There are basically two ways to make a living, i.e., working for money or letting money work. In the Internet age, it is easy to distinguish between the two.

- The former is busy, even at work, sending emails, the inanity of which are limited only by one’s imagination, while the latter burns his/her midnight candle sending emails to expand his/her network;

- The former sends chain letters, the latter viral letters;

- The former derives satisfaction, or so it seems, from a paycheck that leaves nothing much after bills are paid, while the latter goes on vacation like clockwork, yet still earns;

- The former works like crazy to keep his/her job, the latter works like crazy for portfolio diversity;

- The former rushes through breakfast and traffic to stave off an over-bearing boss who frowns on tardiness while the latter keeps his/her sweet time, ticking off his/her activities during the day with Swiss-watch precision.

The similarity between the two is that each loath to swap roles. The latter for sheer sense of financial freedom and accomplishment while the latter for fear of losing his/her false 15/30 security.

Differences and similarities aside, denizens of both live separate worlds, intangibly separated by two words – mind set and, tangibly, by entirely different tools to function and succeed in each. It is irrelevant to talk about the tools I used while working for money for more than 30 years. They are as diverse as that of any Tom, Dick or Harry’s.

Home business through e-commerce has fewer tool diversity but more daunting. Either you have your own product to sell or be an affiliate, a solid product or a software, a real book or an e-book. While a website is a must for others, some claim success even without. Some sell direct while others are comfortable with multi-leveling; some get by with plain text while others insist on HTML knowledge.

Regardless of the way a particular home business is conducted, the common denominator is to find the people willing to open their wallets in exchange for a product, among millions of other products, they find in the virtual Internet display room.

Getting to these people often reveals an Internet marketer’s moral bent. I know a guy who harvests emails, then blasts them throughout. Playing catch-me-if-can with email service providers, which he probably has a dozen, he uses more than a hundred email addresses. If one is blocked, he switches to another. He and his group of “spammers” are having from modest to good successes in their business.

Technically speaking, spamming is sending an unsolicited email even to a person. I, and probably most, take spamming as sending emails to a horde of strangers offering them something on the off-chance that one in a million or so may patronize what is offered.

All websites I have stumbled across have anti-spamming policies and take to these heartily. Result? My e-commerce has been in the doldrums even after a year at it.

http://www.leadsleap.com/blog/how-to-create-an-online-business/?r=micheael02

(More Hurdles next issue)

Entrepreneurship is not easy.

While doing the rounds of prospects when I was in the insurance business, practically all of the young professionals I’ve interviewed professed to retire early and engage in some business. The same percentage, however, don’t know what business they want to go into.

A lot of people out there have this innate desire to be their our own boss, to strike it big, to make something out of themselves, free from the supervision or dominance by others. That’s what entrepreneurship is about. Or at least, a lot of would-be entrepreneurs take it to be.

The sad fact however, is that no one but no one who ventured into the world of entrepreneurship was spared the baptism of fire. A great majority got burned and faded away, leaving only an insignificant few who can claim success. The difference between those who made it and those who didn’t lies in but two words – mind set.

The following, for whatever they are worth, can help any entrepreneur weather the storms that lie ahead. These are:

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“The person who gets the farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare.” – Dale Carnegie.

Entrepreneurship is going where but a few dare to tread. It is not “winning-the-lottery” affair where the prize comes but once and when least expected. It is a process of tweaking here and there until the right mix between the entrepreneur, the product and the customers he is trying to sell his product to reach a critical mass allowing things to take a life of its own with results beyond an entrepreneur’s wildest expectations.

*************

“The successful always has a number of projects planned, to which he looks forward. Anyone of them could change the course of his life overnight.” – Mark Caine

Hard core entrepreneurs never put all their eggs in one basket but have an uncanny “third” eye to discern what are viable and what are not and they psyche themselves to give each a go, either simultaneously or sequentially. The Internet has made this possible and easier; it has offered countless ways to establish one’s entrepreneurial bent. Some guys I met in the Internet have 50 websites to do business in. How they manage that is another point of discussion.

*************

“Success doesn’t come to you….you go to it.” – Marva Collins.

Success at entrepreneurship occurs when people buy what you are offering them. But unless you make the first move of offering something people need or want, no sale is made – as simple as that. The hard part is to know “what” to sell and “who” to sell it to. Leaving these questions unanswered is a veritable rope which an entrepreneur can hang himself from.

*************

“Success is a journey, not a destination.” – Ben Sweetland

Entrepreneurship is not a “get-rich-quick” scheme but a lengthy process of deliberate acts from start to finish, which, by natural ascendancy of things, becomes the start of yet another entrepreneurial endeavor. So if you have the “get-the-money-and-run” mindset, rob a bank, not go into entrepreneurship.

*************

“Success is not permanent. The same is also true of failure.” – Dell Crossword.

If two guys are given a million dollars each, the person with a taste for success will double his fortune at probably the same rate as the other guy, with a mind set of a loser, to become a pauper.

We all make mistakes. Some big, some small. But the only mistake that really counts is to continue on making the same mistake that has robbed us the chance of become better than what we are today.

*************

“Seventy percent of success in life is showing up” – Woody Allen

Nobody has probably missed the saying, “the early bird catches the worm.” Figuratively, merely showing up is not the whole story but it is almost there. Just like being a member of so many organizations yet not doing much one’s membership other than being a “name” in the members’ roster.

Showing up and doing most likely describe this trait of a successful entrepreneur. To strike while the iron is hot.

Adapted from the Forest Marie series of educational articles at:

“http://www.forestmarie.com/5-qualities-of-a-good-entrepreneur/”>5 Qualities Of A Good Entrepreneur</a>

“Fear of Success“ (last part):

Each of us is probably no stranger to someone who seemingly has everything given to him on a silver platter and gush (with envy) over his successes. While it is easy to droll over his good fortune, but we are loathed to take a closer look at what he went through to get there.

Winding down on this series, successful people are:

Continuously engaged in personal growth:
There was a time when ignorance can be due to lack of opportunities. Today, with the access to the Internet easier than crossing a street, ignorance is due to laziness, no more, no less.

Millions of messages crisscross the globe per minute. Yet how many of these contribute to our professional growth? I have had to unsubscribe to two Yahoo discussion groups for sheer lack of depth in the subjects thrown around daily. Daily I get invitations to join some boy-meets-girl websites. While not entirely bad, but if the time spent in front of the computer is going to add nothing to my mental data base, save for a sexy picture and a name, then my computer, as a tool for learning, is not put to good use.

Attracted to other successful people:
I’ve written about this and I write again. “If you want to waddle like a duck, then be with the ducks. But if you want to soar like an eagle, then be with the eagles.”

Nobody likes to be with losers. It is said that “misery loves company.”

I love my late mother. But in the last years of her life, her visits with us were always about her aches and pains, her debts, her so many pet peeves against the world. But she was my mother that I have to indulge with. Otherwise, a good book is definitely a preferred company rather than someone who constantly carps about how difficult life is.

Aware that success cannot be a one-man show:
Bill Gates could not have achieved his empire without the help of others as driven as he is. Successful people know that they cannot be good in everything, cannot be everywhere at any given time, can only do so much as their bodies allow them to, so they enlist the aid of others who are as good, or even better than them in certain fields.

The simplest analogy will be that of domestic chores. A good head of the family can probably do all there is to be done around the house. But at any given time, he cannot do all, so he has to delegate. In fact, a good head of the family makes it a point to train his/her children some of the things that need to be done on a regular basis.

Optimistic:
We say that when it rains, it pours. Successful people say, “Now we have ample supply of water.”

Nothing saps one’s energies faster than unwarranted pessimism. This is especially true in home business or other self-employment activities where nobody is generally available to take the slack.

But human as we are, we cannot avoid but have bouts of it once in a while. When it does come, say, “This, too, shall pass.”

Know that there is a time for everything:
They don’t push it but take things in stride. A guy who signed up with me on a trial basis said that he is going to upgrade once he will have the time. Hard as I try, I cannot imagine how he can have more time than what each one of us already have in abundance – 24 hrs a day.

If one is pressed for time, or seem to be perpetually in shortage of it, take stock of what you do in a daily basis; average them on a weekly basis and so on. Then decide what you can let go or what you must do. Pit each item to their degree of importance against what you intend to do with your life, your dreams. I bet you, you will soon find more than enough time to do those which are important to succeed in life.

End

For the original version, visit
http://www.forestmarie.com/5-qualities-of-a-good-entrepreneur/”>5 Qualities Of A Good Entrepreneur

“Fear of Success” (Part II)

In my previous post, I wrote about the first three traits of successful people. Foremost among them is the desire to dream big dreams, dreams exciting enough to make them reach for the stars. Then I talked about their drive to achieve their dreams, yet the patience to wait it out knowing that things don’t just fall out from the skies but are the results of well-laid down processes.

In continuation, successful people have:

Have Passion:

Have you ever heard of people singing without passion? I’m sure you’d feel the same way I would under the same circumstances – nothing but noise. It is said that if something is worth doing, it is worth doing well.

Taking it forward, successful people do things they are passionate about extraordinarily well. Making one’s dreams come true requires no less an effort.

Have Focus:

Focus is trying to hit a moving target with no bullet to spare. Though successful people, more often than not, make their own opportunities, but they hate to jump from one unfinished thing to another. They make all their shots count. And that requires focus.

Make Decisions:
Making decisions is one of the most difficult things management faces all day. Yet decisions they must make lest they are stopped dead in their tracks.

In its simplest context, making decisions is, no more no less, making a choice between two or more alternatives. The difficult part is the “what ifs” that come with every decision we make.

“Damn the torpedoes,” is sometimes a soothing relief when up against situations like these. And successful people, more often than not, damn more torpedoes than we care to count.

They Don’t Pass the Buck:

It’s so easy for most of us to look around for excuses for all the bad things befalling upon us. Seldom is there a person who would boldly say, “I’m sorry. It was my fault.”

Passing the buck serves no purpose but to murk the issue, miss out on the big things that could spell the difference between success or failure the next time around.

Successful people take each failure in a stride, taking stock of what is left after the dust of failure has settled and start out all over again, more determined than ever to do better the next time.

They Look for Solutions:

My favorite saying while in the corporate world was, “Are you a part of the solution or part of the problem?”

Like it or not, a lot of us are parts of the problem, not the solution. It is because solutions invariably lead to new things, new approaches to problems. And people hate something new that will drastically alter the way they do things.

My classmate in engineering school loved to quip, “if we don’t have the formula to this problem, let’s make our own formula.” Needless to say, he rose to become the vice president of a very large multinational corporation engaged in beverage manufacturing.

(Adopted from Forest Maries’s blog, titled “13 Traits of Successful People)”

“http://www.forestmarie.com/5-qualities-of-a-good-entrepreneur/”>5 Qualities Of A Good Entrepreneur</a

More next posting

“Fear of Success:”

Previously, I wrote about home business and why a lot of people cringe at the thought of having one. Then I wrote about the false mind-sets that keep most of us from engaging in it. Now I shall remove the veil from all the things we put up to justify our meager existence.

Consciously or sub-consciously we are afraid to succeed. Conditioned to conform to the norms, not to rock the boat, to blend, we don’t know how it is to succeed. It is something new, something different, hence we avoid it with all our might. We know that going to the dentist is a relieving experience, yet we put up so many reasons to postpone a visit.

For this reason we can count by the fingers, people who have succeeded in their fields of endeavor. Because these are the people who are not afraid to do anything, to brave the unknown for the lust of life, to see that they’ve got what it takes. These are the people who:

Have dreams:

The biggest accomplishments of man started with a dream. The bigger the dream the bigger the accomplishment. The greatest monuments of man’s dreams stand for all eternity, i.e., the Great Wall of China, the pyramids of Egypt, the Taj Mahal in India (which I have visited twice), are but a few examples.

Successful people dream dreams. Ordinary mortals make wishes. Successful people work on their dreams. Ordinary mortals wait for life to deliver to them, in a silver platter, their wishes.

Had man just wished to land on the moon, he would never have planted a footstep on the lunar surface.

Achieve:

Successful people try at a lot of things not minding to fail, for failure is considered as a step from which to launch another round of tries. Ordinary mortals try at a lot of things always fearing failure. When it comes, as it surely does, they make excuses.

The recent feat of Michael Phelps in the recent Beijing Olympics defy imagination. All swimmers in the world, I’m sure, would have loved to be in his place. If only they are willing to go through the process he did.

To achieve something, anything, is not a walk in the park, unless all one wants to do is to take a walk in the park. Achieving really something meaningful requires a single-minded of purpose and a total dedication of one’s life towards achieving that which what he wants to achieve.

Know that success is not a “one-shot” deal but a process:

Almost a year ago, in this same coffee shop, I had dollar signs before my eyes when a friend encouraged me to blog for money. After so many failures, so many things to learn, so many scams I got into and extricated myself from, I have slowly shorn off the things that have un-horsed me several times, is beginning to see the path. It helps to have networked with guys like Forest Marie (Skype:successwithforest), Paul Wilson, Kenneth Koh and so many others who are willing to lend a helping hand, not to scalp me even more. They too, went through a process that was anything but wholesome. They, too, went through a learning curve, a gestation period, albeit with a single-mindedness of purpose to succeed.

God, Himself, used a process to make the Universe. Ordinary mortals can do no less - whatever we do will definitely take more than seven days. But we all get there in due time – if we just keep at it with diligence.

On the average, people in this business started the see the light of day after two or three years of bumming about. I am willing to go through the same route, the same length of time

Would your?

(Adopted from Forest Maries’s blog, titled “13 Traits of Successful People)”

More next posting

“Breaking Down Barriers – Home Business“

“Yes, you can,” is the first step towards breaking down mindsets against home business. The rest is easy. Here are some of them, more pernicious, albeit often imagined:

Stupid Scam:

I would be unrealistic and lying to say that the world of home business through e-commerce is not filled with sweet-talking people offering heaven but delivering a mud-hole. But to lump everyone into one sinkhole would deny the accomplishments and successes of people like Tyler Cant (imstwc@yahoo.ca), Forest Marie (forest@forestmarie.com), Kenneth Koh (support@leadsleap.com), and others, whose help for their downlines are nothing but awesome. It’s just a matter of separating the grain from the chaff.

At any rate, Dr. Joe Rubino believes that answering objections like “scam,” ”pyramid scheme,” “no money,” and millions of other objections is to do what Richard Brooke mastered – the “listening” technique.

Instead of directly asking objectors “Why,” which immediately put them in a defensive and antagonistic position, try asking “what” exactly is meant by the objection and pay careful attention to what the objectors say. Then continue asking similar questions to further define the objection until you find an opportunity to involve your objector into formulating a positive attitude.

Richard Brooke used this method to earn his first million at the age of 30 in network marketing, after having tried several jobs, including a gas station attendant and a poultry farm hand, right after high school.

Unsupportive Spouse:

This may not seem obvious in Oriental cultures, like mine, where wives are generally outwardly acquiescent to husbands. What goes on behind the façade of civility, however, can sometimes be as devastating as a confrontational stance.

Rachel Hoffman, in her book, “Tips for Dealing with an Unsupportive Spouse,” wrote that “many of the objections aren’t with the home-based business itself but with real or perceived results of operating such a business.” These could be many things, but the most common are:

Money.

There’s a fear of a loss of income from a “real” job, or seek employment in order to operate a home business; that money is thrown away on something that will produce an uncertain income or money that is intended for a vacation, a new car or anything the spouse wants is no longer there because it is plunked down into a home business.

Lost in the scuffle is the saying that, “it takes money to make money.”

Quality time:

This is perceived to compromise the time together, talking, or doing mutually interesting things together as the spouse is busy in attending to a home business.

Having a regular job can jeopardize quality time as well, even more so, than a business venture done at home. But if the focus is “success,” not the home business, per se, then a talking point between the two presents itself possibly paving the way for the mutual involvement in the business.

Domestic chores.

This can be a tricky issue as home business allows one more hours to attend to domestic chores – depending on the chore and the predilection of a spouse to do it.

Home business or not, the house, for harmonious living, must always be anchored into a “who is to do what,” platform. A good discussion in this direction will not adversely affect, but enhance, any home business endeavor. Or why go home business in the first place if that is not one of the intended positive results? (Excerpts borrowed from an IAHBE article written by Yank Elliott)

(More next issue)

“Home Business Through E-commerce”

I enjoy the two sides of both worlds – I have a job as a technical writer which I enjoy, and I can do it at home. A friend who used to be an engineer for an American firm doing wire harness, resigned from her job and, together with her husband, works at home doing an Internet-found job.

No, ours, and other people who are similarly blessed, is not home-business in the strictest sense of the word. But we enjoy the benefits of a good pay while staying at home. My regret is that my current contract provides me with not much time to do, fulltime, that which I want to pursue fervently – real home business

I guess it doesn’t require a pretty high IQ to perceive the apparent and real advantages of working at home – if only our conventional jobs permit it.

So how about home business? Naaaa, from the looks of the faces of those asked this question, no answer is needed.

So why do most people cringe at the thought of having a home business? This report attempts to look at some of the paradigms people relate home business with:

Societal Conditioning:
According to an article written by former teacher-of-the-year, John Taylor Gatto, the educational system of the U.S. and, unfortunately, of the countries touched by her influence, is patterned on the Prussian plan of Frederick the Great where the major thrust was to produce a controllable political population and a capable but obedient workforce for corporations and other employers.

Thus even today, parents never fail to remind their children to study hard, get an education and work for someone else, forever trapping themselves in a lifetime of routine and an income that hardly make both ends meet. Anyone who does not fit into this mold is a nut case.

Negative Influence:
It’s often said that if you want to waddle like a duck, be with the ducks; but if you want to soar like an eagle, be with the eagles. Unfortunately there are more ducks than eagles out there making it easy to understand why the wayside of losers is more common than the hi-way of winners.

It’s often heard of a young man saying, “Going to school or not will result to the same thing anyway. I’ve tried this and I’ve tried that and so many other different things ending up the same way.”

This mind-frame is not a result of some genetic anomaly but by being with people of the same attitudes. “Misery loves company,” they say.

Fear Factor:
The bad news is that home business entrepreneurship is not for everyone. The good news is that it can be for everyone. Entrepreneurs are not a breed apart from the rest of us, working grunts. They just love to work for themselves and will bridge everything to pursue their dreams.
And yes, entrepreneurs are people with dreams, big dreams. They are not afraid to fail, for failure is part of the game. They dust their butts after each fall and, with a smile, would say, “now where was I?”

They are people with a quench for life, the kind of life not imposed upon them by others but by the height and breadth of their own desires. They don’t take the well-trodden path but beat a path of their own.

And you and I can do the same.

No Capital:
I once met a guy who said the “had I been more bright, I would have passed the board exam for mechanical engineers.”

“No capital” is more an alibi than a reason. While there was time that oodles of money were required to start a business, home or not, the advent of the Internet has made things easier and affordable to anyone with access to a computer and a desire for financial freedom.

Currently, the number of homes connected to the “Net” run in millions worldwide. A good portion of these burn their candles doing computer games while the rest exchange inane emails or surf through social networking sites looking for long lost friends or establishing new ones. Only a few have taken it upon themselves to get a payback from their computer time.

The Internet has totally revolutionized how we do things. It has everybody access to an unlimited range of products most of us never knew before. It has broken down borders of geography, race, sex, creed, ethnicity, educational background, etc. And it has made it dirt cheap; a lot of these websites offering home business are free.

To start with, click on the links below and be on your way of freeing yourself from the perpetual need to augment your income.

http://paydotcom.net/?affiliate=335734
http://www.ezinfocenter.com/10219106/IAHB
http://www.moneymill.ws

Should you need a helping hand, leave a comment on this blog or email me at:
joesspinafortune@gmail.com.

“Content That Sells“

While it is easy to post (update) a blog on a daily basis, the question begging an answer is, “Update with what?”

Blogging gurus are one in saying that content (subject of one’s blog) must be given the most emphasis for a blog to sell; that it must be something one is passionate about to make it credible and, since the blogger is passionate about it, the motivation to update it by whatever frequency comes naturally.

I am passionate about my experiences in life. The weakness of this subject is that “life” has an unlimited sub-topics that can virtually fill a warehouse of niches. And even if an ordinary guy like me, recently a widower, with two adult and professional children who still refuse to marry can find a niche, will it be large enough to warrant enough number of “clicks” in a month to earn from affiliate ads? Much as I wish to be a celebrity, or a sports icon, a criminal, a womanizer or plain gossip mill, I can’t because I’m not.

I can fill my blog with enough banners to obliterate my content but if nobody visits it, there would be nobody to sell the products advertised in it, right? It’s pretty much like selling bottled water in the most inaccessible part of the Sahara, right?

So back to the gurus I went and found out that I must put something of value in my blog that would interest my potential readers; something they can get something out of, either information or help for a dire need. Some well-visited blogs I read wrote about home cooking, home repairs, health, political commentaries. Again something I cannot be passionate about for lack of experience or inclination about those topics.

I once reviewed my blog statistics and observed that I was once visited by an SEO (Search Engine Optimizer – more of this later) when I posted something about “bananas,” though I wouldn’t know if the interest was related to apes or the health benefits of bananas. I also got a number of visitors when I wrote about my children.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimizer of Optimization (as others would call it). Apparently there is a “bug” in the electronic hi-way that searches the web and blog sites for words and match them with words that are frequently searched out in the Internet. These key words are collected and categorized by companies like Yahoo or Google and other half-a-dozen other companies or more that make a living collecting and selling key words.

Making a web or blog site SEO-friendly starts at the very beginning – the choice of domain names. Ignorance denied my domain name from this key requirement, so I have to settle with the second method, which is to use the right “tags.” Tags are words put into a post to make it SEO-friendly. And these tags must be among the key words mentioned above. The problem is that for the SEO bug to like your post, it must be peppered with these tags over and over again making it lose its meaning and flavor. A reading material, no matter how good it may be would be plain out ridiculous if the word “life” is mentioned no less than seven times.

A lot of the blogs that claim to bring in hordes of visitors and profit for the blogger, write about e-commerce, promote e-books, promote others’ blogs or other electronic widgets which, again, I am no expert of.

“Blogging and E-commerce“

E-commerce can take several forms, with blogging as one of the most popular. Whereas there are millions and millions of blogs out there, only a fraction are engaged in e-commerce, and fewer still make money out of it. Blogging is what I know at present, hence none of the other types shall be dealt with here.

Defining the word “blog’ will reveal the variety and diversity of viewpoints for a certain item in the electronic world. To start with, the word “blog” is a contraction of the words “web log” and defined by some as an electronic diary. WordPress defines it as a chronological presentation of things or events. But the word “chronological” easily lose its meaning as people with almost anything in mind and an access to a computer can have a “blog.”

A case in point is a website and blogsite. URL-wise (home address), it is difficult to distinguish a blog from a website. Opening both is not going to make things any easier for the uninitiated because, in all probabilities, they would contain the same jumble of advertisements.

To cut the story short, the distinguishing feature of a blog over a website is through their lead pages. A blog always opens up to something worth reading while a website, more often than not, always writes about the site and what it does. A blog is simpler and, almost always, made up of one page while a website is a multi-paged publication.

As a tool for e-commerce, blogs are having an edge over websites because of simplicity in setting up, operation and maintenance. Opening an account with Bloggers.com or WordPress, the two largest blog providers, is all it takes. One can have a “free” blog from both providers while only WordPress offers a “hosted” blog. A hosted blog is one in which you have to have a registered, and paid, domain name. I used to have a free blog but switched to “hosted” because, not only will it give the blogger more options for enhancement, but it also removes a lot of controls the provider has over the blog.

Having visitors to it is completely another matter to make it an effective tool for e-commerce.

There was a day when diaries were very private and intimate possessions. They were shared only with those taken into confidence by the writer. Today, people are gripped with exhibitionist mentality and would like the whole world to know even the sleazier parts of their lives; the more sleazy the more visitors, fortunately or unfortunately. There was a blog of a gay which registered thousands “hits” (visitors) a day by recounting his “gaying” experiences with the rich and famous and powerful. Such a kind of blog is the envy of bloggers worldwide hungry for hits for them to earn.

Because of its ease and availability, opening a “link” from one’s computer can cause an avalanche of offers from e-commerce “gurus” – some self-proclaimed while others have earned their due. Legitimate or not, at least they agree on these basic elements to drive a horde of visitors to a blog. These are:
- Content
- Currency (frequency of updating)
- SEO (Search Engine Optimization) friendliness.