How To Make Money At Home

This is a guest post by Allison Maslan.

Have you ever impulsively jumped on a great new idea to make money only to find that your enthusiasm dwindled after the first week or two? Have you started a hobby that a friend got you fired up about, dropping a big investment to get started, but soon after you completely lost interest?

In order for an activity or goal to sustain itself long enough to be successful through life’s ups and downs, there must be meaning or a passion behind it. This love of your work, relationship, hobby or practice is the glue that will keep you cherishing your wins and picking yourself up after your losses as you progress on your path toward success. When an activity or goal has meaning to you, you are more likely to give your heart and soul to this cause, making sure that you stay focused, labor over every detail, and absorb yourself in every moment. When you spend time on efforts that really matter to you, it’s much more probable that you’ll make the commitment that’s necessary to build a lasting entity.

Millions of people desire to leave the confines of the corporate world to start their own business. Even though they fantasize about the idea of freedom, they become paralyzed with fear at the thought of leaving a safe, secure job. I talk to people all day that tell me they are feeling empty as if something is missing in their daily lives. They spend three quarters of their lives at a job void of soul and passion. Their creativity and drive are buried so deep within them they feel numb and shut down. The status quo, title and a paycheck are not enough anymore. They have upped the ante. They now want to be inspired and fulfilled with purpose in their home and work life.

Then there are those who have taken the haphazard plunge into a business that they are not passionate about, and find themselves feeling like they have fallen into the drudge of yet another boring job. What was once their mission becomes their biggest nightmare. After a few years of being disillusioned they opt to throw in the towel. This does not need to happen!

When the purpose of your business matters to you on a deeper level, your efforts will endure. And when you reach your meaningful goals, success will feel like a shining glory. When you have built something you can be proud of, something you are completely passionate about, the satisfaction is not only in the outcome, it’s in the day-to-day process. If you’re only working toward the destination and not reveling in the journey, you miss out on the abundance of life. When you are only focused on the goal , you may find yourself thinking, “Is that all there is?” while feeling empty, sad and bored, and once again, unfulfilled.

What’s the difference between those entrepreneurs who are optimistic and moving forward and those who are just getting by? I believe that much of it has to do with how you view the glass – half full or half empty. George Sheehan (author, track star, cardiologist), once said, “Success means having the courage, the determination, and the will to become the person you believe you were meant to be.” People with a positive outlook and a life plan don’t get off the track when things change – they just change tracks.

As a life and business strategist, I spend a great deal of time helping clients tap into their passions, and then guiding them to create a business that reflects their inner purpose and dreams. Particularly in this economy, if you are a business owner that is having some slower weeks or months, it is crucial that you stay connected to your mission and why you started the business in the first place. If the business is only about making money, there is not much heart or soul to draw from to get you through.

Here are a few tips to feeding the soul in yourself and your business.

• Surround yourself with inspiring and motivating people. You may find that your usual crew begins to lean toward the negative side of life when times get tougher. Seek out those people who are supportive of your goals. Join groups or seek counseling to keep you motivated and accountable.
• Be Easy on yourself. Change and transformation can bring up all sorts of good, bad and ugly stuff. When you feel yourself struggling, take a break. When you have small successes, give yourself kudos for all your hard work and continue to move on toward your bigger visions and dreams.
• Start now. You don’t want to look back in ten years and realize that you’re still at the same place in your life then as now. Even if you love your life now, growth is a necessary part of your evolvement on this planet. Every single day of your life is precious. Embrace it, and those you love, to the fullest.

Once you finally connect with something that has meaning to you, and your internal passion regarding this is accessed and utilized, your once deadened perception and reality will be pumped with new and energized life blood. I call this your Secret Spark, a perfect mix of meaning and passion that enlivens your life purpose and gives you the drive and stick-to-it-ness to make things happen. When you discover the soul in your business, your work will become stimulating and fun, and you’ll be immersed in your satisfying activity and lose track of time.

Dreams are gifts of the soul.
We need to make every effort
to cherish them, to live them.
Otherwise they only surface in our sleep.
A soulful life is an awakening
and actualizing of our
deepest dreams within.

~Allison Maslan

Allison Maslan, HHP, CCH has been an entrepreneur for the past 25 years and has a vibrant array of nine successful businesses to her credit. She is an author, life and business strategist, homeopathic physician and international speaker. Her book, Blast Off! The Surefire Success Plan To Launch Your Dreams Into Reality launches on January 19 2010.

Are you struggling every time you want to write an article? Do you postpone writing because you have no idea what to write?

You are not alone. I have been in that situation many times in my early freelance writing career. Instead of getting depressed, I tried to find ways to come up with article ideas. I learned many ways to brainstorm article ideas by practice. I also read many blogs and got few tips.

Now I’m going to share the 3 best ways with you.

1. Books

I come up with tons of ideas by reading books. I’ll show you how to do it and will also give you an example for it.

When I say books, it doesn’t mean you have to read books related to your niche. You can read any book. I can brainstorm article ideas for the make money online niche by reading health books.

First read the book and write down the key points. You can group the points into categories. Once you have the categories written, try to relate the category to your niche.

Example: Last month I read a book on getting abs (yeah). Whether it helped me to get abs or not, it did help me coming up with article ideas. I had an idea for an article just by reading the introduction.

When I read the introduction, the author of the book stressed on how hard it is to get abs but once you put in work, you can achieve it.

I came up with: “7 Reasons Why Making Money Online Is Like Getting Stripped Abs”

You can come up with many when you read a whole book.

2. Free Wordtracker Keyword Question Tool

This tool is a goldmine. It is completely FREE and I can’t believe many people are not using it.

Go to the keyword question tool (different from the normal wordtracker keyword tool). Type a keyword and you’ll get all the questions people are typing in Google.

Are they hot keywords? It should be because people are searching for it. Are there many questions? There are tons of them.

Here’s what you get when you search for “Christmas”

I have written a detailed post on 3 ways you can use Wordtracker keyword question tool.

3. Magazines

This method is different from the first one. There are many magazines available in the market. You actually don’t need to buy a magazine.

Go to the magazines’ home page and find the cover of their current and previous issues.

What do you see in the covers? A cool looking graphic? Yes. But that’s not what we want.

What else do you see? Do you see the headlines of the best stories you’ll find inside the magazine? That’s what you want.

Let me show you an example

I found this headline in Cosmo magazine.

What 81% of Men Expect on a First Date (You’ll be Pleasantly Surprised)

Now I can change this headline to come up with a post for copywriting.

What 81% of Your Customers Expect When Reading Your Sales Page

Sounds cool? You can find thousands of headlines that can be reworked for your niche.

If you follow the above three methods to come up with an article idea, I’m quite sure you’ll never face writer’s block.

Please share your opinion and how you brainstorm article ideas in the comments.

Do you want responsive followers? Are you following hundreds of people everyday in twitter?

You don’t have to do it anymore. You can get responsive followers without following hundreds everyday by using the simple tips I’m going to tell you in this post. The best part is that you can do it for free. But don’t let the word free to fool you.

In order to follow these steps, you don’t need:

1. Money

2. Softwares that cost $97+

Here’s what you need to have:

1. Time (Not a lot)

2. Some knowledge in your niche (which you probably already have)

That’s it.

What about the results? Here are some of the benefits:

1. Followers who don’t mind whether you are following them or not but they will follow you

2. People who are interested in what you share and see you as an expert

3. Followers who actually check out the links you tweet and buy stuff you sell

Without any further ado, let me take you through the simple tips I use to get responsive followers:

1. Post Tips of Value

Whatever niche you are in, tweet tips that people will be interested in. Are you in the weight loss niche? Great. Tweet tips on how people can lose weight fast. You are in the make money online niche? Cool. Share your ideas on how to build a list or get traffic or just about anything related to make money online. You don’t have to think much. You would have written articles or ebooks. Post something from them.

When you tweet tips, your followers will often retweet your message. So their followers will see your tweet and if they are interested, they will follow you.

By doing this, you are also showing yourself as an expert in your niche. Once you give information and build trust, it will become easy to sell whatever you want.

2. Use Twitter Search And Answer Questions

Find keywords in your niche and search twitter for those keywords. If you are using a twitter client, you can create a column for your search keywords. Whenever you find a question, you can hit the reply button and reply to the person who has asked the question. Its as simple as that.

Let me give you an example. Say you are in the dog niche, you can use a keyword like ’stop dog’. This will provide you results with those two words. You will find people asking questions like “how to stop my dog from barking at my neighbors?”. You are an expert in the dog niche, right? Why not help them with a tip?

You can do that in just about any niche. The people whom you have answered will be happy for the help you just provided and will follow you. When they follow you, they will see that you are always tweeting useful tips (see number 1). So they’ll trust you a lot more and buy from you.

3. Retweet Others Often

This is something you might already know. But I don’t see many people doing it. You have to retweet others. Give and you shall receive. Retweet others and you will be retweeted. When you are retweeted, you will be followed by the followers of the people who retweeted you.

When you are doing the number 1 item in this list (posting useful tips), you will often be retweeted. The number of times you get retweeted will increase tremendously if you retweet others.

A piece of advice: Don’t retweet for the sake of it. Only retweet stuff you like. It is just like forwarding a mail. You forward only the ones you like. Its the same with twitter. Retweet what interests you. Chances are your followers will also like it.

So don’t let anything stop you. Start implementing these three tips right now and see your followers grow. You won’t get hundreds of followers everyday but as I said in my previous post, quality matters more than quantity.

Please share your opinion in the comments.

Are you using twitter the way you should be using? Are you one of the many frustrated marketers who is finding it difficult to understand twitter?

You might have spent quite a lot of money on ebooks related to twitter marketing. It might have taught you some tips. I have bought a couple of them too. I’ll be honest here. I learned a lot about twitter by using it than by reading these ebooks. And today, you are going to learn what most twitter gurus never told you about twitter marketing in those $27 or $47 ebooks that you bought from them. The best part is, it is going to cost you nothing. Yes, zero dollars ($0).

I know you will be excited now, just like how you felt when you bought those ebooks. But this time, you are going to really learn some tips. And yes, let me remind you again, you are not paying anything for this.

A piece of advice before I tell you what I learned about twitter. Please set some time and take action. I’m sure you will have success.

So ready to read what I have for you? Great.

Image Source: shhh… by Gustty

1. Auto Follow and Bulk Follow Are Surefire Ways to Failure

Auto follow is the process of following people who followed you without seeing what they tweet/sell/spam.

Bulk Follow is the method of following people based on keywords or visiting a twitter user’s profile and adding everyone that twitter user is following. Done using a software which often costs over $27 (with some being in the range of $197).

Auto follow and bulk follow don’t work any more. It used to work when twitter was free from spam. Now it is spammed by people all over the world.

The keyword based following is in a poor state now. Every spammer knows how to use the right keywords to make you follow them.

What should you do?

Stop auto following right now. A very high percentage of followers you get everyday are bots. Do you want to follow them back and see only advertisements in your twitter stream?

Stop bulk following. Never go on a following spree. You want to follow only those who interest you and who will be interested in what you have to say.

We’ll move on to the next point now.

2. It is NOT About the Number of Followers (You won’t need to spend a dime anymore)

Every ebook that you buy promises to get you thousands of followers. There are tens, if not hundreds, of softwares that lets you increase your twitter followers. How much money have you spent on these products?

Please don’t spend anymore money because it is not how many followers you have that matters but the quality of followers.

I have a little over 1900 followers (at the moment of writing). But I’m happy with it because the followers I have are very responsive.

Shell out money only if a product promises to get you responsive followers. I won’t even say keyword targeted followers are responsive followers. As I said before, there are millions of bots out there tweeting your targeted keyword and you don’t want to follow them.

Compare this with list building. Would you prefer to have 1000 responsive subscribers or 10,000 freebie seekers? I know which one I would rather have.

I’ll write an elaborate post in a couple of days on how you can get hundreds of responsive followers without following many everyday. Keep watching this space.

3. The Right Way to Make Money Using Twitter (Ignore this and you’ll leave lot of money on the table)

Let us be honest here. Most marketers use twitter to build brand and earn money. Or at least that is the reason I use twitter. I don’t use it for chatting with people all day, although I do chit chat once in a while.

What should you do to make money?

You have to sell. It can be your own product, an affiliate product or some kind of service.

Sadly most marketers do it the wrong way. The worst part is, there are hardly a couple of books that teach you the right way to make money using twitter. If you are not doing it this way, you are leaving money in the table. By doing it the way most marketers do, you are at the risk of losing few followers who trusted you.

What’s the right way?

Don’t over promote yourself. Keep a ratio. It can be something like 12:1 or 15:1. You might wondering what these numbers are. 12:1 means for every 12 general tweets you post, you can post one tweet about yourself. If 12:1 sounds harsh for you, reduce it to 10:1.

Never direct link to the general or affiliate sales page. Do you own a product? Have some kind of offer and tweet a link to that offer page saying only your followers get that offer. Do you promote an affiliate product? Link to a squeeze page where you can collect the email ID in return for sending them your free ebook and then sell to them over email. If you have a blog, link to the blog posts and have people RT your tweets.

I see that a lot of marketers use direct affiliate links. This will earn you a sale or two. But when you are looking for high conversions, it is better to follow the above tips.

Give away a lot of free stuff. The more you give, the more trust you build. And I’m sure you know trust equates to conversion. The followers who follow you for your free stuff are not freebie seekers. They will buy your products.

As most marketers promise, there is no such thing as overnight twitter success. You have to be patient and follow the above steps. Most marketers never tell you these tips but these are the most important ones. Follow these from today. And I hope you haven’t forgotten about the article I’ll be posting in a couple of days on how to get hundreds of responsive followers without following many everyday. It will also be free and informational. Make sure you subscribe to the blog so you won’t miss the post.

Please share your views and what you think most marketers don’t teach about twitter.

When ever you plan on creating a new info product, you have to think of it in terms of CONTENT. The content is your product. The way you package and present it is just window dressing. Here are the 30 most effective and profitable information product types which you can use as a guide to package your own products:

1. E-Books

Just open up a Word Document and convert that into a PDF file. Great when used as a frontend to a backend large ticket item

2. Books

Content converted to a PDF file and then sent to a printer. If you want to self-publish your book, you can use print on demand services like Lulu.com or get a traditional publisher like I did with eMillions. You can print just one book or 25,000. It’s a great way to get started with a physical book.

3. Newsletters

Content ‘sections’ (articles) that are either used in an offline newsletter or an online ezine. A book of content could give you enough content for a year’s worth of newsletters.

4. Blogs

Just like what I’m doing right now for The University Kid. Alternatively, you can call it an “online magazine” and your credibility instantly boosts up.

5. Audio Books

Record yourself (or someone else) reading your book content. Yes, just read it and record it. Voila – you’ve got an audio book. A tool like Audacity (free) works fine.

6. Podcast

Record yourself talking about your subject matter. You can read part of your book. Like reading sections or chapters of the content. You can just talk about it. You’ve done the research. You’re now an expert. Just talk about what you know. You can use the free software product given later to record your podcast.

7. Audio Program

Multiple audio CDs in one program. Whenever you gather content for an idea you’ll always have more content than you can fit into a book or e-book. A one CD ‘audio book’ could become an full blown ‘audio program’ by breaking it into separate CDs for each chapter and adding additional content.

8. Vlogcast

This is just like a blog or a podcast except it’s recording the content as a video instead of text or audio. Although you will have to invest in a camera (either digital video camera or webcam) the software to edit and package the video is completely free – I’ll tell you about it later.

9. Video Program

Just like the Audio Program except the content is recorded as a video. For example, you could read the book into the camera or you could be recorded teaching the material to a group. Break the content up into sections and place each section on a separate DVD.

10. Workbooks

Examine your content and create a book or report specifically designed to ‘teach’ the material. Present the information in a summarized format and have questions for each book chapter/section.

11. Multi-Media Kit

Put your book, audio book and/or DVD or you reading your book together.

12. Coaching Program

Present your content via the phone or email depending on how you’ve structured your coaching program.

13. Teleseminars

Present your content via the telephone – normally in an interview type format. However, I have listened to a few teleseminars that was just the expert speaking the entire time. It’s called expert by association.

14. Teleworkshops

Present your content via telephone in a “workbook” type scenario. Make it a smaller group with an interactive layout.

15. Home Study Course

Combine books, audio programs, video programs, workbooks, etc. into one product. Anyone who can create enough content for an e-book has enough content to convert their content into a Home Study Course and have a high-end product to promote. Usually you can sell those for $497 a pop

16. Membership Site

Include your text, audio and video content in a secure website where your clients pay you each month for access to the material. The great opportunity here is it is residual income that continues each month.

17. Radio Show

With the power of the internet anyone can have their own radio show. You can record the content and have it played at various times or you can do a live show. Same content as a podcast.

18. TV Show

Internet TV (IPTV) is coming very quickly. Just like internet radio – within 1-2 years anyone can build their own TV show on the internet. In fact, you could even use YouTube as your video distribution platform.

19. Syndicated Column

As an expert in your field, you may be asked to submit your articles to a newspaper. Or you can post your articles on your own website and others can syndicate the content via RSS feeds.

20. Articles

Crop your book content into smaller sections – and you’ve got a ton of articles you can use online or offline. You could submit it to article directories (and get tons of backlinks) or as guest posts on authority blogs in your niche.

21. Mini Books or Reports

You guessed it… if you have a book with 5 chapters, you could make it into 5 “special reports”. This is a great way if you want to distribute free viral e-books and spread the word out about your brand.

22. CD/DVD Training

Use your audio CDs and/or video DVDs to create a monthly training subscription service. Think like “Video Professor”. You’ve already got the content created – get clients to pay you monthly for it.

23. Magazine

A magazine is nothing but a large Newsletter. The great thing about a magazine… you can get advertisers to pay you money each month to be listed in your magazine.

24. Software

Convert your content into an executable file. You don’t have to be a software developer. I used HTML and Flash to package text, audio and video into an EXE. Once an EXE I called it software and it could be promoted with a higher perceived value.

25. Keynote Speaking

Summarize your content into PowerPoint slides to speak from when asked to be an expert presenter.

26. Resell Rights

Provide others the ability to resell your product(s) and keep 100% of the profits. Pro: Higher perceived value. Con: You lose control of your product. If you want income – this is a great way to do it. If you have a product you don’t want to lose control of – do not do this.

27. Private Label Rights

Provide others the ability to modify your content, brand it with their own name and resell it as their own. Pro: You can sell it at a higher price than Resell Rights. Con: It will no longer be your product after it’s rebranded

28. Licensing

Make an arrangement with a company to purchase a large quantity of your product. For example: A company may license your content for all their employees.

29. Foreign Rights

Convert your content into other languages. I’ve received many requests for my book eMillions to be translated into other languages from foreign publishers.

30. Consulting

A culmination of all your research and content presented as required by the person and/or company that hires you.

The key point when it comes to packaging is that you package your product to meet your NEED.

If you need a viral product – then use a viral package like podcast, special report, etc. If you need an entry-level product – then go with an e-book, book or audio book. If you need a high dollar product – then package products together like books, CDs, Workbooks, DVDs, etc.

There is NO difference between the content in an e-book, audio and video but depending on the way you package it you could receive a much higher profit because you’ve provided a much higher value to the client. If you can create an e-book then you can create ANY of the products/services shown above. They are just various ways to package the exact same content.