I’m in the process of completely rethinking my business model, and that will be my primary focus as I plan this year’s business retreat for myself. Your business model doesn’t have to be at all complex, but should provide the guiding force for all that you do, like guiding you to the opportunities to accept (and those to decline), the joint ventures and strategic alliances to pursue, and the new ideas you should retain and develop, as well as those to let go of.

Here’s are the 4 steps I’m following as I create the blueprint for my business model:

1. Make clients pay well for your most valuable commodity — your time. I see many service business owners tying themselves up with (and tying themselves down to) far too many 1:1 clients. You have only so many hours in the day, and at some point you’ll hit the wall and not be able to expand the number of 1:1 clients you see. Sure, you can hire and train additional staff to handle the overflow, but in many cases, you make less money in this model while tripling your headaches. Make your 1:1 time with clients your highest-fee service, charging a premium fee to dispense your expertise.

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You know how often I get asked about how effective social networking is for someone’s business, from my clients or when I’m out networking from random business owners?? Hundreds a month.

It’s amazing. It’s amazing how many of us are on the social sites but also how many are not!

I think if you’re an entrepreneur, no matter whether you do business locally or globally, you should be doing some amount of social networking as ONE source of lead generation in your business.

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Online forums are a fantastic reminder of the influence the internet has had on society. Using forums to connect with your market is a natural progression.

Forums are online communities where individuals can discuss topics ranging from fly fishing to breast feeding to internet business. Discussions are conducted by posting notes to the forum. A single discussion is called a ‘thread’ and most forums have several – even hundreds – of threads going at any time.

What is truly remarkable about the use of forums is the personal quality of the discussions. Read some of the posts on forums such as warriorforum.com and you’ll soon see that the members become more like neighbors (and even friends) than strangers connected only by the keyboard and monitor in front of them.

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Time for the 5th and final article in my step-by-step list building series. In the first 4 articles I have focused on setting up a full list building system, monetizing the sign up process, and putting up a great follow up series, featuring good affiliate programs (you will find links to the first 4 articles at the end of this post). Today we’re going to take what you’ve learned so far, and explore how you can take it to the next level.

So How Do You Get Filthy Rich On The Internet?

Following the steps in the first 4 articles is a very good start. Building your
own list is extremely important if you want to be successful in internet marketing, and you can make a very decent income just from promoting affiliate products… But in order to take your internet marketing career to the next level (the filthy rich part), you really need to have your own products. As you are about to discover, setting up your own product isn’t that difficult. But first lets take a look at some of the benefits from having your own products.

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Traffic generation, I can say, is like the “heart” of the whole Internet Marketing business – you can have a really solid-looking, content rich website, you can have a very attracting offer put up for your customers, but if there’s no traffic going to your website, then you’ll not be able to get any recognition, and any sales at all.

There are lots of ways you can use to drive traffic to your websites and offer pages, both free and paid.

In this post, we’re going to take a look at some of them.

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There are basically two types of bloggers in the world – reporters and experts – and some people perform both roles (usually the experts, it?s hard for reporters to become experts, but it?s easy for experts to report).

If you have ever taken an Internet marketing course or attended a seminar specifically for beginners, you have probably heard about the two different methodologies. Whenever the business model is based on content, and if you blog for money then the model is based on content, people are taught to either start as reporters, or if possible step up as experts.

I?ll be frank; you want to be the expert.

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