From my new Online Series O-Biz 101. This is part 2

Inspiration:

To get inspired to create your very first internet business, you need to make some money right up front, and you need to be able to do it for twenty dollars or less.

Why twenty dollars? Becuase it is a nice figure you can hold in your mind – when I say “Twenty Dollars” probably the first thin you thought of was a crisp green twenty dollar bill (if you are from America) or, now-a-days, it is a greenish peach color… whatever, the fact is you should be able to see your very first net based profits without spending any more than this – and by net based profit, I mean to imply that you make you twenty dollars back and then some.

So, here are my three top business opportunities you can start for twenty dollars or less that can earn you your first internet profits:

1. Sell a product or service on Ebay – each product will cost you anywhere from about 1 to 5 bucks depending on how fancy you get with gallery images, etc.
2. Get a free account on Blogger.com or Wordpress.org, set up a free blog, then join Click-Bank as an affiliate publisher for free and start promoting some affiliate products. This can cost you noting but some time to set up the sites and get your products. There have been some people who have literally made thousands of dollars doing just this – but their secret was awesome copy and content. That is where you will be spending your time in this approach.
3. Join the Warrior forum or the DataPoint forum and promote a product of your own. There is a twenty dollar cost to do this and you have to have a minimum number of days and posts on the forums, but they are a massive wealth of information on internet marketing – many individuals have made thousands using this approach, including yours truly.

These are just three ways off the top of my head that cost twenty or less.  There are probably hundreds more, and if you are willing to purchase a domain name (which usually only costs ten bucks or so) and learn how to use Wordpress stand alone version, you can also create your very own blog without the restrictions of the free blogs. In fact, this blog uses Wordpress and forum software – you could even start your own member site and charge a membership dues.

Inspiration is the title of this second installment of the O-Biz 101 series, and you should be inspired to realize that for your first business there is enough free stuff out there that you can get started right now on you own business.

Stay Thirsty my Friends!

-DTM

From my new Online Series O-Biz 101.  This is part 1

Desperation:

I understand… You need to create a business just to survive! It’s no longer a matter of “I wish I could work from home so I could be my own boss!” Now it is a matter of “I NEED to work from home so I can keep it and Feed my Family!”

But at this point you don’t have any spare change, let alone money to start a business. What do you do?

Well, the first thing is you take care of your family and basic needs – do whatever it takes, work nights at a grocery store stocking shelves, or flip hamburgers. The bottom line is you have to remember that panic never helped anyone get started in anything, but usually leads to a worse situation.

If you got that basics covered, but things are just looking bleak unless you do something else, then listen up…

You can start a business online for nothing.

Yes, you read that correctly, you indeed can start a business online for no money at all. But be very careful because I did not say that it would be easy. It won’t. It will require time and work, and it will not be an instant fix.

That second part is so important that I am going to repeat all of this from the beginning because I want to make sure you are not being duped by some well wishers or some direct marketing trickery designed to part you from what little money you do have.  Here is the scoop:

• You can start a business online for nothing.
• You will be required to put time and effort into your business.
• It will not be easy, at least not at first.
• You have a lot of learning to do.
• Results will not come instantly, and may take awhile.

But guess what, it can be done and eventually you may get to the place where you are only working online and making a very comfortable living doing it!

I know it can be done because I am doing it.  This very website you are reading this on (Well, if you are reading it on www.AchieveMaster.com) is one of my online presences.  I started this whole endeavor by selling a box of old radio tubes on EBay to earn the money to buy website domains and tools to create my first web presences and start creating products and services for my online business.  You can read about this in one of my earliest posts here: Bootstrapping Your Internet Efforts. If you have an account on Ebay you can sell all of your stuff you don’t use anymore – buy your family some food and perhaps a cheap vacation, and get your mind cleared to start on a new adventure in your own business.

(Incidentally, that article was originally named “Man builds business with Box of Junk!).  Do you think I should have kept the original name?)

The fact is there are many other people doing business online and you are going to face competition as well as the uphill battle of getting known in whatever space you intend to do business in.

So todays lesson is simple: Are you desperate enough to start?  If so, then decide.

That is it – Decide you will start today, even if that is nothing more than picking up a book or magizine or going online and start reading up about what you have to know to start an online business.  But what ever you do… WHATEVER YOU DO… Dont’ Buy Anything!

Learn first!

It’s okay if you go and read some of those slick sales pages designed to hypnotically make you pull out your wallet and send in your credit card number – just give your wallet to your wife or good friend first.  You must first get a lay of the land and learn what is out there, what is working, what is not.

You might want to join a few forums, here is a list of my two favorites – and you don’t even have to post at first, you can read tons of stuff for free, and if you do join, you will get so much information your head will hurt – and that is a good thing!

The Warrior Forum – probably the number one forum online, hands down.

Digital Point Forum – I personally think they are the next best thing to Warriors.

Get some books (real, paper books…at your bookstore or to save money, your public library).

By all Means go to this site here: www.hardtofindseminars.com Michael Senoff is the most generous Internet Marketer online, hands down, period.  He gives away absolute GOLD in audio format.  If you have an MP3 player, download his stuff and use it as a learning course.

Do This Now!

David T. McKee

PS: If you have a PayPal account and seven bucks ($7.00) you can order my electronic library “Marketing Magic Collection I” – a collection of over 250 books, reports, articles, and helps on Marketing, Online presence, SEO, Copywriting, Advertising, self development, etc. all in PDF format.  - But only after you have done the other stuff I told you!  Now get Busy!

The Post below is a what is known as a “Public Domain” rewrite.  I have taken the Public Domain Essay by Herbert Kaufman which was originally copyrighted in 1908 and 1912.  The copyright has since expired and so now the work may be used in any way, including making derivative works and calling them your own.  This is perfectly legal, however I am not one to take the work of another man and call it my own, these words were in their original form, penned by Mr. Kaufman.  All I did was take his ideas and transform them into twenty first century concepts.  The Basic Truths are still the same.  Enjoy.

The Clock that Had no Hands, By Herbert Kaufman

Rewritten by David T. McKee

Internet advertising is to business, what hands are to a clock. It is a direct and certain means of letting the public know what you are doing. In these days of intense and vigilant commercial contest, a dealer who does not advertise is like a clock that has no hands. He has no way of recording his movements. He can no more expect a twentieth century success with nineteenth century methods, than he can wear the same sized shoes as a man, which fitted him in his boyhood.

His father and mother were content with the shopping malls or local shops; nothing better could be had in their day. The were accustomed to print or direct marketing over the radio or television, or perhaps they shopped around the corner in local stores which depended upon the immediate friends of the dealer for support.

So long as everything was within driving distance or could be mailed without too much expense using catalogs or mail-order it was possible for the proprietors of these establishments to exist and make a profit. Local Radio or TV ads informed the public of a multitude of products.

But as technology moved forward things changed, as they always do.

As in the past when transit facilities spread, sections of the city became specialized. Block after block was entirely devoted to stores, and mile after mile became solely occupied by homes. The purchaser and the storekeeper grew farther and farther apart. It was necessary for the merchant to find a substitute for his direct personality, which no longer served to draw customers to his door. He had to have a bond between the commercial center and the home center.

In the same way the Internet has connected customers and merchants around the world and provided this bond in a global way. And the connection is made through Direct Marketing.

Hey, are you looking for a cheap but effective way to boost your online AND offline sales? Check out my “Business Card Direct Marketing Secrets! Reveled. If you have any kind of home based or small business, you need this information! Click this link now!

While interconnected computers eliminated distance, advertising was still necessary to inform people where he was located and what he had to sell. It was a natural outgrowth of changed conditions–the beginning of a new era in trade which no longer relied upon personal acquaintance, or newspapers, or radio and TV for success.

Something more wonderful than the fabled philosopher’s stone came into being, and the beginnings of fortunes which would pass the billion dollar mark and place tradesmen’s daughters upon Oriental thrones grew from this new force.

Within twenty years it has become as vital to industry as communications is to commerce.

Advertising is not a luxury nor a debatable policy. It has proven its case. Its record is traced in the skylines of cities where a hundred towering buildings stand as a lesson of reproach to the men who had the opportunity but not the foresight, and furnish a constant inspiration to the young merchant at the threshold of his career.

Google’s new tool Side-Wiki looks like a great new addition to the plethora of new tools coming out that are essentially plug-ins to the browser. For most sites that are simply presentations of information of various kinds, this new tools just creates a comment bar on the side. Even though it is called “Side-Wiki” it is not a wikipedia page at all, but just a set of visitors commentary on the information in the site. Normally this would be considered a cool thing, there is only one problem with it: Anyone can post anything, and if the page is your sales page, and the poster is your direct competitor they can post slander and libel against you and direct your prospects to go to their sites all while hosting it on your site!

That is an outrage! Because now all that work you did to create traffic and improve your site, to create your product and drive traffic can be destroyed by just a few clicks from an enemy.

What do you do? Well, if you are smart you get a blocker for Side-Wiki. A good blocker needs to be able to sandbox your site without screwing up any of the links, existing anchors, or data – it needs to be able to create random redirection, and should be keyed so you can see that the redirection is yours and not put in by some hacker or other spam tool.

So how does Google’s Sidewiki work, look at the picture below and you can get  good idea:

What is happening is that with the Sidewiki tool bar you are really running two browsers at once. The first, your regular browser, is looking at your sales page, or as you see in the picture, at the Google search screen. The other browser which is hosted on the left side is communicating directly with the Giant Google Corporation, and accessing the Massive Google Database, and posting the various comments from the database to the sidewiki application.

Then what happens is that your competitor or person who simply does not like you (represented by Dr. Evil in the picture) decides to write all kinds of bad things about you, your business practices, your products and services, and then offers the same product for less money elsewhere. This drives all of your business away!

And there is nothing you can do about that as long as your site is not blocking sidewiki, anyone who has downloaded the new Google toolbar has this capability to see the bad things others have written about your site, and you are hosting it, at least that is how it appears to them.

You need some way to block this! You need an Ultimate Side-Wiki Blocker.

There are a few on the net, but most of these are remotely hosted scripts. If you put one of these on your site you are bound to have problems if that remote host goes down, or gets hacked. It is a much safer bet to get a script you can install on your own site. These scripts will work in your blogs as well as your straight sites, landing pages, mini-sites etc.

Look into a Side-Wiki blocker, like the one I offer – even if you decide not to use it, it should be in your toolbox!

-DTM

The very Best Side Wiki Blocker on the net is the one I wrote, which you can get for free at the Wordpress plugin site or from the link on the sidebar.  I have improved and updated the initial blockers offered on the web with a new one that includes the following options:

• Random length redirection key
• Ability to Add Special key_word to redirection key
• True random with date seed

So why would you want to Block Side-Wiki?  Well…

Your competitor can write horrible untrue things about you and your products and these will show up for all of your prospective customers when they visit your site if they happen to have Google Toolbar.  Worse, your competitor can steal your traffic, always undercutting your prices or features/benefits right there on the site you are paying for!

Google links from Side-Wiki might feed you link-love, but basically what this means is you are left wide open as if you were allowing full access to anyone to write anything about you, and you cannot do anything about it…

Oh yes you can!  Enter The Ultimate Side-Wiki Blocker.

This blocker sandboxes your site while preserving all of your own links and plugins, functions, scripts, etc.  And it does it better than any other script out there.  And if you are reading this at my site (www.achievemaster.com) and have sidewiki installed on your browser, then you are seeing it in action!

Get it today before someone says something awful about you!

David T. McKee