Becoming an affiliate marketer is an awesome way to earn extra money. It can soon become your full-time income if you work hard enough.
If you are here, you are probably thinking about setting up your affiliate marketing business. This post is only going to deal with the website itself. Before you do this step, it is important that you have your strategy in place. This includes:
Select your niche. This might be kites or knitting or fashion
Doing your product and services research so you know what to market
Your Marketing Strategy. SEO or ADs or SOCIAL, or some combination
Domain name
Once you have decided this, you can find out how to set up an affiliate marketing website. These are the options you have.
The almost free route
If you have no money you have to learn how to make an affiliate website for free. You need to get googling. But basically, you are going to:
You have some money. Get a professional to build the site for you. This will give you time to work on the business. You can focus all your time on the money-making part. Product research, marketing material, and possibly Paid Ads.
Getting your creativity on and building an affiliate site can be mentally and financially rewarding.
You’ll learn a lot about your selected niche, business in general, and how online business works. You’ll find there are so many aspects, that once you start making money, you’ll pay someone else to do the parts that are hard.
Thrive Themes Suite is Your All-in-One Toolbox. Create a WordPress Website That Converts Visitors into Leads and Customers. But is Thrive Themes Suite really the best tool out there? Hard to answer as there are many tools available to WordPress, but it’s the one I choose to build client sites, funnels, and much much more.
I will dissect each of the different tools out there starting with the Web Builder
Thrive Themes Websites
With WordPress and building your site, there are a couple of routes you can take.
Free Route
Get your site hosted (Bluehost offers affordable and fast hosting for your WordPress Site), find a free theme that you like, find a whole lot of plugins that work together to give you what you need. The risk of doing it this way is that you have no customer support and limited functionality. It will be hard to customize the site (Unless you are a good PHP developer)
Buy a Theme Route
Find a theme that you like, and you have to pay for it. Buy a number of plugins that offer you premium features and 3rd party tools to build your email list. The costs can rack up as you continue to add functionality
Thrive Themes Suite Route
All in one tool. Thrive Themes Suite allows you to build quality websites with tons of functionality that you can drag and drop as you need. It’s conversion-focused and allows you to focus on your core business
Thrive caters to all your needs. Easy to brand for your business, with many design choices. There’s no other platform in the WordPress world that gives you the design freedom of Thrive Suite. You can build e-commerce sites for physical and digital products. With deep WooCommerce integration and access to 9 tools built by marketers to build conversion-focused websites, building sites that convert is easy.
Create Landing Pages and Funnels
Now you get to create the money-making machine. Your conversion-focused Landing page and funnel. Thrive Architect provides you with 290+ landing page templates. They all focus on specific needs you might have. One will be geared to lead generation, another to webinars, and even one focusing on getting you coaching clients. If there is a need out there, there is probably a funnel for you. And if you don’t like any, customize and create your own.
Building your email list is probably the most important feature of any online business. You need to build your list so you can give great offers to more and more people. With Thrive you can simply pull in opt-in pages and customize them quickly to your needs. There is also an option to create A/B testing to find out which designs work better.
There are 20+ API connections to popular marketing tools including Aweber, one email autoresponder software.
Thrive Quiz Builder helps you create professional-looking questionnaires that help you find out more about your audience. Find out what your customers want, and create it for them!
Create and Sell Online Courses
When you need to take your business to the next level and start to teach what you know, Thrive has you covered. Free and Paid courses allow you to build trust in your network.
Thrive takes away
Expensive 3rd Party Course Software
Complicated Learning Management Systems (LMS)
Lack of control over how you display your course material
Thrive Suite and Thrive Themes Apprentice give you all the control you need.
Thrive Themes Cost
As you can see, Thrive Themes Suite has a LOT to offer. So what are the costs involved? And do the costs outweigh the benefits.
You have to decide that yourself. But from where I am standing, Thrive Themes Suite is the perfect investment if you want conversion-focused sites.
The Packages
It’s a rather low cost of $19 a month, which is nothing if you need quickly create pages, quizzes, and offers. You can also buy different components separately.
Memberships
This will give you access to everything immediately. No need to keep purchasing as you need. And you always get the latest updates.
The is a huge cost benefit if you do eventually use most of the cool tools.
Individual Plan
If you are sure you are only going to use 1 or 2 features, then buy them individually.
Conclusion
Thrive will give you a neat, easy way to help convert those leads into customers.
As you start to use Thrive Themes Suite, you will continue to find new things you didn’t know existed.
And that keeps your business growing.
Learn How to Earn Income Online
With a Step-By-Step Blueprint to Guide You to Success.
It would be a bit of a lie to say that any side hustle will be easy. But, if you can find something you like doing or it takes you away from pain, then it could be seen as easier. We all want time and money freedom, but it only comes with putting in extra hours somewhere early on. So, what is the easiest side hustle then?
No two hustles are the same. And not all are equally easy. What is the measure of an easy side hustle?
It can be done in your spare time
When deciding on a project to earn extra cash, you need to know you have the time out of your busy day to do it. Especially if you are working full time with a family.
Something you are good at
It pays to work with skills you already have. By doing so, the learning curve will be quicker, and you’ll be able to make more money quicker. If you are good at building websites, perhaps this would be your starting point.
Something you are willing to learn
If you don’t think you have any real skills (very unlikely), or you want to learn something new, pick an area you are interested in. When I was building computer applications, it often took me to clients’ sites. From there I realized that I actually like communicating with clients. So I started a side hustle consulting on the side. I outsourced the actual work to better programmers than me.
Can fit in with your schedule
That same consulting business eventually could not fit into my schedule. It was just too time-consuming and not making enough for it to be worthwhile. So I focused on my job again. My current hustle in affiliate marketing is much better suited for me. I can do my 2-3 hours each day when I can fit it in. (Mostly in the morning when my brain is fresh!)
The question “What is the Easiest Side Hustle” has been answered for me.
Affiliate Marketing
If you are willing to put in consistent effort, over time you will learn all the skills necessary to be successful. And you just need to know a little about them all. When you start making money, you can outsource the ones you don’t like.
Although you can do this on your own, it’s always better to get the help and support you need to get it running like a pro. Six-Figure Mentors have guided me all the way. Their All-In-One Package costs $97 per month and gives you the following:
Hosting for your Website
Web Design Tools for WordPress
Training on how to build a Website
Training on where to find affiliate programs
Training on Email Marketing
Training on Social Media Marketing
Online Ads Training (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and more)
Do you make these mistakes in Affiliate Marketing Online Business?
I heard that people make them, I made them, and I stopped making them. But I am sure you can learn from me. They are common. But if I can change, so can you!
1. Waiting Too Long to Launch Your Affiliate Marketing Online Business
Trying to be perfect stops you from earning money early in online business. If you are like me, you always need things to be perfect.
In one of my previous “business ventures”, onthemark, I made this mistake and it cost me. Designer custom logo, business cards, and a pretty website. This all cost me time and money. The time I should have been getting customers. The time I should have been promoting. Soon I was out of money and frustrated.
Even if you have no money for advertising, share your links on Social Media. Send out a weekly email to all your friends and family. Connect with new people on Social Media sites. I still chat with all my new and old connections on LinkedIn and see if there is a fit for them in online business.
Get whatever you have in front of someone and get feedback.
2. Forgetting Your Story in Affiliate Marketing Online Business
You got into online business for a reason. Do you need extra cash? Do you like the idea of being the star of the show? Or you got “gatvol” of your job. (Gatvol is an Afrikaans word meaning, without being rude, fed up)
And of course, there was a build-up to that too. Your childhood, your failed marriage, and even a drug story or two. But don’t forget the good. The promotion, your new partner in this world. Your furry friends are always around to cheer you up. We are all made up of so many intriguing life moments that we remember as stories.
These all make you who you are.
Great marketing is great storytelling.
Tell a story that your customers can connect with and share with others.
That’s how you expand your message beyond your own borders.
3. Focusing On The Little Stuff
Like I eluded to earlier, don’t waste time on things that don’t make money! Just because it’s fun doesn’t mean it makes money! Focusing on things like branding and website design and layout won’t help you early on. Make sure you focus on the money tasks. Blogging, advertising, customer support, and getting it in front of your audience.
And a new one I learned recently; I’m busy creating a strategy around it, guest post blogging to drive traffic back to my site. Backlinks build authority.
4. Inconsistent Emails in Affiliate Marketing Online Business
Smart marketers build an email list. Even smarter marketers build a relationship with that list.
Are you only sending emails when you have a new product to offer? Or are you only sending emails once a month? Stay in regular contact with your people. 2-3 times at least these days. Give them regular values. Link them to your latest Blog, Podcast, or video.
5. Doing Everything Yourself
businessman holding modern city building skyscraper on shoulders real estate agent concept. Humans are building cities on their shoulders. Concept of creating the world of humanity.
You’ve got to treat your online business, like a business. Sounds easy right. But that means stepping out the way when you can benefit in time from someone else doing a better job at something than you!
Are you the content creator, webmaster, customer support, and still working a job?
You don’t have time to do it all. Learn the basics of a skill, then outsource it. Bring in extra money doing things you like and use that money to pay for outsourcing.
Even if it means trading your time for money in a skill you are good at. Use the money to pay a professional for something you are not good at. i.e. If you are good at web design, build sites for other up-and-coming businesses. Use the money to pay for something you hate, blogging or SEO.
Six-Figure Mentors recently brought these mistakes back to my attention. Most people don’t make it online because they try to do it all, and forget the reason they were doing it in the first place.
And yes, I am guilty too.
It’s amazing all the mistakes you can make in this online world and still make money.
Free bonuses include: Special invitation to their next streaming Masterclass, walking you through the EXACT steps and skills you need to learn to make your first 10 sales online.
Seeing you launch your Affiliate Marketing Online Business.
Are you a software developer looking to start your own profitable online business? Let me start by stating first: Business is always going to have its challenges. And it will be hard to continue at times. But once you have looked at all profitable online business ideas, picked one and pushed hard at it for several years, you’ll look back with pride at what you have achieved.
Maybe you have already tried to develop code for a friend’s business in your spare time. (Probably for little money) And it can be tough. Developing 8+ hours a day at your full-time job, then having to do it nights and weekends too. That can be taxing for anyone and will put undue pressure on your family and social life.
Although you might be in a very specific discipline, like Java, there are many alternatives to making money online other than coding. Your skills are very adaptable to many types of online business. There are many profitable online business ideas, but here are the ones I like. I’ve even made money from a few of them. After coding each day, it can be refreshing to focus on a different type of venture.
5 lucrative online business ideas
Web Development\Design Services
You can create Websites using classic programming languages like Java, Python or c#, but most of the time this is overkill. Many clients out there just want a website, landing page and maybe a sales funnel. All these components already exist in many free, or cheap, content management systems (CMS)
Solutions like WordPress have taken all the hard work out of creating a website, online store (WooCommerce) and blogging. The hardest thing to get your head around using these products is that there is minimal code. Most of the time you a building pages using a page builder and installing plugins.
It’s so easy these days, even non-technical persons can get into it with a bit of effort.
Thrive Themes is a plugin for WordPress that provided you with templates to build your websites. If you want to learn to build with Thrive Themes click HERE.
Online Software Development Course
If you are good at teaching what you know, create a course, and sell it. You can use WordPress Technologies like Thrive Apprentice (another one of those WordPress plugins) to house your online course. There is a yearly cost for Thrive Apprentice, but you can use it over and over and it does it all for you.
Here are a couple of my favourite online authors. Courses I have bought and used in the last few years of my software dev journey.
Josh Moroney, Ionic Expert, and independent creator. He leverages online technologies to showcase how to use Ionic. He has a blog with many posts on specific aspects of Ionic, and a full paid-for course on how to create solid, secure mobile applications using the Ionic Framework.
Another favourite of mine, Marco Behler utilises online technology to share his expert knowledge on Java and specifically Spring Boot Framework. With a free chapter or 2 in his course, I bought the rest because it helped me understand the framework and how it was built.
SEO Consulting Business
SEO is one of my favourite topics right now. I’ve been learning and implementing this in my business for the last couple of years now. But I have also been able to apply my knowledge to other businesses and gain them a competitive advantage, bringing them customers.
SEO is a long-term project for your website that will bring organic internet traffic to your site over time. Long-term means anywhere for 6 months to 2 years depending on your business type and competition in it. Consistency up to that point and beyond is key to SEO success.
SEO Requires:
Links – Relevant Links to both external and internal pages. They help Search engines like Google to qualify your authority. Site owners are only likely to link to reputable sources. So, you need to build your clients reputation with other sites too so they link back to your site.
Content – Search engines crawl your web pages to find relevant information that they can provide to a user doing a search. The closer the wording of your content is to a search, the more likely the search engine will rank you. The more people visit your site, the more the search engine will see you as an authority and push you higher in the search. Your aim is to be Number 1 in popular searches.
Page structure – The third component of SEO is page structure. Pages are written in HTML. So, when Google crawls your pages, it sees the HTML Tags. In HTML 5, the tags were enhanced to indicate much more information to the search engines. So, if you structure correctly, and embed the correct metadata, Google can index more correctly. This will in turn help you when being ranked. WordPress has plugins that allow you to set this data without ever looking at the code!
And of course, there is no contest when it comes to quality content. The more users use your information and the longer they stay on your page, the more authority you will gain over time. i.e. Higher up on the Google Search.
So, you have all the tech jargon and savvy, and no one to share it with?
Why not hone your skills as a writer, and deliver difficult to communicate information with a diverse audience of people?
You can write anything from Software manuals, API documentation, support documentation for systems. People buy these skills. It’s often easier to outsource to maintain quality.
You can check out Upwork if you are looking for a contract of any length. And you will never run out of new technology, so it’s an endless business (what you want!)
Digital Marketing Business
Digital Marketing is a broad term for helping your client, or yourself, sell your products or services online. It is focused on getting you to stand out from the crowd.
But in essence, you need a:
Platform Where can you find your prospects? Where are they likely to be hanging out online? It can be Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, or any other social platform. Here you can either run paid ads or simply post relevant content to your audience. If they like it, you need a call to action. Usually, a link to your landing page (fancy word for sales funnel/website)
Landing Page The landing page has a more detailed sales copy. It will highlight your product or service benefits and perhaps you’ll give away a gift to capture their name and email.
Ongoing Marketing Strategy This part is the key. You are unlikely to make a sale just because they gave you an email address. Once you have an email, you can market to them weekly. (Just don’t spam) You must manage your email list and provide the prospects with value every week. You also must keep offering your products or services. When they are ready, they’ll buy.
Software Development is a great career to be in. It often allows you to work from home, and with a team worldwide. And the pay is great.
But not everyone wants to program forever, like me. Some of us want to learn new skills in writing, client management, online authority and managing a business.
All these skills mentioned can be self-taught, you just need to apply yourself and learn.
Happy decision making!
Learn How to Earn Income Online
With a Step-By-Step Blueprint to Guide You to Success.
The December holidays gave me time to breathe again for a bit. Sometimes I don’t realize how focused and tight I am until I get significant time to chill. One gift I got this past holiday was a Remote Control Helicopter. I hadn’t flown one of these in a decade. It truly was a blessing to get back into a hobby that I had lost touch with for so long. It helped me relax and focus on a different activity; A fun activity. So I got thinking; When should you turn a hobby into a business?
When should you turn your hobby into a business?
This all depends on your situation. Are you willing to mix business with pleasure? Your hobby really could make your day-to-day fun, but there is always going to be an admin aspect to it. Will you stop enjoying the thing you love?
For me, I have started a business in a new area, simply because I want to learn what online business is all about. And I am enjoying it, and still making time for other fun activities. But for you, it might make more sense to business your hobby straight from the get-go.
Once I get my online business business (Yip, the word has to repeat) running, perhaps I’ll start in a new niche. Maybe to do with another enjoyment of mine, dogs!
Hobby vs Business
Hobby
A hobby is a leisure activity done in your spare time. You should have fun doing it and feel relaxed when done.
The benefits of a hobby can include:
Learning something new and gaining knowledge in something you love.
Feeling refreshed and fulfilled when done for the day
Having something to look forward to when you are at work
Business
A business is an entity that is engaged in commercial activity. There will invariably be some admin, billing, and tax concerns to look after. Also, lots of marketing. If it’s online, you’ll be writing tons of content each week, running ads, and connecting on social media.
The benefits of owning a business include:
Managing your own time
Some Tax benefits (Consult the tax professionals in your area on how to do this legally)
Financial reward when the business grows
Innovation
Social investment on a bigger scale
How to turn your hobby into a side hustle
Now that you have decided to turn your hobby into a side hustle, where do you actually start?
And if you are ready to take it online, click on the blue bar below
Start Your Own Affiliate Marketing Business Here
Do you have to declare a hobby business?
If you decide to take your hobby into the business space, then yes. Make sure you run it like a business. After all, it’s what’s going to support you in the long run. Just by putting my blog etc into a business protects the way I conduct it. Re-investing all the time, and making sure it keeps growing.
With that, enjoy your hobby, and maybe even make some money from it
Learn How to Earn Income Online
With a Step-By-Step Blueprint to Guide You to Success.
It’s a New Year; Hope you have a successful 2022. Did you get the needed rest over the festive period? Now that you have hopefully relaxed a bit, there is another heavy year ahead (as always). So how do we make sure we get the work done, but also have time to relax and spend focused time with family and friends. I’m sure you’ve heard it before, work life balance. So, let’s see how we can create work life balance.
What is Work Life Balance?
Work life balance is really making sure you fit in all the work and social activities into your 16 hour day. (Of course, we need 8 hours to sleep). This includes eating, hobbies, time with friends and family, reading, work, exercise, playing with your dog, etc. But if you put all the things you want to get done into a calendar, you’ll often find you won’t have time to do them all. At least not at once. And this is where the balancing and trade-offs begin.
Why is Work Life Balance Important?
By not paying attention to your work life balance, you could either focus too much on the fun activities, and achieve nothing, or you could focus too much on work and burn out! If you are spending too much time on your PC without breaks, eating while working, and checking in at work when you are spending time with family, you are probably on the road to burnout. Humans just can’t do more than one thing at a time. If you keep trying to, it will feel like you are always working and getting nothing done. Let’s see some key aspects we can look at to increase our chance of this work life balance.
How to create a Work Life Balance Program
Whenever I find myself losing the work life balance, I force myself to sit back and do nothing for a moment. Breathe a little, and maybe meditate to empty my mind. It’s usually important at this time to go through the following five steps. Probably because I am doing things that I should NOT be doing.
What are the five steps to work life balance?
1. Find Your True Values
If you know your true values it will help you focus only on the things that make you happy right now. There are many values that we would like to have, but they are all too often not our current values. For example, I was part of a chess club and enjoyed it for years. But after time, I was just going out of habit and not getting enough from it. Even though I love chess, it’s just not a value right now. So I eliminated it from my schedule.
2. Plan the Time for your Values
Once you have your current list of values, make sure you eliminate all the non-values from your schedule. Every time you schedule your fun activities, make sure they are in line with your values. You’ll feel a lot better only doing the things you like to do. Make sure you schedule at least one fun activity per week or as often as you think you need it. (Of course if one of your values is family, you need to nurture that daily)
3. Ensure you make time for Stress Relief and Exercise
There will always be stress, but we simply need to find ways to eliminate it after a hard day’s work. For some this may be a conversation with friends, others it might be a glass of wine. For me, there is nothing better than getting on my running shoes and hitting the road. It seems to clear my mind and prepare me for the fun events ahead (Because we scheduled them remember!) It also has a good side effect of keeping me fit.
4. Use Important/Urgent to access a task
This is an important step that is aimed at your vocational work. Whether it is a job or a business, you need to eliminate unimportant tasks. Outsource or delegate anything that takes you away from the important. The way it works, place each task into the relevant grid spot below. If it’s important and urgent, you need to DO IT NOW! If it’s important but not urgent, schedule it for a time you can focus on this. If you are a morning person like me, schedule it in the morning. If the task is not important but is urgent, get someone else to do it. If you can, pay someone. And finally, if the task is both unimportant and not urgent, DON’T DO IT!
Also, schedule focus time in your calendar. A time where you will undertake important tasks each day. In this focus time, you have to remove all distractions. This includes phone, email, meeting requests, people. Only work on the important task at this time.
By nature, most of us are people pleasers. We have an insatiable need to help others. But if this helping others is taking us away from our work and our values, we need to say NO.
Some tips on how to say no:
Say it in clear terms
Be assertive and polite
Be honest in your reasoning
Conclusion
Next time you feel trapped, as if you can’t escape what you are doing, just breathe and follow the steps above. You’ll start to realize you have more control than you think. Focus on your values.
Get ready to Launch into CyberSpace!
With a Step-By-Step Blueprint to Guide You to Success.
2021 was another year many would best forget about. COVID lockdowns and restrictions continued to wreak havoc with our lives. Business faced the continued challenges of remote working and continuing to maintain productivity. Many people lost their jobs. Many had to start over. And now you face the end of another year. And I’m sure you are looking to make 2022 a better year.
But like most things in life, success isn’t an accident. Good fortune may come to some, but most success is undoubtedly achieved through a deliberate conscious effort. And that is both encouraging, and the challenge. Because you have the power to change your life. To manifest new things, better opportunities, if… you are up to the challenge.
You want a better year?
What are you prepared to do about it?
Are you prepared to make changes in your life, and put in the time needed to get momentum going?
Yes, obviously you are, here are some ways to make your 2022 goals a reality!
Visualize the End you Want
The best way to set goals for the year is to start with the end in mind. Envision in your mind the end of 2022.
What is it you want to have achieved?
Who do you want to have become?
Where do you want to be?
Take time and really think about these questions. Dig deep. The clearer your vision of the end of the year, the more focused your goals will be.
Your vision should drive your goal setting. When you know where you are going its easier to plan your journey. Goals are what lead us to our ultimate vision. For example, you may want to buy that luxurious holiday home on the coast, but there are a number of goals you going to have to achieve to make that a reality. The vision reveals the goals. And the goals are the pathway to your destination.
So let’s be honest for a minute. We all have those goals in our lives we seem to constantly brush off. Every year those goals are on our lists, but we seldom carry through with them. But what if you did? How would that make you feel?
How would it feel to exercise for a solid year and get fit and healthy?
How would it change your career possibilities if you actually just mastered that one skill?
How would you feel if you could actually get that business idea off the ground?
We all have those goals we want to achieve, but keep putting off. Make your list and choose at least one to pursue, anyone! Preferably the one that would make you feel the greatest sense of achievement!
Stop procrastinating, stop waiting for the right time, weather, circumstances and just start! You’re going to be so proud of yourself when you get to the end of 2022 and have followed through with it! And all the sacrifice and discomfort you might have to endure will be absolutely worth it?
So what goal are you going to finally conquer in 2022?
Set Goals with Purpose
Anyone can set goals. In fact all of us set goals all the time. But few of us achieve every goal we set. That’s because we don’t have a strong emotional purpose driving them.
Let’s take health for example.
Whether it’s losing weight, toning up, strengthening your body or running a marathon, often we lose the desire to follow through because we lack a really good reason.
Why do you want to improve your health?
Is it just because it sounds like a cool goal?
Or is there a backstory, an emotional reason, something that makes us jump up and say “that’s it I’m doing this?”
Is it because you want to break through your own limiting beliefs about yourself? Is it because you want to fit into sizes of clothing you could years ago? Or are you sick and tired of feeling weak, lacking energy, mobility, strength, or endurance?
Whatever holds the greatest emotional value, hold onto that!
You want to make more money? Why? Just because, or do you want to give your family a better life. Don’t just set the goal, think about the purpose behind it, that reason is what will push you beyond every setback and failure to your ultimate success.
Map Your Journey
Taking time to visualize the end of 2022, is a fun exercise. Setting goals you want to achieve for the year is the easy part. The real challenge is how do you get there? And that’s why many goals in our lives seem to remain just that, goals, and not reality.
Once you’ve chosen a goal to achieve, take some time to think about the journey you will need to take to achieve it. Remember a goal is an objective. It says little about the steps needed to achieve it.
For example, let’s say you wanted to start your own business. That’s a long-term goal. It’s going to take hours of work, every week, consistently. So how do you map this journey?
Research people doing what you want to do.
Follow people on social media that do what you want to do.
Look for opportunities and niches to exploit.
Create a clear idea for your business.
Be able to explain your business clearly to anyone.
Start talking about your business idea on social media.
Start connecting with people and growing your network.
Ask for feedback from your audience to better develop your service.
Reach out and offer a free trial of your service to get feedback and recommendations.
Use those recommendations to build social proof.
Consistently talk and share about your field of expertise.
Create resources to help your prospects understand your services.
Establish yourself as an authority in your field of business.
It’s not going to cover everything you need to do, but will help you get perspective on what you need to do to build momentum!
We all want progress! In fact it’s when we don’t see progress that we get disheartened and discouraged. That’s why you should set time aside daily, weekly and monthly to evaluate what you have done, and what you haven’t done. This will help you maintain focus, keep perspective and identify areas you need to focus more time on.
You cant just go through each month hoping you are going to reach your targets. Monitor your progress, don’t be obsessive, just maintain focus and perspective. Motivate yourself when you gain ground, and reprioritize if you see any areas are losing momentum.
Life is up and down, and things happen that are unexpected. That’s life. Just be flexible to adaptive to your circumstances and maintain focus. It’s why getting into a habit of monitoring your performance is important!
Conclusion
The journey to achieving any goal worth achieving is often fraught with challenges! Goals are most often than not as simple as one, two, three. They require consistent and deliberate action. Some days you will feel like you are progressing fast and furious. Other days you will feel like you are moving backwards rather than forwards.
This is just the nature of life. You have to remind yourself, persistence is the greatest reason you will succeed! Every day you have an opportunity to further your progress. Keep working at your goals, be relentless, don’t give up hope and acknowledge your progress however small it may be!
The positivity you can extract from the journey will fuel your motivation and resilience.
Wishing you the best year ever for 2022, may all your goals finally become a reality!
Get ready to Launch into CyberSpace!
With a Step-By-Step Blueprint to Guide You to Success.
As the year swiftly comes to a close we begin reflecting on the past year. The highs and lows. The wins and losses. Maybe you’ve reached a tipping point in your career, or maybe you feel you need a change. Here are some things to consider if you plan to launch your online business in the new year.
Why didn’t you start this year?
Looking back over the year gives us perspective. All those “what if” questions. Like… what if you started working on that business idea this year. How far could you be now if you had started earlier on your idea.
When we realize that its simply time and effort that gets results, you can get focused on doing what needs to be done. Opportunities are everywhere. Its just a matter of looking for them, and acting on them.
Break Through the Fear
Are you stuck procrastinating about your business. Waiting for the right time? There is no good excuse to keep putting off your goals and dreams. There is never a perfect time to do anything. During the worst of the pandemic, many people started businesses. And many have made progress despite the most difficult circumstances. Now is as good a time as any, to get your idea off the ground. Why not start today!
One of the biggest challenges when starting to build any business is feeling overwhelmed by the task. A great strategy is to break things down and make them more achievable. The smaller the better.
Instead of just stating “I want to start an online business”, identify the steps:
Setup a social media page for my project.
Connect with people doing what I want to do.
Read blogs about the business I’m interested in.
Watch youtube videos about the business I want to start.
Start sharing my learning on social media.
Register my own domain.
Setup a WordPress blog.
Write my first blog post.
Etc, etc, etc…
Its much easier to pursue small steps than take one giant leap from zero to a full fledged business. No one can do that. It takes many small steps to get a business off the ground. Take your idea or business and break it down. The smaller the better. Identify the tasks and do them one at a time.
Focus on Milestones not Goals
Often goals are more complicated to achieve than we think. And when we fail to achieve them we are left feeling depressed. Why not set milestones for each of your goals.
Your Goal: Start an online blog marketing affiliate products.
Here examples of milestones:
10 January – Start posting on my social media about my idea.
15 February – Setup up a WordPress blog for my venture.
15 March – Post first blog post
30 March – Post second blog post
And acknowledge your success for every milestone, its one step closer to your goal. Milestones will also help you manage the timeline of your progress.
Embrace the Journey.
An online business takes time to build. Its a journey that never ends. Its not a destination. Embrace the journey, embrace the learning and enjoy the ride. The more you see it as an adventure, the more excited you will be to pursue it. The more passion and energy you will have to persevere through every challenge you face. You going to struggle at times, but with the right perspective you can keep yourself motivated!
If you not having fun, why are you doing it in the first place? Enjoy the challenge of building something new and it won’t feel like work. Have fun while you learning new skills. Building a business doesn’t have to be all serious and dreary. Embrace the creative process of learning, building and creating.
It will do wonders to your energy levels. And that energy will reflect in your efforts.
Start Today!
Why wait for next year? Start taking time everyday for your business. Remember your success will not come from one days effort. Not even a few days. But rather the compounded effort you take every day, every week, and every month! Take small steps daily, and build your dream business brick by brick, day by day, and one day soon you will be looking back and thinking “WOW, my business idea has become my business reality…”
Get ready to Launch into CyberSpace!
With a Step-By-Step Blueprint to Guide You to Success.
Many people struggle to get their business ideas off the ground. It often takes longer than they think to develop their products or services. And this stops many from even launching into cyberspace. But that is changing. More and more entrepreneurs are opting to build their businesses in public. Yes. Even before they have products or services to sell.
This might seem risky or foolish. But there is a method to their madness. They may start by sharing how they’ve been researching their ideas. What they have learned. They may share what other companies are doing, and how they intend to improve the issues of those products or services.
And social media is where many entrepreneurs are talking about what they are building. Sharing their journey of discovery and development with the public eye. Many entrepreneurs actively engage with the public and get feedback, which can be a fantastic way to build an even better business.
Let’s take a look at why building a business in public can help facilitate opportunities for your startup.
Transparency Builds Trust
One of the biggest challenges in building a new venture is establishing trust with prospective customers. People need to be able to trust that you will deliver what you say you will. At the beginning of your business journey, you will start with zero customers. And that means you need to be able to attract interest in your offering. But how do you build trust?
Building in public is a way to establish trust. As people see you online, you will start to build up credibility as you interact with your audience. People will feel like they are a part of your journey, and will relate more than if you simply tried to promote what you were selling.
As you share more of your journey in public and people can see you are consistent, willing to listen, and give feedback, you will establish a strong sense of trust.
Establishing a strong brand is pivotal to building a successful business online or offline. And it ties in with the previous point on trust. Your brand presence can build a public image that can be a powerful asset to attract customers.
Brand versus Business
Your business is the behind-the-scenes mechanics of your venture. It’s the systems you use, the administrative side, the inner workings of your services, and operations.
Your brand is the public persona or image that people see of your business. It’s how you represent yourself in public, both verbally and visually. It’s the way you market your business, or how you talk to your customers. It’s fundamentally the outward character of your business.
And this is where building in public can help you build a strong brand, whether personal or organizational. The same benefits apply. The voice and attitude of your communication will establish a certain character for your brand. And this will attract a certain type of audience.
For example, if you are developing a service for corporate professionals, considering your audience can help guide how you represent your brand both verbally or visually. Appealing to one group might repel other groups of people. If some people don’t connect with your brand that’s okay. You are not trying to help everyone. If you attract the right audience, that is ultimately what matters.
And that’s where your brand can be a magnet. It can attract the right type of audience that you want to connect with online.
Attracts Your Audience
A problem many entrepreneurs have is selling their products or services once they are ready to launch. This can take a lot of time, effort and even money to do. And if you like many entrepreneurs, you don’t want to be starting from scratch when you are ready to launch your offering.
This is where building your audience before you launch can be invaluable. The advantage to this is that you are building anticipation for your launch. People are getting to hear about how you are building your venture. If you do it right, by the time you do launch your offering, you will have already created awareness and interest. And that means that you will not have to start from nothing.
Better Product-Market Fit
You might have an idea that you think is fantastic. You feel it’s so good it cannot fail. But what does the market think? Does your offering meet the demands and needs of your target audience? This is a challenge for any startup. You just don’t know how people will react to your idea.
And this is where building in public can come into its own. You can share your product or service offering and get feedback. Maybe people offer you constructive criticisms or ideas to make it even better. They might even be able to help you hone your product to meet the demands of your target audience.
If you want to succeed you need to listen to your audience, your prospective customers are a goldmine of information. Don’t dismiss them. You ultimately build something for them. And the more the public sees your openness to embrace feedback the more confidence people will have in you.
One advantage of building in public is that you can test your offering with a select number of customers. By gauging the feedback from your customers you can prepare for your launch. And ensure you iron out any issues before you finally go live.
By launching too soon, you might disappoint customers and lose valuable trust that you’ve taken time to develop. So rather take your time to gauge feedback from users and ensure it meets a certain level of quality before you make it available.
Conclusion
If you are considering building a new venture you might want to consider starting even before you have a clear direction. Sharing your journey can greatly benefit your progress and brand awareness.
Before you even have a clear vision of your business, you can start sharing about the area of interest and get feedback on ideas to gauge what people want. This can guide you toward a clearer idea for your offering, it’s really a win-win…
And all at the same time you will be building your online presence, establishing your authority, and growing your audience. This means when you are ready to finally launch your venture, you will have the audience you need to sell your product or service.
So… are you ready to start your journey in public yet?
