Three Important Factors for Successful Content Writing
If you have a blog or any other type of website for your online business then you need to know how to write great content. At the very minimum you are going to be writing for your own blogs/sites. In addition to that, you will probably be writing for at least one of the following reasons, if not all of them; articles for promotion, press releases, guest posts for other blogs, information products, sales copy, and more.
Whatever the reason may be, it is vitally important to be able to write well if you plan to build a successful internet business of any kind. Here are 3 important factors for successful content writing on the web:
1) Write Frequently
If you want to become a sports superstar or a famous musician, or become successful at anything else, you have to practice. The same rule applies for writing high quality content. You need to hone your writing skills and keep them sharp. In order to do that you should write a bare minimum of 500 words every day. That might sound like a lot but it’s really not very much at all. The post you are reading right now is around that length. Really most days you should write up to five times that amount, or more.
Another thing you want to do that goes along with writing a lot is read a lot. Find blogs, articles, forums, books, and other things in your niche to read on a regular basis. Believe it or not but reading will help you with writing. And they don’t all have to be in your niche, you should read other stuff too. Any time you read good writing it will help you become a better writer.
2) Develop a Unique Writing Style
As you continue to write and read, you should be able to develop a writing style that is unique to you and doesn’t sound like everyone else out there. Be different and embrace the fact that you have your own unique style of writing. Stick with it and people will take notice. You can build up a very loyal following if you write in a way that people truly enjoy.
3) Be Valuable
A very important factor for successfully writing online is to be very valuable to your readers. How you provide value will depend on your niche and what you are trying to accomplish with your website. In general, this will usually mean that you either entertain or educate your readers with your writing. It’s even better if you can do both at the same time but you definitely need to at least do one or the other.
If you are just stringing words together for the sake of writing then you will never build up a readership. People either want to learn or be entertained, or both at once. If you can do that with your writing then you will do great.
So, three of the most important factors for successful content writing online are to write (and read) frequently, develop a unique writing style, and be valuable to your readers. If you keep those three factors in mind when writing then you should be able to create great content for your online business.
Perpetual 20 Review
This is a review of Ewen Chia’s Perpetual 20 program that has just recently launched and is quickly becoming the talk of the town in the internet marketing world. That’s not surprising considering Ewen Chia is a super affiliate of the highest caliber as well as one of the most well-known and respected online affiliate marketing gurus in the world. Anytime he promotes something or creates a new product of his own (such as perpetual20) it gets a lot of attention.
So, what is perpetual20? Here is a quick review of perpetual 20 so you can learn a little more about it before joining…
In simple terms it is a way to make money online by creating a perpetual (never ending) income by following a very simple system. There’s really not much to it. Here are the 4 simple steps to the program…
1) Start by joining the perpetual 20 program. It’s a very easy and straightforward process to sign up. And the monthly cost is dirt cheap compared to most other money making programs.
2) Once you are in you will get incredible training and resources to build a successful online business. This is to ensure that you never feel alone and helpless. You will have the tools you need to succeed on the internet.
3) Start promoting and referring others. All you need to do is refer just 4 people and you will be fully qualified! That gets the ball rolling towards a huge pile of money that keeps coming in every month. That is what’s called residual income!
4) Last but not least, you earn forever. Yes, you will get passive residual income every month like clockwork. And it will continue to grow as your referrals start bringing more people on board.
That’s about as simple as it can get when it comes to starting your own internet home business and making money online. Of course, it will take some time and work for marketing to get your referrals, but that can be expected. You can’t generate a sold monthly income without doing something to build it up.
There are actually 3 ways to earn with this program:
1) Unlimited $20 commission payments on your personal referrals
2) Reverse 2-up residual income from members below you
3) Quality products you can sell for instant profits
And you get all the tools, training, and resources you need to make it happen. This provides a solid opportunity along with a great set of products.
One more great thing about it is each sale made gets deposited directly into your Alert Pay account, which can then be transferred directly to your own bank account or sent to you by check. I like that because you don’t have to wait for the company to process and pay out your commissions.
Since perpetual 20 just launched, it hasn’t been around long enough to give a full in-depth review or provide actual data or personal experiences about how well it is working. However, it does appear to be a winner. And Ewen Chia is known for putting out amazing products so that speaks highly of it from the start.
There’s even more to it than I can fully explain in one blog post, so I encourage you to go read the site yourself. Be sure to check out the home page videos, compensation plan, frequently asked questions, products page, and everything else to get a full overview of the perpetual20 system.
Top 5 Home Business Opportunities for 2011
We are rolling along into 2011 already. The year is flying by as they always do. If you had plans to start or expand a home business this year but have been putting it off the time to go for it is right now! Before you know it the year will be over and you will be making plans for 2012 instead. There are plenty of great home business opportunities and other ways to become your own boss, so don’t put it off any longer.
To get you started on the right path, here are 5 of the best home business opportunities for 2011, in no particular order…
1) Network Marketing – Some people love it, some people hate it, and some people can’t decide either way. But it seems like everyone at least has some sort of an opinion about network marketing businesses, aka multi-level marketing or MLM. You have probably even had one pitched to you by someone in the past or maybe you have joined one before.
Whatever your opinions or experiences might be, one thing remains a fact, and it is that network marketing is one of the easiest, fastest, and most popular ways for the average person to start a home business. There have been more millionaires made in this industry than in any other in history. If you are looking to get out on your own and start your path towards residual income and financial freedom in 2011, you might want to consider network marketing as one of the best ways to do it.
A word of caution though, you do need to be very careful when choosing a network marketing opportunity. There are plenty of great programs out there that are perfectly legitimate. But there are also a lot of scams, schemes, and other shady business practices going on in this industry. Look past all the hype, watch for red flags, and do a lot of research before jumping into something.
2) Affiliate Marketer – This is undoubtedly one of the easiest and cheapest ways to start a home business. There are affiliate programs for pretty much every niche you could possibly think of and almost all of them are free to join. I have never seen a market where there wasn’t some product or service at least somewhat related to it that you could promote as an affiliate marketer. And rarely do you find any that actually cost to join, although sometimes they do.
You can also use free blogging platforms such as blogger and wordpress to start a site. Then, you can use free internet marketing strategies to promote them. So basically you could build a successful business without spending a cent. Although I do recommend getting your own domain and hosting, and spending some money on a few resources to help you along the way, but it’s not necessarily required. That’s what makes this such a popular way to make money and why it made the top 5 business opportunities list.
However, just because it’s easy to get started with affiliate marketing, and can be done by spending very little money, if any, doesn’t mean you will be able to simply join a program and be cashing in the next day. It does take a lot of learning, time, and hard work to build a successful affiliate marketing business. You still have to put in the necessary effort just like everyone else.
3) Professional Blogger – Another one of the best home business ideas for 2011 and probably for many years to come is becoming a blogging professional. There’s a virtually unlimited amount of topics that you can make money blogging about. If you have a passion or specific knowledge about something that other people are interested in then you can become a professional blogger and earn a living writing about it.
You will need to research the niche and various topics within it before jumping in so you can be sure there is an audience out there. You don’t want to waste your time writing and trying to build a business around a blog topic that nobody has an interest in. You also want to be sure that you aren’t choosing a niche so competitive that you will never be able to get anywhere with it.
Two of the most important parts of succeeding with a business like this are consistency and perseverance. It’s always easy to stay motivated at first but it takes time to write a lot of content, build up a solid readership, get high search engine rankings, daily traffic, and eventually a great income. The hard part is sticking it out until all of that happens. You need to be determined and continually work at it for quite a while before it will begin to pay off.
4) Online Business Consultant – With each year that passes the internet becomes more popular for starting home businesses online. But most people don’t have a clue how to get started or where to go after they do start. So there is huge money to be made if you want to teach them what they need to know.
They need to learn everything from niche research to setting up a blog/site to SEO, link building, marketing, social networking, copy writing, building a list, and everything else that goes along with internet marketing. There are a lot of people and even corporations that will pay a lot of money for help with that stuff. If you have the knowledge and skills then you can definitely do very well as an online business consultant.
This isn’t really so much a way to get your home business started because you will obviously need to already have plenty of experience in order to offer your consulting services. However, it is a great way to expand on your current business and create another income stream for yourself. This opportunity will only increase in popularity in 2011 and for many years to come.
5) eBay Seller – There’s really not a whole lot to say about this one. Just about everybody knows what eBay is and has used them for buying or selling items. For many years this has been one of the most popular ways to start a home business to make money online, and that is no different this year. You could technically be up and running today if you really wanted to.
You might think all the ideas for succeeding as an eBay seller have been taken but there are still plenty of opportunities to do very well with your own eBay home business. Admittedly it’s probably not quite as easy as it once was but it’s not impossible either. At the very least it can be a great way to get your foot in the door of the online business world.
One thing you must remember is that no matter what home business opportunity or idea you choose, it will take a lot of time and hard work to build it. Read that last sentence again because it is very important! The chances of you becoming successful in a month or two are slim to none. It rarely happens no matter what some marketers try to make you believe.
You need to be ready to put in 6 months to a year, or even longer, of consistent effort before you see any significant results. Too many people think they can just hop on the internet or join some system and be rolling in the money quickly and easily. That’s not going to happen. Any business takes a lot of time and hard work to develop.
Now, you know the top home business opportunities for this year, so get up off your butt and get started right away! You could be on the path to financial freedom by the end of 2011.
Top 5 Work at Home Jobs for 2011
It’s a new year full of new opportunities for anyone willing to get out of their comfort zone and begin a work from home career. With each year that passes the internet becomes a bigger part of our lives and that creates an increase in online jobs you can do from home. The world is changing and will continue to do so. This is your chance to get ahead of the game and take advantage of what’s available to you in this new digital world.
Of course, there are many options available, and the “best” one is impossible to say because everybody has different preferences and needs. However, I have discussed 5 of the top work at home jobs for 2011 below to hopefully help you make an informed decision. They aren’t listed in any particular order.
1) SEO Consultant – With the growth of the internet and everyone coming online for business and personal reasons, it is more important than ever to be able to get websites ranked highly in search engines. Most people don’t have a clue how to do search engine optimization (SEO) properly nor do they have the desire or time to learn. They need the services of an SEO specialist to help them out and are willing to pay good money for it. If you have the knowledge and skills to get high rankings on the major search engines (mainly Google) then you can work from home as a search engine optimization consultant and earn great money.
2) Web Designer – As with above, the increase of people and businesses coming online makes the services of a web designer more in demand than ever before. Most people and companies don’t know how to create a website or have the time to learn. They would rather pay someone to do it for them and do it right the first time. If you can design and build web sites you can make a very good living from home in 2011 and beyond. This is certainly one of the best work at home jobs right now.
3) Blogger – There are actually a couple ways you can make money blogging. One is to start your own blog(s) in a profitable niche then work towards building up the traffic, readers, and rankings until you can monetize it. However, that is not really so much a “work from home job” as it is your own online business as a professional blogger.
The other way is to actually hire yourself out as a blogger. With so many blogs online now there are countless opportunities for someone willing to be a blogger-for-hire. A lot of people don’t have the time, energy, or ability to keep their blogs updated consistently so they will pay someone to help them out with the writing duties. This can be a great way to earn money online without having to build up your own blog.
4) Freelance Writer – These days just about everyone needs articles, blog posts, website content, information products, sales letters, press releases, and many other things written. But not everyone is a good writer or has time to do all the writing themselves, or maybe they just don’t want to do it. If you were to work at home as a freelance writer, you would have more jobs than you could handle as long as you were good at it. This is another one that will continue to grow in 2011 and years after.
5) Social Media Marketing Coach – This is the newest, the least known about, and probably the least saturated of the five work at home jobs on this list. Social media is all the rage right now but relatively few people know how to truly use it properly and effectively for business marketing. So there is huge potential for those who do. One of the hottest ways to make money online in 2011 is being a social media marketing coach for internet marketers, small business owners, and even large companies. If you got the skills they can definitely pay the bills.
So, there you have it, the top 5 work at home jobs for 2011 and each of them could also be turned into your own online business or help you learn how to make money from home other ways. As I said, it’s impossible to say what the absolute top five are because everyone has their own needs and preferences. However, these are certainly among the best of the best. Hopefully one of them fits within your expertise. If not, then get started learning the one that interests you most and you will be working from home as your own boss before you know it!
How to Build a Successful Online Business
I love the lifestyle that comes from running an online home business. I get to work from home each day, set my own hours, choose my own projects, and enjoy abundant income. It’s hard for me to imagine how I’d feed myself without the Internet. When I think about income generation, I immediately think of the web.
I was talking to a successful entrepreneur recently who pointed out that building an online business is an exercise in personal development. He’s absolutely right. I’ve probably learned more valuable life lessons from my entrepreneurial pursuits than from any other areas of my life. Running a business tests you in so many ways — your self-discipline, your intelligence, your communication skills, your focus, etc. If you’re lacking in any of these areas, your business results will reflect it.
The real world of business can be unforgiving. Success is rewarded. Mistakes are punished. The benefit is that it keeps you honest. You can’t settle for weakness, laziness, and bad ideas, or your business will fail. There’s a huge chasm between an idea that sounds good and an idea that actually gets implemented and succeeds under real-world conditions. Anyone can come up with good ideas, but most people can’t successfully implement them.
Some people can’t handle the pressure of running their own business. They worry about the risk of failure. They’re looking at it from the wrong angle though. That risk is precisely the point. Risk is what helps you grow. It makes you stronger. An entrepreneur who fears risk is like a bodybuilder who’s afraid of barbells.
There have been times when I had to deal with tough problems, like having bills due but no money to pay them. These problems made me dig deep inside myself. My business compelled me to grow into the kind of person who could handle these sorts of things. I learned to trust myself to work hard, to stay focused under pressure, and to even enjoy the process.
We all have different levels of risk tolerance. You don’t need to stress yourself out to grow. You just need to challenge yourself in a way that stimulates you. Lift weights that are heavy and which tax your muscles… but which you can still successfully lift. Afterwards you may feel spent, but you’ll also grow from the experience. If you only do what comes easy for you, you’ll suffer from atrophy, and life will become rather boring and pointless.
Why an online business?
In the age of the Internet, I think almost everyone should have an online business… if only for the growth experience. It doesn’t cost much to start one, but it will teach you so much. Perhaps the greatest benefit is that you’ll learn you do have something of value to share with the world, something that can generate income for you for the rest of your life.
In a way I’m jealous of the teenagers and 20-somethings that are growing up so Internet savvy. Any of them could start their own online businesses and get ahead financially at a young age. I would have loved to have been doing this in high school or college. The internet was just starting to become main stream when I was that age so I was schooled on it a little but definitely didn’t grow up with it. It’s terrific that some people are becoming millionaires at such a young age, but I think the real success stories come from those who find a way to generate just a few thousand dollars per month, enough to cover their expenses.
I don’t even have kids yet, but I’m already thinking about how I will help them start their own online businesses when I do have them and they are old enough. I imagine by the time they become adults, they will already have multiple streams of income from websites they created during their teen years.
Building traffic
Running an online business is deceptively simple. Look at my web site, for example. The structure isn’t very complicated. It’s mostly just a lot of content and a lot of ads. But it consistently generates a nice five-figure monthly income. Anyone can do it, right?
Unfortunately, not everyone can do this. People try and fail all the time. The success stories get a lot of attention, but there are orders of magnitude more failures.
The key factor in building a successful online business is traffic. If you can’t build sufficient traffic, you won’t be able to generate much, if any, income. And unfortunately most people are really bad at building traffic. They apply completely inept strategies that don’t work, and they usually give up within a few months after starting.
Building traffic is not remotely easy for most people. This problem isn’t unique to the web though. You see it in every field. Some authors sell millions of books, while the average book doesn’t even sell 5,000 copies. Lots of people can write a book, but relatively few know how to sell a book. Lots of people can create a web site or blog these days, but few know how to attract large amounts of traffic.
If you can successfully build lots of traffic, it’s fairly easy to generate income from it. You also have time to figure it out. If you can grow your traffic, you can maintain your traffic, and that gives you time to figure out how to monetize the traffic.
In the past I’ve written articles trying to teach people how to build successful online businesses, including, How to Make Money from Your Blog and How to Build a High-Traffic Website. Those were long, detailed articles, and both have become extremely popular in the blogosphere. I didn’t charge any money for this content — it’s all free. Those articles inspired a lot of people (hundreds that I know of) to enthusiastically start their own websites. Some of those people are doing quite well now, but most that I’ve been aware of have failed miserably.
Why most people fail
Why did most people fail? I think the reason was that the whole process of running an online business is just too complicated for most people. There are lots of ways to screw it up. It pained me to visit some of those sites and notice a dozen glaring mistakes within the first few seconds — blogs that didn’t enable permalinks, cutesy headlines with no keywords in them, bad choice of topics, page titles that still used the WordPress default format, hideously suboptimal ad layouts, hidden or missing contact info, etc. Any one of those mistakes could cripple a site’s results. More than one is a practically a death sentence. Such mistakes cause problems both for human visitors and search engines.
But at the same time, there were teenagers humming along just fine, generating four figures in monthly income after working on their sites for 6-12 months. They didn’t necessarily get everything right, but they were Internet savvy enough to fix the big problems early.
What bothered me most about this was that people were too often failing because of the technology. Many of them had great ideas and very good content. It was a shame to read some of their articles and think to myself, this is great stuff… too bad no one will ever see it.
The cruel and unfair part of online business is that if you aren’t very Internet savvy, you’ll make mistakes on the technical side that you’re totally oblivious to. You may get the content side right, but the technology will bite you and cripple your results.
In my “How to Make Money from Your Blog” Article, I did correctly identify this problem and suggested that 99 out of 100 people would fail because of it. But it’s still a pretty unfair situation. There are people who can write great content who really deserve to be getting a lot of readers, but because they don’t understand permalinks, RSS feeds, pinging, or other technologies, they’re doomed before they start.
Once I saw this happening, I basically decided I’d better shut up about encouraging people to run an online business. People kept asking me for new articles on the subject, but I didn’t think it was a good idea. I was concerned I’d be doing more harm than good.
A new solution
Recently I came across a vastly superior solution to this problem — a way for people to build a successful online business that doesn’t require them to become technology gurus.
What I recommend is a service called Site Build It! – it’s an all-in-one solution for creating and building an online business. You pay an annual fee for the service, and they provide you with all the tools you need to build an income-generating web site. They host the site for you, they help you register your domain name, and they provide integrated tools like point-and-click page generators, built-in blogging, form builders, RSS feeds, and lots more. Many of these details will be handled for you, so you don’t have to worry about them.
You still create your own content, and you use their tools (or your own familiar tools) to create a site based on your unique ideas. You focus on the content side. They help you with the technical implementation side.
I don’t recommend this solution for everyone. If you’ve already built a successful website that generates thousands of dollars a month for you, you won’t need this. I don’t need it myself. But if you’re one of those people that have been held back by the technical complexity, then this is definitely something you should look at. This is the kind of solution I’d recommend in a heartbeat for my non-programmer friends who want to get something going online but quickly become lost in a sea of jargon.
If you’re interested, just be aware that it will take some time for you to look into this service and decide if it’s right for you. The Site Build It! site has a lot of detailed information on it.
An extra benefit for those who already have successful web sites
Site Build It! also has one of the most generous affiliate programs on the Internet. Some of their affiliates earn more than $10,000 per month. I recently became an affiliate myself after seeing what a great service this will be for people. If you’re looking for new income sources for your web site, just read the last section of Build Your Own Successful Online Business, which will explain why this affiliate program is so strong.
Running an online business can be a wonderful growth experience, and the income and freedom it can provide is certainly nice too. People really shouldn’t be deprived of this opportunity for technical reasons. The self-publishing power of blogging technology has gotten us partway there, but it’s only one piece to the puzzle. I encourage you to take a good look at Site Build It!, since I think you’ll find that their system fills in the remaining gaps, putting online business success within reach of most people.
This is by no means a get-rich-quick program. You’ll still need to put in the time and energy to create quality content for your web site, but at least you won’t have to worry as much about the technical side so you can focus your efforts more on marketing and making money.
An extra special thanks goes out to Steve Pavlina for this post. He’s a personal development guru that has built an incredibly successful online business, and he’s a really nice guy to top it off!
