Marketer’s Mojo to me is living a life of freedom, flexibility and fun, or F-cubed as I like to call it. Too many people believe that life isn’t about having these things.

Thy think it’s about working hard no matter if you like it or not and it’s about doing what’s been done before. (and yep I’m talking about my parents who told me I HAD to go to college/university and get me a good education and then a good job).

Well my friends, we’re not doing what’s been done before. We are pioneers in the industry of internet marketing and we’re doing it a whole new way! One of the things we need to ask ourselves to break free from that ‘prisoner in our own lives’ mentality is to ask ‘WHAT IF’.

Here are my What If’s – What are yours?

So what are your What Ifs? This is similar to the thinking I needed to do to create my vision board. One of the biggest issues I’ve found in my business are not based on what I know about marketing or what I sell. They’re personal, they’re my thinking.

In the professional area I mentioned wanting to change lives and help people. A mentor of mine said to me if I’m not sharing what I know with others it’s almost like I’m being selfish because those people can benefit from my help!

If you have any doubt about how one person can affect many people watch this short movie and you’ll be inspired to make the most of every interaction you have with the people around you.

Tip #1 Keep it simple. Think about the Nike swish or the golden arches. Those two visuals represent huge conglomerations and yet they evoke a personal experience, emotion, or thought. Logos do not have to be complicated to be effective and too much going on will detract from the effect and power of your visual.

Tip #2 Place your logo consistently and continuously. Use your logo in all of your marketing materials from advertisements to emails it’s how people will begin to associate and identify with you.

However not all images are logo images. If you’re selling products then it pays to display those products in photos. You aren’t likely to buy a product without seeing it and your prospects aren’t either. However, simply placing a photo of your products on your website or in your catalog may not inspire a purchase. Sometimes you need to finesse it a little bit.

Tip #3 When displaying products, make sure they’re prominent in your photo and use good lighting. That means there are no other items in the picture distracting the eye and no shadows obscuring the image. If you’re selling clothing, sometimes it helps to have it worn by a model so people can see how the item fits a real person rather than a two dimensional photo. An attractive model also taps into your customers desire to also be attractive and can actually influence a purchase.

Tip #4 Show people enjoying your products. Hot tubs are a great example of this strategy. Instead of showing an empty hot tub, show it with an attractive couple holding hands or show it full of smiling people – depending on your market.

Tip #5 Show people using your products. Yes, a great set of colorful kitchen bowls may sell quite well with a photo of them sitting on a black marble table however what if someone is using those bowls or serving dip to a friend at a cocktail party or mixing a cake with a cute child? Your audience and prospects are an important part of your graphics and your decisions and should represent their hopes, dreams and desires.

Images can tell a story, they can highlight the benefits and features of a product without saying a word. They can brand a company, evoke emotions and inspire purchases. Take the time to create a strategy with your visuals, logos, catalog images and website graphics, and reap the rewards.

Set up your business properly and your orders will still come in, even when you’re not working.

All too common is the business owner who feels they have to do everything themselves in order for things to go smoothly in their online venture. This couldn’t be farther from the truth! In case you’re curious about why so many online business owners are singing the praises of outsourcing, keep reading to see just five of the many benefits it can obtain.

More Value for Your Time
When you own an online business, one of the most important things to remember is how much your time is really worth. When you think about the dull or repetitive tasks that you are doing, you’ll find this work is not worth your high per hour price tag! When you outsource, you’ll pay someone else to take care of those responsibilities while you give attention to the more important, money-making projects.

Saving Resources
Think about everything that goes into the tasks that you would outsource. This will range from things like your time and space to costs such as Internet and software. After awhile all of these costs add up. For instance, graphics software can get quite expensive. If you are outsourcing an activity, you get more than just the task itself out of the way. You will also get someone who specializes in areas of your business that you may not know quite as well as or have no desire to learn. More than likely these people will already have the tools needed to complete their assignment. Depending on the project, this might save you money and learning time. This brings me to the next benefit of outsourcing.

Going to the Experts
The tasks you are outsourcing might not be ones that you have no desire to learn about, whether they are troubleshooting, manufacturing, taking orders, website design and maintenance, or something else. By handing the work over to an expert who enjoys and makes it their business to know these things, you’ll be able to take advantage of their knowledge in the area without having to learn it yourself. This in turn will give your customers or clients more than you could possibly give them yourself.

Expand
When you outsource, you will soon realize that you are in a great place when it comes to getting more involved with your business. You will be able to expand and provide everything your customers need. Outsourcing frees you up to try new things with your business, learn more and experience new aspects of your industry.

Accountability
When you outsource, you will have a contract with the person or company you are working with. By having someone else who is depending on work from you, you are more apt to stay ahead of the game by planning better and making sure that you’re tasks are getting completed as well.

When you first begin learning about and implementing outsourcing techniques within your business, you’ll find out those boring or repetitive tasks can easily be handed off to someone who enjoys doing them. This will allow you, as the business’ owner, to free up more time to concentrate on more important aspects of your business such as product creation, advertising, networking and other marketing practices.

These are the things that will help your business to grow even more profitable.

Are you a slave to your Online Business? Break the chains. Check out www.OutsourceWeekly.com to find out how!

Affiliate marketing is a very viable strategy for making real money on the internet.

The first step to becoming a highly successful affiliate is finding a niche that is interested and a product that you really believe in.

By doing some diligent research you will find a great number of affiliate programs that provide some top tools and resources for you to promote and make money with their products. However, what you do with those tools and materials is entirely up to you. You can be just another affiliate or a super affiliate.

What Is A Super Affiliate?

Technically speaking a super affiliate is someone who generates a significant amount of profits for the products or services they represent. There is no set dollar amount in the definition, but a general rule is someone who makes a five or six figure income as an affiliate marketers.

A super affiliate can make a healthy living from their affiliate business alone while a standard every day affiliate may need to supplement their affiliate income with, gasp…a 9-5 job!

Benefits To Being A Super Affiliate

The most significant benefit to being a super affiliate is the income. Many super affiliates make six figures simply promoting the products and services of others.

Additionally, if you’re one of the main contributors to a company’s affiliate program they’re going to pay attention to you and your needs. You may receive a higher percentage of sales you may receive first shot with new marketing materials and programs and you’ll get the support you need when you need it.

Here Are A Few Steps To Become A Super Affiliate:

Step One – Commit to publishing content every single day. Content has proven time and again to be the best sales tool available to affiliate marketers. Nothing, not even strategically placed ad copy works as well as providing quality content that pre-sells any product that you’re promoting on your website.

Possible content includes:

* Autoresponders.
* E-newsletters.
* Blogs posts
* Social networking via forums, social networking sites, and chat rooms
* Articles
* Press releases

Step Two – Track and test. Make sure you know where your prospects are coming from, what motivates them to click through and what information they read and respond to – then give them what they need. Tracking and testing is the only way to hone your affiliate program into a smooth running, money making machine.

Step Three – Use the provided marketing materials and be willing to take it a step further. Many affiliate programs do a great job of providing their affiliate with ready to marketing materials including:

1. Banner ads
2. Buttons
3. Email copy
4. Articles
5. Free promotional reports

Use the materials your affiliate manager has provided. It’s been tested and developed for results. That being said, be sure to create your own content too. Even as an affiliate you are your own company and your website needs to reflect your personality and brand. Building a community around your website and providing valuable content is a sure way to create a following that trusts you and your credibility – which will result in click throughs and affiliate sales.

Step Four – Pre-sell. The good news is that your job as an affiliate is to pre-sell products and services. Pre-selling means your content, whether it is a review, article, tutorial, course, or blog post, speaks honestly about the products and services you promote. Pre-selling is about providing value to your website visitors and prospects, making them comfortable with you and your authority to generate interest and a click through to the company website, where the selling happens.

Step Five – Follow up. Just like your affiliate manager follows up with you to see how you’re doing and what you need, follow up with your prospects. A great way to do this unobtrusively is to create a lead list by providing a newsletter visitors can subscribe, a free report, or any number of products in exchange for an email address and the permission to contact them with valuable information and special promotions.

Being a Super Affiliate is the only way to go if you want to build a successful affiliate marketing business. Find products and services you trust and believe in and then create a strategy to share information to your target audience. Test and track your efforts, focus on providing value to your prospects and leave the selling to the companies you represent. Helping others live better lives, without having to provide the products or services personally, is a great way to make a living.

Need more information on how to become a Super Affiliate? I highly recommend Rosalind Gardner’s Super Affiliate Handbook for anyone who is new or even experienced in Affiliate Marketing. Rosalind has made a six figure plus income as an affiliate marketer for years and her handbook is considered THE BIBLE of affiliate marketing to many.

Easier said than done, right? Here are 5 keys to help you create and sustain a positive mindset so you attain the success you desire.

1. Surround yourself with successful and positive people. The influence people have over our own personal energy is amazing. Moods and attitudes are so easily spread – think about how much of a difference a simple smile from a stranger can make for your day and then magnify it 1000 times to demonstrate the power of positive and successful friends, family and associates. When you have people around you who inspire you, believe in you and want you to succeed, there’s no room for doubts and even when they creep up, they’re quickly swept away.

2. Create a mantra or an affirmation. Repeating positive affirmations has been shown to get people through tough times and to actually help them truly believe what they’re saying.

For example, “I am building a powerful and profitable business.” Many of the most esteemed business professionals have used the same affirmation strategy to attain their success. To find the right affirmations for you, consider writing a quick list of your doubts, insecurities and complaints. These can then be quickly turned into affirmations.

For example, if you write that you’re always feeling disorganized then your affirmation would be, “I am organized and in control.” Repeat your affirmations several times a day and feel the power of positive thinking.

3. Capture negative thoughts. We all have negative thoughts from time to time, however, negative thoughts and emotions can derail us and prevent us from achieving all we desire. Of course catching those negative thoughts takes practice and persistence. When you find yourself thinking negative thoughts or having negative emotions, find a trigger to turn them around. The affirmations mentioned above are a great way to turn the negative into the positive. You can also find quick pick me ups like a favorite song, a walk outside in the fresh air, or some exercise to help improve your mood.

4. Set goals/intentions and then be willing to let it go. The law of attraction says that we attract what we focus on the most. However, desperation, needing your business to be a success, sends mixed messages and a lot of negativity into the universe. Set your goals and intentions and then let them go. A certain amount of faith in yourself and in the power of attraction is necessary. Give it a try.

5. Be grateful. Gratitude is perhaps the single most powerful and positive tool for success. When you’re grateful for all of the wonderful things and people in your life the challenges you face seem significantly less important and are more easily dealt with.

Consider keeping a gratitude journal and make a practice of entering into it daily. That way, when you’re facing challenges a quick peek at all the amazing things in your life will make you feel as if you can tackle anything. Additionally, an attitude of gratitude helps you maintain a positive perspective and to face challenges as opportunities rather than obstacles.

Success is within your reach and with the right attitude you can accomplish anything you set your sights on. Embrace these five powerful mind success strategies and you’ll build a better business and live a happier, more satisfying life.

Audio Version of Article

If you have a website, or even read any information on creating a website, you’ve most likely heard that you should use keywords on your site. Keywords are so much more than just words. Let me give you my definition:

- Keywords or keyword terms are specific terms or phrases that people use in the search engines to find what they are looking for online.

Most of the time people are looking for information. So they type in the keywords relating to what it is they want to find.

What does this mean to you?

It means keywords are a goldmine of information telling you exactly what people want when they are coming to the search engines. It means it’s just silly for you to pick out two or three keywords, slap them on your website and call it a day.

You need to integrate keywords and keyword research into your business and respond to what people are calling out for. Sure you can write about whatever you want, whenever you want online but if no one is looking for that information you’re wasting your effort.

Where do I find MY keywords?

There are plenty of great places to do keyword research. Start educating yourself on what the numbers mean and what the google competition is.

Do a google search for any of the following and you’ll find some great keyword tools:
- SEO Book keyword tool
- Adwords Keyword tool
- Wordtracker free keyword tool
- Wordtracker
- Market Samuri

So, here’s your homework:
- Go find a list of about 100 keywords relating to your market and use them. Use them in your website copy, to create newsletters, to create new products, to write blog posts and anything else that you do for the market those keywords serve.

It’s a valid concern and it’s constantly getting harder to get your completely legitimate emails delivered to your subscribers inbox. We can thank the lovely spammers for the difficulties in email deliverability!

There are some things you can do to protect yourself and get your emails delivered to your opt-in list and read.

Getting Permission

Confirming that the people who ask for your information have actually requested to be on your list is the number one step in the battle for deliverability. You should be using a process called confirmed, double or verified opt-in to send a unique link to the attempted subscriber when they request information. Before adding the person to your list they must click that unique link verifying that they are indeed the same person that owns the email address and requested to subscribe.

Subscriber Addresses

When requesting website visitors to opt-in ask for their “real” or “primary” email address instead of a free email address like Yahoo or Hotmail. Free emails tend to be throw away accounts and typically have a shorter lifetime than a primary ISP address.

Of course you can’t control what email you are given but often just making the suggestion will help to receive their most active email address.

List Maintenance

Always promptly remove undeliverable addresses that bounce when sending email to them. An address that bounces with a permanent error 2-3 times in a 30 day period should be removed from the list. ISP’s track what percentage of your newsletters bounce and will block them if you attempt to continually deliver messages to closed subscriber mailboxes.

Message Format

Usage of HTML messages to allow for text formatting, multiple columns, images, and brand recognition is growing in popularity and is widely supported by most email client software. Most spam is also HTML formatted and thus differentiating between requested email and spam HTML messages can be difficult. A 2004 study by AWeber.com (which, by the way, I also highly recommend as an email service provider) shows that plain text messages are undeliverable 1.15% of the time and HTML only messages were undeliverable 2.3%. If sending HTML it is important to always send a plain text alternative message, also called text/HTML multi-part mime format.

Content

Many ISP’s filter based on the content that appears within the message text.

Website URL:

Research potential newsletter advertisers before allowing them to place ads in your newsletter issues. If they have used their website URL to send spam, just having their URL appear in your newsletter could cause the entire message to be filtered.

Words/phrases:

Choose your language carefully when crafting messages. Avoid hot button topics often found in spam such as medication, mortgages, making money, and pornography. If you do need to use words that might be filtered, don’t attempt to obfuscate words with extra characters or odd spelling, you’ll just make your messages appear more spam like.

Images:

Avoid creating messages that are entirely images. Use images sparingly, if at all. Commonly used open rate tracking technology uses images to calculate opens. You may choose to disable open rate tracking to avoid being filtered based on image content.

Attachments:

With viruses running rampant and spreading thru the usage of malicious email attachments many users are wary of attached documents. It’s often better to link to files via a website URL to reduce recipient fear of attachments and reduce the overall message size.

CAN-SPAM Compliance

The January 2004 Federal CAN-SPAM law introduced a number of rules regarding the delivery of email. It’s important you have your legal counsel review your practices and ensure you are in compliance. The two most important rules include having a valid postal mail address listed in all commercial messages and a working unsubscribe link that is promptly honored to remove the subscriber from future messages.
Reputation

Reputation services are often used by large ISP’s as a way to vet email senders regarding their email practices and policies. Businesses listed with these services are then given less stringent filtering or no filtering at all. Several reputation services are:

* http://www.isipp.com/iadb.php
* http://www.bondedsender.com
* http://www.habeas.com

Relationships & Whitelisting

Contact with major ISP’s and email providers is essential in letting them know about your requested subscriber email. Many large providers such as AOL and Yahoo have specific whitelisting programs and postmaster website areas to ensure your email is delivered as long as you meet their policies and procedures in handling your opt-in list.

Email deliverability is about ensuring requested opt-in email is delivered to the intended recipient. While no single tip will enable you to get 100% of your email delivered each one utilized as a group can go a long way to reaching that goal.

Want to know the email service provider I trust for my email delivery? It’s Aweber all the way!