Archive for the ‘Tips & Tricks’ Category

Set Goals and Plan For Your Online Business

Wednesday, April 30th, 2008

“He who fails to plan has already planned to fail” is a popular adage. If you do not deliberately define what Success in Online Business means to you personally, you might get yourself worn out and feeling unfulfilled after putting in so much effort and resources into your online business.

There is need for you to set your Online Business goal. Setting business goals helps you to use your time and resources more effectively. This step should not be taking for granted. Define you goal and right it down. I will encourage you to use the following acronym which is commonly use to ensure that you get the goal well spelt out. Make your goal S.M.A.R.T!

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Your Online Business Needs Patience Not Haste!

Thursday, April 24th, 2008

Instant this! Instant that! Nobody wants delayed gratification. If it is not available now, you can forget it! Welcome to the info-jet age where an email can travel round the globe in less than 1 minute. Every new Online Entrepreneur desire to apply the same principle and make their Online Business Successful.

Alas, that is not the case. You can only have such instant success if your father owns CNN or you are as famous as Bill Gate (just kidding). If not, the earlier you sit down and learn the basics of starting and running a successful online business, the better for you. Running after Get Rich Quick Packages will get you nowhere. You will only end up falling victim to scammers. They promise to make you a millionaire overnight, but you need to part with the little you have first! They have a website well packaged to churn out thousands of dollars into your PayPal account while you do nothing (in your dreams!). They claim that the pages were professionally optimized for SEO, SERP, CPC ….blah, blah, blah. You know the rest of the story. It is all bunch of lies to get your money. Do not fall for it.

I have been working round the clock mopping up any knowledge that can help me achieve my goal for this blog. Was I in a haste to get the desired goal accomplish? Yes, I was? But now I know better. Yesterday, I came across a masterpiece article written by Yaro Starak for newbies like myself. It was quite instructive. It was an eye-opener. The article laid emphasis on the importance of patience in growing an online business. I encourage you to visit his site and download a copy of his masterpiece article “How to start an internet business… and make your first $1,000 online” Even though it is free (save for the time it takes to subscribe and download) you will get better result than that being provided by the fake Instant Cash-Cow Packages making rounds online.

After digesting the information provided in the article, I had to slow down and re-formulate my strategies. I do not want to have a burn-out as a result of being hasty. In less than two months, this blog has moved from a zero level to a level that some friends admire and commended, but I was not satisfied. I actually felt that the growth rate was too slow. I wanted 1,000 subscribers, 500daily visitors, 4PR from Google etc. I wanted it now, I mean yesterday! That meant overworking and putting my health at risk! Is the risk necessary for entrepreneurship success? You bet it is not. I was just being foolish and displaying the ignorance that is common with newbie Online Entreprenuers.

Stop the haste! Stop attempting to achieve unfeasible targets. If you do not know, get this straight, Internet Business is not as fast paced as you think (I wish I could shout this on the roof top to every Nigerian Entrepreneur online). It is the technology available that is fast paced. You can send 1,000 emails under 1minute and all the contacts will receive their copies almost immediately. But it takes effort and time to get those contact names on your subscription list. Patience is a vital ingredient for the Success of your online Business. So learn to allow time do justice to your persistent effort. If you exercise patience, the result will come. See you at the top! Cheers.

Network With Your Peers – Stop Bootlicking!

Tuesday, April 15th, 2008

As a newbie blogger, it is natural that you may have little or no audience with the big shots in your market niche. 🙁 Instead of running around the big shots trying to catch their attention you will be better off building relationship with your peers 🙂 . Start making friends with bloggers who are newbies like yourself, they are in need of friends just like you, so you will not need so much effort to catch their attention. They tend to be more friendly and willing to reciprocate love.
When I first started blogging (Saved By Jesus), I wanted desperately to establish links with well known bloggers. I embarked on what is commonly refer to as “bootlicking”(I visited the famous blogs daily, and put so much effort in dropping quality comments in a bid to catch the attention of the blogger). After some months, I got angry because all the effort brought no result whatsoever. Later, I read some tips given by Yaro Starak, I applied it and lo and behold, I discovered that it works. Now I have friends online who relate to me as their peer. They show me so much respect. Every visit I make to their blog is reciprocated eventually, if not immediately. And you know what, the circle is growing. I even have someone who wants me to be his mentor (quite interesting, considering the fact that I am a newbie myself) 😉 . (more…)

Site Statistics Can Ruin The Fun Of Blogging

Monday, April 14th, 2008

Constant checking of your site statistics can ruin the fun of blogging. If you look at the statistics frequently enough, it will change your attitude towards blogging. When the graph is climbing up, you will feel on top and naturally more ideas will flow, however when it starts going down, you may suffer writer block. The ideas seems to cease and you feel like packing up the blog.

So is it wrong to check the site statistics? No, that is not what I mean. I just want to point out that the daily movement of your site statistics should not be allowed to discourage you from working towards your goal.

I have observed that every blog or website, no matter how popular, suffers the same fluctuations in site statistics. Ask successful bloggers, they will tell you that some days, week and months are better than others (sometimes the fluctuation has no correlation with the quality of posts on your site).

A post that did not receive attention when you wrote it may suddenly become a traffic puller because its content addresses an issue that is currently among the hot topics in the blogging community.

However, you need to study the trend being shown by the statistics at least once a week so that you will know what the trend has been like. The statistics is meant to be a tool (for improving on your effort), not a verdict on the success or failure of your blog!

If you have a goal and you are working on it, then you are already succeeding. It does not matter if Google Analytics, Alexa, FeedBurner and other statistic tools think otherwise. 🙂

Get Yourself A Mentor

Wednesday, April 9th, 2008

Why do you need a mentor?
I will answer the question using an illustration. If a man embarks on a tour of an unknowing territory without employing the service of an experienced guide, we will not be surprised if he ends up lost. Would we? Common sense demands that anyone embarking on a journey into an unknown territory should employ the service of the best guide that knows the territory very well. It is plain stupid to launch into the unknown without a guide, praying that you will not get lost.
But wait, is that not what many newbie Online Entreprenuers do? After reading an article or two, the newbie Online Entrepreneur launch an online business and start struggling to succeed until his strength wanes out. Newbie Online Entrepreneurs often, take leaps of faith. They launch out online based on personal assumptions that they have acquired what it takes to be successful online. While in reality, they only have visions of what they want to accomplish but not the know-how. (more…)