In our technologically expanding world, where the Internet is the most available form of media, Viral Marketing is an extremely effective form of advertising. Before the Web explosion, this form of advertising would have been referred to simply as “word of mouth” or getting your message out by having your customer base spread the word.

Why Use Viral Marketing?

There are several studies that state that if someone has a good experience, chances are they will tell a few close friends. However, with a bad experience people will repeat it to anyone who will listen. Since the pace of the Internet is so much faster than that of word of mouth, you will want to be careful with the messages you put out there. The message you put forth can spread, and spread quickly, whether that message is good or bad.

Viral Marketing is exactly what it sounds like – advertising that works like a virus does. It can be as simple as a message that is attached at the bottom of an email. Like a virus, as the email is sent from one person to another, so goes the attached message. It is like an electronic version of that famous television commercial that said “you’ll tell two friends, and they will tell two friends, and so on and so on…”, only with the World Wide Web, one well placed message can have the ability to reach millions with one click of the mouse.

Remember when Hotmail was starting? You could only get an account if a friend sent you an email with the link. Everyone wanted one, and emails spread like wildfire. And BMW had that great campaign with very famous directors, a very new Clive Owen and very short movies – all on the Internet, which was becoming a brand new venue for movies. You may not have enough money in your advertising budget to hire Clive Owen, but there are still things you can do to attempt some viral marketing.

Essential Features

To tap into the potential power of a viral campaign you will need a few essential elements – free products or services that are easily transferred to others using existing communications networks. These products or services should be something that will exploit people’s natural behaviors and emotions. Some examples beyond commercials would be how-to guides, surveys, best-of guides, educational guides, tools, widgets, quizzes and badges.

Sometimes nothing grabs peoples attention faster than the word FREE. Free trials, free email accounts, free anything can put you in a potential customer’s head. Free can get your name out there and introduce people to the goods or services that will generate future revenues for your business.

There are rewards you can offer as well. Rewarding loyal customers with anything from percentage rebates and coupons for future purchases to free gifts for their continued patronage is another outstanding way to make sure that your ‘virus’ continues to spread.

Know Your Customers

Knowing and understanding your customer base will make your viral marketing more successful; tracking and analyzing what motivates them to want to pass along your message. You need to know what makes them tick. What is going to make the working mother of three take the time out of an already incredibly busy day to not only be drawn to your message, but also be interested enough to pass that message along to the other extremely busy moms in her address book?

As an example, say you have an errand-running service. You could offer a day of running errands to the lucky winner of a contest. All you have to do to enter to win the free day of errands is to register by clicking the link to your website. Strategies such as these can be a bit more effective as the people that register tend to have an interest in the services you offer.

If you can zero in on who your customer is, this type of marketing can be quite inexpensive and highly effective. Online surveys and questionnaires can also be quite useful in getting inside your customer’s head. They can and should be your most valuable resource when it comes to figuring out what they want. Careful consideration of your customer’s needs and the commitment to meet those needs is what will ultimately make you successful in business.

Viral Marketing is a useful tool and it’s something to think about along with your other online marketing strategies. However, you still need to create something unusual and useful that people will naturally want to share and tell others about.

With the Internet there are opportunities to reach a much larger number of people much faster than in decades past. However, the basic marketing rules still apply if you want your viral marketing campaigns to be successful. Know your products or services. Know what demographics you are targeting. Get in their head and figure out what they need to feel compelled to not only spend their hard earned money with you, but what will make them want to keep coming back, and more importantly, bringing their friends with them.

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Operating a home business is seldom easy and interruptions come in all shapes, sizes and forms.

Between the family, friends and neighbors who call or come by, and the telemarketers who insist on ringing your number off the hook, getting through the workday can be a real challenge.

When you introduce children into the home office environment, your productivity and patience can be seriously tested.

For example, I remember how my three-year old daughter was pulling on my shirt begging me to read her a story. Clearly, I was in the middle of something important here, but how could I say no to those eyes? I’ll be right back…

Ok, that wasn’t so bad was it? She was happy, I was happy (having bonded with my daughter) and now I’m back to continue my conversation with you Whats the lesson here? Flexibility is a major key to balancing your home business priorities with your familys needs.

I can tell you from first-hand experience that maintaining a deep level of concentration on work in a home business for long periods of time is next to impossible. Naptime does offer some reprieve, but any break from the kids is usually short lived.

Even with older children, summertime introduces new challenges with kids running in and out of the house all throughout the day.

I would like to share with you some of the tips I have discovered to help manage your home office with children in your midst. Since children of different ages pose different challenges, I will present my tips in terms of age groups.

OLDER CHILDREN AND TEENS

We will look at older children first since they pose the least challenge to our work productivity.

Children, who are old enough to understand the idea of schedules and chores, are old enough to understand the needs of your home business. Explain to your children that you do your work at home so that you can be near them when they need you. But also be sure they understand that you must do your work so that you will have the money necessary to keep your house, feed the family and to provide them with money for entertainment.

Once your children understand the necessity of your work, then outline a work schedule and explain it to them. Do make sure they understand that emergencies are definitely an acceptable reason to interrupt your work. Then make sure they understand that between hours x and y, you will be doing work — and then hold them to respecting your schedule.

INFANTS

Infants will never understand your needs for work. But fortunately, babies do well under a schedule or routine. Instead of expecting your child to work around your schedule, schedule your work around the needs of your baby.

It is simple. Babies eat, sleep and poop. Sometimes they play. Fortunately, babies sleep more than they do anything else.

Naptime offers the best advantage for getting your work done. Get your baby into a routine of eat, sleep and play, and you will experience unexpected levels of productivity.

TODDLERS

If you have a toddler running around the house while you are operating your home business, then you may find that your hair turning gray or disappearing altogether. But, gray hair is a sign of character, right.

I am venturing to guess that the person who devised the door lock for the inside of the house did so because he had toddlers in his own home. Inside door locks should only be utilized when you are making that important phone call and your toddler is screaming for your attention. At all other times, your door should remain unlocked with your door open.

Develop a routine with your children for meal times, naptimes, and play times. Work these times into your work schedule and adhere to them. If you fail to keep appointments with your children, your children will have less respect for your work and do more to prevent you from the completion of your work.

Don`t be afraid to let your children sit in your lap while you are working. It helps them to feel wanted and it helps them to be a part of your daily life. There are times when it is okay for them to be sitting in your lap while you work, and at other times you need them out of your lap. Don`t be afraid to tell them to get down and go play or read a book so that you can resume your work.

Permit your children to have their toys in your office. Often they will sit contently and play while you work. Just knowing you are near is enough to keep them happy.

Be prepared to take an hourly break to deal with your toddler. Try to do potty breaks at your hourly break and to do drink refills. This can help your child grow into a routine that will work well with your home business. At each break, spend a few minutes with your child giving hugs and kisses and talking with your child about what he or she wants to talk about.

Toddlers don`t always do well with the routine, so be prepared to take a few minutes when needed to give the attention that your child so desperately needs in the moment.

IN CONCLUSION

I hope these tips serve to help you in the challenge of operating a successful home business.

My home business permits me to fulfill my financial obligations *AND* see my children grow up. I would never contemplate trading my home business for another kind of business. Even with the added challenges of dealing with toddlers in my home office, the upsides far outweigh the downsides.

Growing my own home business with children around has definitely given me a new respect for all people who successfully run a home business with kids in the work environment. I tip my hat to you… You deserve it!

-Albert

How to make $1000 a month online from scratch – Part 8 of 8

Over the past 7 weeks I’ve been outlining the plan of attack for making your first $1000 a month online. Completely from scratch.

This series made the following assumptions:

• You will have 5-10 hours a week to work on the business.
• You’ll have very few, if any, technical skills.
• $400 to invest.
• A willingness to work hard, stick to a plan and resist distractions.

If you’ve followed through and taken action on my instruction you should now have:

1) The right mental attitude to pull this off.
2) Selected a niche topic with the “right stuff”.
3) A traffic pulling website with at least 10 articles on it (and growing).
4) A strategy and process for converting that content into dollars.
5) An info product you are selling that helps out the folks interested in your niche topic.

If you’ve got all of that together, you should be very happy with yourself. You’ve worked hard and you’ve achieved something that most people lack the discipline to do. Well done.

However, I warn you. This is the most dangerous time for your new business. If it’s anything like 99% of other projects of a similar nature, there still isn’t much happening on the income side of things. It’s often very disheartening.

You may be feeling a mix of emotions including:

• Did I select the right niche?
• This isn’t worth the time I’m putting in here.
• The economy must have caused this not to work.
• Maybe my design isn’t right?
• I’m not cut out to make money online.
• This sucks.
• Jay sucks.

This is natural. It’s the nature of traffic.

We know because we’ve seen it over and again. As an example, we followed this same methodology for a site of our own. The first month saw just 11 people visit. The second month just 39. Pretty disheartening stuff. In over 8 weeks we’d seen just 50 people hit the site.

However, by just keeping at it we started to see growth. By the third month we’d had around 1300 people hit the site and by the eighth month we cracked 10,000 visitors.

Many people who witnessed the same kind of stats would have given up at the end of the second month. It’s hard to make much money off 50 people in 8 weeks. Nonetheless we didn’t give up. We just kept plugging away at it until we saw some solid growth.

Once you see your site growing fast, it’s a strong motivator. When you see your site making money, it’s an even stronger motivator.

Mental toughness

But the hardest part is keeping the pressure on when no one’s visiting your site and you’re not making a cent. This is why I created this chapter. You need to keep pressing through and have some mental toughness to keep doing it.

It reminds me when I used to race mountain bike cross country. These were normally hellish 2.5 hour races that were comprised of 7 laps. The starts were absolutely furious as you were in the red zone just trying to establish your position. Your heart rate was through the roof and your legs were full of lactic acid.

However, this first lap wasn’t the hardest part of the race. The second lap was.

In the first lap your mind was ready to fight and your body fueled with adrenaline. However, in the second lap your body was paying for the first lap’s punishment. Your mind was saying, “I can’t do this . . . I’ve still got 6 laps to ride and I’m feeling like I could die . . . maybe I should stop.”

It was easy to dig yourself into a mental hole and feel like pulling out.

But then as you complete your second lap you begin to settle into a rhythm. Your body recovers and you get some momentum. As you begin to pass other people you get your confidence back and those mental doubts go away and you refocus on the task at hand.

If you’ve completed all the steps in parts 1-7, you’re probably hitting lap 2 about now. Keep focused. It will only be a matter of time before you see some positive results.

Building momentum

In the meantime, I recommend you keep following the formula of building momentum I outlined in Part 6, “The Traffic”.

During this period I recommend setting yourself the following goals. It will help you get through this little rut.

1) Write 1-2 articles a week (following the principles in Part 7).
2) Get 2-4 new links a week (following the principles in Part 6).

Just consistently keep doing this. Do it without expectation for at least 6-8 weeks. If you’re still not seeing growth then I would bet that you are doing something on your site that is actually inhibiting traffic.

Check the following:

1) You’re not doing anything that violates the Google Webmaster Guidelines.
2) See if your site is being indexed correctly by using some of the webmaster tools provided by Google.
3) Ensure that you have links pointing to your site.

Once you’ve started seeing some growth, you’ll feel more motivated to keep driving forward.

The basic formula for growth is easy. Simply:

1) Develop more content on a more diverse keyword group that people love and want to link to.
2) Develop more content that can be monetized via affiliate links and your own product. For example via reviews and case studies.
3) Improve your sales letter for your product by writing more compelling content, adding testimonials and building trust. Remember, if you can take your conversion rate from 2% to 4% you can double your income.

If you methodically follow my advice there really should be no reason why you can’t reach your $1000 a month mark. Of course you can use this to have an amazing family vacation each year, start a college fund, support a new member of the family or really whatever you wish.

Perhaps you don’t want to dream big, but it is very possible to earn much more than your $1000 a month. The next major hurdle is to take your site from a part-time income, to a full-time, day job replacing income.

The simplest way is to focus on the 80/20 rule as much as possible and automate this process as much as possible by outsourcing the processes. Simple mathematics say that if you could replicate this 10 times or make 5 sites twice as profitable, you can earn $10,000 a month.

This would be a dream for many folks and could be a good pathway for you.

However, if you want to hit these kinds of figures and higher, there are probably more efficient ways to go.

Now they aren’t easier necessarily. You need to be more skilled and possibly take more risks.

Article Series
This article is part of a series. Other published articles in this series so far are shown below:

1. How to make $1000 a month online from scratch
2. The required mindset for online success
3. Choosing a niche for your online business
4. How to plan your online business
5. How to start your online business
6. How to get traffic to my website?
7. How to get my site to make money 

Albert

In regard to making money on the Internet, everyone is always looking for the quick fix. They want to sign up for a program, place an advertisement, and make hundreds or thousands of dollars instantly. While this may be possible depending on your circumstances, the most direct and guaranteed path to success on the Internet is to stick with the fundamentals. 

A friend of mine who is an athletic coach for kids in the city where I live reminded me of this lesson. This guy is actually so passionate about kids and athletics that he coaches 4 different sports: basketball, soccer, baseball and football. Of course, he has a kid of his own on each team. But what is remarkable about this guy is the results he gets with his teams. 

He was recruited to coach the 8th grade football team where his children go to school. After 27 years of losing seasons in a row, the first year my friend became the head coach the team won the district championship and repeated their championship run the following year. This past weekend he coached 12 different games and won all 12 of them. As you can tell, this guy is extremely dedicated.  

But the funny thing is that he and the kids he coaches are not totally hung up on winning. If they lose a game, they feel equally good about themselves as they would if they had won. What matters most to them is how well they played and lived up to their potential as a team.  

The real question is how my friend’s teams continually perform on such a high level and beat nearly anyone they play even though they are often smaller and younger than their competitors. I asked this question to my friend the other day and he told me that it’s all in the fundamentals.   

In his practices, all he works on with his kids is keeping a positive mindset and practicing the fundamentals. He told me that his teams never scrimmage or strategize about upcoming games during practice. They simply work hard on all the fundamentals of whatever particular sport they are playing and do so more than any other team they play. This constant practice and improvement of the
fundamentals is what allows his teams to progress faster than his competitors. While most other teams get caught up with how to win, out-strategize, be stronger than and intimidate their opponents, my friend’s team is just so good at the basics that they blow everyone out of the water when game day arrives. 

This got me thinking about my own Internet business and why I’ve been able to succeed on such a high level while most others who have tried to do what I do have failed. The answer is not really surprising. 

Most people who try to build a successful Internet home business are looking for the quick fix. They want it to work IMMEDIATELY and so they usually fall prey to business opportunities that promise to help them get rich overnight and advertising scams that promise to deliver thousands of hungry prospects to their website in the next 24 hours. Of course, these opportunistic schemes are really
just geared to steal people’s hard earned money. You see, when someone is desperate and looking for an INSTANT solution, they will often be taken advantage of and their chances for success with an Internet home business are slim to none.  

However, while there are thousands of business opportunities on the Internet and millions of different ways to advertise and promote your website, I personally practice the fundamentals in my Internet home business. I do this by sticking with the business opportunities I’ve joined for the long haul and promoting my website consistently with simple, affordable and easily maintained Internet marketing techniques.  

In fact, one of the techniques that works best for me is writing articles like this one and getting them published on other people’s websites using article syndication tools and software found online. 

By writing articles and getting them published on other websites online using powerful tools like those mentioned above, I’m able to get my name and website address in front of thousands of people without paying a dime in advertising. Of course, the key to this strategy is that I write and distribute articles consistently in this way. It’s one of those “fundamentals” that doesn’t cost anything but a little time and effort. Fact is, it’s this price of time and effort that most people are unwilling to pay. They’ll gladly part with hundreds or even thousands of dollars, but ask them to do a little hard work and they say “No way.”  

It’s this understanding that can separate you from the pack. If you are willing to practice the fundamentals of your business faithfully and consistently, you will be destined to succeed on a high level. But if you can’t and you’re only looking for the quick fix, you have already lost the game before you even set foot on the field.  

Even pros like me practice the fundamentals every day. In fact, especially pros like me practice the fundamentals. The moment I stop practicing the fundamentals is the moment I stop being a pro. Think about this carefully and then renew YOUR commitment to the fundamentals of your Internet home business today. Do this and you will soar past your competition. 

If you don’t know the fundamentals of marketing online yet and want a mentor who can teach you and guide you and push you to achieve the success you deserve, join my team today and let me show you a path that has worked for me and a growing number of like-minded people in my “inner-circle”

To your success!
Albert