairncross, founder of the Money Gym, has built a six-figure business marketed entirely online and once made £14,000 in one weekend from one mailout. She knows exactly why people run out of steam in the quest for passive income — in her experience would-be internet entrepreneurs often aren’t prepared to focus attention in one place, on one thing, for long enough to make it work.

Nicola suggests focusing on just one thing – one information product, one niche or one passionate interest – and take consistent regular actions that include:

• Creating a web presence — a sales page, a brochure site, a blog. All of them preferably.
• Capturing visitors’ details, encouraging them to subscribe to ezines (online newsletters).
• Turning visitors into raving fans by providing regular, maybe even daily, valuable content.
• Having a system to automate the selling of our product.
• Replicating the process.

As Nicola says, “like creating wealth, making money online is simple but it’s not easy, you have to get off your “assets”, learn new skills and take some action”.

To encourage — or even bully their Money Gym members to success, Nicola and business partner Judith Morgan have decided to set up an Internet Challenge. It’s a three-month personal challenge for anyone who has day-dreamed about creating passive income, or perhaps started but fizzled out along the way.

Anyone can join them for what will be a three-month personal challenge by visiting http://www.TheMoneyGymClub.com and joining the club at Silver Level.

Already people are getting excited about their goals, swapping resources and information…with Nicola on hand to keep everyone focused. And The Money Gym are further incentivising their new Silver members and supporting them in the Challenge by giving them free lifetime access to Nicola’s 12-Step Internet Marketing Home Study Course – which retails for £1450 – and membership of a private email support group. This will provide encouragement, resources and a kick up the backside!

The Money Gym has helped hundreds of people along the road to financial independence (and created millionaires along the way) via their 1:2:1 Money Gym Gold wealth coaching programme. It is a powerful, practical down to earth programme that teaches participants a solid and proven way of creating wealth, with a choice of ways to suit your personality. These could be a choice of, or a combination of high risk, high return investment, solid bricks and mortar, or building a business that you can sell or use to set you up for life”.

So 60 days in, how are the participants getting on?  I thought I would ask them to update you here on the blog – which apart from inspiring you all, will give their projects a useful link from a blog now ranking 3/10 on Google Page Rank. 

So guys, who is going to be first to step up to the comments box?

Video & Audio – A Simple Guide

If you want to add video and audio to your blog / website (and you should!)  there are a number of inexpensive turnkey solutions to this, the best of which is Armand Morin’s Generator suite of products including InstantAudioGenerator and InstantVideoGenerator.

However, my mentor in all of this is Mike Stewart who you can find at www.FromTheDeskofMikeStewart.com – he owns his own recording studio in Nashville and speaks at every internet marketing event as he’s passionate about this. He has some very inexpensive tutorials on DVD or to download, and walks you through all the equipment you need (and never more than you need!)

TECHIE STUFF:  I use either a handheld digital FlipVideo (great quality and perfect for testimonials) or a simple inexpensive camcorder on a tripod, and a really decent mic which makes a huge difference (either a hand-held mic or a lavalier mic which clips to my collar and plugs into the camcorder) or a desk based studio quality mic, which connects to my computer via an Edirol soundbox.

I have a lightsnake which connects a mic to the puter without a soundbox, but have never managed to make that work – same with my firewire which connects the camcorder to the puter. So I soldier on with USB connections and they work fine.I use Mike’s simple bit of software which captures the sound and video together into a short .AVI video which I can then edit. To edit, you can use Windows Movie Maker (Start menu > Accessories > WMM) or now I use Sony Vegas Movie Maker – allows you to layer the “5 essential elements of great TV” which is moving pictures, still pictures, sound/music, effects, text. I then turn the edited .AVI file into either an MPEG or WMV file for uploading to YouTube / Google Video, or a FLASH movie for streaming from our own site.To create the latter, I use Mike Stewart and Jim Edwards FLV Producer software (very inexpensive) then their FLV Player Creator, which uploads the video and the code for the “little TV” you see.

All of these bits of software cost between $40 and $90 and they all simplify the process and streamline it.

OUTCOMES: To give you an idea, I can film a short movie and have it online in about 15 minutes. Just yesterday, someone booked on one or our workshops and quoted the podcast as how she heard about us.

If you upload a big video file to Google, such as a .AVI or .WMV file, you can then download it as an MPEG4 which you can then easily video podcast for folks to look at on their new iPhone – we use Hipcast.com which also podcasts audio and video via iTunes, but I do know how to do it from your Wordpress blog too now.

See some examples at www.MoneyGym.tv or on our TV channel at YouTube – www.YouTube.com/wealthcoach

Blog On The Move

Well, you can probably see that we moved our blog from our beloved Typepad to Wordpress eventually and after a very false start a few weeks ago.  Hmmmm, it’s more correct to say that Lea Woodward of www.ProjectWoodward.com moved it for us – and at a very reasonable fee too!

There were issues with our server and if you are not in the know, as I’m not about that level of techie’ness, it can stop you dead in your tracks.  But Lea sorted it out.  Which is ironic as Lea used to be one of my internet marketing mentoring clients – still that’s as it should be, the client outstripping the coach!

Now, for all of you out there who have started a blog on Typepad on my advice, don’t worry!  And keep blogging!

1.  No matter what they say, Wordpress is not as easy to use as Typepad, even with expert instructions

2.  You can very easily export your Typepad blog and import it into Wordpress if you want to, later.

So why have we moved then?

I’m on a mission to get our traffic up, and to improve our Search Engine Optimisation even further and I have finally been convinced that having your blog hosted on your own URL is one of the ways to do this.

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