Steve Wagenheim’s Home Business Blog

This article was actually inspired by yet another new member who decided to come to the Warrior Forum for the express purpose of spamming that forum. And the ironic part about it…this person was promoting a product that absolutely nobody at a marketing forum would have had any interest in. At the very least, the targeting was pitiful. But that isn’t even the point of this article. The person in question was surprised at the reception he got.

Let me put it to you this way. Every forum has rules, and the members there who respect those rules take it personally when somebody breaks those rules. So they will, like it or not, come to the aid of defending the forum and giving the rule breaker a hard time. In this particular case, I think the members, myself included, showed some amazing restraint. We could have been a lot tougher than we were. As of this writing, I still have no idea what happened to the spammer. I guess I’ll find out eventually.

Point is, please don’t be surprised when you go to a forum, break the rules and the members start to rag on you. It’s going to happen, and that’s if the forum admin doesn’t boot your rear end out of the forum before the members even get to you. I’ve seen people tossed out on their ear so fast, I never even got a chance to get a word in. Imagine how frustrating that is for the law abiding members.

And if you’re thinking, “Oh please, what’s the big deal?” Imagine that everybody who went to a forum felt the same way and either contributed to the mess or didn’t care. Think that forum would be a useful place for anything? Eventually, the spammers and con artists would take over and the forum would become worthless. No forum owner who cares about his home would allow that to happen.

So when you go to a forum and break the rules, please don’t be surprised when the members start ripping you a new one. It’s going to happen. So, if you’re smart, the first thing you’ll do when you get there is read the rules (they should be posted somewhere) and make sure you follow them. It’s not hard to do and in return, you’ll actually have the other members welcome you.

Otherwise, what did you expect?

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Sick and tired of spinning your wheels trying to make a buck online? Visit the products page of my blog at http://stevewagenheim.com/blog/products and get a 6 figure education for pennies.

Contrary to popular opinion, there is NOT a sucker born every minute. Yet, there seems to be this impression going around that off line business owners are stupid, and thus can be taken advantage of by simply giving them a good sales pitch. If that’s what you think, and you’re planning on approaching an off line business owner, you might want to read this article before proceeding. The life you save may very well be your own.

Okay, let’s get right down to the facts. People who run their own businesses have a lot at risk. They’ve put many thousands of dollars of their own money into these businesses. They have plenty of sleepless nights wondering if they’re going to make enough to cover next month’s rent and put enough food on the table to feed their family of four. Do you really think that they’re just going to hand you over a blank check because you tell them you can make them all this money? Get real!

What you need to do is approach these people as a professional. First thing you need to do is completely study their business and understand it. Be able to go to them and give them some demographics on sales, customer type and so on. You need to show them WHERE there market is and what the REAL potential is. If there isn’t any, don’t waste their time. They’re not going to be buying.

After you have shown them that you REALLY understand their business, something that is going to impress them in itself since most people don’t have a clue, the next step is to show them, with actual details, HOW you can help them get more customers by putting up a web presence. Do the keyword research and show them how many people in their area are actually looking for their service. You are going to have to show cold hard numbers in order to get them to pull out their wallets.

Finally, show them your service and what you will do for them. Explain each part of the service and why it’s important. If you can show examples of what you’ve already done, that would be a big help. You need to gain their trust and the only way to do that is to be straight with them.

No, off line business owners are not stupid. If you think you can pull the wool over their eyes, you are sadly mistaken. Be straight with them and you just might have a customer for life.

To YOUR Success,
Steven Wagenheim

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This article is pretty much in response to a forum thread where a member was complaining that it would take a whole year to build a list that was 10,000 in size. You’d think that a year was a long time. In the world of Internet marketing, it’s not. It’s a drop in the bucket. Trust me, if you can build a list of 10,000 prospects in a year’s time, you’re doing good.

Let’s look at the math. If you take 10,000 and divide it by 365 days in a year, that’s a little over 27 opt ins a day. That’s nothing. I don’t even focus that much on list building like some people do and I get between 10 and 20 opt ins a day. So 27, for somebody who really works at it, is nothing. It’s a drop in the bucket. Do that consistently every single day for a year and there is your 10,000 prospects. But guess what? Size doesn’t matter. Not in list building.

See, this is where people get so hung up and I don’t know what I have to say to make them understand that the size of your list is meaningless if it’s NOT properly targeted. There are ways of building a list so fast that they’d make your head spin. But most of those ways are totally worthless because the list that you end up with probably won’t be very responsive at all.

Somebody pointed out at the forum that Frank Kern had a million dollar day selling a $1,997 product. That’s only 500 sales. Do you really think you need a list of 10,000 people to make 500 sales IF that list is so finely targeted that those people are just DYING to get a hold of your next product? Trust me, you don’t need anywhere near a 10,000 member list to make 500 sales.

But some people just don’t get it. It’s not the size but the quality. And quality only comes from making sure that you’re targeting people who are most likely to be interested in YOUR offer. If you’re selling a book on article marketing, it makes no sense to build a list of people who hang out at pay per click chat rooms or wherever. Somebody doing PPC is never going to want to waste time writing articles when PPC is so much faster. It won’t matter what you’re giving away. You won’t make any sales of your book.

So forget about list size. Forget about how long it takes to build a monster list. Focus on targeting people who are truly interested in what YOU have to sell and that year is going to go so fast you won’t know where the time went.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

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I’ve yet to see somebody really tackle this issue in regard to affiliate marketing. Truth is, this is a serious problem. What am I talking about? I’m referring to the affiliate and merchant wars. Oh, you haven’t heard? Well, sit back, relax, grab a cup of whatever and read this. I promise you that it will be most enlightening.

Where do I even begin to try to explain what has been a problem ever since the first product got promoted through an opt in page? Yes, an opt in page. You know the one I’m talking about. That’s where the prospect gets directed, not to a sales page…to an opt in page. There, the prospect gives his name and email and gets some kind of free report or whatever, all while being added to the merchant’s list.

And therein lies where the war begins. See, the affiliate, thinking that he’s doing all this work to drive traffic to the merchant’s opt in page, feels that HE should be the one getting the opt in…not the merchant. As a result, many affiliates will no longer promote a product that doesn’t go directly to a sales page. And in a way, you can’t blame them.

But let’s look at it from the perspective of the merchant. See, their bottom line is simple…make as many sales as possible. What do you think is going to make them more sales, building a list or NOT building a list? Well, without testing and without looking at each specific niche, it’s impossible to say. I can say, however, from my own experience, that building a list as a product creator has been the best thing I’ve ever done. I wouldn’t make nearly as much without one.

Okay, but why the war? Why won’t an affiliate promote a product through an opt in page and why won’t the merchants give in and send prospects directly to a sales page? Well, this is where the element of trust comes in.

See, the affiliate thinks, aside from the belief that they should get the opt in, that if they send a prospect to an opt in page, they won’t get credit for the sale afterwards. And in some cases, this is true. There are some shady merchants out there who send their list to a different sales page that doesn’t track affiliate clicks. Not cool, but it happens.

On the other side of the coin, let’s be honest here. An affiliate can build a list for the affiliate product and then, if they choose, promote different products to that list. So the merchant has less of a chance of making a sale from that affiliate. Also, an affiliate can drop a product at the drop of a hat. There is very little loyalty to merchants with so many products to choose from. And why should there be?

So as you see, because of the self serving interests of both parties, it is almost impossible to get any affiliate OR merchant loyalty. Each side is simply looking out for their own interests…as it should be. This, however, gives us the wars we have now.

And I don’t see them ending anytime soon unless affiliates and merchants learn to trust each other.

To YOUR Success

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Okay, I know that the title of this article has a lot of people scratching their heads. Are you one of them? I’m sure. Well, don’t worry. By the time you’re done reading this article, you’ll understand where I am going with it. Yes, you DO have to watch your knees when you’re running your own home business. Let me explain.

I have the worst computer setup in history. See, I first setup my business back in the day when I really didn’t think I was going to take this very seriously. Well, a few six figure years later, I realized that I was taking this seriously…very seriously. Problem is, I’m too lazy to change my computer setup. See, I have this table that I use to put my keyboard on. The PC and monitor itself, well, they’re on a speaker and another table. Okay, so what’s the problem?

Well, the table that has my keyword, where I sit, has some very hard wood legs attached to it. And every once in a while, I’d get up too quickly to go and get something and ram by knee into one of the legs. Well, eventually, I got tired of doing that so I printed out a note in big black bold letters…WATCH YOUR KNEES. And I took that note and pasted it to the table where the keyboard is. That way, I always see it BEFORE I get up to walk away. This reminds me to watch my knees when I do get up.

So what’s the point and what does this have to do with YOUR home business? Well, let’s face it. Unless you have a steel trap mind, you’re going to forget little things like this. You’re going to go through your day and at the end of the day, it’s going to be like you hit your knee against a desk. You’re going to realize that you forgot to do something. And many times, it will be something critical. Trust me, I’ve been there.

What you want to do is write out some sticky notes or print something out and tack it to your wall, desk or wherever, so you don’t forget what it is you have to do for that day. And I suggest printing it out the day before. Go through the next day’s itinerary and see what it is you have to do. Make your notes and print them and tack them wherever so that you are ALWAYS being reminded by them. Then, when the task is done, take down the reminder and toss it. If it’s something you do everyday, keep it up.

Trust me, if you don’t watch your knees when you’re running your home business, you’re going to end up with banged up knees…ouch!

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

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There is no doubt about it. It’s not 2006 anymore and the glory days of article marketing are long dead and gone. Long live article marketing. I know this article is going to ruffle a lot of feathers, but somebody has got to let you in on the real deal or you’re going to be working under a premise that simply doesn’t exist anymore. While I can’t possibly cover everything in this article, I will cover the main areas where things have changed…drastically.

For one thing, if you’re submitting articles to article directories, the standards have changed. Directories are a lot stricter today than they were years ago. For example, I just recently edited an article from a few years back by changing the resource box. When I went to resubmit, even though the article itself didn’t change, it was initially rejected because the keyword percentage was 2.8%. Years ago, this was fine. But now, with Google cracking down on keyword saturation, anything above 2% is toast. So I had to do some keyword cutting to get the article approved. So standards themselves have gone up.

In addition to that, the niches themselves have become more saturated. There are more article marketers out there than ever before. So you have more people fighting for the same piece of the pie, or in some cases, even less of the pie where markets have actually decreased in demand.

Then of course you have competition from other sources of promotion. You have things like Facebook, Twitter, Squidoo and other web 2.0 platforms that are making it harder for article directories to rank. Years ago, if you found an article on a particular subject, it was most likely from an article directory. Today, that isn’t necessarily the case. You have a lot of niches where your top results are now video and NOT articles at all. YouTube has become a powerhouse for the SERPs for many niches that used to be dominated by articles.

And the above is just the tip of the iceberg. In short, article marketing is no longer just that. It has now become content marketing where you need to take your articles and re-purpose them in many ways, including turning them into free PDF downloads and even videos.

If you’re going to play the old article marketing game the way it used to be played back in 2006, you are going to lose that game. You’re going to need to step things up and ramp things up.

Those who don’t are going to be left behind.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

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If you’ve read my first two installments in this series, we’ve covered the reasons why people get into an online business and external factors as two of the reasons why people can’t make money online. In this installment, I’m going to cover what I call the “head full of stuffing” syndrome. In plain English…information overload OR lack of information. Keep reading to find out why this is one of the most frustrating aspects of success that online business persons face.

Unless you have an education in business, which isn’t a guarantee that you’re going to have any success in itself, you’re coming into this with a head full of nothing. You’re totally at a loss as to where to even begin. Unless you have friends who can help you, you’re totally on your own. Most people will, at that point, turn to the search engines…Google being the search engine of choice for about 50% of the population.

And if you’re like most people, you’ll type in something like, “How can I make money from home?” After doing this, you’ll get a list of about 300,000 sites IF you type this with quotes to try to narrow things down at least a bit. Still, 300,000 sites is a lot to choose from. And each one has something different to say. You’ll find a number of suggestions for making money from home including affiliate marketing, freelancing, creating your own products, network marketing and on and on. The choices are endless.

Where do you begin? Most people will just pick something that interests them, if anything. But then there is the problem of, “Okay, this is what I want to do…how do I do it?” That’s where we then get into web page design, promotional tactics, and so on. There are more ways to promote a product or service online than Carter has liver pills. Problem is, some tactics work better than others to start off with. Add to that the fact that some tactics, like article writing, take skill…and you’ve got yourself another mess on your hands.

Who do you trust? What are you qualified to even do given your skill level? Can you increase your skill level? If so, can you find the right kind of instruction in order to make that happen? Gradually, your head full of nothing becomes a head full of stuffing. You’ve read and read and read until you’re blue in the face. You are now more confused than ever. You know more, and at the same time, no less than when you first started simply because you have info overload…and still don’t know what’s good info and what’s bad info.

Quite honestly, I don’t know how anybody with no knowledge of business gets through this stage without somebody to take them by the hand and walk them through the process. Yes, I’m talking about a mentor or coach…whatever you want to call it.

If you find yourself in the above situation (totally confused) you might want to consider getting yourself a mentor or coach.

It just might save you from months of frustration spinning your wheels trying to figure this thing called making money online out.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Tired of spinning your wheels trying to get your marketing off the ground? Haven’t got a clue what you’re doing and sick of being dead broke? Why not get some solid mentoring from somebody who has been EXACTLY where you are today? Check out my mentoring program at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/mentoring/mentoring.html and finally get yourself the one on one education that can FINALLY give you the success that you’ve been looking for.

I know you’re probably as sick of it as I am. Every single day you hear somebody quoting statistics at you, like 97% of all people who run a home business fail. Where do they get these numbers from and why is it that everybody keeps repeating them? Well, this article is going to explain why these numbers get passed around like a cheap call girl and what statistics REALLY matter. Keep reading to find out.

Let’s tackle the subject of why these numbers keep getting passed around. Well, somewhere, a long time ago, somebody actually did do some research and maybe even took some surveys. Granted, these were relatively small samples as the Internet was in its infancy, but it was enough to get a handle on things. Then, in order to write effective salescopy, they started quoting these stats. The result? Everybody who read them started to quote them to others without really knowing if they were true or not. That’s why we get all these stats thrown all over the place. They are, in a word, meaningless.

Want to know what the only stats are that matter? I’ll tell you. YOURS. That’s right. It doesn’t matter what anybody else does or doesn’t do. Even if a stat IS accurate, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s going to apply to you. Your business model may be different. Your niche may be different. The amount of money you spend on marketing may be more or less than the average, as if anybody REALLY knows what the average is. There are so many factors that go into the success or failure of a business that industry stats, accurate or not, are meaningless when it comes to YOUR business.

Okay, so now that we’ve established that the only stats that matter are yours, how do we get those stats? The only way is through accurate tracking. Put tracking links on all your campaigns. When somebody clicks on one of your links, somewhere, this needs to be accounted for so you can refer to it later. This way, if you’re getting one sale for every 500 clicks for an affiliate product, you know that it’s probably time to move onto something that converts a little better.

You can’t market in the dark effectively. If you don’t know what’s going on with every little thing you do, you don’t know if your efforts are worthwhile or not. The last thing I want to do is put time and effort into a campaign that converts at one tenth of one percent. And there is no way I can know if I’m converting that poorly unless I am tracking my clicks and sales. It’s NOT rocket science.

So forget about all the stupid stats you hear. The ONLY stat that matters is YOURS.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Tired of spinning your wheels trying to get your marketing off the ground? Haven’t got a clue what you’re doing and sick of being dead broke? Why not get some solid mentoring from somebody who has been EXACTLY where you are today? Check out my mentoring program at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/mentoring/mentoring.html and finally get yourself the one on one education that can FINALLY give you the success that you’ve been looking for.

There is an old rule in Internet marketing circles. Those who give, get. Yeah, I know…a lot of folks don’t exactly believe that. But I can tell you from experience that it is more than true. This article is going to show you, through examples, why this is so true. You may want to read this.

A long time ago, I helped an Internet marketer out with a campaign he was running. I didn’t charge him for the work. I just did it because I felt it was the thing to do. Well, quite some time passed and I never heard from the person again. But then one day, this person started promoting one of my products. I didn’t ask him to. He just did. Why? I’d like to think it was because I had helped him out previously.

Just recently, I had a problem with a third party site. Well, one member of a forum that I attend PM’d me to let me know that he had personally contacted the site on my behalf to let them know that what they had done was wrong and directed them to a thread about the incident. Why did this member do it? Well, I’d like to think it’s because of something I had done for him, though for the life of me, I can’t think of what it was.

Point is, we don’t market in a vacuum. Everything we do is right out in the open. If we attend forums and contribute to those forums, everybody gets to see that contribution. Conversely, if we attend forums and act like a horses rump, everybody gets to see that too. What we present is what is observed. Claude Rains we’re not. At least I’m not.

So ask yourself this question. Do I want to be seen as somebody who does nothing but takes or do I want to be seen as somebody who gives? Who do you think is going to be perceived in a more favorable light? And if you ARE somebody who gives, do you not think that there are going to be those who are going to return the favor? Sure, there are people who do nothing but take. That’s human nature. But most people are pretty decent and if you do right by them, they’ll do right by you.

Sound like “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours?” Maybe, and I’m not denying that a lot of that goes on, especially among the big boys of marketing. We see it all the time whenever there is a big launch. The same guys are always promoting each other’s products. Some see that as a bad thing. I see that as just another example of what I’m talking about.

In other words, you can play the game or you can play against the game.

I know which side I’m choosing.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

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How the mighty have fallen. This may be one of the strangest articles you ever read from me. It is certainly one of the most difficult I’ve had to write. Hopefully, you will get something out of this that just might help you with your marketing and keep you from losing some valuable assets. Keep reading to find out where I’m going with this.

Okay, let me just come right out and say it. My main YouTube business account was disabled…gone…poof and history. I don’t know for certain why it happened (I broke no TOS of the site) but I have a good idea what happened. When you make a name for yourself, you become a target. And when that happens, people go gunning for you. And yes, there are things these people can do to get many of your accounts (not just for YouTube) deleted. Question is, what can we do about this?

Well, as I am waiting for a response back from YouTube to find out EXACTLY what happened (not that I expect an answer) there are some things you can do. And I thank Roger and Frank from the Warrior Forum for reminding me of these.

For starters, it’s always a good idea to diversify. If you put all your eggs in one basket, you stand a good chance of dropping that basket and having those eggs turn into scrambled eggs very fast. So in the case of somebody like me, who has made a name for himself, it is probably a good idea to venture into other markets with a completely different name.

In case you’re wondering, there is nothing wrong with using a pen name. Many people do it. In fact, if you are reading this article at EzineArticles, they allow you to submit articles under pen names. So don’t feel like using a name that is not your own is unethical. It is not. As long as you don’t misrepresent your knowledge (claim to be a doctor when you’re not) you will be fine.

Another thing you can do is to look for other avenues to promote. YouTube is not the only video site on the Internet. There are plenty of others. Use them! Same goes for any type of site like social bookmarking, networking and so on. There is more to the Internet than Digg, Facebook and Twitter. And believe it or not, people go to these other sites.

Like it or not, there are going to be folks out there who will come gunning for you once you’ve made it. If you’re prepared for this (I was not) you can greatly minimize the damage.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

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