Why is Trading so difficult?

Imagine if you will, that one day, March 18 perhaps, a genie comes to you and tells you that because of good fortune the genie intends to reveal to you a correct prognostication on the market. “THE DOW……says the genie WILL BE DOWN 2000 POINTS ON MARCH 18 OF NEXT YEAR”

There you have it. You have a glimpse of the future. The genie has never been wrong and promises this to be correct as well. SO…with that in mind, what do you do?

How simple, right? You decide that with this knowledge you will take all your money out of the market immediately, thus preventing the terrible losses that would otherwise come. You feel comfortable with your decision.

Ah, but such is not human nature. It is in our being, it is woven into our souls to want something else……more! How can I not only avoid losing money, but also make money? How can I not only make money, but make a lot of money? How can I not only make a lot of money, but make the MOST money?

You consider this, but in the end you recognize that you are a novice so you decide to simply take your money out of the market.

Over the next month or two you watch, incredulously as the market goes …..UP!

Up and up, higher it goes while you watch carefully and remorsefully, knowing that you would have been much better off if only you had waited to withdraw your money. The genie has promised. The market will end lower. You know this, yet you also know you would have been so much better off had you waited to withdraw your hard earned money. Unsure what to do you confide in a friend about the genie. He quickly gives some advice.

“YOU SHOULD SELL THE MARKET SHORT!” says the friend with astounding conviction.

Not knowing much about short selling you ask a few questions, but mostly listen. You think that YES, this could be the thing to do. But selling short is not something you are comfortable with. Yet who can you get to help you based on this information? You and your friend decide to read about short selling. You do, and you then institute your plan. You will sell the Dow short.

Recognizing that you have lost some of the profit you otherwise would have garnered had you left the money alone initially, you decide to leverage slightly. So you sell assets worth about 20% more than your total equity.

This will surely not only make back what you have lost since the genie prediction, but will reap other huge benefits when the market falls. Once the trade is in both you and your friend smile at each other and think about how smart this tactic is, and begin to mentally count your profits.

Strangely enough, corporate profits are being announced this week by all the major corporations and they are much better than anticipated. The Market responds up.

You do not like the continued rise in the market. You find yourself questioning the genie. But he has never been wrong. Unfortunately your account is now only worth 75% of its original value. This is opposed to the 20% gain you would have had, should you have left the money alone in the beginning. You are dismayed to find out that leverage can be painful.

Genie or not, the discrepancy begins to eat away at you and you once again speak with your friend. How about futures? asks the friend.

We could sell futures and leverage that way…..at least with half of the money. In fact, we could sell a single stock future and increase our leverage if we pick a stock that will fall more than the market as a whole!

You are surprised that your friend knows so much but he is confident and even has the stock picked out.

Sunmex Inc.! he states rather emphatically. Sunmex? What is that? Where have you been? Sunmex is promised to be revolutionary in the energy realm. This is the corporate entity that has plans to harness solar power to degrees not yet realized anywhere in the world.

“But…. the friend continues…yesterday, they were one of the “stocks on the move” at IBD. They were going down.Hard! The company is leveraged too highly and looking for capital to sustain some of its enterprises. In addition, I have read that Sunmex stands to lose huge sums of grants from the U.S. government because of the recession. And word on the street is that the CEO is very sick.

So be it. You choose to use half your remaining capital to sell Sunmex short. You will use single stock futures to accomplish this goal. You have never done this, but it seems so easy. You look for the quote and there it is…….125! Wow, that is a high price. It has to come down. This idea is great.

You have enough capital to sell 500 shares, but in your haste to complete the transaction you inadvertently hit the buy button and BAM! You now own 500 single stock futures shares of Sunmex. You miss the problem. Ah, but your friend recognizes the mistake.

Wow! Look what you did!!!

Knowing from his extensive reading that you should immediately liquidate a mistake like this, he does just that and hits the sell button. TRADE COMPLETE.

Unfortunately your friend did not realize, nor did you, that this was an incredibly thinly traded Single stock future and the bid ask spread was 20. You bought at 125 , held for 2 minutes, and sold at 105. At 500 shares the calculation amounts to a 10 k loss.

How am I going to get that money back? you shout.

Now you are angry. The market has taken your money. You want that money back. That is simply not fair.

You decide to go through with the short futures transaction, only now you leverage more than you originally intended because of your previous losses. Sunmex goes up.

It seems that the congressman from the congressional district in which Sunmex is located, used to be childhood friends with both John Boehner and Barack Obama. He is able to get through legislation that continues to provide government support for this important company. The announcement pushes the stock up and up.

You begin to get emails explaining the importance of liquidating some of your holdings. Something called a margin call as your brokerage referred to it. You are learning more about leverage.

Options!! your friend exclaims. Options. We will buy options and that will give us much more leverage. When the market falls we will get it all back in a hurry……and more!

Options? More Leverage? You are confused, but it only takes a few minutes of explanation and you begin to see how you could in fact, make incredible sums of money this way.

You think about questioning your friend on his plan, but this does in fact sound like the right way to get back those losses. Yes, YES, options it will be. You decide to buy put options on the DOW, and you look for an expiration close to the March date. Unfortunately, options expiration in March comes on the 17th, one day shy of the one year date the Genie promised about. Once again though, when you look at pricing, you recognize how much you will lose by pushing the expiration out to April. That cost is too high. In addition the market has been quite volatile lately with the rise and the price of options is high. But you know little about implied volatility and care less. You simply want your money back.

You wish there was a March 18 expiration, but lets face it, by the 17th you’ll have garnered much of the gain anyway. As you are thinking about all this you decide to go ahead with the options trade and get it over with. You have simply lost TOO much money so far. You must get it back. So you invest ALL your remaining money in the March put option and choose an “out of the money” strike price below the original level on the genie day. This will grant you far more in return when the market falls as you know it must..

January comes with the market still rising. Volatility is decreasing and your account “mark to market” shows significant losses. You are confused by the continued loss.

Finally in February the Dow turns and begins to fall, Losing 100, 150, even 300 pts., but despite this it barely returns to its original level at expiration on March 17th. The options are worthless. Your money is gone.

You are sick. How could this be, you wonder.

The next morning you awake to the news of the East Coast earthquake.

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Do you wish to earn extra money online? Before you begin, it is imperative to learn how you can guarantee that you will be able to easily achieve this goal.

The first thing to understand is that you are the only person that can guarantee that you will earn an extra income at home. No other person can ever do this for you because you are the one that has to put in the time and effort to make it happen.

Now, there are some very vital tasks that you will have to do if you are serious about earning extra money using the internet. The following are the tasks that have to be completed or you will never make any money.

1. Absorb all the knowledge you are able to – One thing that many people do not take time to think about when trying to earn money on the internet is that you cannot do this without the correct knowledge.

Making money at home is the same as starting a business of your own and this cannot be done online or offline without the correct knowledge. You need to be ready to become a sponge and absorb all of the knowledge you can every single day.

Learning will be started on the first day of your business and will continue every single day until you close the doors to your business. Internet business is always changing, so learning is important if you really wish to succeed.

2. Stay focused – There are a lot of ways to allow yourself to become distracted online. You have to keep yourself focused on building an income with the business idea you select because allowing yourself to become distracted will stop you from achieving this goal.

One good thing to do is to spend a little time each day looking at anything that catches your eye, so that when you sit down to begin working on your business; you will not have the need to let your eyes wander to another idea.

3. Work hard every day – Hard work is a must with an internet business to make money, just like it is with everything else in life. Put in hard work every single time you work on your business and before your eyes you will start seeing an increase in your income and start seeing your efforts rewarded.

Then the hard work every day will not feel like hard work, but more like something you like doing because you are confident that it is going to help your business income grow.

4. Alert other people that you are in business – Do not make the mistake of thinking you can start a business and then sit back and wait for others to come to you. From the very first day you are in business, you have to begin alerting others online that you have a business to visit.

10 Ways to Make Money at Home

Marketing using a variety of methods is vital to growing the traffic to your business and that in turn it is vital to growing your online income.

If you can do these tasks every single day, then you will definitely be able to guarantee that you will earn extra money online. You are the only one that can accomplish this goal, so be sure you take it seriously and that you select the right business for you so you will find your journey to success much easier and more rewarding for you.

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SEM Business Blueprint

Affiliate marketing is a business model that rewards you for bringing traffic to an affiliate offer from an affiliate merchant. Of course you only make money online when the website visitor performs the required action.

That can be one of 3 things.

1. Click on an ad. Google Adsense is the main affiliate program for this.

2. Complete a lead form or software download. There are numerous cost per action programs in various niches. Commission Junction is a good place to start.

3. Buy something. The top affiliate program online is Amazon where you can sell both physical products and digital downloads. ClickBank is another great digital info affiliate program.

The most common problem affiliate marketers face is getting traffic to their affiliate offer. This problem is not unique to affiliate marketing.

Anyone who tries to do Internet marketing is going to fail if they don’t master a least one form of website traffic generation. However, because affiliate programs are free to join, the affiliate marketer is left with a website they do not know how to promote even though they are now an affiliate.

The second most common problem affiliate marketers face is converting traffic into the required action from the affiliate merchant. Initially most affiliate marketers promote the website provided for them by the affiliate merchant.

This is okay because at least you have a chance to make money. When an affiliate marketer starts they generally do not have their own website and do not know how to build one.

In the long run when you find an affiliate product you really want to promote, you are better off to purchase your own domain name, and build a website to promote it on. Once you have your website you still need to learn how to promote it so traffic generation will be where you spend the majority of your time.

It has been said that a person needs to see an offer as many as 12 times before they act upon it. This is especially true if you are selling products as an affiliate merchant.

For this reason doing email marketing is the best way to complement your affiliate product. Once you have your subscriber’s name and email address, you can follow up with them in the future as many times as you want, as long as they stay subscribed to your list.

Timing is everything in life and it certainly is that way when selling affiliate products. By keeping your name, and your affiliate products in front of your list, you will increase your sales because when your customer is ready to purchase you are the one they think of first.

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Jeff Schuman invites you to visit his make money at home website for free JV With Jeff training, affiliate marketing, and starting your own online home business. Visit it now to find one real way you can finally make money online!
http://www.Team-Schuman.com

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I want to go over with you a keyword research technique, a way to brainstorm to find niches and keywords. But first I want to tell you that this is not for everybody. For my students out there that already have an area or a site that’s large and they know they need to be focused there, I don’t want you distracted with this shiny object that works really well for finding niches. You don’t need to go away from your big project. Spend your time there until you get it working, then you can branch out. At that point you can hire some VAs and you can use these techniques to branch out into some other areas.

Now if you’re the kind of student that is into building a lot of small niche websites, then this audio will be perfect you. And if you haven’t found your area yet, then again, this is perfect for you. But I always want to be careful whenever I show people some of these techniques that my students should be focused on their area and putting all their effort in there don’t get sidetracked and distracted. So if that’s you, just put this in your back pocket for now. Listen to the audio and learn how it works, and then later down the road, you can come back to this and have your VAs work on this – a method for finding the niches.

You find the niches and then put your VAs on building the sites and getting you the backlinks. But anyway, here is the method. Go to Google’s External Keyword Tool and log in, just log in with any one of your Google accounts. That’s important because they give you a lot more keywords. If you don’t log in, you’ll only get a hundred, and we’re looking in some really big areas. You’ll see in a minute what I mean. But these big areas oftentimes even the top 100 are many tens of thousands. So you need to log in so we can drill down into several hundreds at least and take a look at the choices you have for building an online business.

And what we’re going to do is simply put in some words that people use in connection with a lot of different types of searches. And in the transcript, I’ll have a bullet list of all these phrases and words that we’re going to search for that gives us ideas for what people are looking for and what we can then further drill down into some of these areas, and build a little niche site for, or perhaps, find a big area that we can focus on, find a big area that you can work on longterm.

I have such things as ‘best lawnmowers’, ‘best PC laptop’, ‘best kite’, ‘best rated laptops’, ‘best snow blower’, ‘best chainsaw’, ‘best breast pump’. Best breast pump has a global monthly searches – let me… Well, I won’t change that. Well I’d like to see what that is in the phrase match but… Anyway, we won’t get into that. You know how to do that. Watch the other video for how to separate those and drill those down. But look at all these ideas that we got just on the first page. Let me go the next page of a hundred and just kind of look – ‘best pressure cooker’, ‘best prices in electronics’, ‘best snow blower’, ‘best kite boarding’, ‘best space heaters’, ‘best pressure washer’, ‘best leaf blower’, all kinds of things.

So you see what I mean there and I have in my list other words that you can type in and brainstorm with, such as ‘locate’, ‘find’, ‘want’, ‘looking for’ – a number of other ones on there. The only thing you have to be careful of and always be aware of is that you’re looking for what we call ‘buying keywords’. In other words, not information-related keywords. A buying keyword would be, for example, ‘best snow blower’. If someone already owns a snow blower, they aren’t searching the Web for the best one. If they do own one and they’re looking for the best one, they want to buy a new one. Or ‘best kites’ – they’re looking to buy a kite. ‘Best pressure washer’ – they’re looking to buy a pressure washer.

Always keep that in mind. For example, I had a student, a mother who was very interested, very passionate about the problems with childhood vaccines. She wanted to make a website about childhood vaccines. She had already done some keyword research. There are a lot of people, a lot of parents searching for information about childhood vaccines. Now, you tell me which page all things being equal will make you more money? A page that ranks highly for childhood vaccines or page that ranks highly for best kites, or best pressure cookers, or best leaf blowers, or best knife sharpener. The list goes on.

Childhood vaccines have no way for you to make money. At best, there may be some eBooks that are available and for sale that might show up in AdSense ads, but always remember that eBooks are not very profitable with respect to AdSense ads. The providers of eBooks cannot pay you very much for those clicks. And so your CPM for any eBook-related item, if it’s anything under $50 dollars, its AdSense CPMs will be very low. So always keep that in mind. So childhood vaccines is no place you want to be. You want to be in an area where people are spending money.

Let me jump to the next page here. See, I have ‘best accounting software’, ‘best dog collars’, ‘best dog training videos’, all kinds of stuff. So you get my point there. Those searches will provide you with some ideas for some areas that you can drill down further into, looking for some good phrase matches and so forth, more specifically for the possibility of keywords. And if that area will work for a large site or just a small site, if you drill down into it and you’re only finding 10 or 20 keywords that are having at least 300 or 400, to 500 searches a month, then probably it’s just going to be a small niche site that you’ll build 10 to 20 pages for, and that’ll be it.

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Visit Steve Weber online at Weber Internet Marketing for more details about how to find a niche. http://www.WeberInternetMarketing.com

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You can create membership sites to sell anything, but if you are knowledgeable about any specific topic then you can use them to sell that knowledge. You can do that in a number of different ways including articles, eBooks, videos and MP3 audio files, and which is most relevant to you will depend upon the type of knowledge you have.

People use the internet to seek information. Sometimes it is simply to have one question answered: a crossword question for example, or to find the answer to a question needed to enter a consumer sweepstakes. Perhaps they need information for school homework, or are trying to compile a trivia quiz. Whatever the reason, they are looking for information.

However, others are looking for more than that, and might be looking for information on the best way to find carp, how to lose weight or how to bring up their children properly. If you have that knowledge then you can create subscription sites to sell your knowledge and make money.

Take Golf as an Example

Let’s take an example: golf, and how to cure your problems and improve your game. In discussing this example, keep in mind that you can apply exactly the same principles in your specific interest. Whatever it is that you are knowledgeable about; you can apply to this example – even if it’s fishing, gardening, internet marketing, training dogs or quilting. People will join a subscription site to learn and to meet others with the same problems or interests.

You can have a page or two on solving golf problems, such as a slice or hook – one is the opposite of the other, and if you understand how to cure a slice, then sorting out your hook is the mirror image! Strengthen your grip for one, and weaken it for the other. Take a step back for one and forward for the other. In fact, you could have a whole page on the slice and hook.

You could then have sections on improving distance, the flex of a club and so on. More on training equipment, from weighted clubs to laser systems and full circle swing trainers. You could include information and tips on choosing golf balls. The whole point is, this is only for members of the subscription sites, and you do not offer this information anywhere else.

Create a Product to Sell – or Give Free

Another way to sell your golf knowledge would be to write an eBook including all your golf tips. Try to make it about 90 pages plus: it will take time to get together, but you could pay ghostwriters to do it for you. Once it is complete, get an account with Clickbank if you don’t already have one, and put it up for sale, for say $47. It doesn’t matter if it sells or not – if it does, great, but if not, it doesn’t matter because that’s not why it’s on Clickbank.

Offer your members the first two chapters free – in fact you could offer the first chapter free on your squeeze page in return for their contact details. That way you can keep in contact with prospects that visit your website, but don’t join the membership site. Then offer the first two chapters free to members on the site.

What you do then is to offer your eBook “Add 40 Yards to Your Golf Swing in 5 Easy Lessons” at ‘less than half price’ to members: $23. You can prove it is genuinely under half price by showing them your Clickbank price – that’s why it’s there! That is sure to get you some sales, so you make money not only from the membership fees, but also from sales of your eBook!

A Subscription Site Forum is Popular

You could also start up a forum: make sure the membership software you choose enables you to create subscription sites with a forum. There is some very good free forum software online, and a good membership software package should be able to integrate that into the site. That will then enable your members to discuss their golfing problems between themselves.

Once your members feel that they are in a club or ‘family’ of people with the same problems and issues as themselves, then they will keep on paying their monthly subscriptions – often just for that contact with like-minded people! A forum can make the difference between average subscription sites and great ones.

Apply These Principles to Any Niche

There is lot more you can do with your membership site, but do you get the general idea? The golf example can be applied to any niche. You can sell your knowledge both on the site and in the form of an eBook. Rather than the ebook you could offer members affiliate products on golf and also provide them with a monthly training course on improving their golf swing.

You could offer a similar course in 8 parts as a gift on your squeeze page for those providing their email address: that can be delivered by autoresponder along with a link to your registration page. It is easy to create subscription sites to sell your knowledge if you have a good subscription software package with which to run your site. Membership sites can be very profitable.

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If you wish to create subscription sites to sell your knowledge, and make good money doing so, then check out http://www.memberdesk.com which is one of the most powerful membership software packages online, and also enables you to run blogs and a forum.

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Having an existence on the internet is growing more and more important, especially to businesses. If someone is relying on a website to generate their business, they may want to look into the traffic exchanges powerful yet underutilized possibilities. Using a traffic exchange can be simple, so long as people make themselves aware of what they are useful for.

The basis of a good traffic exchange is a website working through automation or worked on manually. There will be a database of members in the exchange and coding involved to track the relevance of the websites. Some web traffic exchange sites will also offer a surfbar to keep people within the network. This often comes with a tutorial.

Most of the popular exchanges have no cost attached. In the most basic sense, an exchange should be a form of free advertising. This is great for people who have little to no budget for advertising but require a lot of traffic to their site. Sometimes an exchange will offer upgrade options, helping people push their site higher up in the list. Rarely is money required in order to join.

The key factor for a web traffic exchange is that relevant sites are joined together. Many people are offering the same products and services as other online businesses. Joining with those businesses to share visitors can be helpful, as visitors who are surfing one site will go to another looking for the same product or service. This means less time is spent on visitors who are looking for something else entirely.

The type of currency used in an exchange is called a credit. These are earned by visits and help make a site’s ranking in an exchange go higher. The higher the ranking, the more likely a site is to have unique visitors. Credits are earned via visiting websites. Members of an exchange will visit other sites within the same exchange. One of the side benefits of this is that the business can see how others in the same market are doing. Lots of members also really like the sites they visit, meaning they will link to the sites of their choice on their own web pages.

The length of time that a visitor stays at a site is important. A good landing or entry page can make all the difference. It’s important to work to convert visitors into customers by making this page as enticing as possible. It’s also critical to have the page match the key words used in the ad copy which brought people to the site.

An important aspect that exchange sites work with is that of the bounce rate of visitors. Many exchanges will have a time limit or requirement for members who are visiting other members’ sites. The longer anyone stays viewing a website in their browser, the more likely they are to extend their stay even longer. In order to be properly credited in an exchange, a member needs to ensure they stay at a relevant site long enough. Many exchanges have a requirement of up to a minute when it comes to visiting.

Advertising on the internet can be totally free, no cost whatsoever. This is very important for people who are using the internet to make money and can’t afford to spend on their business, at least in the beginning. The importance of using traffic exchanges powerful yet underutilized opportunities is integral to any business unable to budget for their advertising.

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About the Author:

Business owners, check out our website for tips on how to generate free website traffic, now. You can also find information about a great affiliate marketing business opportunity, today.

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Do you struggle to make money at home online? Then your struggles are going to end now because you are going to find out some powerful secrets that are effective for helping any person earn an income on the internet.

Once you are aware of these secrets, if you are smart and use them then you are going to stop the struggle to earn money and will actually start accomplishing it. The following are the secrets that all business owners on the internet need to use in order to successfully make money.

1. Online business education – Building a business online is similar to building one that is offline, but there are also noticeable differences. You need to learn how to build any type of business on the internet by giving yourself an online business education.

You have to begin from day one and learn one new thing, or more if you have time, every day so you can gain as much knowledge as possible. Everyone knows that the more knowledge you have about something, the better you will be at it.

The same thing is true with a business on the internet. The more knowledge you are able to gain over time the more income you will earn with it.

2. Market every day – You have to be the one to spread the word about your particular business or no one will even know it exists. There are a large number of internet marketing methods that can be used to help you accomplish this.

Begin with one method at a time and learn how to use it effectively. Then put into action the knowledge you have gained until it is attracting traffic to your business each day.

Then you can add another internet marketing method to the mix until you have a number of methods working effectively to draw traffic to your business every single day.

3. Work hard and give it time – Hard work and time are definite requirements for any person that is trying to make an income from home. After all, it is a business you are trying to build to be a success and that will always need hard work from you and time to see the results from your efforts.

4. Make a strong commitment to succeed – Too many people do not make a commitment to succeed with their business, but you have to if you want this dream to happen for you. Building an internet business will not be simple all the time and being committed to making your dream of success real will help you overcome any obstacles or problems that get in the way.

5. Build relationships – Building a business on the internet can be hard because no one can get to know you as a person, unless you make it happen. You need to build relationships on the internet with potential customers through social networking, blogging and a variety of other ways.

The more you build relationships, the more people you will have that trust you and this is going to make them willing to spend their money with you over another online business owner.

These are the most powerful secrets that you want to use if you really want to make money online at home. Thousands of business owners all over the world use these secrets every day and that is why they have accomplished success and you can also if you just use them with your business starting right away.

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If you enjoyed this article by Jeff Schuman please check out our passive income opportunities website today. Where you will find helpful information about how to make money at home online and you will be provided with many ways to make money at home so you can choose the right business for you. http://www.WinAmazingLife.com

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Many people set up a subscription website on a niche of their choice and then sit back waiting for all the members to queue up and join. In the words of Neil Diamond, “They will wait that way forever ,” because without researching the niche you might get no takers for your member site.

Researching your subscriptions website is just as important as doing the market research on any other product you might want to sell online. People are not queuing up to join – even if they want to make money using your membership site, they will be joining your competitors’ membership sites that are offering what people are looking for while you sit and wait.

Even if they have made the decision to join a membership site, why should they join yours? What are they looking for, and can you provide that? Do not make the mistake of trying to provide everything, because you can’t, and you should carry out some market research before designing your subscriptions website.

What if you were an inventive genius and you decided to invent a machine that could make garlic-flavored ice cream from butter. Would you spend time and money inventing and manufacturing the machine, and then try to persuade the public that they should convert all their butter into an equal volume of garlic-flavored ice cream? Imaging how many machines you would sell!

Would it not be better to do some market research first? You might then have found that butter is more expensive than ice cream, and that people would rather convert cheap ice cream into expensive butter. You might then have found out that they would have preferred strawberry ice cream, or pistachio, but certainly not garlic – so your invention was a no-no from the start!

Guess what! The same is true of membership websites. Before designing your subscriptions website you should first carry out some market research and find out what people would want to see on the site. Maybe your idea of a membership site on the topic of ‘fly tying’ wouldn’t work, but a site on ‘fly fishing’ in general likely would. You don’t want it to be too broadly based, but nor should it be too specific.

Take dogs, for example. A membership site on just ‘dogs’ would be impossible to maintain, because each member would be looking for something different – some may be interested in training dogs, others in showing them, and yet others in their health. You could never keep your members happy. On the other hand, a subscriptions website covering the topic of dog collars would be too specific.

It is important that you research your market, and there are several ways to do that. If you already have a dog site, you could put a survey on your home page: “If I were to start a membership site what topics would you like to see covered?” The information you get back would then give you a rough idea what people are looking for.

You could carry out a search online using ‘dog membership site’ – you might find some people looking for a membership site in a dog niche not yet catered for. You may take a note of the dog niches where a subscriptions website already exists, check it out and decide if you think you can beat what it offers. Maybe you will spot a gap, and then check using the Google keyword tool to find out if anybody is using keywords relating to that gap.

Basically, what this is saying is that you should carry out some market research before choosing your niche. Pitch your membership site at a part of your niche where you think you should get plenty interest, but not so broad as to make it a full time job just to create enough content to keep everybody happy. In the dog niche, for example, ‘dog training’, ‘dog breeds and shows’ and ‘dog health’ might all be realistic topics for a subscription site.

The same holds true for any other niche: be neither too broad (too many interests) nor too specific (too few potential members). Choose a topic you can write about and also that you believe you can make money from. You need a subscriptions website to be sufficiently popular to get a reasonable number of members and also with products you are able to sell online.

Don’t trust only to your membership fees for your income – use the site to give you a number of income streams. Examples, in addition to your membership fees, are product sales, report sales (short $5 reports), advertising space and perhaps even Adsense. Be sensible, carry out market research first and then make sure the niche can be monetized. Then go for it, choosing good subscriptions website software to run the site.

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When choosing a subscription website package it is important to select software that you customize to make the membership site your own. Member Desk is online at http://www.memberdesk.com and offers such as software package that you can run with an unlimited number of domains for multiple member sites.

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So what is it about the concept of “selling” that so many people feel so uncomfortable with?

When asked “when you were growing up how many of your mothers had a vision of you being a salesman?” and “what adjectives would your mother use to describe a salesman?” Usually the response to the first question is: “none” and to the second words such as: “pushy, manipulative, dishonorable, fast talking, sly, underhand, shady” are common. No wonder that so many people are hesitant to sell themselves, to sell their products or services. And yet without “selling” there will be no business, limited advancement, limited innovation and many more dissatisfied people/businesses.

For those uncomfortable with the concept of “selling” there is a need to change this negative view into something positive, maybe even beautiful and empowering. Selling can be seen as a process that connects us to people and empowers us to help them because whilst people hate to be sold to – they do LOVE TO BUY!!

Selling doesn’t have to be seen as negative. How we decide to deliver the selling/buying experience to “customers” is completely within our control. It is a conscious choice each of us can make. How you define the process of “sales” in your own mind will be powerful in influencing how you deliver the buying experience. If you start with a negative view you will unconsciously project or mirror your beliefs in silent, powerful, and unseen ways through your choice of words, body language, and through your overall approach to the entire process.

Your underlying motives and beliefs have everything to do with how you present yourself and your ideas to people. That’s why we must redefine the term “selling” and give it a more positive and purposeful meaning that can guide us towards delivering a more positive buying experience to our customers.

The great philosopher Plato said “the beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms.” Our new improved meaning for selling should be based on the process of what we are really trying to achieve when we sell to customers. It could be a very technical definition such as: “an engagement system required to effectively develop, manage, enable, and execute a mutually beneficial, interpersonal exchange of goods and/or services for equitable value.” or more one that is more simply put: “selling helps people make decisions that will add to their quality of life.”

The all too common one-sided regurgitation of product features and benefits must be altered to become a more interactive process that gets customers involved and guides them towards discovering for themselves that which is in their best interest. When you sell with ethics and integrity you don’t approach people with the intent of selling them something. Rather, your goal will be to gain rapport and understand their problems, their business, their concerns so you can help them advance, improve and get what they desire.

Human beings are emotional creatures who process decisions they make with their emotions and feelings. To “sell” well we must start with basic communication skills – asking questions, listening, understanding, and having empathy and rapport. Selling is a process of guiding people towards self discovery. It’s a process of engaging a person’s heart and imagination towards something that does not yet exist in their lives.

The two greatest skills as a salesman are questioning and listening to the answers! People really don’t care how much you know or what you can do until you have first understood their needs, their “pain” and clearly identified what it is they are seeking to improve (clients really do not like “product dump” speeches).

If you need to sell but want to do it with integrity and achieve success then I suggest the following 10 tips:
1. Adopt a healthy view of selling – helping your customer solve business problems and aligning our approach to the way they buy, is key.
2. View prospects as someone you want to help not a “target”
3. Take the time to connect on a personal level.
4. Begin by asking open-ended questions.
5. Listen twice as much as you speak.
6. Identify needs/pain
7. Ideally get your prospect to verbalize their “ideal solution”
8. Fit the solution to their “specific and stated” needs.
9. If you don’t have a solution to their need be honest, walk away until another time.
10. Your values and attitudes are projected – be open and honest and people will trust you.

You don’t have to be obnoxious to sell. The best salesmen sell by engaging with their customers. They understand their problems and help them resolve them. Selling isn’t a dirty thing – we’re selling all the time – our thoughts, our ideas and our beliefs. There’s nothing wrong with selling when you have to someone who needs your products/services and you make money, even a lot of money, from it. It’s just an honorable, mutually beneficial exchange! Be proud that you’re a salesman! Be proud that you have made someone’s life or job easier as a result of your products and services.

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Leigh Dorling runs Cognisi a successful business coaching company which helps business leaders and managers achieve their goals more quickly than they will do themselves. He loves the simplicity and power of inpsirational quotes, and created http://www.CreateYourMessage.com as a fun way to produce motivational posters for his clients and to aid them create powerful reminders of values, vision, beliefs and goals etc.

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Everyone and their brother has heard about how easy it is to make money online, and to a certain degree this is true. Anyone can put up a website, offer a product, service or even simply information and make a profit. There are a lot of ways to make money online, and niche sites can do rather well as long as they generate the traffic which is necessary in order to grow and expand. While the online world seems to move at the speed of light, and problems can be solved instantly, getting your site to a place where it is a serious contender takes time, and this surprises a lot of people.

Niche sites are in a better position than others to easily find and court potential traffic that can translate into cold, hard cash. Because a niche site is really appealing to a limited audience, it is easier to direct resources toward the areas online where they can be found. This is the essence of internet marketing, and niche sites are at a distinct advantage. Finding an audience to market to is not always easy, especially if it is a general audience. It can take a lot of time and a lot of money to get the word out in a blanket fashion where general surfers can be found.

Marketing niche sites is much easier, because it is easier to locate where your target audience will be, and then you can direct your efforts to them in order to get good attention for your site and the services that you offer. Because you can reach your niche audience more easily, you can make money easier as well simply because you are reaching the audience that would be interested in what you are offering. You can either do this yourself or hire a company to do the work for you. But, keep in mind that most niche marketing will require a lot of writing, posting, linking and other things that add up to hours upon hours of work every week.

But, whether you or a company you hire does the work, the ultimate goal is to turn in these marketing efforts into cash. The first step to monetizing your site is to sign up with a payment processing system as well as a company like PayPal. The most important part of this process is ensuring that the company you select is widely recognized and trusted, because many consumers are very nervous about making online purchases. If they see they will be using a payment system they do not trust, you can lose a lot of business in an instant.

PayPal is a great company and has changed how people purchase items online, however it is not enough. You need a credit card processing service as well. Also, making your niche products easy to see, read about and order is essential to successfully marketing your products or services online with growth in mind.

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Getting started with affiliate marketing is not hard to do. However, I am not a big believer in just promoting the replicated affiliate sales page the merchant provides.

In this article let’s take a look at 5 steps you can use to get started as an affiliate marketer without building a website of your own or using the company provided one.

1. Choose a niche. Find a market that you want to be in and that you can also make money with. If you’ve got something you have an interest in a hobby, or maybe you are an expert at that’s a good place to start.

2. Find a product to promote. Join Clickbank and start looking there.

People purchase digital information all day long and you can make a lot of money selling it to them. Plus ClickBank has thousands of products in multiple categories to choose from.

3. Set up an email campaign. To do this you need to have an autoresponder and a series of prewritten messages. I like Aweber, but there are many good autoresponder companies.

You may already have prewritten messages from the ClickBank product you choose to promote. If you do that’s better because you can copy and paste those directly into your autoresponder email campaign.

If not you will need to write a series of short messages. You want to include a link back to your ClickBank affiliate products in those so people can go and visit your affiliate site. This is how you make money.

4. Build a splash page. This is also referred to as a landing page. You can hire someone to do this for you at Fiverr.com if you prefer.

The splash page needs to include a sign-up form that links to your autoresponder. Whenever you promote this online you are building your email list and these subscribers are followed up with automatically from your prewritten autoresponder messages.

5. Get traffic to your splash page. The majority of your time will now be spent promoting your new splash page.

Your whole goal is to build your email list and then follow-up with your subscribers. Good traffic generation techniques to start with include article marketing and forum marketing.

If you have a little money to invest you can also do pay per click advertising with Google, Yahoo, or Bing. Payperclicksearchengines.com is a good site to visit and get a little training on how to set up a PPC campaign.

The key to making a lot of money is to get a profitable campaign in place and then start a second one. There are many affiliate marketers who run multiple campaigns. Some even have as many as 100 or more going at a time.

You are only limited by your ambition and work ethic. You can make great extra money in affiliate marketing, or even develop a six or seven-figure income if you want to think big!

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With the current tuff economic times, a lot of people today are devising new approaches of meeting their budgets. One such way is working on line. The growing number of individuals has turned to world-wide-web so as to get that additional coin to assist meet their tight budgets. One method on ways to make funds working on line is by means of blogging.

This is considered one of the cheapest and easiest methods of starting up an on-line enterprise. All a person will be required to do is concentrate on creating the number of his or her followers. Then it’s crucial that an individual device methods of charging the services being offered in his or her websites.

What exactly is vital to take into consideration, is that an individual should really learn the best way to control his or her own blog. The individual need to have the ability to monitor what comes in and goes out of the said blog. This can give him or her opportunity to device creative techniques of generating revenue. Acquiring a domain name can be a must. By no means mind it only price couple of dollars to get this, along with the benefits are numerous. The domain name will act as a starting point. This is like a person’s identity. This should really be followed by identification of a ideal layout theme for the desired blog sort.

This has also been made easy with the presences of so many templates available, where an individual can choose which one to go for. He or she can also Google for an additional themes and topics, if the provided ones does not suit him or her.

From the created blog, a person can decide to allow advertisements be presented at a chargeable fee. This is according to the agreement made between the blog owner and the advertisement agency. What should be considered however is the fact that for one blog to qualify as a unit advertiser, the blog must register a whooping number of followers, a qualifying entity.

Also consider joining Google Adsense which is done free off charge. This will make visitors to the created blog pay before accessing it.

The growing number of websites paying individuals for every blog post made is also increasing. For instance Pay Per Post, pays a person for ever review done, which is relate to the assigned topic. These are just but very reasonable ways of making money working online.

And who said facebook is only for socializing? This is another way on how to make money working online. There are a number of ways a person can make money facebooking. All is needed is creativity and identification of a persons stronger points. Look at places a person is well reserved for. For instance create a page that gives full description on various expertises.

Consider identifying the right group to target with the created page. A person should consider very popular niche to go for. Place all the items one wishes to sell at the market place and money will come flowing. The good thing as far as marketplace is concerned is the fact that, there are no limitations on how many ads to put. So put as many as one wishes, to increase chances of making extra cash.

Looking to find the best deal on keyword #1, then visit www.yoursite.com to find the best advice on keyword #2 for you.

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