Steve Wagenheim’s Home Business Blog

Making money online is very, very hard. Want to know why? Keep reading this article and I will explain in excruciating detail why it’s so hard. I will leave no stone unturned so that you will know exactly why you’re spinning your wheels and scratching your head trying to figure out how to make a buck out of this lousy business. Don’t worry…this article has a happy ending.

Okay, reason number 1 why making money online is very, very hard. It’s because of planning. Most people hop on the computer, say to themselves “I want to make money online” and don’t have a plan. They have absolutely no idea what they’re going to do. So they go jumping around from one thing to another. They may start with paid surveys and then move on over to paid emails. Maybe they do those GPT things. They never stick with one thing more than a few months or so.

Reason number 2 is because of budgeting. Most people have no budget. It amazes me how, if you were going to start a business in the off line world, you’d have to spend thousands of dollars on rent, supplies, advertising and so on. And yet, in the online world, you can’t get most people to even spring $5 a month for a decent hosting account. How do you really expect to make any kind of money at all if you’re not willing to invest in your business? This just boggles my mind.

Reason number 3 is knowledge…most people have none. Let me ask you a question. If I wanted to become a brain surgeon, would I be able to just walk into a hospital operating room and start cutting into somebody’s head? Of course not. So why is it that people feel that they can go about making a living online without having any kind of knowledge whatsoever? This isn’t like walking a chewing gum. There are many skills needed to be able to make a buck in this world…not the least of which are communication skills. If you can’t communicate with your potential customers, what chance do you have?

Reason number 4 is discipline and work ethic. This is something that is becoming rarer and rarer each year. The younger generation especially wants to have things handed to them. Yes, we live in a world of instant gratification. Yes, there are exceptions, but for the most part…people just don’t want to work. And tell somebody that they need to put in at least four hours a day into their business and they look at you like you had two heads.

Reason number 5 is patience. I touched briefly on this in reason number 1, but let me go into more detail. Did you know that an off line business needs about 2 years on average before it sees a profit? And yet, people who try to make money online expect to be in profit their first month. And when it doesn’t happen, they get discouraged and move onto something else.

There you have it…5 reasons why making money online is very, very hard.

How many of those reasons apply to YOU?

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Want to make money TODAY without spending a DIME? Check out my site at http://www.hottrendsdaily.com/ and find out how.

Somebody started a thread at the Warrior Forum today asking if the economy really was bad. It got me thinking of all the self fulfilling prophecies in the world. When it comes to Internet marketing failure, many times, we are our own worst enemies. If you’re wondering what I’m talking about and why I am totally convinced that IM failure can be avoided, no matter how bad the economy is, keep reading. I think you will find this to be one fascinating article.

First of all, let me explain why I truly believe that the bad economy is a self fulfilling prophecy. In a nutshell, somebody in the government declares that we are heading for a recession. We’re not sure why. But they say we are and that’s good enough for us. So we change our spending habits. We don’t buy as much. Then companies have to start laying off people because sales are down. And the downward spiral continues. Yes, it is a self fulfilling prophecy.

Okay, so how do we avoid this as Internet marketers? After all, if the economy does start going down the toilet thanks to our fears, how do we keep people buying our products? There is only one way, and it’s something I’ve been trying to get across to marketers from day one. You have to have something to sell that people are going to want no matter how bad things get. I’m not just talking about the necessities like food and shelter. I’m talking about the things that, if we didn’t have them, our lives wouldn’t be as pleasant. You know, the little luxuries that we can’t live without.

For example, could you give up your cable TV subscription even if things were really bad? Of course not. Heck, I see families on welfare at the supermarket with their coupons but wouldn’t you know it, they’re talking to the checkout girl telling her how they have to get home to watch the latest episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” on HBO. Okay, as a cable subscriber, I know how much this stuff costs monthly. And then these same people hop into their brand new Toyota and make their way towards their $150,000 home.

Tell me I’m wrong.

Point is, no matter how bad things get, people will keep spending money on the things that really mean the most to them. So, are you selling ebooks on how to have nice gardens? Forget it. In times of crisis, these things are NOT going to sell. They’re just not important enough. BUT…if you have an ebook on how to get out of debt quickly and easily, these same people who are just about able to pay for food are going to be jumping at the chance to pick up your product. They, more than anyone, need it…desperately.

So, if you want to beat the self fulfilling prophecy of economic chaos, offer something that is going to sell no matter how bad things get.

You’ll find that the lousy economy doesn’t set one foot in your front door.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Want to make money TODAY without spending a DIME? Check out my site at http://www.hottrendsdaily.com/ and find out how.

This is what you call putting a knife through your own heart, but if I’m going to tell the truth about making money online, then I’m ultimately going to reveal some not so nice things about myself as well. Yes, I play some of the games as well. I have to in order to make a profit. So in this installment of our real truth series, I’m going to reveal the skinny on free stuff and how it’s really not so free when you take a look at the motivation and what’s inside. This one is going to be a real eye opener.

Okay, I just said free stuff isn’t so free. You’re scratching your head probably wondering if I’ve been smoking something. After all, it is free right? You didn’t pay for it, right? So how did it cost you anything? Well, it may have not cost you anything in dollars and cents right away, but make no mistake about it, the freebie that you got has a method behind the madness and all isn’t as it seems.

For starters, most freebies require you to opt into a list in order to get them, right? Well, believe it or not, that’s a form of a payment…you handing over your email address and access to you any time the list owner wants. He can email you as much as he likes until you either unsubscribe or he keels over from heart failure. You’re his for eternity. Now, if he’s providing you with good content that helps you with your business, then you might not mind so much. That’s something I always try to do. But not everybody is so giving. Some just give you one sales pitch after another. It’s the list from hell.

Another thing that makes these freebies not so free is the fact that if you actually look inside these reports, you’ll see that they are either stuffed with affiliate links or links to their own products. That’s right…ways for these horrible list owners to make money off of you. Well, of course some of these products may actually be very good and help you with your business. I’ve purchased quite a few items from these free reports myself that have greatly contributed to my six figure a year income, but the point is…the freebie isn’t so free if it’s making you spend money, right?

Okay, maybe the above isn’t the end of the world, but I just wanted you to be aware that when people give you things for free, just as I do, there is always a reason behind it that leads to dollars and cents. That’s why it’s called business. And there’s nothing wrong with running a business if you do it honestly and provide products and services to others that have REAL value.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Here’s a freebie that you won’t even have to opt in for to get. My real truth video series. You can watch them at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/downloads.html and get all the dirt on making money online.

Okay, I’m sick and tired of hearing people complain about how hard it is to make money online. In this article, I am going to give you three down and dirty way is to make $1000 a month where you won’t have to stretch your budget or strain your brain. Anybody who can’t make at least that much money each month with these methods is simply not trying. Hopefully after you are done reading this, you will have no excuses not to make at least $1000 a month.

The first method is by freelancing. Freelancing is where you offer your services to other people at a price. The easiest form of freelancing is by writing articles. It doesn’t take a lot of brain power to write an article. Plus, you can easily make up as much as $5-$10 apiece, with each article that you write. Just writing three articles today at $10 apiece will give you $900 a month. Squeeze in another 10 articles during the month, and you’ve made your thousand dollars. It’s that easy.

The second method to make at least $1000 a month is by selling e-books. All you have to do is come up with an e-book priced at about $40 and sell just one of those a day. Let’s say that your sales page converts at 2%. To sell just one copy a day. You only need to get 50 people to your website each day. Trust me, getting 50 people to your website in a day is not hard to do. Once you’ve done this, making $40 in one day is a piece of cake.

The last way to make $1000 in one month is by selling items on eBay. All you have to do is find one item around the house that is worth about $40 and put it up for auction at eBay. If you can’t find items around the house, go to garage sales around your neighborhood. There are always people getting rid of things that you can easily sell for $40 or more. If that doesn’t work, go through a wholesaler and buy items directly. Selling on eBay is an easy way to generate a steady income.

These are just a few ways that I thought of right off the top of my head to generate $1000 in a month. If you simply sit down and give it some thought you will find that making $35 a day is really not all that hard. And you can do it with almost no expense at all. Freelancing, e-books sales, and the eBay are just a few of the many things available to you.

There are simply no excuses… so go out and make some money.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Want to make money TODAY without spending a DIME? Check out my site at http://www.hottrendsdaily.com/ and find out how.

I have heard this said by successful marketers, not once, but many times. Marketers like Jason Moffatt, Eric Louviere, Kevin Riley, and on and on and on. The biggest reason why you’re not having any success is because you’re not doing anything…at least nothing productive. Look, I used to be in the same boat so I know what it’s like. As a matter of fact, I can pretty much guess what you’re doing.

Let me see, you probably start your marketing day checking your stats to see how many visitors to your site you got, how many sales you made and so on. I know. I was real big on checking stats. Heck, I used to check my stats every hour. I was a total fanatic.

After that, you probably check your emails. You want to see if you got any prospect inquiries to any of your ads, that’s if you even have any ads out there. Maybe you check to see what the latest big product pitch is so you can get that product and start making some money JUST because you bought it. After all, all these products have buttons that you can push that will instantly bring you wealth, right?

Then you probably go to your favorite forum and hang out with your other buddies who also aren’t making any money. You look for the great “tips” that the gurus post at the forum to see if you can learn anything that will put you over the top. You see some cool gimmick and figure you’d try that, only to find out that it’s just one piece of a very large puzzle. That one piece is NOT going to make you a fortune…if anything at all.

By this time, it’s probably lunch and you take a break from working. The only problem is, you haven’t really done anything, have you?

Look, this business is not rocket science. Do some keyword research. Find a niche with a demand for a solution to a problem. Create your own solution or find somebody who already has and sell their solution as an affiliate. Don’t have money to advertise? No problem. Write a few articles and send people to a page to pick up a free report. Build your list. Mine is over 5,000 strong right now and earns me a solid six figures a year. No, it won’t happen overnight. Forget about instant riches. Get to a point where you’re getting 10 to 20 opt ins a day. Sell these people something that will actually help them with their problem. Build a real relationship with them. Care about them.

If more people would do these simple things, we’d have less people complaining about not being able to make any money online.

For crying out loud…just do something.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Want to make money TODAY without spending a DIME? Check out my site at http://www.hottrendsdaily.com/ and find out how.

Well, I figured that since I was in a real truth frame of mind these days, I’d tackle make money products in this installment of my real truth series. Today, you’re going to find out exactly what the deal is with these products that promise that you’ll make all this money online IF you follow their steps. And I’m talking not only about the bogus ones but the legit ones as well. Yes, there IS a real truth that you better know or you’re in for a world of hurt and disappointment.

Let’s start with the bogus products first, which are the get rich quick ones. You know the ones I’m talking about. They’re the ones with the headlines that read something like “Make $30,000 In 30 Days…Guaranteed!” Okay, first of all, if you see any headlines like these, the sales page is in violation of FTC regulations which state that you cannot make any income claims on your sales page. So these people are flying under the radar and are eventually going to get shut down anyway.

But even for the legit pages that don’t make specific claims but hint to the possibility that you can make a ton of money fast in your sleep, this is just not so. It won’t happen. Running a business online takes hard work and a lot of time. There is no easy and quick way to riches. I am speaking from experience.

Okay, but what about the legit products like mine. I don’t make any crazy claims. I even show proof of the income that I’ve earned…BUT! Yes, there is a big but coming. See, while I may have made that money, what you don’t see is all the hard work and time that went into making it. You see the end result. And people want to think that this end result will happen quickly. It will not. I have been working online for over five years now and it took me a long time to get to where I am today. It did NOT happen overnight.

So when you got to these sales pages, even the legit ones, and they tell you that you’ll learn everything you need to make a living online, please understand that it’s not going to happen in an instant.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Want to see more of this series? Watch my REAL Truth Videos at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/downloads.html and get the REAL truth about making money on the Internet.

Everybody talks about the cost of marketing or doing business. But do you REALLY get it? It’s not only about dollars and cents. Sure, that’s a big part of it, but to the savvy Internet marketer, it goes way beyond just nickels and dimes. This article is going to take a brief look at this issue. I have no doubt that it will open up your eyes to many possibilities you may have not considered.

It’s easy to look at things in black and white. For example, a pay per click keyword says it’s going to cost you 10 cents every time somebody clicks on your ad for that keyword. Okay, great. So you get out your little calculator and figure out how much it’s going to cost you for 100 clicks, then figure out your conversion percentage on the product you’re selling and finally come up with a dollar amount for advertising, gross sales and net profit. From all this, you decide if it’s worth promoting the product or not via this method.

Believe it or not, it’s not all the cut and dried. For example, let’s for argument sake say that your cost for 100 clicks is $30 and your product only brings you in $27 on the front end and it converts at 1%. You would say that you’re losing $3 on every sale…but…what if the sale came with a new subscriber to your list? And what if for every 100 sales you sold two coaching courses at $997? Suddenly, it makes a lot of sense to pay that $3 loss up front to get the money on the back end.

Okay, that’s one kind of cost and how it can be misleading if you only look at part of the picture. But there’s another kind of cost…the cost of YOUR time. A lot of people who don’t have a lot of money say things like, “Well, my time doesn’t cost me anything so I’m going to use free methods to generate traffic where I have to do a lot of manual labor.” Well, fine. If you’re time really does mean nothing to you, far be it for me to try to change your way of thinking. But my time DOES mean something to me. I’d rather be spending it with my family or in the recording studio than slaving over manual work all day. This has come from many stupid years of doing just that. I missed out on a lot of parties.

Point is, there is a cost to everything you do, whether it be directly out of pocket or in the hours you spend writing articles or whatever. So the next time you sit down to figure out the cost of your marketing, remember, it’s not always just about dollars and cents.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Want to make money TODAY without spending a DIME? Check out my site at http://www.hottrendsdaily.com/ and find out how.

Isn’t it great how we have to be so politically correct these days. We can’t say that people are broke anymore. We have to call them monetarily challenged. Well, if that’s you, and you’re wondering how you can drive traffic to your site without spending a dime, you might want to read this article. In spite of what you might have heard, there ARE effective forms of promotion out there that don’t require you to shell out a whole lot of money for. This article is going to share a few of my secrets. Hope you get something out of this.

What most people don’t realize is that it’s not money that makes the Internet go round…it’s content. Go look up just about anything at all at the Google search engine and you’ll find content…more specifically articles. Oh yes, sometimes the content will be in the form of videos or audio files, but for the most part, the written word is what makes the Internet run. Well guess what? It doesn’t cost anything to get content on the Internet.

One way is by simply putting up a blog. And yes, you can do this absolutely free. Blogger is a great blogging platform that not only is free but will allow you to use your blog for promotional purposes. As long as you have relevant content on the blog (not a spam blog) they will have no problem with it. You can then make money from these blogs through Adsense, affiliate programs, CPA offers and many other things.

If you have your own web site already, you can drive traffic to that site via article submissions. There are a number of great article directories on the Internet, Ezine Articles being at the top of the list. I’ve been submitting articles to them for years and it doesn’t cost me a cent. Not only that, I get tons of visitors to my various sites from the articles that I submit. Many of those visitors turn into paying customers because I offer them something that helps them with their problem.

If you want to discover more cheap or even free ways to get traffic to your site, check out the link in my signature. Trust me, you don’t have to shell out hundreds of dollars for Adwords or solo ads or bought leads or whatever. I don’t and I make a nice living online being cheap.

You can too.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Want to discover how to use the crappiest forms of promotion online that earn me over $3,000 each month? Visit my site at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/crapads/index.html

As a marketer, I realize that there are some people who are trying to make a living online who simply don’t have a lot of money to spend, if at all. So this article is written for those who are on an extremely tight budget. You won’t make a fortune with these methods, but you can make a nice steady income and it won’t cost you a red cent. As you then begin to earn, you can invest some of your profit into other methods that will give you a bigger return.

The first, and easiest way is by freelancing. Everybody has some kind of a skill. I happen to be able to write. You don’t have to be a great writer either, just competent enough to be able to fill a need. The need I am talking about is that for content. The Internet is made up of content. Everybody who has a web site needs it. Unfortunately, not everybody can write. That is where you come in. By offering your writing services, you can make a steady income online without having to spend a cent. All you need is your PC and notepad to type into. You don’t even have to purchase an expensive word processor. Or you can download Open Office. It’s free.

The second way to make money online with no expense is by blogging. This is one of the easiest ways. All you need to do is a little keyword research to see what topics are hot. Google Hot Trends is a great place to go for that. Once you find something that looks promising, there are several ways you can monetize it. One is by joining an affiliate program for a product related to the area you’ve chosen and promote that product through your blog. Another way is to open up an Adsense account and earn money through people reading about this topic at your blog and clicking on your Adsense ads. It’s that simple, and again, no expense if you use a blog like Blogger or WordPress.

The third way is to join a CPA program. CPA programs pay you to refer leads to them. You don’t have to sell anything. All you have to do is recommend offers to people who are looking for things, such as apartments for rent. You simply place a free classified ad telling people that if they’re looking for an apartment, to simply go to the site you provide for them, and they’ll find all the apartments that are available through that site. You get paid whether they rent an apartment or not as long as they register with the service through your link. Again, this is at no expense.

You won’t make a fortune with any of these methods, but they will bring in a steady income, won’t cost you anything and won’t take up a lot of your time.

You can make money online and it doesn’t have to cost you an arm and a leg…or anything at all.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim
Want to make money TODAY without spending a DIME? Check out my site at http://www.hottrendsdaily.com/ and find out how.

There are more ways to start and run a home business than you can possibly imagine. Those choices only make the decision that much harder. Where do you begin? What’s right for you? What model will you be able to afford? Well,if you’re wrestling with getting an idea for a home business, you might want to consider getting into freelancing. It’s without a doubt the cheapest model in existence. This article will fill you in on some of the details and then point you to where you can get more info.

Okay, so what’s freelancing? Well, in a nutshell, it’s offering your services for a fee. Plain and simple. Naturally, in order to freelance, you have to have some kind of skill to offer. The more common freelancing jobs are writing, programming and graphic design. Writing actually covers many things such as article writing, copywriting, ebook writing and so on. Programming could be development of applications using a language like C or a scripting language like PHP. It could also include web design as an offshoot. Graphic design can be anything from ecovers to full blown web page templates.

If you have any of these skills, then freelancing might be something you’d want to consider. Now, having said that, don’t get the idea that freelancing is all roses. Yes, you do make your own hours and set your own rates. But there are some downsides to this home business model.

For one thing, you don’t have a boss hanging over your head telling you what to do and when to do it. If you get an assignment, it’s up to you to make sure you get it done. A late assignment is going to make a very unhappy customer. Plus, with freelancing, the work isn’t always steady. There may be times of the year that are slower than others. So you will have to learn how to budget. And of course there is the occasional problem of getting paid. Some customers, you have to drag the money out of.

Freelancing can be very lucrative. There are some freelancers who make six figures a year working very little. If you want more info on this fascinating way to make money from home, in my signature is an absolutely free report that you can read. It won’t cost you a dime and it will cover all the pros and cons of freelancing so that you can make an informed decision.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Not sure if freelancing is right for you? Get my free report at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/freelancing/squeeze.html and get the total rundown on the freelancing world and find out how YOU can earn 6 figures a year as a freelancer