The Right Team to Take you from Zero to $5,000,000 in Four Years

If there’s one adage every successful entrepreneur will agree upon, it’s “hire the best people you can afford.” No entrepreneur is an island – or a business– unto themselves. Even the most successful entrepreneurs are generally really good at only one or two things. Their secret to successfully making money online with business after business is bringing on board others who are really good at everything else.

“Hire people who are better than you are, then leave them to get on with it… Look for people who will aim for the remarkable, who will not settle for the routine.”

— David Ogilvy

So who are the most important people to bring on board your team? What is the one weakness or gap in your knowledge that, if filled, would immediately result in a doubling or tripling of your income online.

For many first time internet entrepreneurs, the answer is bringing on board someone who’s “been there, done that.” When I started my first online business, it took months before I felt like I was finally getting down to business.

In the meantime, there was a flood of millions of small details to figure out: everything from corporate structure to accounting methodology to legal risks to a reliable hosting provider to pricing my products.

“If you pick the right people and give them the opportunity to spread their wings—and put compensation as a carrier behind it—you almost don’t have to manage them.”

— Jack Welch

How much easier would that process have been if I had someone experienced at my side that I could just turn to and say — “Hey Steve, how much should I price a product like this?”

That kind of advice, multiplied by the hundreds of such small questions that pop up in the course of establishing your online business, acts like an accelerant for your business growth. Mistakes that would have cost thousands can be avoided, and month-long research projects can be compressed into a few hours.

“The shortest and best way to make your fortune is to let people see clearly that it is in their interests to promote yours.”
- Jean de La Bruyère

How to Find your Five Million Dollar Team:

Don’t think that just because your business is small, there’s no way for you to bring experienced advisors on board your team. If you’re just getting started building your online business empire, you don’t need to hire a Fortune 500 Exec as a full-time employee (or even Board Member). There are plenty of other ways to get that same kind of quality advice without spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in salary:

1. Hire Steve Peirce and the IncomeElite Team for Less than 5 Bucks!
   
   Bringing the folks of IncomeElite on to your team just may be the next best thing to being Richard Branson’s favorite nephew: you get tons of personalized advice, answers to nearly all the questions that will come up in the course of ramping up your online business, and access to the website templates, marketing plans, and sales techniques that the Income Elite team members have used to build businesses generating over $20,000,000 in profits. The best part is that (unlike Richard Branson) Steve Peirce and the rest of the income elite team are specialized in exactly the kind of online businesses that you can build from your home computer in your spare time – lean, mean, cash-generating machines built upon time-tested online marketing techniques, not some “secret system” that Google will shut down after a month or two. Membership in IncomeElite (which is required to access all of the how-tos, resources, and Q&A from Steve and the team) usually costs $97 per month, but they’re currently running a promotion where you can try it out for 5 days for $4.95!
2. Other Options
   
   Even 5 Bucks is too much for you to pay right now to get some quality people to join your team? Depending upon your situation, you may have other options as well. The Service Core of Retired Executives (SCORE) is one such option. SCORE provides qualifying small businesses with volunteer advisors experienced in that area of business. http://www.score.org/how_score_works.html If SCORE is not for you or you’re based outside of the US, you may have luck finding a retired exec who would be willing to provide similar mentorship on a more informal basis. Angel investors and other former entrepreneurs are often willing to help foster the next generation of entrepreneurs. Generally you’ll give up a small portion of equity (ownership) in your company in exchange for this advice, but it can be well worth it!

“Success has many fathers. Failure is an orphan.”

- Unknown

Looking for New Ways to Make Money Online? How About 101 Ways….

Today I’m going to address another question frequently asked by our beloved MakingMoneyOnline.com readers:

Dear Making Money Online,
I’ve tried the blogging thing. Affiliate marketing was fun until Big G axed my money pages. Contributing posts to revenue sharing websites works OK, as long as I don’t want to earn any more than a Starbucks coffee (not even a Latte) each month. In short, I need some help: What other legitimate ways are there to make money online?
–Whiskey Pete

Well Whiskey Pete, you’re in luck, because this week I stumbled upon a site that’s intended for people just like you. My friend Brock Hamilton has put together what just may be the web’s most comprehensive list of legitimate ways to make money online. His website 101 Ways to Make Money is just the thing for anyone who feels like their online cash generating skills are in a rut.

Sure, you’ll find the usuals there, like making money with online surveys or blogging, but Brock has gone much further to help you find your own personal cash machine with such unusual tactics as scrap metal, animal ID tags, or even poetry.

Best $1.95 I Have Spent on Making Money Online in a While

This probably isn’t breaking news to many of you out there, as many of the people that visit this site are bloggers and are familiar with Darren Rowse from ProBlogger.net.  He is one of the top bloggers online and provides tips on how to make money online blogging. His blog has been around for quite a few years now and he is one of the leading authorities on blogging for profit.

Darren just recently opened up a blogging forum for members to learn and discuss blogging issues like; blog design, content creation, finding readers, how to make money with your blog, social media, etc…. Unlike a blog where you usually can only ask questions in the comment area about whatever the blog post is about… in this forum you can ask any question you can think of when it comes to blogging. The other members, as well as the moderator and administrators are there to help answer any question you might have!

One thing that is different about this forum is… it is not free. It is a paid membership forum, but the price to become a member is only $1.95 per month… which is the least expensive thing I have ever paid for online so far.

Why is he making it a paid membership forum versus a free forum like many other forums? Listening to Darren, it totally makes sense. Here are some of the reasons…

1. The first reason he is going to staff it with a paid moderator (which is really cool) and administrators that put time a side to make sure it is a valuable community.
2. Another reason is he wants to put a small barrier (the $1.95 per month fee) to keep out spammers and people that are only visiting the forum to promote themselves. He is all for being able to promote yourself to the community, but he doesn’t want that to be your primary focus. The goal is to be able to promote yourself while helping others… which I am totally for!
3. He doesn’t want the community to get too big. He is looking for a more intimate community where members can get to know each other and hopefully collaborate with one and other on different projects.

Now I could go on and on about this community, but I will give you the results I have had since I joined just a few days ago.

Since I have joined Darren’s forum I have met several bloggers that I am sure I will be working with in the future on projects, I have also received ten new subscribers to my newsletter from members of the forum, plus I have been contacted by four very good bloggers that are writing Guest Posts for Making Money Online right now, from a simple request on the forum. So I would say I have gotten way more than my money’s worth so far… and I think it is only going to get better.

The only negative thing I could say so far is there are not that many members on the site when I visit, which is to be expected… as he just broke the 1000 member mark a few days ago. But there is usually a few members viewing each section of the forum and most of my posts have been replied to very fast… which I really like. As the forum continues to grow this won’t be an issue to me at all.

So if you are able to afford an extra $1.95 per month, I strongly suggest you give Darren’s blogging forum a try.

If any of our readers are already members, I would love to hear what you think of the community so far in the comment section below. I know there are least a couple of you that have joined as I have seen you in the forum

Traffic Monetization Program Beta Test Results

Here is a quick follow-up to my post a couple of weeks ago on a new Beta Traffic Monetization System we are testing out on one of our other blogs to see if it can help us make more money online.

To refresh your memory here is basically how the program works:

The program is basically an advertising revenue sharing program, similar to Adsense, but with a cool twist. With this you place keyword text links that you choose right on your website. You can choose high paying keywords if you like, but for my test I chose keywords I know my readers are actually searching for. When a visitor clicks on one of the text links, relevant ads are then displayed right on your website. The site owner then earns money each time a user clicks onto an advertiser’s link.

Here is how the text ads looks on our website MiraMesa.com.

So for the past 2 weeks the site has been averaging between 200 – 300 visitors per day, with about 75 – 80% of that traffic coming from search engines. Below is the earning’s chart which shows you exactly how much the site has earned with this traffic monetization system so far.

As you can see… not the greatest numbers ever, but not the worse numbers either. If the numbers stay like that, we will ending up earning a little over $20 for the month from those ads… which really isn’t too exciting.

We have decided to let the ads run through the rest of the month, and after that take them down, as we can earn more money selling banners ads to local merchants in that same spot.

Here is a list of the pros and cons we have come up with so far:

PROS:

1. I REALLY like the ability to choose our own keywords, as we could choose all high paying keywords if we wanted too. We didn’t for this test, as the blog is an extremely focused niche and we didn’t have a lot of choices, but I could see where it could work very well on some other sites.
2. I also like the ability to display the ads anywhere and anyhow we like. You could display several keywords like we did on that site, or you can just add a text link in a post and that would work as well. The display flexibility is very cool.

CONS:

1. It is not available in all countries, and many of the countries where it is available… they seem to not have a large ad inventory, so not many ads (if any) display. So a website that gets a lot of worldwide traffic, I don’t think it would be too good a fit.
2. Unlike Adsense where you can login to your account and see how your ads are doing every hour, and get a very detailed report… that is not the case with this program. The report information is very limited (as you can see above), plus the report is always 2 days behind. So if I login today (which is Thursday), I will only see my commissions through Tuesday. I really don’t like that!
3. The earnings per click do not seem to be that great either. The problem I think is… this company is using another company (Hotkeys.com) for their backend system and both of them (at least) have to take a cut of the commissions before it gets to us. I believe with Adsense you are only sharing your commissions with Google (but I could be wrong).

So for the time being (for us), the Cons outweigh the Pros… but that might not always be the case. The company is very new and as they grow… they might be able to fix everything that I have listed in my Cons section. If that happens, I would absolutely recommend this company.

As you noticed I never mentioned the name of the company. That is because they are still in Beta Testing mode and it is not available for everyone to use yet.

If you would like to test out the system yourself, send me an email and I will put you in touch with the owner. The only requirement is your site has to average over 300 visitors per day to be considered.

Free Private Label Rights

Here is a follow-up to my 2 previous posts, “What is Private Label Content” and “What Can You Do with PLR Content” where I promised to tell you where you can get a lot of PLR content for FREE!

If you read both those posts, and/or subscribed to our FREE course, “Private Label Secrets”… you know there are lots of things you can do with PLR content to help you make money online.

So where is the best place to get Free Private Label Content? If you do a Google search you will come across several offers, and I have tried many of them. Most of them require you to supply your name and email address and they will give you access to a limited amount of PLR content each month. So why would they give access to free PLR content each month? They do it to add you to their subscriber list so they can send you all sorts of product and affiliate offers each month. Some only send you a few emails a month, while it seems a couple others bombard you almost every day with one offer after the next. I quickly unsubscribed to those ones. Now I am not recommending any of those companies here, and I think you should definitely proceed with caution if you decide to sign-up for any of them.

The company I suggest you join is called Infogoround, as I have been a member there for over 4 years now and I love them. They supply you with a ton of high quality PLR articles each month on all sorts of niches, as well as some complete eBooks. By complete I mean not only are they really well written, but each eBook comes with a customized ecover and sale’s letter, which also comes with “private label rights” so you can totally customize them too.

The cost to be a member is only $24.95 per month, which is an incredible deal for all you get. But I told you could get all this for FREE, and you can, but it takes a little effort on your part. Bryan Winters who started Inforgoround came up with this INGENEOUS IDEA called the “Cash for Content Program“. You can read the entire rules in the image below, but basically it says if you write and submit one good (minimum 400 word) article any month, they will refund your entire membership fee (the $24.95) for that period.

So if you write and submit one article per month you will basically never have to pay anything for your membership. It is truly an awesome deal.  As for me, I almost always write my own articles each month as it is very simple to do… but occasionally I just don’t have the time. In those occasions I usually pay a freelance writer $5 to write an article for me and I submit that. I have probably done that at least 3 or 4 times and it has worked great.

Now there are not too many products or services that I would give my 100% support behind, but this is definitely one of them. Especially if you are interested in making money online. There are just so many different ways you can utilize quality PLR content to build your business and Infogoround delivers some of the best online. They also come with a 30 day money back guarantee… and if you can practically get it all for FREE, it’s a no brainer!

Selling Information Products – Best Ways to Start (Part 2)

I am going to change the order of things in my series on, “Selling Information Products”. Part 2 was going to be on some simple ways to create your first information product, but I am going to save that one for the next section. Instead, I am going to write about the best way I know of to create and sell your first information product and why I think it is the best.

As many of you know I have been making money online (doing all sorts of things) for over 10 years now, and in that time I have purchased MANY books and courses on all sorts of different ways of marketing things online. I believe the most I have ever spent on a product was around $997 which I purchased at a JV Alert Seminar. I probably never would have spent that much money on one product, but the creator gave anyone who purchased it life-time access to all his products and any future products he creates, so it was definitely worth the money to me. Plus he let us pay in in 3 installments, which really closed the deal.

Besides that one, I believe the most I have ever spent was; I bought a few products in the $497 range, many in the $97 range, a lot more in the $47 range and I cannot tell you how many in the $29.95 and under range. Almost all of them were very good products, except a few which I should have asked for my money back, but didn’t.

So why am I telling you this? Because of all the products I have purchased online to help me in my making money online endeavors, the best thing I have ever bought (to this day) only cost me $7.00. SERIOUSLY… ONLY $7 BUCKS! I am sure a large percentage of you out there have heard of this before, because it is definitely not new. But for those of you that haven’t, you should pay attention, as it is still one of the best ways to get started making money online. The product I am talking about is called the “Seven Dollar Secrets”.

What the Seven Dollar Secrets is a short 33 page eBook teaching you how you can make a ton of money online selling inexpensive (ideally around $7.00), short (around 30 pages), content-packed eBooks. Not only can you make a lot of money, but you can also build a subscriber list (who actually spend money online) at viral speed. And I am sure you know that building a list is the key to making money online for the long term.

So let me give you a quick overview of what you will learn, and more importantly what added bonus you will receive that makes the product worth many, many times more than seven dollars.

• You will learn how simple and fast it is to create a content rich eBook
• Why $7.00 is the “Magic Price” to start building your Info-Product Empire
• How you can make much more than the original $7 you charge your customers
• How to quickly build an Army of Affiliates eager to promote your book
• Why your subscriber list of paying customers will build at viral speed
• ADDED BONUS – The actual script he uses that makes all this work. I personally would spend at least $100 to purchase just the script and it comes FREE as a bonus for buying the eBook.

Now is this going to make you rich fast like one of those MILLION DOLLAR PRODUCT LAUNCHES you hear about all the time? HECK NO! What this is going to do (if you apply it) is it is going to help you get started (hopefully fast) making money, and even more importantly help you build a list of people who spend money online which is the most important thing of all. Because once you have built yourself one of those huge lists like the big gurus have, then you might be able to have one of those million dollar launches, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s first get you started making some money.

SPECIAL NOTE TO ALL YOU BLOGGERS OUT THERE: If you want to make money blogging you need to do more than just write posts and paste Adsense and Banner Ads on your blog. If you visit all the probloggers out there like; John Chow, David Risley, Shoemoney, Zac Johnson, etc… they all do more than just write posts. Many of them have other sites that they own which they promote on their blogs that bring them in a lot of money; many have their own products, as well as promote affiliate products in many of their posts. You too need to step out of your comfort zone if you really want to start making money online. I honestly believe that this will open your eyes to a whole new world of income for you, and it is cheaper than the price of a pizza! Click here to grab a copy for yourself.

Test Drive Blog Masters Club for Only $4.95

I am sure you guys have heard of David Risley… one of my favorite probloggers. At the beginning of the week he opened the doors to his new Blog Masters Club, which is designed for those of you out there that want to actually make money with your blog(s). He definitely knows what he is talking about, as he has consistently earned in the 6-figures for the last several years just blogging.

Well I just got an  email from David a few minutes ago letting me know that he is going to let new members test out his new club for only $4.95. He letting people try it out to get those of you sitting on the fence about joining… to see first hand what an incredible program he is offering.

I could go on and on about what the club has to offer, but you can watch his video and see for yourself.

Does Your Blog Make Hardly Any Money?

Does your blog suck at making you any real amount of money? If you answered “Yes”, don’t be too discouraged as most blogs hardly make any money at all. But that doesn’t mean your blog never will… it just means you need to change the way you are currently doing things.

One of my favorite bloggers, David Risley has created a great video explaining why most bloggers have a hard time making money online. His video will show you how to take your current traffic and turn it into cash in your bank account.

What I found very interesting is that the real money in blogging actually comes from getting your visitors to leave your site. After you watch the video it will totally make sense to you.

If You Really Want to Make Money Blogging… Read This!

How many blogs do you think are on the Internet right now? I have no idea, as at least a few more were just created while I typed these two sentences (I type slowly). All I know is that there are millions and millions out there, and thousands more created each day.

So why do you think all these people are rushing to create new blogs? There are tons of different reasons, but one of the biggest reasons I know is so they can make money online. People have heard of all these “Regular Joes” getting rich blogging and they want to grab a chunk of that money for themselves.

Another reason they have chosen to blog versus creating some other type of site is that creating a blog is so simple to set-up. Even my 6 year old son has created one. We actually have big plans for his blog, but we will let you know more about that in a few months.

Let’s get back to making money online with blogs. What typically happens when a newbie creates their first blog is they are super excited and all gun-ho to start. They start out writing a bunch of posts, as they were told they always need to keep adding new content. They sign-up for Adsense and add as many ads as Google allows on each page and then they fill the rest of the blank space with affiliate banners.

Next thing they know, a few weeks have past and they haven’t made a dime yet. So they check their traffic stats and see that they are averaging only 5 visitors a day and those are probably just friends and family.

They are a little discouraged, but not ready to quit yet, so they do some research and learn all the traffic secrets they can find and start implementing them right away.

Another few weeks pass by and they check out there stats again and “YIPEE” they are now averaging over 100 visitors a day! The only bad part is they have not made any money to speak of except for a few dollars from Adsense. Not enough to even pay for the monthly hosting service.

Now even more discouragement sets in, but they are not ready to quit just yet. What happens is they start posting A LOT LESS frequently for the next few weeks as traffic starts to dwindle back down and money never seems to come. Next thing you know they are swearing off blogging as a way to make money and they just let their blog lay there to die until their hosting account runs out, or their domain name expires. ANOTHER BLOGGER BITES THE DUST!

So the question is, “Can you really make money online blogging?”

Heck yeah! You just need to know that you are not going to make a lot of money just throwing up a bunch of Adsense ads and affiliate banners. You might make some money, but you are never going to make a living that way.

To make a lot of money online, you really need to learn the basics of Internet Marketing and apply those concepts to your blog. There are a lot of simple things that you can do to start getting people to start spend money with you.

One of my favorite pro-bloggers, David Risley has created a FREE 6-Figure Blogger Blueprint that explains the important ingredient that most bloggers are missing on their sites which keeps them from earning the kind of money they dream about. I have purchased lots of ebooks and courses over the last few years and nobody teaches this stuff. I find that absolutely amazing, as this is how the big bloggers really make their money.

If you would like to get a free copy of David’s Blueprint, you can download it here.

Advertise Your Business Offline with High Quality Custom Embroidered Apparel

There are tons of ways to draw traffic to your website, but the most effective form of advertising has always been from positive word of mouth. For one thing, it is free and very effective as long as it is sincere and the product lives up to your promise. You never know if someone is being paid to advertise a product (celebrity endorsements) or if they actually use the products they are promoting. I know that when I get my hands on a cool new gadget or product that I love I tell everyone about it. I think it is great to share the wealth, and once you begin doing this, you gain an incredible amount of credibility when the product backs up your promises. The next time you promote an item, your friends or clients are sure to jump on it based on your recommendation alone.

Now it is important from a branding standpoint to get your image, logo, name, etc. out there for the world to see. You know how to get your image out there online, but don’t forget to promote your business offline as well. We searched many online apparel companies to help us promote one of our blogs by using custom embroidery on our work shirts. We compared the quality of the shirts, customization of our logo, speed of processing and shipping, ease of use of their design program, and more importantly the cost of producing a quality product. We also took into consideration their customer service, follow up, and strength of their guarantee policy. We also checked with our local merchants, and compared staying local – vs. outsourcing online. We ended up with one company that stood out above the others, and that is the Queensboro Shirt Company.

What started out with a small order of a dozen polo shirts in several different colors, we were so impressed with the quality of the shirts and the value of their competitive pricing that we have since ordered t-shirts, long sleeved shirts, many different styles of polos, and the warmest fleece pullover all featuring our logo. We are walking billboards promoting our business everywhere we go. Competition is tough and you need to do everything you can to promote your business. Having a great logo is a start, but don’t be afraid to get your image everyplace you can. Hats, shirts, briefcases, notebooks, coffee mugs, water bottles and more. The more you get your image in the public’s eye, the more likely you are to get noticed.

Imagine you are at a convention, and no one knows who you are. Unless you like those “Hello, My Name Is” stickers that you write your name in with a sharpie, you are less likely to do business with any prospective clients. Now imagine you have your custom logo professionally embroidered on a stylish polo shirt, and everyone in the room knows that you are the Head Honcho from your company. Suddenly, the room is buzzing with excitement and you are at the center of that buzz. Now I am not promising that a custom logo on a shirt will make you the center of attention, but it works for me. I can tell you first hand that it is a great icebreaker when someone walks up to me in a crowd and asks me what my company is all about. That opens the door, and a great salesman will follow through until the sale is made. If I was just wearing a dress shirt and tie, would I have made that contact? I would say not.

There are a lot of online merchants that offer low cost printing or embroidery. I would compare not only the price they offer, but the quality of their work, their testimonials or customer reviews, and how long they have been in business to see if they are a worthy company or a flash in the pan business. We have ordered frequently through Queensboro (as evident by the picture of me above) and have also referred them to our business associates as well. Some orders take a while to produce, but that is a reflection of the volume of business they do. They do offer faster turnover for an additional fee, but if you are cost conscious you would be better served to plan ahead and save a little money by waiting for them to arrive through the normal production process. They stand by their work, and even after the product has been delivered, they continue to offer specials to their valued clients. They will keep you informed of new items, discontinued item deals, and more. They are a company that is in it for the long term. Stack the odds in your favor, and contact the Queensboro Shirt Company for all of your custom embroidery and printing needs. They are simply the best.

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