Steve Wagenheim’s Home Business Blog

I had the pleasure of reading a really great blog post the other day on the cost of free stuff that really got me thinking. Is it possible that Internet marketers are digging their own graves with all the stuff that they’re giving away? This article is going to briefly fill you in on the incident that brought this up and then, I’ll give you my thoughts on this whole mess.

Essentially, what happened was this. The New York Times started giving its news away, online, for free. So many subscribers were getting accustomed to this service. Well, the New York Times, after a few years, realized that they weren’t getting enough advertising money to cover their costs, so they decided that they were going to start charging again. Needless to say, customers weren’t too happy. Something they were getting for nothing was now being taken away from them.

How the New York Times comes out of this is irrelevant to this article. What IS relevant is that, as you know, many Internet marketers, myself included, are giving away free information in order to get subscribers onto their lists. And there is nothing wrong with this. The problem is, there is only so much free information that can be given away. And with marketers constantly moving the free line, eventually, 99% of what we offer people is going to be free. When that happens, what’s going to be left to sell?

This problem is more than just a marketing one. See, the world we live in expects more and more everyday. With technology increasing at alarming rates, it seems that we can have almost anything we want at the touch of a button. Imagine going through your life without so many of the things that you now take for granted, such as you cable TV, Internet connection, IPhone, IPod, and so many other items. No, they’re not free, but a lot of the services we get ARE free.

Think about it. How many things can you get online at no cost? Certainly you can get all the news you’d ever want. For the life of me, I don’t know how newspapers stay in business. And the truth is, many do not. My one local paper has come dangerously close to shutting down…after over 50 years in business.

Point I am trying to make is this. There IS a cost to free information. That cost comes in the form of lost revenue from customers who simply feel that there is no reason to pay for anything YOU have to offer IF they can find it somewhere for free. This forces you to compete on the same level by offering your products for free as well…unless.

Ah, and there it is…the unless. And this is what separates the successful marketers from the ones who can’t scratch two dimes together. These marketers are the ones who know that they have to deliver even more value than their competitors in order to justify charging for their product or service. In niches where there is tons of information, this isn’t so hard. However, in niches where there is very little info, this becomes almost impossible.

Ultimately, what this will force marketers to do, the ones in those smaller niches, is to branch out and package these smaller related niches together into one big authority site or gateway. In other words, a one stop location where, because of the convenience, customers will be willing to pay for the product or service.

There is a change coming. It may not be this year or next year, but it’s coming. Soon, the small ebook seller is going to have to expand his business in order to get business.

In other words…only the strong will survive.

Yes…there IS a cost to free.

And it’s costing us a fortune.

To YOUR Success

Steven Wagenheim

Want to know what the 7 Deadly Sins of Internet Marketing are? Get my free report at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/7deadlysins/7deadlysins.html and save your business from going down the tubes before it even has a chance.

Whether you know it or not, SEO can be a time consuming process, especially if you involve yourself in all aspects of the process itself. So the question I am going to put forth in this article is a simple one. When doing SEO for your site, should you do it yourself or should you outsource the work? Well, the answer I’m going to give you just might surprise you. Keep on reading to find out just how I feel about this subject.

I will be the first to admit that I am no SEO expert…not by a long shot. However, I do know all the basics and can get a site up the SERPs pretty quickly, if not in record time. I do know that to do everything you need to do to properly SEO your site, it is a lot of work and very time consuming. Let me give you one example of what I’m talking about. Let’s tackle social bookmarking.

For starters, most people go about doing this all wrong. See, your typical marketer will go to a social bookmarking site, like Digg, and only bookmark his own sites. This is not the way to get the most juice out of your efforts. You need to actually become a part of the community, which means filling in ALL your details and actually bookmarking other things of interest that are NOT your own site. In fact, you should bookmark more things that AREN’T your own site than your site itself. THAT is how to properly use social bookmarking.

Unfortunately, this is VERY time consuming as you can imagine, especially since you should be doing this for a minimum of 25 sites. I recommend between 50 and 100. Think about how much time this takes. It’s almost mind numbing. So you would therefore think that I would immediately recommend that you outsource things like this. Well, that’s where you’d be WRONG…at least not to start. But why? Why am I suggesting that you do this yourself?

By doing this yourself, you actually learn the process and understand it. That way, if down the road you decide to outsource, you can tell the person exactly what you want done and how. Sometimes by leaving things in the hands of an the person you hire, you can end up getting banned from these sites because they end up doing nothing but spamming the bookmarking sites. That’s why, something like this, you want to be hands on…at least at the start.

Each aspect of SEO needs to be taken on a case by case basis. Some things are simple enough that they can be outsourced with very little chance of a screw up. But even those items should be done by you at first so that you understand how they work. This way, if the person you outsource to fouls things up, you’ll know.

Anyway, there you have it. Outsourcing is not a cut and dried proposition for SEO. But in any case, I do recommend that you learn to do it yourself FIRST.

It will save you a lot of grief down the road.

To YOUR Success

Steven Wagenheim

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Okay, I’m old. I admit it. And I’m not getting any younger. Anyway, I was just thinking about that old Joe Karbo ad. You know, “The Lazy Man’s Way To Riches.” Remember it? I sure do. Let me tell you…that was one of the most successful ad campaigns in history. And what was it? It was nothing more than…well, I’m not going to spoil the surprise if you don’t have his book. It’s a great read. Pick it up when you get the chance.

But that’s not what this article is about. It’s about change..or more specifically…lack of change. Oh don’t kid yourself. Sure, we’ve gotten a lot fancier with our salescopy than we used to be. Sites are really sharp looking now as opposed to the old days. Heck, when Karbo’s ad came out, there wasn’t even an Internet yet. Just some ugly news print. And boy…was IT ugly. But aside from the glitz that we have today, marketing itself hasn’t changed at all.

Think I am kidding? Head on over to the Clickbank marketplace when you get a chance and take a look at some of the salescopy. Do you notice anything about 99% of the stuff up there? I do. It all promises people amazing riches…literally overnight and in their sleep. There is no work involved at all. Just push a button and you TOO can earn a six or even seven figure income. Tell me I’m wrong.

Yeah, the FTC is starting to crack down on the more blatant stuff, but a clever marketer can still put up an attractive sales page that hints at amazing riches at the touch of a button…even with all the “results not typical” disclaimers that need to be added to any testimonial INCLUDING a detailed breakdown of either what typical results are OR how the person got those results…exactly.

But when all is said and done, people are still going to want to believe the dream. So headlines like “Discover How A Truck Drive Now Earns $30,000 A Month” are still going to rake in the sales. Why? Because it’s human nature. If you think I’m wrong, go take a look at the lottery lines every Tuesday in New Jersey when people are scrambling to get their Pick 6 numbers.

As a marketer, if you really want to succeed in this business, along with the dream, you’ll actually provide a real solution. Trust me, those who do are the ones who last the longest in this business. The ones who sell nothing but snake oil eventually get such a bad rap that they go out of business.

So go ahead…sell the dream.

Just back it up with a little reality and you’ll do just fine.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

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Have you ever heard of an ethical bribe? In most cases, bribery will land you in jail or at least land you with a pretty hefty fine to pay. But when it comes to affiliate marketing, bribery is not only ethical, it’s essential to survival…especially today. If you’re wondering why, keep reading this article and you’ll find out.

Okay, so why is bribery so important today as an affiliate marketer? Well, in case you’ve been living under a rock, the FTC has recently made some guidelines that say that you MUST disclose that you are receiving a commission from the sale of a product as an affiliate. This usually comes into play when a marketer puts up a review of a product and then under the review, gives the prospect his affiliate link. In the old days, this was fine. Today, you MUST disclose that if the person buys from THAT link, YOU get a commission.

So why does this make bribery so important? Well, many people, after reading your review, if they see that you are in fact getting a commission from the sale of the product, they might not take your review as seriously and as a result, this might cut down on the number of sales you make. This is a perfectly logical concern of affiliates, as it should be. So how do we combat this?

That’s where the bribe comes in, and it’s perfectly ethical and legal. Yes, it’s going to take a little work on YOUR part, but if you want to survive in the new affiliate marketing climate, you’re going to have to learn to adapt. Okay, so let’s get to this bribe and just how we pull it off.

Assuming you have read the product and understand what it’s about, you know what it contains and what it doesn’t contain. No product is perfect…not even mine. So what you will want to do is this. You’ll want to write down all the things you wish the product had and then create a companion product that contains those things. Then, what you want to do (here comes the bribe) is offer that product as a bonus to anybody who buys the main product from you.

This way, you can be TOTALLY up front about the fact that you’re getting paid for the sale. In fact, I even tell people that they have to make sure that my affiliate ID appears at the bottom of the payment page or they won’t get their bonus. Full disclosure and I STILL make a boat load of sales. The key is having a bonus that is REALLY worth something.

Don’t have a product? No problem. Offer your time. Offer to help them with the product if they need it. If you go beyond what most affiliates are willing to do, you WILL make more than your share of sales.

There you have it..an ethical bribe that makes the customer happy, the FTC happy and you VERY happy.

To YOUR Success,
Steven Wagenheim

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Everybody is an expert. It’s true. For proof, just look around the Internet at all the proclamations that people are making about all sorts of things. It happens in all areas, especially in SEO. I never saw so many SEO experts with pages that can’t rank for beans in my life. And these same people are spouting off about how you have to do this and you shouldn’t do that and on and on. Well, don’t believe everything you hear because a lot of it is based on faulty information. This article is going to explain.

Best way to get my point across is with an example of how faulty info can make its way to the mainstream way of thinking. This is why I always test everything out for myself.

John Doe puts up his new site. He does nothing more than basic SEO. By that I mean, he has some anchor text on his pages, proper meta tags and enough content so that the site doesn’t look like a ghost town. A few days later, without doing any backlinking or anything else, John Doe’s site is number one at Google. John Doe then gets on his favorite SEO forum and proclaims that basic SEO is all you need to get your site to the top of the search engines.

What John Doe failed to tell anybody is that his site is in a niche so obscure, targeting keywords that are so obscure, that when you actually do a search using those keywords, you find that there are only 10 sites on the Internet that even have them on their pages. Of course he’s number one. The other sites probably know nothing about SEO at all. He’s gotten away with just the basics because every other site has done absolutely nothing.

Okay, I understand that this is an extreme example, but I used it to illustrate a point. When people start making proclamations about how this thing or that thing works and is the be all and end all of SEO, you need to take that proclamation with a grain of salt. Because more often than not, the person giving you that info has left out a vital piece of the puzzle. It could be any one of a number of things, including not telling you something that they DID do that REALLY made all the difference in the world.

Point is, SEO is not just one thing. It’s not even a combination of certain things. What works or doesn’t work for YOUR site will depend on a number of factors, not the least of which is how much competition is out there and what THAT competition is doing with THEIR sites. See, one million competing sites of people who don’t know SEO from a hole in the ground is not the same as one million competing sites put together by marketing professionals. And the only way to find out which is which is to study your competition.

Ultimately, the strategy that works for YOU will need to be tested. There is no one size fits all when it comes to search engine optimization.

Anybody who tells you differently is not telling you the whole story.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Is your site sinking like a dead weight in the SERPs? Want to get your site to the TOP of the SERPs? Pick up Kurt Melvin’s Think Links. You can read my complete review of the product at http://stevewagenheim.com/blog/internet-marketing/review-of-think-links-for-seo.html

Over the years that I have been running my own home business (over 7 years now) I have been asked many questions. I keep a record of these so that I can build an FAQ page. Well, today, I decided to answer three of my most asked questions in this article. If probability works the way it’s supposed to, there is a very good chance that one of these questions is one that you yourself have. If so, I hope you find the answer you’re looking for.

The third most asked question that I get is this one. “Do I need to have my own website in order to run a business from home?” Okay, the word “need” is the problem with the question. You don’t “need” to have anything to run a home business. Each business is going to be different and therefore, the needs of each one will be different. However, having said that, having a web presence, IF it is a professional looking one, can only help. Notice I said professional looking one. If it looks like crap, then no, that website is going to do you more harm than good. Do I recommend having your own site? Yes, absolutely.

The second most asked question I get is this one. “Can I make money from home without having to spend money?” Well, anything is possible. There are many business models out there that are literally free to run. However, by limiting yourself to a free business model, you are also limiting your options. For example, if you DO use a business model that requires a professional looking site and hosting, you’re going to have a very difficult time finding a free hosting solution. And as far as getting a custom domain without spending money, that’s literally impossible. So while it’s possible to make money online without spending any, I don’t recommend it.

And finally, the question I get asked more than any other is this one. “What’s the best home business to get into?” Yeah, everybody is looking for the best home business. I have a newsflash for you. There isn’t one. Let me explain why with a simple example. One home business model is writing sales letters for other marketers. You can make a lot of money doing this. But guess what? If you can’t write sales letters you can’t make any money. Oh sure, you can try to BS people into believing that you’re a copywriter, but once they see your work…you’re done. There is NO one best business model. It depends on your skills and interests.

Anyway, there you have it. Those are the three questions I get asked more than any others. I hope that I answered YOUR question today.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

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I’ll be the first to admit that there are a ton of things that you can do to screw up your marketing. Each mistake can cost you a lot of money. But there is one mistake, that if you make it, can cost you thousands. You’re probably wondering what one thing can be so detrimental that it can practically ruin your business. Well, if you keep reading, you’re going to find out. It’s not what you think.

Okay, so what is that one thing that can cost you thousands of dollars, if not more? It’s this…failure to make a business plan. Now I know, you can try to wing this business. I’ve done it. I freely admit it. It took me a long time before I sat down and made a REAL business plan. But guess what? Once I finally made a business plan, my income increased by four times. I’m talking tens of thousands of dollars in lost income when I was just winging it.

But why? Why is this one thing so important? Well, the answer is very simple. Without a business plan there are two key pieces of the puzzle that you don’t have written in stone. The one is how much of a budget you’re going to allow for expenses. Without a budget, marketers just tend to spend money left and right. Then, all of a sudden, they look up and find out that they’ve spent more than they’ve actually made. That’s how you end up in the red.

On the other end we have projected income. Now, I know you’re probably thinking that you can’t possibly know what you’re going to make when you first start out. While that might be true, what happens when you don’t have income goals is that you end up getting in a rut. You make a few hundred dollars, or maybe even a few thousand dollars, and you begin to coast on that. You have no goals so you have no real desire to make a plan to increase that income. You just do the same thing…over and over and over. This leads to a stagnant income. There is no way around this.

Add to those two things that fact that without a business plan you don’t even know who your prospects are and what they want, and you end up marketing in the dark. Not knowing what buttons to push (market research) is a sure way to fail. Certainly, you’re not going to maximize your income without a solid plan.

So yeah, you can wing this Internet marketing thing. Lots of people do. But if you REALLY want to maximize your income, you’ll sit down and make yourself a business plan.

And you’ll do it TODAY.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Want to know what the 7 Deadly Sins of Internet Marketing are? Get my free report at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/7deadlysins/7deadlysins.html and save your business from going down the tubes before it even has a chance.

An interesting question came up at the Warrior Forum today. What do you do, as a product creator, if you want to sell two products…one as the main product and another as an upsell but with a different commission rate than the first product and do this through Clickbank? Sound complicated? Well, it really isn’t. In this article I’m going to show you a simple way to do this.

First of all, the reason that this is even the least bit tricky is because for each Clickbank account that you have, you can only have one commission rate. So even though you can sell up to 500 products through one account, each one has to be sold at the same rate for affiliates. Therefore, an upsell with a different commission rate, as far as affiliates go, becomes a bit of a problem…but not a big one.

First thing you need to do is get your first product approved by Clickbank. There is a $49.95 fee for this product. After you get it approved, the next thing you have to do is open up a second account and submit your upsell product to THAT account and get it approved. Fortunately, the fee for your second account is only $29.95, so at least there is a bit of a discount.

After you get both products approved, you need to setup your upsell process. When an affiliate sends a prospect to your main sales page, his affiliate ID is written as a cookie to the prospect’s PC. This takes care of the first product. However, after the purchase of the first product and the upsell page is displayed, because the second product is under a different product ID, there is no cookie written for that ID. That’s where we run into a bit of a snag.

So what we need to do is run a custom script that will take the affiliate ID and the product ID of the second product and combine them into a brand new Clickbank hop link which will then be written to the prospect’s PC. At that time, when the purchase is made, the sale will be credited correctly to the affiliate.

Okay, I know what you’re going to ask. Where do I get this script? Well, you have three options. Option number 1, in order to have the most control, is to write the script yourself. This will also save you the expense of buying one. If you’re not a programming expert, your next option is to have a programmer custom make one for you. If that’s not an option either, your last option is to do a search through Google, or the search engine of your choice, and see if there are any existing scripts that do this. If so, make sure there are clear instructions for installation.

There you have it…how to get around the one commission rate limitation per Clickbank account if you want to sell two products, one as an upsell, with a different commission rate than the first product. Now, if Clickbank no longer allows separate payments for upsells, then you’re going to have no choice but to keep all your products under one account. For clarification on this, contact your Clickbank representative.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Tired of creating products that nobody wants and don’t sell? Check out my Complete Guide To Product Creation at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/productcreation.html and create products that actually sell.

Today was pretty much the last straw. It boggles my mind how stubborn people can be and then they wonder why they’re broke. Well, you can be stubborn or you can be successful. The choice is yours. This article, through example, is going to explain just what I’m talking about. You can ignore this information and toss it in the trash or you can take it to heart. I’m not going to beat you with a stick to do it.

True story. The names have been left out to protect the stubborn. Some guy I know just created his first product for his home business. The product itself just might be very good for all I know, but the guy can’t write salescopy to save his life. I mean, this stuff was BAD. Well, I tried to explain to him that he really needed to get a copywriter to create his sales letter. He said he couldn’t afford one and therefore he had to do it himself.

If you look up the word stubborn in the dictionary, you’ll find a photo of this guy. Now here’s the illogic of the whole situation. The copy is so bad that there is no way it’s going to convert…at all. This means that this guy has a product that isn’t going to sell…period. So the money he’s saving in not hiring a copywriter, he’s losing in sales. Heck, he might as well take the product and toss it in the trash for all the good it’s going to do him.

Okay, there is your specific example. Now let’s apply it to your OWN home business. What are you NOT doing that you SHOULD be doing? Be honest. You’re cutting corners on things because you don’t have the money. So you’re doing those things yourself. And what are you discovering? They’re not working. You’re not making any money. I don’t know what those things are. They could be training materials, hosting fees, design tools or whatever. But somewhere, you’re not doing something that you SHOULD be doing and it’s costing you…BIG TIME.

That is called being stubborn. And you can make all the excuses you want for it…no money, no time, or whatever. But that’s all they are…excuses. When I first started online I was broke…but I still spent money on the things I knew I needed in order to succeed. That’s called NOT being stubborn.

You can make all the excuses you like for all the things that you’re not doing. But one day, if you REALLY want to succeed, you’re going to have to wake up and realize that there are some things that you aren’t going to be able to do without if that success is going to come.

I just hope that day doesn’t come too late.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

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Well, another marketing related tool has just come out. I’m going to briefly talk about it, but the main reason for this article is to explore the possibility that someday, somebody’s going to create a marketing tool that’s going to end up destroying us all. A little far fetched you say? Maybe, but with some of the stuff I’ve seen come out, I don’t think we’re far removed from the day when marketers simply annihilate each other. Anyway, keep reading and you’ll see where I’m coming from.

Okay, so just what is this latest tool? Well, it’s something called Tube Chop. What it does, in a nutshell, is it allows you to take a YouTube video and designate what parts of it you want to show to your prospects. So let’s say a video is four minutes long but you only want to show the first 20 seconds. You simply put the URL into the Tube Chop interface and designate the start and end times that you want for your new video which you can then embed into your site.

You’re probably thinking, “What’s so bad about that?” Well, let’s say a marketer has a two minute video and the last 30 seconds of the video is his sales pitch to his site containing his URL. One can simply go to Tube Chop, designate the first 90 seconds to display and that marketer’s sales pitch and URL is now eliminated from the video version that you’ll put up on your site. How do you think this is going to make this person feel when HIS info is now used to promote YOUR product?

So here we are with yet another tool that can be abused to the point where nobody’s video is safe…not mine, not yours…nobody’s. But that’s the cost of technology, right? Whenever somebody makes a tool that can be used for good (and this can be a very useful tool) that same tool can be used for evil. And I’ve come to accept that fact over time. But like I said in the premise of this article, one day, we’re going to create a tool that is going to practically make Internet marketing obsolete.

In the meantime, thankfully, nobody has come up with that tool yet. Yes, we’ve just lost a little more control over our marketing with this Tube Chop, but maybe somebody will come up with a tool that will keep people from chopping our videos.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

If you want to discover the REAL truth about Internet marketing and get some solid tips to take your business to the next level…get my free report at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/realtruth.html and subscribe to my REAL Truth newsletter where you’ll discover more than from all those high priced ebooks combined.