Are you looking for a real opportunity that will finally pay you what you are worth while allowing you the time freedom to control and live your own life on your terms?
Here are some straight facts on how we have found success. We are simply sharing with you our experience and seven key things that have worked for us.
Find a mentor. You want someone that can share the roadmap and tools they used to be successful. Someone who has a system. Someone who already has the results you are looking for. This has to be someone who is willing to listen to your needs and actually cares about your success.
Look For Growing Markets; Don't Chase Trendy Fads. Make sure that the products being sold are legitimate stand alone products, products that would sell themselves if on a shelf in a store etc. Most network marketing and direct sales companies out there are built around the compensation plan and NOT a stand alone product. If what you are marketing is NOT a stand alone product, you will have a hard time building residual income and a stable business as most people will not be able to duplicate what you are doing and your attrition will be huge.
A Franchise-Like System -With Manual; Without The Big Franchise-Like Fees One way to tell if the products are viable is to see what percentage of the products sold are retail sales. If people are only buying the products to be able to turn around and sell them to other recruits, beware. This is so critical. Beside who doesn't want to be proud of what they're selling. There are enough legitimate companies marketing legitimate products out there. Find one that feels right to you!
Make Sure You Get a Marketing System that ANYONE can Duplicate. There are a lot of great companies with great products out there, but if you don't have a reliable way to market them, you're not going to make any real money.
The system should also replace most of the redundant and boring things that cause most people to fail. Marketing systems that actually are proven to work are difficult to find. This is usually the weak link... Look closely.
Find a direct sales company to work with. I have personally never achieved a significant income with MLM or network marketing type business models. The attrition is too big and the commissions too small.
Find a company where you don't have to do any personal selling or explaining. Make sure there is a team of people in place to do this for you. You should have an entire team of people to support you. I always give my new people a spreadsheet with at least 30 leaders contact information on it to make sure there is lot's of support accessible in case I can't be reached.
Learn to trust your gut. If you feel good about what you're doing. Great pursue it with everything you have. If you are leery and can't get straight answers about products, services or systems, RUN! They aren't telling you the whole story and only want your money.
You should be able to tell very easily if someone really does care about building a long term successful relationship with you or if he/she is just trying to sell you something. There are hundreds of scams out there. Beware. Many are cloaked in innocence and opportunity. Look closely.
Is what you are about to do something that you can be passionate about and would you be willing and eager to share it with others?
If not, how can you be successful if you lack the self confidence and pride in what you are doing. Do something meaningful and make what you do about "helping others". Be proud and passionate and if you are using the right system, it will be impossible to fail.
You can view several videos we have made about this topic by going to our Wealth Theory Report. You can also contact us at anytime by calling 1-425-377-1093 or emailing us at summitsuccess@gmail.com to discuss anything we have covered here.
Wishing you all the best and we will see you at the TOP!
What’s your excuse — part three? Remember the web video of an autistic kid shooting one basket after another while the fans and even the other team cheered?
What’s your excuse — part two? Nino Savona has a condition that keeps millions of people from living life on their own terms. But Nino doesn't see the disability he's had since he was eight-years-old like other people do.
A Thankful Thanksgiving by Jim Rohn As a person who has experienced over 70 Thanksgivings, I recognize that being thankful is something that we have to work at, even on Thanksgiving.
What’s your excuse? Ben Underwood plays killer foosball and is an absolute master of video games. But so are a lot of 14-year-olds.
What you say is what you get We focus a lot on how powerful our thoughts and actions are and in so doing, we overlook one of the most powerful killers of dreams --- our words.
Don’t Quit In our darkest hour it's hard to see the end of our circumstance. All we can think of is our conditions worsening.
Blind to Failure We have to have a vision for our life, for what we want to become. Most importantly, we have to cherish it and hold on tightly to it when circumstances are telling us that we’ll never see our vision.
It’s how you play your cards I've heard it said that it's not important what hand you're dealt in life, it's how you play your cards.
A lesson from Job Like the biblical Job who said, "the thing I feared most has come upon me," I, too, had thought myself to where I was.
The vision of Jay Leno and President Clinton The vision that you glorify in your mind, the ideal that you enthrone in your heart - this you will build your life by; this you will become.
Best Confirmation Emails Again with the theme that great email marketing doesn't need to be hard, let's talk about confirmation emails. I place an order. Some system confirms my order and triggers an email. The problem is that these emails are normally complete...
Marketing Is Easy Hat's off to Kurt Vetters. Kurt is a very successful medical rep. I don't know a ton about his business, but I guess he is an independent distributor for a specific kind of wound care supplies. What I do know...
Many thanks to all who voted for ExactTarget in the ClickZ awards I just wanted to say thank you to all who supported ExactTarget in the recent ClickZ awards. ExactTarget was voted by their readers as best ASP Email Software. I'm not crazy about the term ASP (Best On Demand Email Software...
Some redemption for the email survey experience Ok..credit where credit is due. Maybe I've been too hard on Sofitel. I actually got an email back that reflected some of what I answered in the survey: Now, I think this is great. I replied back and I feel...
Seinfeld, Jerk Store and Email Marketing Remember the Jerk Store episode in Seinfeld? Well I had that moment this morning thinking about my post yesterday on the Email Marketing Survey from my new friend Dave O'Shaughnessy.... What I should have done is reference another Seinfeld episode...
How a survey can let you see into the soul of an organization Is hate too strong of a word to describe how I feel about surveys? Generally there are two things (maybe three) wrong with most surveys: You can tell yourself lies with surveys. Questions can be written to give you just...
PERSONALIZATION, FREQUENCY AND RELEVANCY: THE EMAIL SUCCESS TRIO The Technology Council of Southern California posted a great article from Morgan Stewart. Personalization. Frequency. Relevancy. The potential that can be unleashed by acting upon these three words is significant. Consider Amazon.com, whose CRM database is arguably the online world's...
Geat Email Marketing Doesn't have to be Hard I love email marketing, and I love great innovative email marketing. And I love all of this even more when it comes from normal everyday businesses. Folks that don't have deep marketing pockets or fancy agencies. People who are just...
Open It, Read It, Buy It: Email Marketing With The AppExchange I was fortunate to co-present at Dreamforce a couple of weeks ago talking about ExactTarget and the Salesforce.com integration and more to the point, some best practices in email marketing and email marketing in general. Questions are at the end...
Email Marketing Best Practices I'm doing some research for a project and I came across this excellent article. What struck me was how timely it was....and that it was written by Jonathan Jackson way back in 2001. I don't know what happened to Jonathan....
The (RED)TM campaign came under a lot of fire when Advertising Age printed a story claiming that (RED) has spent more money on marketing than on raising funds. According to AdAge, the (RED) marketing campaign totaled $100 million, while it “raised a meager $18 million.”
(RED) was created by U2 lead singer Bono and DATA chairman Bobby Shriver to raise funds for the Global Fund that fights AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria in Africa. The idea behind (RED) is to team up with strong, iconic brands to sell (PRODUCT)RED branded products, and have a percentage of (PRODUCT)RED sales go to the Global Fund.
Aimed at creating a win-win situation for companies and people fighting AIDS in Africa, many criticized this new concept by asking whether money would not be better spent directly on charity than on luxury products. Some activists even initiated a campaign called BUY(LESS) Crap, asking people to shop less and donate directly to the Global Fund and other organizations.
So does the awareness created for AIDS in Africa by (RED) companies (GAP, Motorola, Apple, and American Express among others) justify this new fund-raising approach? Should we consume to give, although we know that direct donations will buy more medication than a percentage of sales? Does it have to be one or the other?
On the official (PRODUCT)RED webpage, Bobby Shriver denies the allegations made by AdAge, stating that in 2006, (RED) generated more than $25 million in contributions to the Global Fund. “It’s five times the amount given to the Global Fund by the private sector in four years. In his letter, Shriver further states,
”your writer suggested that the $25 million is meager compared to the marketing money spent. Because (RED) is explicitly NOT a charity, we encourage our partners to go about their business including their marketing. This sells the products; the products generate the $25 million. In addition, this marketing would have been spent anyway, on other product lines. It never would have been (nor will it ever be) given to the Global Fund. We were able to divert existing marketing dollars for (RED). The companies have erected signs in stores and billboards across America saying that AIDS in Africa is a serious global problem. What is the value of that communication? Your writer never tells us. A phenomenal benefit is that Gap, Apple, Sprint and other sales people are meeting Americans and explaining that 5,500 Africans dying daily of AIDS is preventable. What is the value of this?”
I think Shriver has a valid point. If companies can create the needed buzz to effectively promote the fight against AIDS, why should they not take part in this campaign, even if it is for profit? At the end of the day, does it really matter whether we give directly or by buying premium products as long as we generate awareness of problems and help the less fortunate? It looks like we all win: I feel good about my new INSPI(RED) shirt: GAP made some money off of that, and according to the (RED) impact calculator, my purchase provided 41 single-dose treatments to prevent the transmission of HIV from mother to child.
Viral marketing can be a headscratching, manipulative affair. But grassroots, DIY viral marketing can delight. Witness our neighbor Bluehouse‘s first stab at a viral commercial. Intentionally low-budget but well produced, our favorite fair-trade coffee and ecological goods slingers created and star in this tongue-in-cheek ad. Since posted to YouTube two weeks ago, Tracy’s Towels has been viewed over 150 times, and reviewed on Revver, Digg, and Zango. Congratulations to Bluehouse on its successful foray into viral marketing!
Viral marketing is not a new concept. It has been around as long as the Internet and has grown into a powerful marketing tool. As its name indicates, viral marketing uses a host (the consumer) as the primary vehicle for the spread of the virus (a marketing message). This strategy encourages individuals to pass on the marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in exposure and influence. CareerBuilder’s viral Monk-e-mail campaign drew 7.5 million unique visitors within 6 months, resulting in 50 million sent emails and an average user session of 6 to 9 minutes.
Despite being the offspring of cost-effective guerilla marketing techniques, viral marketing has evolved into a competitive and costly venture. So it is key that firms’ viral promotions actually are viral, measurable, and raise brand equity.
There are numerous excellent articles and books on this increasingly important topic. Here are three of my favorite articles:
The Six Simple Principles of Viral Marketing, Dr. Ralph F. Wilson Wilson discusses how to develop the base for a viral marketing campaign. This is a great litmus test for promotion ideas in the early stages of development. An effective strategy must meet all of these principles before it has a chance to be successful.
Top 12 Campaigns You Should Swipe Ideas From, Marketing Sherpa Marketing Sherpa has compiled a list of the top 12 viral campaigns of 2006. Most of the campaigns are relatively unknown, so this is a great resource for catching up with the leaders in the category.
Get the Bug: Viral Marketing Unmasked, Kent Lewis Lewis does a great job of outlining the benefits and hazards of viral marketing. He details the typical lifecycle of a viral promotion and shows how to build business through your promotion.
How do we use this information to inspire the next great marketing innovations? What can we do beyond viral strategies to grow our business and brand equity? What role will end-user interactivity of Web 2.0 play in viral promotions? What opportunities will emerge as a result of Web 2.0? Until then my nose will be in the web and my eyes on Madison Avenue searching for the answer.
Offer Your Employees This No-Cost Job Perk Associated Content: If you own or operate a small business, you probably have looked for perks that you can offer your employees to help boost morale, increase productivity and generate some loyalty. However, you don’t have the budget of a big company, so extras like company cars, gym memberships and in-house babysitting are probably too expensive [...]
Carnival of Marketing This week’s Carnival of the Capitalists is up at The Real Estate Tomato.
Not So Silly String In Iraq Time: American troops in Iraq have become masters of improvisation, like bolting jury-rigged armor to humvees to shield themselves from sniper fire and shrapnel. Lately, an even more novel item has joined their battle kits… Silly String. Marines working in Iraq have shown Army combat engineers how it can be used to detect trip wires. Before searching [...]
Creative Ways To Help Charities Personal Finance Advice: The holidays are a time for giving. There seems to be an assumption that the only way you can help a charitable cause is by donating money, but there are ways you can help without spending any money. 1. Donate Your Time. While this may seem obvious to a lot of people, many don’t [...]
Biz Idea: Create Your Own Gift Card Gift cards are more popular than ever. According to the National Retail Federation, Americans will spend $24.8 billion on gift cards this holiday season, a $6 billion increase over last year and an all-time high. If you offer a product or service, you can create your own gift cards. Offer a low cost promotional item or [...]
Entrepreneur Helps Others With Alzheimer’s Store Pressroom.UPS.com: Mark Warner graduated with a degree in architecture and a certificate in gerontology. His interest developed into a passion and he wrote The Complete Guide to Alzheimer’s-Proofing Your Home, identifying strategies and products to make homes more dementia-friendly. Once the book was published, readers began calling and asking for the products featured in it. The [...]
Cashing In On Your Intellectual Property Greg Brown at Work.com: Every small business that suddenly grows big is based on an innovation of some kind. What’s less common is that the actual innovator has the focus or financial reach to turn the idea into cash. Learning how to protect your big ideas can mean later turning know-how into a business unto itself. It’s [...]
Entrepreneur Offers Tips On Finding A Business Marco Island Sun Times: Each year, thousands of people make new year’s resolutions. In addition to “This year I will lose weight,” “This year I will stop smoking” and the ever-popular “This year I will stop watching reality TV,” one of the more common resolutions made by many this time of year is “This year I [...]
Student Building His Future On Ebay Web@Devil: Before even graduating from college, Corey Kossack started an online business that raked in sales of half a million dollars last year. Kossack, a computer information systems senior, started Koss DVD - which sells DVDs, video games and books on eBay - two years ago. The business became more successful as he learned how to build a [...]
Must See CriticalTV Business 2.0 Magazine: Sean Morgan dreams of becoming a new type of media mogul. As CEO of Critical Mention, Morgan is plotting some fancy footwork himself. Going up against the likes of Google and NBC Universal, he’s bringing search to TV - and TV syndication to the Web. With Critical Mention, he has a Web-based service called [...]
Young Entrepreneur Starts Apartment Shopping Site The Arizona Republic: Eric Wu and friends thought there had to be a better way for college students to find apartments and rental homes via the Web. Jon Lange, director of sales and a friend of Wu’s since seventh grade, said they started the company because of the frustration they experienced moving every year in college. The company [...]
One Cent Ebay Auctions: Beta Testers Wanted Do you participate in $0.01 eBay auctions? I’ve written a new webservice to make it easier. If you’d like to participate in a free beta, send me an email at dane@carlsoncarlson.com.
Bizop Podcast #9 Episode #9 of the Business Opportunities Weblog podcast is up. In this episode: 2007 is right around the corner. What are you doing in your business to get ready for it Tim Grahl and Dan Portnoy discuss the steps you need to take in order to ready your business for the new year.
Seasonal Businesses Jeff Cornwall: I heard a report on Wall Street Journal radio this morning about another example. It seems that many entrepreneurs with lawn service businesses are also getting into the professional Christmas decorating business. Those of you who live in America’s suburbs have seen the proliferation of ever expanding outdoor Christmas lights and decorations displays. Many [...]
Hot Idea: Party Planning for Teens Entrepreneur: Blame MTV’s My Super Sweet 16 for showing teens nationwide the extremes the super-wealthy go to for a child’s coming-of-age soiree. American teens, who number more than 70 million, want what’s hot at their parties–from bar and bat mitzvahs to sweet 16s, quinceañeras and other coming-of-age rites. Whether you start a new specialty, add teen [...]
Learn to Make Money I just discovered a unique home-based opportunity, that’s really got me excited: They teach people to make money. Period! They don’t motivate or inspire. They teach motivated people how to make huge amounts of money so they can enjoy their life. You will learn: To use a powerful system already in place to [...]
Micro Biz: Cardboard Construction When Andrew McGrew was an elementary art teacher he wanted to build BIG cardboard sculptures with his students. He did a few projects, but there was a definite limit to the size of sculpture he could make using duct tape before it collapsed under it’s own weight, and duct tape didn’t hold up well to [...]
Paying Yourself Entrepreneur.com: It’s an age-old conundrum that faces every entrepreneur planning their business: What do I pay myself? There are a lot of different theories when it comes to this issue, but the two most common for startups are: 1. Pay yourself enough to get by. At least during startup until you are operating in the black. 2. [...]
How to Get Referrals Seth Godin: Make it easy for someone to bring up what you do (by changing the nature of the service or product). Give your best customers something of real value to offer to their friends (a secret menu, a significant gift certificate). Once you do that, not giving that gift to a friend feels selfish. Paying me to [...]
Start Your Own Coffeehouse Entrepreneur: Whether it’s a drip, a latte or a cappuccino, Americans are addicted to their coffee. According to the Specialty Coffee Association of America, specialty coffee was an $11 billion industry in 2005, up from $9.6 billion in 2004. But some historians theorize that what Americans are really looking for in their cup of joe is [...]
Committee Wants eBay to Report Seller Revenue to IRS AuctionBytes.com: A United States IRS advisory committee recommended the IRS require Internet business sites to get tax identification numbers from all sellers, according to USA Today. It appears this non-governmental panel wants to put the burden on sites like eBay, requiring them to collect tax ID numbers and report sellers’ income to the IRS. Blame eBay in [...]
Restaurant Site ‘eBay’ Style Scotsman.com: Priceyourmeal.com, which launched in Glasgow in March, now has more than 80 restaurants on board, taking in excess of 700 bookings a week. Registered users can use the site to bid for meals at top restaurants in auctions or haggle directly with the restaurants over meal prices. Sukhvir Dhillon said he saw a gap in the [...]
Credit Cards Fish For Small-Business Biz USA Today: Small-business owners face an onslaught of choices as companies blitz them with new credit card offers. American Express just launched a cash-back card aimed at small companies. Visa this month is rolling out a card targeting small firms with big appetites, those spending $25,000 or more a year. Discover entered the market for the first [...]
Niche Biz: Party By Mail StarTribune.com: Kristen Manolis has parlayed her love for social events into the launch of Decor-In-A-Box. The New York-based Web business delivers by mail the items you need to stage a party for eight, 12 or 25, in color schemes of red, white, green, silver, gold and chocolate. The basic box for eight starts at $250, with Italian [...]
Welcome, Carolyn! Yesterday flyte welcomed Carolyn Phillips to the crew as our new project manager. Right now she's job shadowing Beth, learning about flyte, our clients, and the projects we have in the hopper. However, with over 10 years in project management...
Internet Marketing for Socially Responsible Companies Are you looking to market your business on the Internet, but your concerned about being labeled as a spammer? Or you're not sure how you can compete against companies that may hire black hat search engine optimizers to rank artificially...
Have You Noticed More Spam Lately? Clients often ask me why their opt-in email newsletters are getting blocked, while emails targeting under-endowed men and promoting penny stocks are getting through. eWeek, which is become one of my must-reads, has an interesting article about the recent spam...
Flyte Views Although it's been a few weeks since we've moved into our new abode at 136 Commercial St., Portland, Maine, we're still not 100% settled in. Regardless, I thought I'd share a few photos before we head out for Turkey dinners...
Of Ceiling Wax and Shopping Bots Tonight I'll be on 207, Maine's evening news program, talking about Web sites that make finding the perfect gift easier, or locating the watch or earring a celebrity was wearing (or a cheap knock-off), or how to find the best...
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