Can I Really Work From Home?

Every year, several thousand people develop an interest in “going into business.” Many of these people have an idea, a product or a service they hope to promote into an income producing business which they can operate from their homes.

If you are one of these people, here are some practical thoughts to consider before hanging out the “Open for Business” sign.

In areas zoned “Residential Only,” your proposed business could be illegal. In many areas, zoning restrictions rule out home businesses involving the coming and going of many customers, clients or employees. Many businesses that sell or even store anything for sale on the premises also fall into this category.

Be sure to check with your local zoning office to see how the ordinances in your particular area may affect your business plans. You may need a special permit to operate your business from your home; and you may find that making small changes in your plan will put you into the position of meeting zoning standards.

Many communities grant home occupation permits for businesses involve typing, sewing, and teaching, but turn thumbs down on requests from photographers, interior decorators and home improvement businesses to be run from the home. And often, even if you are permitted to use your home for a given business, there will be restrictions that you may need to take into consideration. By all means, work with your zoning people, and save yourself time, trouble and dollars.

One of the requirements imposed might be off street parking for your customers or patrons. And, signs are generally forbidden in residential districts. If you teach, there is almost always a limit on the number of students you may have at any one time.

Obtaining zoning approval for your business, then, could be as simple as filling out an application, or it could involve a public hearing. The important points the zoning officials will consider will center around how your business will affect the neighborhood. Will it increase the traffic noticeably on your street? Will there be a substantial increase in noise? And how will your neighbors feel about this business alongside their homes?

To repeat, check into the zoning restrictions, and then check again to determine if you will need a city license. If you’re selling something, you may need a vendor’s license, and be required to collect sales taxes on your transactions. The sale tax requirement would result in the need for careful record keeping.

Licensing can be an involved process, and depending upon the type of business, it could even involve the inspection of your home to determine if it meets with local health and building and fire codes. Should this be the case, you will need to bring your facilities up to the local standards. Usually this will involve some simple repairs or adjustments that you can either do personally, or hire out to a handyman at a nominal cost.

Still more items to consider: Will your homeowner’s insurance cover the property and liability in your new business? This must definitely be resolved, so be sure to talk it over with your insurance agent.

Tax deductions, which were once one of the beauties of engaging in a home business, are not what they once were. To be eligible for business related deductions today, you must use that part of your home claimed EXCLUSIVELY AND REGULARLY as either the principal location of your business, or place reserved to meet patients, clients or customers.

An interesting case in point: if you use your den or a spare bedroom as the principal place of business, working there from 8:00 to 5:00 every day, but permit your children to watch TV in that room during evening hours, the IRS dictates that you cannot claim a deduction for that room as your office or place of business.

There are, however, a couple of exceptions to the “exclusive use” rule. One is the storage on inventory in your home, where your home is the location of your trade or business, and your trade or business is the selling of products at retail or wholesale. According to the IRS, such storage space must be used on a REGULAR Basis, and be separately identifiable space.

Another exception applies to daycare services that are provided for children, the elderly, or physically or mentally handicapped. This exception applies only if the owner of the facility complies with the state laws for licensing.

To be eligible for business deductions, your business must be an activity undertaken with the intent of making profit. It’s presumed you meet this requirement if your business makes a profit in any two years of a five-year period.

Once you are this far along, you can deduct business expenses such as supplies, subscriptions to professional journals, and an allowance for the business use of your car or truck. You can also claim deductions for home related business expenses such as utilities, and in some cases, even a new paint job for your home.

The IRS is going to treat the part of your home you use for business as though it were a separate piece of property. This means that you’ll have to keep good records and take care not to mix business and personal matters. No specific method of record keeping is required, but your records must clearly justify and deductions you claim.

You can begin by calculating what percentage of the house is used for business, Either by number of rooms or by area in square footage. Thus, if you use one of the five rooms for your business, the business portion is 20 percent. If you run your business out of a room that’s 10 by 12 feet, and the total area of your home is 1,200 square feet, the business space factor is 10 percent.

An extra computation is required if your business is a home day care center. This is one of the exempted activities in which the exclusive use rule doesn’t apply. Check with your tax preparer and the IRS for an exact determination.

If you’re a renter, you can deduct the part of your rent which is attributable to the business share of your house or apartment. Homeowners can take a deduction based on the depreciation of the business portion of their house.

There is a limit to the amount you can deduct. This is the amount equal to the gross income generated by the business, minus those home expenses you could deduct even if you weren’t operating a business from your home. As an example, real estate taxes and mortgage interest are deductible regardless of any business activity in your home, so you must subtract from your business gross income the percentage that’s allocable to the business portion of your home. You thus arrive at the maximum amount for home-related business deductions.

If you are self-employed, you claim your business deductions on SCHEDULE C, PROFIT(or LOSS) for BUSINESS OR PROFESSION. The IRS emphasizes that claiming business-at-home deductions does not automatically trigger an audit on your tax return. Even so, it is always wise to keep meticulously within the proper guidelines, and of course keep detailed records if you claim business related expenses when you are working out of your home. You should discuss this aspect of your operation with your tax preparer or a person qualified in the field of small business tax requirements.

If your business earnings aren’t subject to withholding tax, and your estimated federal taxes are $100 or more, you’ll probably be filing a Declaration of Estimated Tax, Form 1040 ES. To complete this form, you will have to estimate your income for the coming year and also make a computation of the income tax and self-employed tax you will owe.

The self-employment taxes pay for Social Security coverage. If you have a salaried job covered by Social Security, the self-employment tax applies only to that amount of your home business income that, when added to your salary, reaches the current ceiling. When you file your Form 1040-ES, which is due April 15, you must make the first of four equal installment payments on your estimated tax bill.

Another good way to trim taxes is by setting up a Keogh plan or an Individual Retirement Account. With either of these, you can shelter some of your home business income from taxes by investing it for your retirement.

Of course if this is all too much for you, (insurance, parking, permits etc.) you can always look at an online business such as 12kmonth.net

Yours in blogging
Dan Dinneen

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5 Tips For Staying Razor Sharp When Starting Your Home Business Enterprise

So, you’ve decided to start a home-based business?

Good for you!

You’ve just joined the ranks of 79 million North Americans who are expected to start their own home based business in the next 3 to 5 years according to Forbes Magazine.

You may be juggling a full time job, a part time job and family life. You know that there are many things you need to do in order to successfully start your business and work from home.

Don’t let anyone fool you into thinking its going to be easy. It can be simple but it won’t be easy. If it were easy everyone would be rich working from home.

Ditch The Old - Grab The New!

How are you going to fit your business project into your daily commitments?

It’s easy to become overwhelmed and lose focus. Losing focus will cause you to take no action. Action is essential to moving on from where you are now, to where you want to go.

Here are 5 critical tips for staying focused and razor sharp when starting your home business enterprise…

1. Break It Down:

If you have a large task to tackle, it is always easier when you break it down into smaller components. You’ll find it easier to focus because you won’t feel as overwhelmed. For example, ‘Register a business name’ can be broken down into: ‘Think of five business name ideas’, ‘Find out how to register a business name’, ‘Get registration form’ and so on.

2. Keep A ‘To Do’ List:

Once you’ve broken down major tasks into smaller ones, make and keep a ‘to do’ list. Always keep a note pad and pen with you so that you can jot down any new ideas as they arise.

3. Schedule Your Time:

Every evening, decide on three to five tasks on your ‘to do’ list that you wish to accomplish the following day. Stay focused on these tasks and only move on to the next tasks on your list once these have been completed.

4. Set Goals:

This is critical. There is nothing that will keep you more focused than setting goals and writing out your goals. Visualize exactly where you want to be in a month, six months and a year.

In a month’s time, do you want to have registered a business name and have a fully functional home office set up? In three months time, how many clients or team members do you want? How much revenue do you want to generate in a six month’s time?

5. Say No:

Be assertive and carve out more time for your home business. Saying ‘no’ to that extra demand by your boss every once in a while can get you home one hour earlier a couple of days a week.

How about cutting back on the amount of housework that you do? How about watching less TV? Thats a BIG time zapper. Imagine how you could channel that extra time into your home business enterprise…

If you put these 5 tips into practice, you’ll definitely find it easier to focus and stay razor sharp so you can achieve your ultimate goal of working from home and putting more LifeStyle back in your life.

P.S. Pay particular attention to Tip # 3 above. As a Home Business Owner and Entrepreneur, once you gain control of your time you will eventually have all the time you will ever need…

Perhaps you’ve tried and tried to suceed in your home business, but feel like you’re banging your head against a brick wall.  Why not watch this video and click the banner below … it’ll change your life.

Yours in blogging

Dan Dinneen

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Obesity – Epidemic or Opportunity?

I have been wanting to write a post for some time now about looking after ourselves while we work at home. It can be very easy to get the kids off to school in the morning, grab a cup of coffee and sit down to do some work in front of a computer. All of a sudden the day is nearly over, the peace is shattered and the kids are home from school. And what have we done to look after our health? Probably very little – and this leads to becoming overweight, which is no good for our body, and no good for our brain.

According to Wikipedia.org being overweight “ is generally defined as having more body fat than is optimally healthy.” But is that all there is to it?

Most medicos agree that a man having over 25% body fat is obese, while a woman is obese if she has more than 30% of fat, but it’s a fine line between being overweight and being obese.

Obesity is a worldwide health problem which is reaching epidemic proportions and is defined as the excess accumulation of body fat.  Many people think that it is a state of overweight, but that’s not exactly true.  Being overweight indicates an excess amount of weight that includes bone, muscle, fat and water. But, obese persons have a surplus of body fat which is generally caused by a sedentary lifestyle, consumption of pre-packaged food, fast foods, and certain medical disorders are the causes of obesity.

Today, obesity has become the number one public health issue in the United States. Research shows that obesity and being overweight are one of the causes of preventable death in America. Around 1/3rd off all Americans are overweight people and another 1/3rd are obese.

So what has all this got to do with running your own home business?  Well there is an extremely good window of opportunity open to us at this very point in time. You see we have just had Christmas and New Year!  -  What do we do in the holiday season?  –  We eat!

That means that you have a target market of approx 100,000,000 people in the US alone!

US Obesity Trends 2007

What I would like to show you is an incredible product that will launch your new weight loss business beyond your wildest dreams!

Yes Dan! I Want To Learn More!

On the following pages you will discover the revolutionary product that is leading the field in the lose weight and keep it off  industry. Backed by over 122 clinical studies (search lycium barbarum) Tai Slim will take you to a new level in not only personal health, but also personal wealth. Whether you start as an advantage customer or business builder the choice is yours.

The important thing to understand if you chose the latter option, matter where you are in the world technolgy will give you all the support and training that you need. This training which is designed to suit your individual goals not only comes from myself (yes, I am offering my time to you FREE, as a member of my team), but is also backed by renowned business builders in the network marketing industry. Click the link below to find out more about this truly incredible product and business model.

Yes Dan! I Want To Learn More!

Yours in blogging
Dan Dinneen
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Basic HTML

When I was first starting to look at computers and how they worked, I can remember going to a friends house to use his, more powerful machine. It had a monochrome (green) screen, just like mine, but I wanted to use it mainly because he had a thing called a hard drive. At the time we were blown away at the capacity of information he could store – I mean this thing was enormous – It held 20mb! My how things have changed. Now I get emails that big and think nothing of it!

Blaise Pascal 1623-1662

It was about then that my education was broadened when I became aware that a computer talked in a ‘language’ and it wasn’t english. There were things like hexidecimal, FORTRAN (the first compiled language), PASCAL ( I thought he was a scientist), COBOL, good old fashioned BASIC, a couple of others and of course, what we are here for, some gobbledygook thing called HTML – ‘HyperText Markup Language’.

Here is a very brief, and basic tutorial on HTML. It won’t get you passing exams, but it will get you past the beginner stage, and it will give you enough info for wordpress and to customise some features of your blog. If you need a comprehensive tutorial then I suggest you visit HTML Goodies. It’s a great website, and that’s where I got started myself.

Tags:

All HTML starts with, with an opening tag like this < and ends with a closing tag like this </>. Here are some starters:-

Underline: <u>your text here</u>

Bold: <strong>your text here</strong>

Italics: <em>your text here</em>

Start text on a new line <br>your text here</br>

New paragraph <p>your text here</p>

Using two tags at once? Thats fine, just don’t get your tags out of order:-

<strong><em>your text here</em></strong> will give you both bold and italic but <strong><em>your text here</strong></em> will give you a spelling mistake and it won’t work.

Hyperlink – At some point in time you will have to create a link to another site or page. This is called a hyperlink, and it looks like this <a href=”http://www.yourdomain.com“</a>. You can ad some text in to give your readers an instruction, like ‘Click Here’ or what ever text you wish, and that will look like this <a href=”http://www.yourdomain.com“> your text here</a>

Images can get a little complicated if you have to create a ‘pathway’ but the very basic coding looks like this -<img src=”imagenamehere.gif” alt=”your text here” width=”32 height=32″>.  If you are competent enough to use an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) program then you will probably understand how to create a pathway, but if your a beginner and you’re using wordpress for your blog, it might be a lot easier for you to upload your images using the icon in your edit box. However, if you are going to make your image ‘live’ so it links to another site or page on your blog, you will need to click the html tab and insert your hyperlink so it looks like this. <a href=”http://www.yourdomain.com“img src=”imagenamehere.gif” alt=”your text here”</a>

Email links – I’m not really a fan of using email links on any of my sites because eventually your site is going to be crawled by an email spider. It will specifically target the @ symbol, grab everything around it, take it back to its’ host, and kapow – you have junk mail. To avoid this you can take a look at how I show you my email address on my Contact Us page. But if you still decide that you have a need to use it, then this is how to write it – <a href=”mailto:johndoe@yourdomain.com”> Click Here To Write To John</a>

Good luck and I hope this helps.

Yours in blogging
Dan Dinneen
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A Time For Reflection?

Well it’s that time of the year again when we reflect on what we did last year, and what we hope to achieve this year.

A lot of us will think of holidays, cars, houses etc, but is that what you really want? And if so, what are you going to do to get those things – the universe is a funny place you know.

I too have been going through a time of reflection and looking back at the past year, and, of course looking forward. One of the interesting things that came to mind was that most of the events I had wanted to occur in my life actually had! That was when I remembered The Secret.

When you learn The Secret. you will understand that you really can manifest those things in your life that you really do desire. But this comes with a WARNING. Whatever you ask of the universe, it will give you – and whatever you refuse to take from the universe, it will stop giving. (That’s why I always pick up a coin off the ground.)

Please let me explain a little more what seems to be a contradiction in terms. When we think our brain, or more accurately, our sub-conscious is unable to detect the difference between a truth and a lie. Each time the mailman arrives, and you say “all I ever get is bills, bills, and more bills” what do you think you’re going to get in the mail all the time – Bills! However if we start and change the way that we think and the next time the postman comes we say something like “I’m so glad that we have electricity so that we can keep warm in winter, and I can spend some time on my blog.” just watch and see what happens to your thinking pattern. It won’t stop the bills from coming, but you sure will feel better about it.

If we are grateful for the small things in life (clean water, the freedoms we enjoy like free speech, being able to walk down the street, putting our children to bed in the evening) then the ‘universe’ cannot help but continue to give you the things that you ask for. Remember this famous quote? – “You recieve not, because you ask amiss.” That was why the famous Earl Nightingale said  “We become what we think about.” Please take the time to watch this video below. Just as Earl Nightingale gave me the inspiration to write this blog, I would like to give you the inspiration that will carry you through 2010.

In 1956 Earl Nightingale produced a spoken-word record, “The Strangest Secret”, which sold over a million copies, making it the first spoken-word recording to achieve Gold Record status. Today, Earl Nightingale is remembered as the greatest philosopher of his time, and his best selling programs and books continue to sell daily, and inspire new generations around the world to reach their highest potential. Why not give yourself a gift that will last a lifetime as it has for me.

To your prosperity in 2010

Yours in blogging
Dan Dinneen
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There seems to be alot of discussion in the forums regarding using software to submit articles. Most of the problems revolve around ‘duplicate content filters’ and losing those precious backlinks.

The problem arose about 3 years ago, when Mr Google figured out that software was being used to submit articles to the directories, and the majority of these submissions were exactly the same! As most people are probably aware Google uses algorithms to rank sites, and when it discovers duplicate content it axes all pages (and backlinks) that have that content.

In my own personal search to solve this problem I came across two programs that work in conjunction with each other – namely Magic Article Submitter and Magic Article Rewriter

What this software actually does is a synonym substution (spin words) – ie. it will suggest words to you which you select to fit your article. This way you won’t end up with an article written in gibberish.

When you first start out, you’ll need to create a profile (please use a gmail account or you’ll have 1000 emails in your inbox, and use the same password as your gmail account). Once this is done Magic Article Submitter will then create accounts for you in approximately 1000 directories. It will then go back to your gmail account and confirm your registration via the activation links that were sent you.

Then using Magic Article Rewriter you can start to spin your article copying and pasting from where you wrote it. The more spin words you use, then the more variables there are to your article, which means different content! Note: Do not spin your keywords!

Here are the results from my first effort (I still have 390 unactivated emails in gmail) – Activated 690, Skipped (by me because content of site eg. golf, fitness, poetry etc does not match) 145, Errors 21, and submitted 505

Good luck and I hope this helps.

Yours in blogging
Dan Dinneen
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Warning: This post contains frank and straight forward opinions. Some people may be offended.

We’ve all read the hype about Internet Marketers making fortunes overnight. How somebody woke up in the morning and had $15,873 in sales while they were sleeping. Or they made $32,987 from just one mailout. Or how you can make enough money to retire on in 6 months. Is this really possible? Well yes it is – but here’s what they don’t tell you:-

That these sales were for what’s called ‘high ticket items’ (high priced) and that this was mailed to a list of over 500 thousand. Or that they formed a joint venture with a high profile internet marketer and used his/her list, and it took 6-9 months preparation for this to happen!

So what’s the secret? The secret is ‘recurring income!’ You see when you use a mailout and you go for the sale, all that you are paid for is that one sale. But what if you were paid continually for that one sale, just like a mortgage broker does when he writes your home loan. He gets an upfront commission (paid for the sale) and then he recieves a trail commission for as long as you have that loan with the bank.

In the table below, I have tried to illustrate the compounding effect of a trail commission based on a commision of $200 per sale and a trail of $30.  As you can see, it doesn’t take very long for the trail to build up – in fact when you take a look at month 6 ($1500 trail), this is the equivalent of 6.5 FREE sales!  This is how you create true wealth for yourself and get to sack the boss!!

Sounds good so far doesn’t it? But what if your brand new to the internet, can only cut and paste, have no knowledge of html, css, java and php sounds like something illegal?

What you need is education and support. What you need is an integrated education and instructional platform that facilitates members quickly and efficiently creating your own plug and play, internet marketing business. Eliminating traditional overhead, CarbonCopyPRO provides a fully staffed virtual office; communication tools, business resources along with the training and support needed for each member’s success.

But. This is not for everyone. You see in order to protect the integrity of the community, as well as to contain the growth, CarbonCopyPRO membership is by referral and application only.

CarbonCopyPRO membership provides the following and more:

System:

• A fully integrated and personalized online marketing and customer management system
• Detailed traffic, lead and sales tracking capabilities
• Professional call center to assist in closing member product sales
• Available in 42 languages and over 150 countries

Training:

• Comprehensive video training library
• Marketing plans for variable budgets and levels of experience
• Master Marketing Program that teaches a combination of traditional and contemporary Internet marketing techniques
• Weekly educational webinars and tele-seminars
• Daily entrepreneurial and mindset training
• Live Master Marketing Events™
• Business leadership programs

Support:

• Email, phone and live chat support
• Professional outsourcing and virtual assistant services
• Personal marketing mentors

CarbonCopyPRO gives each member the educational tools, support and resources they require to market anything, to anyone, anywhere in the world, regardless of experience or technical expertise.

But, like I said before CarbonCopyPRO membership is by application only, and is not for everyone. There is no guarantee that you will make money, because the results come directly from your own efforts. If you think that you can join a system like this, kick back, and let the system do the work for you, then you will probably actually lose money, go broke, and have a sour taste left in your mouth.

If however you have a the passion to succeed, a willingness to learn, and the drive to get you there then you will probably make it. Like all businesses it takes time to learn the skills involved, and it takes time to build that ever so sweet residual income.

If you want to work from home, or the beach – or even your home on the beach, then I would encourage you to apply now.

Yours in success
Dan Dinneen
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Here’s Where You Get What You Need For Your Home Business !!

Number #1 in a 3 part series:

When it comes to starting your own home business, lets face it – you have to have resources! Whether it’s a whole bunch of friends hanging around the bbq and giving you tips & tricks, or whether you’re gonna do it on your own – at some stage your going to have to bite the bullet and get help.

On this page I hope to provide you with some valuable advice, and of course resources that will get your cashflow hoppin’! As Napoleon Hill author of Think and Grow Rich said, you need to ‘get a group of masterminds around you.’

When I first read this paragraph some 17 years ago, I was under the impression that he meant real people, that is people that I know. So where would a young man growing up in a small town in Australia find 7-10 entrepeneurs/internet marketers – that I knew? It took me a long while to figure out that what he really meant was experts, and those experts, didn’t have to be friends – they just needed to have the same goals, understanding, and ambitions as you or I do. If you haven’t read Napoleon’s book, then I suggest you do so now – it’ll change your life.

Let’s get into it:-

This may come as a bit of a shock to some of you, but we live in the 21st century! Thanks to previous industry groups such as MILNET and ARPANET we now have a little thing called the internet. And as, Robert Kiyosaki said, ‘now that we have the internet there is no excuse for being poor.’

First of all, if you are reading this page and you already have a succesful home business/blog, then this page probably isn’t for you, so thanks for visiting, and maybe we can catch up next time. However, if your one of those people (just like I was) who struggled with what to do first, then you are at the right place.

1) Get a blog! Sounds simple? – it is. Go to wordpress.org and sign up for a FREE blog. Whatever you do, DO NOT go to wordpress.com by mistake. There are a whole lot of reasons for that, but the simple reason is wordpress.org = good, wordpress.com = not so good.

2.) You need to register your own private domain name (so people can find you). Getting a domain name is simple, finding a domain name may not be. There are literally millions of domain names out there, and thay are all unique. When choosing a domain name, try and make it as close to your niche as possible. Your webhost should be able to provide you with a search function to help you with this. Which brings us to the next point ……..

3) Find your Web host: At this point in time, I am only happy to recommend two web hosting services – Ken Evoy’s Site Build It and BlueHost. Both are like chalk and cheese as far as blogging goes, but both have one click wordpress installation (which is good), both support all widgets, and both have good tracking facilities, as well as very robust platforms.

Which is better? I’ll leave that up to you. I have used SBI for my other sites, and it is very, very comprehensive regarding research tools, keyword generation and SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). Probably because of this if you are into SEO and research then this may be the better choice (but don’t take my word for it).

On the other hand, if you are looking for cheap hosting and a FREE domain, then go to BlueHost You won’t get any research tools like SiteSell offer, but it is cheap, and easy to use. For more information on both of these hosting platforms read this post.

If all of this sounds a bit much to start off with, then I’d suggest you download a FREE copy of Yaro Starak’s Blog Profits Blueprint.

It is absolutley jam packed with a literal roadmap of how to build your blog. (As you can see, I prefer blogging over websites, but it’s a personal thing)

Here are some of the things that Yaro will teach you:-

• How To Choose Your Blog Topic
• Why Most Bloggers Fail
• How To Market You Blog
• The Problem With Google Adsense
• How Blogs Make Money
• What Is A Pillar?
• The Holy Grail Of Blog Monetization

Well everyone, I’d like to thank you for reading this post, I hope that it has been helpful.

In the next post in the series, we’ll talk about some more gutsier stuff like choosing a theme, rss, and monetization methods.

Until then,

Yours in blogging

Dan Dinneen

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There are basically two types of bloggers in the world – reporters and experts – and some people perform both roles (usually the experts, it’s hard for reporters to become experts, but it’s easy for experts to report).

If you have ever taken an Internet marketing course or attended a seminar specifically for beginners, you have probably heard about the two different methodologies. Whenever the business model is based on content, and if you blog for money then the model is based on content, people are taught to either start as reporters, or if possible step up as experts.

I’ll be frank; you want to be the expert.

Reporters leverage the content of the experts and in most cases people start off as reporters because they haven’t established expertise. Experts enjoy the perks of preeminence, higher conversion rates because of perceived value, it’s easier to get publicity, people are more likely to seek you out rather than you having to seek others out, joint ventures come easier, experts in most cases simply make more money and attract more attention.

Most Bloggers Are Reporters

The thing with expertise is that it requires something – experience. No person becomes an expert without doing things and learning. Bloggers usually start out without expertise and as a result begin their blogging journey by talking about everything going on in their niche (reporting) and by interviewing and talking about other experts (reporting again).

There’s nothing wrong with reporting of course and for many people it’s a necessity at first until you build up some expertise. Unfortunately the ratios are pretty skewed when it comes to reporters and experts – there are a lot more reporters than there are experts, hence reporters tend to struggle to gain attention and when they do, they often just enhance the reputation of the expert they are reporting on.

Don’t Replicate Your Teacher

If you have ever spent some time browsing products in the learn Internet marketing niche you will notice a pattern. Many people first study Internet marketing from a so called guru (for lack of a better term). The guru teaches how he or she is able to make money online, and very often the view that the student gleams is that in order to make money online you have to teach others how to make money online.

The end result of this process is a huge army of amateurs attempting to replicate what their teacher does in the same industry – the Internet marketing industry – not realizing that without expert status based on a proven record and all the perks that come with it, it’s next to impossible to succeed.

Even people, who enjoy marginal success, say for example growing an email list of 1,000 people, then go out and launch a product about how to grow an email list of 1,000 people. Now I have no problems with that, I think it’s fine to teach beginners and leverage whatever achievements you have, the problem is that people gravitate to the same niche – Internet marketing – and rarely have any key points of differentiation.

How many products out there do you know of that all claim to teach the same things – email marketing, SEO, pay per click, affiliate marketing, and all the sub-niches that fall under the category of Internet marketing. It’s a saturated market, yet when you see your teachers and other gurus making money teaching others how to make money (and let’s face it – making money as a subject is one of the most compelling) – your natural inclination is to follow in their footsteps.

If the key is to become an expert and you haven’t spent the last 5-10 years making money online, I suggest you look for another niche to establish expertise in. www.BlogMastermind.com

Report on Your Process, Not Others

The secret to progress from reporter to expert is not to focus on other experts and instead report on your own journey. When you are learning how to do something and implementing things day by day, or studying other people’s work, you need to take your process and what you do as a result of what you learn, and use it as content for your blog.

It’s okay to talk about experts when you learn something from them, but always relate it to what you are doing. If you learn a technique from an expert it’s fine to state you learned it from them (and affiliate link to their product too!) but you should then take that technique, apply it to what you are doing and then report back YOUR results, not there’s. Frame things using your opinion – your stories – and don’t regurgitate what the expert said. The key is differentiation and personality, not replication.

Expertise comes from doing things most people don’t do and then talking about it. If you do this often enough you wake up one day as an expert, possibly without even realizing how it happened, simply because you were so good at reporting what you did.

You Are Already An Expert

Most people fail to become experts (or perceived as experts) because they don’t leverage what they already know. Every person who lives a life learns things as they go, takes action every day and knows something about something. The reason why they never become an expert is because they choose not to (which is fine for some, not everyone wants to be an expert), but if your goal is to blog your way to expertise and leave the world of reporting behind you have to start teaching and doing so by leveraging real experience.

Experience can come from what you do today and what you have done previously; you just need to take enough steps to demonstrate what you already know and what you are presently learning along your journey. I know so many people in my life, who are experts simply by virtue of the life they have lived, yet they are so insecure about what they know, they never commit their knowledge to words for fear of well fear.

Blogs and the Web in general, are amazing resources when you leverage them as a communication tool to spread your expertise because of the sheer scope of people they can reach. If all you ever do is talk to people in person and share your experience using limited communication mediums, you haven’t much hope of becoming an expert. Take what you know and show other people through blogging, and you might be surprised how people change their perception of you in time.

Reporting Is A Stepping Stone

If your previous experience and expertise is from an area you want to leave behind or you are starting from scratch, then reporting is the path you must walk, at least for the short term.

Reporting is a lot of fun. Interviewing experts, talking about what other people are doing and just being part of a community is not a bad way to blog. In many cases people make a career of reporting (journalism is about just that), but if you truly want success and exponential results, at some point you will have to stand up and proclaim yourself as someone unusually good at something and then proceed to demonstrate it over and over again.

Have patience and focus on what you do to learn and then translate that experience into lessons for others, and remember, it’s okay to be a big fish in a small pond, that’s all most experts really are.

This article was by Yaro Starak, a professional blogger and my blog mentor. He is the leader of the Blog Mastermind mentoring program designed to teach bloggers how to earn a full time income blogging part time.

To get more information about Blog Mastermind click this link:

www.BlogMastermind.com

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