This is the first of a series of posts where I help you to get started in business on the internet.

Today, I’m going to talk about the one key ingredient to success on the internet and give you an overview of the whole process of setting up your first internet business. The following posts in this series will go through each of the steps in more detail giving you a clear picture of what it is you need to do next.

First of all I’d like to congratulate you on deciding to start an internet business – it’s one of the easiest and cheapest businesses to get started in the world – however it does require some effort and you may need to spend some money. In fact there’s a trade-off between how hard you are prepared to work and how much you spend. I’ll explain more about that later…

Let’s get started…

It’ all in your mind…
Yes, the biggest obstacles most people face in starting an internet business are the ones that are in their own heads – their beliefs and their mindset. I know, I was there once

You may have read about people making money, lots of money on the internet but do you really believe you can do it? Do you really? Do you have limiting beliefs about money and making money. Maybe your parents were poor and you believe that you can only earn a little bit more than they did.

Are you ready to put in some effort. Or are you one of these people that is lured in by the latest “make money overnight with just two clicks of your mouse” offer. Do you keep spending money on e-books that either are just plain nonsense or that you don’t do anything with…

These are all symptoms of someone who either has a problem with their beliefs or their mindset. If you don’t have the right beliefs or your mindset is not good it probably won’t stop you from succeeding eventually. But you will take a lot longer and find it much harder.

So don’t even start thinking about your business yet. Spend an hour or so examining yourself and finding out where you might trip yourself up. Assume that there will be some sort of problem, you’re like an explorer tracking down negative beleifs in the jungle of your mind!

Being clear on the enemy within will help you to avoid the traps you might set for yourself. For more help on personal development and getting the right mindset, take a look at the achieving your dreams blog .

Know where you’re going
Perhaps the key ingredient to success is in knowing where you are going and what you want to achieve with your business. Here are a few things to think about:

What do you want your new internet business to do for you?

• Be a second income
• Make enough money to let you quit your boring job
• Make you a millionaire
• …

How big do you want it to be?

• Just you – quite normal when you’re starting out?
• A team of employees – you’ll need more people if it’s going to be more than a lifestyle business

How do you think you’re going to make money – you may find you change your mind later, but right now you need to have a good starting point:

• Selling your own e-books and information products
• Selling other peoples e-books and information products
• Selling real products
• Your own
• Someone else’s
• Selling your services as an expert in …
• Selling advertising space on your very popular website
• …
• Some combination of the above

You can see there’s a load of ways to make money on the inernet and you may find that as you go through the next few steps your ideas change, but you should start with an idea in mind.

Some time spent planning before you start will help you be much clearer on just what you need to do and to avoid all the distractions that the enemy of anyone starting a business.

Don’t give up the day job!

Whatever choices you make, you need to be prepared for the long haul.

Now, on the internet, the long haul is not a long as it can be in the real world, but it might well take you a year or two before you start seeing a significant amount of income.

Dealing with the financial pressures of supporting yourself and your family can be very hard, and it can make it hard, if not impossible to get your business going. What’s worse, the pressure of not bringing in money can derail your mindset that you’ve worked so hard on…

You need to be able to support yourself and your family (if you have one!) while you’re starting your business. And it will be really helpful to have a little bit of spare money to spend on your business. At the very least you’re going to need to pay for web hosting and one or two other bits and pieces.

So the best advice you can take is: Don’t give up the day job if you’ve got one. Fitting in starting your business around having to do a full day’s work and the daily grind of the commute can be hard, but with careful management of your time it is possible.

Almost everyone who’s started an internet business has started in this way until they’ve got enough income to cover their basic living costs. Once you get to that point, going full time will be easy as you’ll already be skilled at running your business.

Ignore false prophets

You know who I mean. Those silver tongued salesmen who promise instant overnight riches.

There may be a very lucky exceptional few who have just the right combination of skills, mindset and belief that lets them become instant overnight successes.

And there are always a few people who buy the product and use it to make some money instantly…

Until you dig deeper and find that those people spent years and thousands of dollars trying out endless instant success formulas!

The reality is that the vast majority of people need to acquire new skills, develop the right mindset, and put in some effort before they succeed

So prepare yourself for the long haul and be pleasantly surprised if you manage to get there faster.

For more thoughts on this topic go here.

The ‘secret’ formula that will propel your business to the stratosphere

So far we’ve talked a lot about planning your new internet business. I’ll finish this article off with an overview of the process of taking action and getting your business going. But before I do I want so share one absolutely vital piece of information with you…

It’s THE formula for a successful internet business, in fact for success in the offline world as well. When you first see it, it may seem far too simple, but this formula has profound consequences for your business. That’s why I’m bringing it up here. Look at it and remember it. We’ll be referring back to it throughout the rest of this course.

So here’s the formula for success on the internet:

PROFIT = CUSTOMERS X SALES – COSTS

You want profits – that what is returned to you as the owner of the business. To make those profits you need to find some customers and sell them something. The two ways to make more money are either to find more customers – get better at marketing on the internet or sell them more stuff – either more expensive items or just more items.

Just about everything you do on the internet is aimed at increasing your customers and your sales.

Both finding customers and selling them something will cost you money. It can be a very small amount on the internet, or you can spend a lot, especially if you want to find customers quickly.

However much you choose to spend, you are aiming to make your business profitable. The amount you spend should be less that than the total money you earn from your customers.

When you first start out you may well find that your costs are at least as high if not higher than the money you earn from your customers. However with just a little bit of tweaking your can turn your business around and make it profitable.

So what do I do next?
In the next few posts we are going to be covering everything you need to know to get a business started. In fact there are literally hundreds of choices but I’ve narrowed it down to a few that I’ve used and that I’ve seen other people use with great success.

We’ll start with market research – finding out who your customers are and what you’re going to sell to them

We’ll look at how to learn from your competitors. Yes, it may come as a disappointment to you but you’ll have competitors. Just think of them as a good thing – where there’s competitors there are customers! You’ll need to find out how to set yourself apart from the crowd and I’ll show you how to do this

Then we’ll get into the nitty gritty of setting up your internet shop front – putting up web pages that are going to persuade your customers to spend money with you.

Now you’re ready for some customers in the next post we’ll talk about how you’re going to get customers to your web pages – TRAFFIC. You’ll see that you can spend anything from zero to a lot to get traffic – the choice is yours

Now you’ve got visitors to your web page and those first few sales are trickling in we’ll talk about the other secret to success on the internet – testing, tracking and tweaking. This post will show you how to turn your business into a goldmine.

In the final post we’ll look at where next – you’ll have been on quite a journey to get to this point, but it doesn’t need to end here. The internet is limitless, you can take your business as far as you want.

See you soon for part 2 – marketing

Are you ever unsure about what are your real priorities for developing your internet business?

Is your work life balance loaded in favour of work?

I’ve struggled with all these questions while I’ve been trying to start up my internet business. The answer of course is to be able to make sure you have a clear plan both for the long term and for the short term right down to the tasks you need to each and every day.

So how can you be clear about what your priorities are and what you need to do next with any activity you are planning - whether it’s business or your day to day life?

I’ve tried a whole range of different tools like to-do lists, timelines, putting post it notes all over the place etc. While they can be helpful I’ve mostly found that they just don’t cut it…

Just doing the tools can take up a large part of the day. They don’t make it easy to juggle priorities and it’s hard to relate what you’re doing to the bigger picture.

Just recently I’ve been introduced to an excellent piece of free software called Freemind that has made it much easier for me to plan my time and let me fit more in.

The benefit of using Freemind is that it’s real easy to first of all brainstorm all the tasks you need to do, then organise them in a logical way so that you can get through them efficiently and finally to set and change priorities as you uncover new information.

You can organise just about anything - from a single day through to a complex project, breaking down all the tasks into simple lists, organising them, prioritising them and moving them round when you need to. It’s all done on your computer screen quickly and easily. Once you’ve got your plan you can get on with it knowing that you’re making the best use of your time you possibly can.

I would strongly recommend checking out Freemind, it is complete free and very easy to install and get working.

You can get it from sourceforge.net, but it’s quite an effort to wade your way through that site (if you’ve ever tried downloading from sourceforge you’ll know what I mean).

My top tip is to get Freemind completely FREE from Bob the Teacher’s site at discoverfreemind.com. If you go there you’ll find he is also offering some other very useful free stuff to make it even easier to use Freemind

If you go to discoverfreemind.com you’ll also see Bob is offering some training on installing and using Freemind. I’ve been through that course and I’d recommend it as a great way to get started using Freemind.

So what are you waiting for? Check out Freemind now and get the benefits straight away…

Technorati Tags: Freemind, discoverfreemind.com

Do you want to know how to upgrade your blog? Afraid that you’ll end up losing all your work?

It doesn’t have to be that way if you upgrade step by step.

Read on for some simple instructions on how to upgrade your blog…

A few words about Wordpress blogs
If you’re not familiar with Wordpress blogs there’s a few things worth knowing:

Your blog is stored in 2 parts:
1. The database which contains all the posts and other information
2. The program files which run your blog

You shouldn’t have to do anything with the database unless you’re on a very old version of Wordpress so you just need to update the program files, which is what you get when you download Wordpress.

Unless you’re using the default installation of Wordpress (not recommended as it’s a real turn off), you will have added some new files to the program files to customize the look and feel. These files are all stored in the wp-content subdirectory inside your Wordpress installation and you don’t want to change these.

Any major change such as a Wordpress upgrade has a certain risk attached to it. You must backup your existing blog before you start. If you do a backup then you can always restore the old version if all else fails…

Armed with these pieces of information, you can get started:

Backup your old blog

You will need to backup both your blog program files (contained in the directory that’s the root of your Wordpress installation) and your blog database as the new version of wordpress will attempt to write to the database in your hosting account as part of the upgrade.

There are some excellent instructions on how to back up your blog on the Wordpress site.

Download Wordpress 2.5

You can get it as a zip file here

Download the program files either to your computer or to your host. If you know how to unzip files on your host it’s worth copying the zipped version to your host and unzipping there. Otherwise, unzip the dowloaded files on your computer ready for copying over to your host following the wordpress installation instructions

Install Wordpress 2.5

The best way to do this is to follow the installation guide provided by Wordpress.

One or two hints:

If, like me, you’ve got a simple installation you won’t need to touch the wp-content directory - leave it alone:-)

Remember the all important wp-config file - without it your blog won’t work. I accidentally deleted mine, luckily I had a backup:)

That’s all - enjoy Wordpress 2.5

I just can’t recommend it highly enough. This is great material that has made an enormous difference in how I approach affiliate marketing.

What’s more, Bob has gone completely crazy and he’s giving a whole 2 hour lesson away for free right now (that’s right, I paid for it, but you get it for free…) It’s got to be worth at least $100 on it’s own check it out here:

>>Get your FREE Lesson immediately<<

Read on to find out more about why this is such a great course…

PROS
** The eight lessons of the course add up to a comprehensive plan to get you started in Affiliate Marketing
** Bob is a great teacher - he explains the material clearly and succinctly (maybe because he spent 10 years as a teacher in real life:-) ), he’s the easiest person I’ve come across to learn from.
** Bob has learnt his stuff from some of the best affiliate and internet marketers around today
** There’s an active support forum and an excellent set of course materials
** There’s ongoing support for a limited time after the course has finished

CONS
** The course runs at a blistering pace - if you want to keep up you’re going to need several hours per week for ‘homework’
** You may find you have to work even harder if you’re a complete newbie. Some knowledge of the basics of internet marketing, setting up websites etc. is really useful

In any case, you should check out the FREE OFFER, you’re bound to learn something useful from it and it will give you a flavour of the full course.

Trying to build a website?

Fed up with battling with HTML?

Don’t want to pay for an expensive piece of software?

Well you’re in luck! There are several free WYSWIG editors you can download from the internet. 

If you’ve tried some of the free editors that have been around for a while you’ll know that they can be a bit ‘quirky’ - or even downright annoying However there’s a new package out that has all the benefits and none of the disadvantages of other free packages…

I’ve been testing the latest free editor to appear - My Free Website Builder - and I can say that it’s excellent.

Here’s why:

It does what it says on the tin!

1. > Completely NO HTML Required…”What You See Is What You Get” Interface!
2. > Easy To Use Software With Step-By-Step User Guide & Video Tutorials Included!
3. > Comes With Over 100+ Professional Website Templates Included FREE!
4. > Equipped With Convenient Built-in FTP Software For Instant One-Click Publishing!
5. > Professional Full-Version Website Builder Software…No Upgrade Required!
6. > Certified 100% Clean With Absolutely Zero Spyware, Adware Or Malware

I’ve tried it and it’s a great little product with some pretty nifty features. The authors have even provided a bunch of excellent video tutorials in case you need them.

You can use it on existing sites as well - unlike a lot of the free editors it doesn’t make a mess of the file.

All you need now are some nice graphics to add a bit of zing to your site…

My Free Website Builder

Technorati Tags: free website builder, website builder, easy website builder, best website builder 

Make Money Online
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=John_S._Rhodes]John S. Rhodes

Your Goal: Make Money Online

There are several easy ways to make money online. While most businesses require a significant amount of upfront work and capital, an online business requires only moderate amounts of work and a very small investment - typically $30 or less.

Getting Organized and Motivated To Make Money Online

Before getting starting trying to make money online, follow these simple steps to get motivated and organized to work on your new business:

First, clear a work area for yourself in your home. Make sure it is far away from any distractions. The best place is a spare bedroom, preferably with a door that you can close to avoid distractions.

Second, figure out why you want to make money online. Write down a list of reasons. What do you wish to achieve? What would you do if you happened to get rich overnight? You can’t be irresponsible with your money, or your business, or it will never flourish. Setup a simple plan to deal with your finances so you don’t blow it all when the gold starts flowing in.

Third, take 15 minutes every night to plan what you need to do in the next day. This will make you far more productive. List things in order from top priority to lowest priority. I recommend getting a dry erase board and have it placed in your office area so you can easily erase things off of your list as you complete this. This will help give you a sense of accomplishment.

Fourth, sketch out a solid plan for your online business. While it costs less and requires far less time to launch an internet business, you should still be planning out every step of the way. It will allow you to organize a daily “attack plan” to advance your business goals and make money online.

Fifth, stick to your plan. You can’t flock from one thing to another in search for the “next great way” to make money online. Stick to the fundamentals - the stuff that has worked for years, and won’t stop working. Find a market need, and fill the need. Once you have a plan, stick with it! You’ll be surprised how far a little focus goes.

Make Money Online With The Simple Formula

Now that you’re organized and prepared to make money online, it’s time to teach you something BIG. All online business and ways to make money online follow one simple formula:

Product + Traffic + Sales Page = $$$

Write that formula down. Let it sink into your head. It’s simple, but powerful!

No matter what you’re doing online, you’re following this formula. If you have a website that has tons of content and you’re making money through Google AdSense, you’re providing traffic to someone else’s product (or service) and sales page. You’re providing them with leads in exchange for a cut of their (and Google’s) profits. Of course, this is just one example. We could others, but we’re not here to waste your time.

So, what’s the key that REALLY allows you to make money online?

Simple: Take complete control of the formula yourself!

Get the traffic and direct it to your OWN product and your OWN sales page to really pull in the cash. YOU need to own the entire process yourself! Don’t rely on affiliate marketing or AdSense for your well-being. You could be squashed like a bug at anytime - after all, they’re the ones making all the money.

Unfortunately, it’s difficult to research and develop your own product. It takes months of hard work or a hefty investment. Many people put in the investment and don’t make money online. There is a great alternative though, but we can’t reveal it quite yet. You have the pass the “test” first…

The Simple Test That Determines If You’re Ready To Make Money Online

If you can’t honestly answer “yes” to the following questions, you need to sit down and think twice about starting an online business:

* Are you willing to take risks?

* Will you be able to commit at least 30 minutes a day to your online business?

* Are you able to stay focused and determined?

* Are you committed to long-term results?

* Do you have a clear goal of how much you want to earn?

These questions should get you thinking about what it really takes to “make it” online. Even if you’re just looking to supplement the income from your job, it takes time and effort to do so.

Looking For A Solid Business Plan To Make Money Online

Now that you understand what you need to make money online, it’s time to talk more about that organized plan we briefly mentioned earlier. You should look for a solid business plan with these characteristics:

*Simple and easy to implement.

* High, long-term income potential.

* Repeatable: the more “work” you put in, the more results you get

* Allows you to “own” the entire formula: Product + Traffic + Sales Page

* Doesn’t rely on others for your income (e.g., NOT affiliate marketing)

Unfortunately, most online courses don’t meet these criteria. They encourage you take the easy path which produces only short-term results. Don’t take their word for it - others are getting rich off of your hard work. You’re getting only a tiny fraction of the pie, since a long-term customer can be worth hundreds, if not thousands. Would you be willing to trade a $10 or $20 commission for hundreds of dollars in the long run? You bet!

The Really Simple Method To Make Money Online

This is where the Really Simple Method
comes in. It’s 100% free and lays out a really simple step-by-step blueprint for you to
start making money online, right now.

It allows you to take control of the entire formula. You’ll generate the traffic, have your
own product and a high quality sales page ready to earn money for you. We’ll show you
how to do it, every step of the way. No, you won’t have to spend the weeks required to
develop your own product - we’ll show you a secret “shortcut” to the process that allows
you to start raking in the cash within 20 minutes!

We even include video tutorials that show you exactly how to upload files to your webhost
and create a Paypal Buy Now button. The Really Simple Method is perfect for online
business beginners and advanced marketers alike.

Go there right now: http://reallysimplemethod.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=John_S._Rhodes http://EzineArticles.com/?Make-Money-Online&id=497840

There are several sources for content, some of them are more favoured than others. If you want to get the best rankings in Google, you need to use some good quality unique content.

It is possible to get low quality content or fluff from very cheap writers that you can find on sites like elance, however Google’s increasingly sophisticated algorithms are getting better at spotting such content. If your content gets labelled as fluff, it will not get a good rating in Google.

The answer is to either write content yourself, making sure that it contains both the keywords you are writing about and plenty of relevant, useful and interesting information or find good quality writers (= not the cheapest) to write it for you.

It is also possible to find sources of content on the web such as ezine articles where you can pick up good content for free. The drawback is that you won’t be the only person with this content on your site so you will be penalised for duplicate content by Google. It is also possible to buy packages of content (known as Private Label Rights articles) realitvely cheaply. Again they will suffer from being non-unique although some services specialise in limited circulation.

Using non-unique content has its place especially when you are first starting out with a new website and need to populate the pages relatively quickly.

…But a lot of things are highly improbable:-)

To be an instant overnight success you need the right mental attributes, skills and knowledge that perfectly adapt you to the game of intenet marketing. If you’ve never been involved in internet marketing before, it is highly unlikely that you’ll have all the abilities you’ll need to be a success. To successfully make money online without serving a long apprenticeship you will need to have learnt all this stuff from past experience in other areas.

When you read about instant ovenight successes, the truth is they’ve all been years in the making.

That said, if you’ve got the patience to persist, the internet is a great place to be successful and possibly one of the easiest to be successful in.

An impressive claim, but does the Ultimate Wealth Package live up to it?

Let’s start by looking at what you’ll find in the package.

The package is one of the latest make money working online packages to be offered and it has enjoyed tremendous success since it’s release, so you’ve got to take it seriously. The book itself is one of the most complete collection of ways to make money on the internet I’ve seen.

Not only do you get the excellent basic package, but you get a massive 108 bonus items, some of them are good quality products that are being sold elsewhere on the internet. Taking that as a guide, the bonuses you’ll get with the Ultimate Wealth Package are genuinely worth more than the package itself.

One of the best bonuses is the $400 dollar value custom affiliate marketing website that Mark the creator of the package is currently giving away completely free. You should note that this is a time limited offer, so if you’re interested check out the Ultimate Wealth Package quickly by clicking here.

So does The Ultimate Wealth Pacakge really work?

The feedback from across the internet is yes it does! Plenty of people have bought this package, are using it and are reporting excellent results. These people are not just those on the Ultimate Wealth Package website, there’s people from around the internet.

However you do have to realize that the website is trying to convince you to buy this excellent package. In particular claims that you’re going to make massive amounts of money working just an hour a day should be taken with a pinch of salt - most people are working a few hours a day and earning a reasonable amount of money.

The true strength of this package is for people with relatively little experience of success on the internet who want to get their share of the bonanza that is out there. The comprehensive introduction to internet marketing and the help you get in getting going will make it easier for you to get started on your road to making money online and creating an independent lifestyle for yourself.

Conclusion

The Ultimate Wealth Package is a good package that delivers on the majority of it’s promises and provides and excellent set of bonuses. Particularly useful if you are beginner and you get there in time to get the free website offer. Check it out now!