Diary of an Online Business

I just arrived home from a trip around the world (and yes it was fabulous and yes, I will be sharing some pictures with you) to receive a very blunt letter from Google – they had disabled my Adwords account! What does that mean? It means that I can never advertise on Google Adwords again.

Now if I was you, the first question I would be asking is why? Well that’s exactly what I also asked Google and to date (10 days later) I have not had any sort of answer.

Google Adwords have told me that I have broken some unforgivable rule but I really do not know what.  Since learning of this we have:

• audited all our websites

• talked with Hostgater to see if any nasties had been put on there that we weren’t aware of

• talked with our email service to make sure we are receiving all messages
• contacted a number of people in the business including the adwords expert Mike Rhodes
• read other people’s stories who have had the same thing happen to them -and there seems to be a few
• reread Googles rules and regulations to see if we could identify any rule we may have unknowingly broken – and couldn’t identify anything

And at the moment we are no further advanced on why this has happened to us and how to fix it.

As you can imagine this is time costly.

The thing that I am really having trouble with is that Google Adwords is telling me that I have not acted ethically (my interpretation).  My whole professional life has been governed by the ethics of caring for others so I not only see this banning by Google as a very large threat to my business but also to my reputation.

I am an optimist and definitely believe that when one door closes another opens. We’ll just have to work out other ways of driving traffic and certainly people are telling me not to worry about this as there are other ways to do it.

I think though I’ll give it a few more tries appealing to Google as I really want to believe in the good Corporate culture and spirit that we hear so much about today. I will choose to believe it is alive and well

I’m really needing some support, advice and information with regards to this one so please leave your comments about anything you feel would be helpful to me and others like me in this difficult situation.

My advice for my readers – check your websites against the Google Adwords regulations. Obviously, this has not been enough to save me a lot of confusion and distress but I really hope that it will be for you

Until next time

Julie

Google Adwords, internet business, internet businesses, motivation, online business, online businesses Google Adwords, health and wellbeing, internet business, online business, online business; internet business; success; learning;

Just arrived back from our holiday in beautiful Coffs Harbour (that’s in New South Wales Australia for those not local). We had a great time but unfortunately I probably had a better time than Will as he had the flu, so he is happy to be safe and sound in his own bed.

This post begins a six part series from Andrew and Daryl Grant on how to sell your ebook online. We originally started in their ebook mentoring program – see the banner on the right hand side or simply click this link to have a look at this website:

http://www.ourinternetsecrets.com/aff/?p=jspain&w=mp09-4

We then progressed into their Our Internet Secrets program. I will be writing a review of this program later on but if you cannot wait to find out more just follow this link to find out about their amazing 4 day workshop. It truly was the best workshop I have ever been to:

http://www.ourinternetsecrets.com/aff/?w=4dayws197&p=jspain

These are the steps that we followed to write our first two ebooks. If you want to look at our ebooks them go to:

www.copingwithlifecrisis.com

www.guidetoonlinedatingtips.com

Step One – Identify A Potential Topic

You are after a topic which lots of people are looking for, and where people “must have” (rather than “need”) the product.

You also want a “niche”, ie a topic which is not too general. For example, “health” is far too general, but “melanoma” is specific enough.

You don’t necessarily need to know anything about the topic, but it helps if it’s something you are interested in.

The tool we use to determine how popular ideas are is http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html.

Click here for a list of the 204 best selling topics on line.

Once you have come up with some ideas, search for the key words you think people interested in a topic might look for. You are looking for words or phrases which total more than 30,000 hits per month on keyworddiscovery for your topic. For example if you type in “skin cancer” you get over 53,000 hits per month.

Next do a search on Google for the same words. You are looking for:

• The number of websites on the topic (you want this to be in the millions)
• Existing ads. You don’t want a topic where someone is already using a good sales letter and selling an e-book. You also don’t want heaps of ads, otherwise you end up paying too much per click to get in the top three.

The Grants talk about using the keyword discovery tool but there is a much easier way now with the Google Keyword Tool. Just go to: https://adwords.google.com.au/select/KeywordToolExternal

This is only the first step. Stay posted for the next 5 steps. I cannot stress how useful this information has been to us in getting started with our online business and I hope it helps you also.

Until next time

Julie

Andrew and Daryl Grant, ebooks, internet business, internet businesses, online business, online businesses Andrew and Daryl Grant, ebooks, online business, online business; internet business; success; learning;, success; secrets to success; motivation; online business; internet business

Ok, am I the only one who at times suffers from self doubt?  Am I the only one who sometimes thinks this is all too much for me and I’ll never be as successful as all those other people out there who are running successful online businesses?

I didn’t think so! What human being has not suffered from some form of self doubt in their lives? Will she accept my offer of a date?  I don’t think that I’m going to be offered the job. Why is it that everyone else in the world is smarter, prettier and more successful? Or, here’s the big doozie: “Why does everything have to be so hard for me and so easy for everyone else?”

Come on now, be honest, surely I am not the only one who goes through this painful experience of self doubt?  The question here could be why write about this on a blog designed for online business success? For one reason only: self doubt could rob you of any opportunity to be successful with your online business – hey, even with me and my online business.

Most success coaches (that’s me believe it or not) would tell you that success is determined 90% by what we think and only 10% by what we do. There was an interesting experiment some time ago that looked at coaching success for basketballers. They took three groups: the first group was only allowed to think about shooting hoops, the second group was only allowed to practice shooting hoops and the third group was coached in both mental and practical basketball skills. Which group did the best? Group one and three both succeeded to the same level. In other words, the actual action of shooting hoops made litttle difference. It was all about training the mind.

Occassionally this self defeating blockage of self doubt pops into my head so what do I do about it? This is what I do and maybe it will help you:

1. Remember the dream. We have a dream book and I like to remind myself of exactly why I started this online business in the first place. It is a powerful motivator.
2. Allow myself a little pity party but after a short time of feeling the feelings and feeling sorry for myself, I take a deep breath and tell myself to get back on with the job.
3. I recall all the things in my life that I have already been successful with eg. raising three daughters and for part of that time on my own, completing two degrees, having  a  private practice for 15 years, managing a 140 staff successfully in the program that I run currently, surviving a terrible divorce and best of all finding the love of my life later in life. If I can do these things then I can continue to face life’s challenges and win
4. Mix with people who will pull you up, not pull you down. We all need encouragement. I truly hope that my blog is an encouragement to you and that in some ways I can be a mentor to others in need.

Let me know what you do to deal with an attack of the self doubts. I know that it will be of help to others who are reading this.

I’m off for a weeks holiday to beautiful Coffs Harbour tomorrow so no post for a week. I really am a firm believer in the need for self care and nurturing.

Until next time

Julie

achieving your goals, internet business, internet businesses, motivation, online business, online businesses, success Add new tag, mental blockages, online business, online business; internet business; success; learning;, success; secrets to success; motivation; online business; internet business

Yaro Starak over delivers again.
This time he has made available to us a free report on how to develop a membership site. We are currently in the process of building two new membership sites and of course as the time gets closer I’ll be letting you know all about them but for now, a quick review of Yaro’s Membership Site Masterplan.
Yaro is a big believer in the need to establish yourself well and truly within your niche. To do this end he gives away amazing information written in a professional manner yet in a way that the adverage non technical person can understand. The latter would of course be me and so I always appreciate it when someone can tone down the techie stuff to such a level that I can get my head around it.
His current free report: Membership Site Masterplan once again establishes him as an expert in the area of blogging and now building on that success to show us how to be successful with membership sites. The big plus with a membership site is that it is not a once off purchase. The customer usually receives their information weekly over a period of time. This helps the customer to digest large amounts of information in more bit sizes and even more importantly the opportunity to practice what they have learnt. For the seller it of course gives on going income which is always better than a once off sale.
In his free report Yaro covers many important topics inclucing:
* The technology needed for a membership site
* Getting the prelaunch and launch of the site just right
* How to put the membership site on autopilot which of course is the whole idea of creating passive income and the lifestyle that goes with it
* The all important “How to sell”
and many other things.
To get hold of Yaro’s free report on building membership sites, simply click on this link:
http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com

If the report is not enough then Yaro also offers that extra added boast of a membership site to provide some hand holding while you are in the important process of getting up and going. To find out more about his membership site simply click on this link:
http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com

In my research I have come up with two distinct models for membership sites:

(1) The community type based model. With this model there is no step by step process that the customer goes through rather it is about role models and offering information on a topic in such form as interviewing experts in a particular area. The members themselves often contribute to the community based models and alot of ownership can be generated in this manner.
(2) This is a step by step outcome membership model on a particular topic eg “How to Build a Membership Site”. Members learn something extra each week until they have finally achieved their outcome.
When deciding which model you want to use it will really depend on the topic you have chosen. Ask yourself “which of these two models fits best with my topic and with what I am trying to achieve”
Don’t forget to check out the banners to Yaro’s free reports and products, particularly the new one Membership Site Masterplan.
Until next time
Julie
PS. Please let me know what you would like me to be writing on. I really want all this to be relevant and to help people build their online business as others have helped us.

blogging, blogs, internet business, internet businesses, online business Add new tag, blogging, building membership sites, online business, success; secrets to success; motivation; online business; internet business

In every bloggers life comes a special day – the day they first launch a new blog. Now unless you went out and purchased someone else’s blog chances are your blog launched with only one very loyal reader – you. Maybe a few days later you received a few hits when you told your sister, father, girlfriend and best friend about your new blog but that’s about as far you went when it comes to finding readers.Here are the top 10 techniques new bloggers can use to find readers.

These are tips specifically for new bloggers, those people who have next-to-no audience at the moment and want to get the ball rolling.

It helps if you work on this list from top to bottom as each technique builds on the previous step to help you create momentum. Eventually once you establish enough momentum you gain what is called “traction”, which is a large enough audience base (about 500 readers a day is good) that you no longer have to work too hard on finding new readers. Instead your current loyal readers do the work for you through word of mouth.Top 10 Tips

10. Write at least five major “pillar” articles. A pillar article is usually a tutorial style article aimed to teach your audience something. Generally they are longer than 500 words and have lots of very practical tips or advice. This article you are currently reading could be considered a pillar article since it is very practical and a good “how-to” lesson. This style of article has long term appeal, stays current (it isn’t news or time dependent) and offers real value and insight. The more pillars you have on your blog the better.

9. Write one new blog post per day minimum. Not every post has to be a pillar, but you should work on getting those five pillars done at the same time as you keep your blog fresh with a daily news or short article style post. The important thing here is to demonstrate to first time visitors that your blog is updated all the time so they feel that if they come back tomorrow they will likely find something new. This causes them to bookmark your site or subscribe to your blog feed.

You don’t have to produce one post per day all the time but it is important you do when your blog is brand new. Once you get traction you still need to keep the fresh content coming but your loyal audience will be more forgiving if you slow down to a few per week instead. The first few months are critical so the more content you can produce at this time the better.

8. Use a proper domain name. If you are serious about blogging be serious about what you call your blog. In order for people to easily spread the word about your blog you need an easily rememberable domain name. People often talk about blogs they like when they are speaking to friends in the real world (that’s the offline world, you remember that place right?) so you need to make it easy for them to spread the word and pass on your URL. Try and get a .com if you can and focus on small easy to remember domains rather than worry about having the correct keywords (of course if you can get great keywords and easy to remember then you’ve done a good job!).

7. Start commenting on other blogs. Once you have your pillar articles and your daily fresh smaller articles your blog is ready to be exposed to the world. One of the best ways to find the right type of reader for your blog is to comment on other people’s blogs. You should aim to comment on blogs focused on a similar niche topic to yours since the readers there will be more likely to be interested in your blog.

Most blog commenting systems allow you to have your name/title linked to your blog when you leave a comment. This is how people find your blog. If you are a prolific commentor and always have something valuable to say then people will be interested to read more of your work and hence click through to visit your blog.

6. Trackback and link to other blogs in your blog posts. A trackback is sort of like a blog conversation. When you write a new article to your blog and it links or references another blogger’s article you can do a trackback to their entry. What this does is leave a truncated summary of your blog post on their blog entry – it’s sort of like your blog telling someone else’s blog that you wrote an article mentioning them. Trackbacks often appear like comments.

This is a good technique because like leaving comments a trackback leaves a link from another blog back to yours for readers to follow, but it also does something very important – it gets the attention of another blogger. The other blogger will come and read your post eager to see what you wrote about them. They may then become a loyal reader of yours or at least monitor you and if you are lucky some time down the road they may do a post linking to your blog bringing in more new readers.

5. Encourage comments on your own blog. One of the most powerful ways to convince someone to become a loyal reader is to show there are other loyal readers already following your work. If they see people commenting on your blog then they infer that your content must be good since you have readers so they should stick around and see what all the fuss is about. To encourage comments you can simply pose a question in a blog post. Be sure to always respond to comments as well so you can keep the conversation going.

4. Submit your latest pillar article to a blog carnival. A blog carnival is a post in a blog that summarizes a collection of articles from many different blogs on a specific topic. The idea is to collect some of the best content on a topic in a given week. Often many other blogs link back to a carnival host and as such the people that have articles featured in the carnival enjoy a spike in new readers.

To find the right blog carnival for your blog, do a search at http://blogcarnival.com/.

3. Submit your blog to blogtopsites.com. To be honest this tip is not going to bring in a flood of new readers but it’s so easy to do and only takes five minutes so it’s worth the effort. Go to Blog Top Sites, find the appropriate category for your blog and submit it. You have to copy and paste a couple of lines of code on to your blog so you can rank and then sit back and watch the traffic come in. You will probably only get 1-10 incoming readers per day with this technique but over time it can build up as you climb the rankings. It all helps!

2. Submit your articles to EzineArticles.com. This is another tip that doesn’t bring in hundreds of new visitors immediately (although it can if you keep doing it) but it’s worthwhile because you simply leverage what you already have – your pillar articles. Once a week or so take one of your pillar articles and submit it to Ezine Articles. Your article then becomes available to other people who can republish your article on their website or in their newsletter.

How you benefit is through what is called your “Resource Box”. You create your own resource box which is like a signature file where you include one to two sentences and link back to your website (or blog in this case). Anyone who publishes your article has to include your resource box so you get incoming links. If someone with a large newsletter publishes your article you can get a lot of new readers at once.

1. Write more pillar articles. Everything you do above will help you to find blog readers however all of the techniques I’ve listed only work when you have strong pillars in place. Without them if you do everything above you may bring in readers but they won’t stay or bother to come back. Aim for one solid pillar article per week and by the end of the year you will have a database of over 50 fantastic feature articles that will work hard for you to bring in more and more readers.

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:

http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/go.php?offer=wjs12&pid=1

Yaro Starak gives away amazing information. He is truly a generous and successful person. Yaro is someone that I follow and constantly learn from. For more information on his products have a look at his two banner ads on the right of my blog

Until next time
Julie Spain

blogging, blogs, internet business, internet businesses, online business Add new tag, blogging, blogs

Recently, I read something that made me think about the challenge of winning or in other words, achieving success:
“Do you not know that in a race all the runners run but only one gets the prize”
1 Corinthians 9:24
I really related to this quote and the fact that I just did not want to be involved in running the race, I actually wanted to get the prize when it comes to being successful with my online business. I started to think about what winners actually do to win and soon realized that all of these things were applicable to success with my online business.
If I want to be successful with my online business, then I need to follow all of the steps below:
1. Train hard. For more information on this go to Entry 2. February 18th 2009 “The Key To Unlocking The Secrets To Success” We must put the effort in. Practice, practice and then practice some more to perfect the skills. I just learnt recently, that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to be truly good at something.
2. Take time to understand and respect your competition. You are not an island. You are actually competing against others for the coverted prize. Study and learn from your opposition. Learn to do things different and better.
3. Never give up. Winston Churchill said it beautifully: “We will never, never, never…………..give up”. The major point is that he said “never” for 30 mins. I think he made his point.
4. Practice discipline and routine. First decide what routine you will need to achieve your dreams. Then of course repeat it – over and over again. It only takes 28 days to establish (or break) a habit, so why not establish great habits that will lead you to exactly where you want to go
5. Focus, Focus, Focus. It is so easy to be distracted by 1000’s of other things in your life. By all means, enjoy life to the best of your ability but discipline yourself that at certain times you will be totally focused on the tasks required to win the prize you are chasing. Without focus you will just spend alot of time getting nowhere in particular.
6. Sacrifice. Oops! Not really a well loved term today. We need to sacrifice now so we can enjoy the fruits of the prize later. The athelete who gets up to train at 4 and 5am would probably much rather have a couple of hours extra sleep but when the stand on the podium to win their prize all the sacrifice is forgotten in the joy of the win. We need to sacrifice of our time, energy and resources.
7. Prioritize. Does anyone else have trouble with this? Sometimes we try so hard to prioritize what we believe to be important but still get it wrong. 5 years, 10, 20 years of hard work goes by and we still are not where we want to be. Stephen Covey tells us we spend 80% of our time working on things that are really only 20% important to us. Get hold of a journal and spend some time deciding on what is important to you and then start to prioritize. You will be amazed at what you can accomplish in a much shorter period of time.
8. Dream. “Without a vision, the people will perish”. Dreams keep us alive. They get us up in the morning with with renewed vitality and motivation to tackle the day with purpose. My husband and I have a dream book. In it we write the things that we want to achieve. Some are small and personal such as dancing lessons, others are large and longterm such as a successful online business to create passive income. Write everything you have dreamed of – no judgements. It will surprise you what is really in your heart
9. Never lose sight of the goal. This can be difficult when you are seeing few results. Keep coming back to your dream book. Remember why you embarked on this journey.
10. Build a good support team around you. The athelete has the coach and the physio to name just a few. You will need a mentor or coach. Hopefully, I can be part of that journey for you as we learn together. I would also like to recommend the people we use Andrew and Daryl Grant. Just go to the banner ad on the front page of my blog. I’ll be talking more later about this topic.
11. Understand your personal roadblocks, obstacles and weaknesses. They say that 90% of the battle is in the mind. This is the purpose of this blog and I will be writing much more on this topic.
12. Educate yourself about the process, skills and techniques that you will need to acquire to be successful at the internet business you have chosen. This is your fasttrack to success and as already mentioned in Point Number 1 see my Entry 2 post.
13. Remember to take care of your main tool – yourself. No one else is going to do this and if you burn out or go off the rails then your dreams of winning the prize will never be realized.

Let me know if you have any other points that would help other people in this area of running the race to win the prize. In particular, I would love to hear what roadblocks you have to achieving your dreams?

Until next time
Julie

achieving your goals, internet business, internet businesses, motivation, online business, online businesses, success achieving your goals, Add new tag, learning, mental blockages, online business; internet business; success; learning;, success; secrets to success; motivation; online business; internet business