If you have started working from home, you know that there can be some confusing times. You do not have a physical team of people with you to help you through every problem. You do have a whole team of people at your fingertips online, though. One way to gain access to these people is by using an affiliate marketing board. This is a place where you can go to ask the questions that you can not get answered fast enough via email. I have used this tool many times to get a handle on a concept I did not understand.

Sometimes, you can not solve every problem yourself. It is hard to admit that sometimes, especially as the type of personality that many small business owners possess lends itself to a certain independence. I have found that you can learn a great deal by using an affiliate marketing board to help you with some of the problems that arise in a home based online business. There are so many people just like you that are going through the same issues that you are, and you owe it to yourself to take advantage of this amazing resource. Try it today, and see how well it can work for you.

The wedding was fast approaching, and I could not wait for it to get closer. I had every detail; under control, except for what we were going to do about a wedding car. I talked through it with my fiance and she and I agreed that we wanted a classic limo. They are harder to find than you might think, so it did take a little digging. Soon enough, we found one that was just perfect for the kind of classic style that we wanted. it was creme colored, and it had a black canvas top, just like the limousines in the old movies. We were so happy with it. I knew that on the day of our wedding, I wanted to arrive to the church in style and elegance. It has always been very important to me that we keep the kind of look to the wedding that we will always look back on and love. I had to do some searching for the right wedding car for the day, but when I found the car we ended up using, I fell in love. So much so, that I ended up buying the car. I put it in our extra garage bay as a memento of an amazing day.

The world of business startups is rife with option. You can buy a franchise or start your own business from scratch. Different approaches suit different people.

There are many franchises available to buy. Many companies you use are probably franchises, from restaurants to cleaning services. A key benefit in buying into a franchise is that you essentially get a readymade business. When you buy into a franchise, many aspects of the business including marketing are taken care of off. There are many different franchises available. Some will give you the business name, equipment and everything you need for start up, others only give you the basics and you still have to buy or lease a location, purchase equipment and the inventory you will need.

The negatives of buying a franchise however are that they are typically inflexible in terms to making it your own, and of course the initial outlay. Visit the Key Mergers website for more information or if you would like to f you would like to buy a business or even to sell one.

Building your very own company from the bottom up however means that you can grow the business organically over time, you can limit your initial outlay and you can be as creative with the direction of your business as you like. Depending on how novel your new enterprise is, it is possible that your will have a steep testing curve and will have to make all of your own connections.

At the end of the day, the rational for choosing whether to buy a franchise or go it alone are dependent on what your want to get out of the enterprise. There is a trade-off between creativity, fleximility, risk and reward.

We all watch the commercials on TV. We hear them on the radio. We meet someone at an event or hear them speak and we are hooked. What has happened? Their marketing efforts have made the ordinary sound extraordinary. They have been successful at essentially creating something out of nothing! This is marketing at its best!

How can we, as entrepreneurial women, market ourselves and our businesses most effectively? First we need to clarify what we want to gain as a result of our marketing efforts. Once we have identified those goals, then we can go back and put our plan together which will tell us HOW to market ourselves most effectively.

What we want to gain as a result of our marketing might be:

-To increase the number of potential clients who know about us.

-To increase the number of potential clients who not only have heard of us, but who understand why they need our products. (explain the ways that your products or services will benefit them)

-To increase the number of potential clients to take action and contact us to buy our products or services.

Some entrepreneurs still think it works exactly like that. However, they are mistaken. Yes, we want our prospects to hear about us, know that we have the perfect product or solution for them which will entice them to come to us to buy. But it doesn’t necessarily happen so easily today.

The business landscape has changed due to two very specific changes in our current marketplace.

1- The number of competitor entrepreneurs is constantly rising (consumers have more choices in just about every industry) and 2- The abundance of information (due to the internet and similar venues) bombarding people with everything they’ve always (or even never) wanted to know about tends to be overwhelming and confusing.

Because of these changes, successful businesspeople have to be aware of the newest ways to thrive, not just survive in today’s marketplace. To thrive in today’s marketplace, no matter your industry, you must make every effort to position yourself and your company to be “top of mind” with as many potential AND current clients as possible. The onus is on you to ensure that when your potential or current client is ready to buy your product or service they think of YOU first. Do you see how that is a different mindset from the “old days” where the focus was on putting a good product or service out there, knowing that you would essentially have clients come to you for them? Today it just doesn’t work that way.

Put simply, our potential clients are being bombarded with LOTS of information and offers. In order to secure them as clients, they need YOU to come out as the preferred vendor or the person they will choose to hire or buy from. This happens only after you have “proven” yourself in it for the long haul. With so many choices, the average person needs time to sort through the information and decide who is “for real” and who has the best product or service. It is up to you to market and position yourself as the most credible, trustworthy expert in your industry. The responsibility for keeping your name in front of them until the time they are ready to move forward, remains totally with you as business owner. The latest research shows that the average person will not act on something until they see or hear it a minimum of 7-9 times, even if they need or want it. How can you make sure that you are the one who the client chooses to do business with?

1- Focus on building relationships

This brings us to the next important change to the way successful entrepreneurs market themselves for the purpose of securing business. We need to be focusing on the relationships we are creating with both our current and potential clients to ensure long term success. We have all heard of the importance of CRM or customer relationship marketing, right? This is where we, as business owners, focus on how we interact with each customer in an effort to solidify our long term relationship with them. We know that people do business with people they like. So it behooves us to take the extra step to show that we truly care about our clients by asking them questions about themselves, their families, their businesses. And from that information send birthday and anniversary cards, surprise them by sharing an article pertinent to one of their interests, touch base with them regularly via phone, notes, email, newsletter, and an in-person meeting regularly. Does this take work? You bet! But, the rewards of loyal, repeat clients will be more than worth your effort.

Relationships are forged one opportunity at a time. They can be solidified in person most effectively, but certainly can also be done via notes, emails, and phone calls when your clients are across the continent or around the globe. Get out and meet new people on a regular basis. Get to know them by showing genuine interest in them and ask questions. Then proudly and confidently share with them what you do (your solution). Then follow up with them and thank them for their time. Send them your newsletter each month. Spend time nurturing your relationships.

2- Focus on a niche

DIFFERENTIATING yourself is key in this area! Most business owners think that the more products or services, they offer, the higher their chances of being successful, when actually the opposite is true. Those who specialize in a niche market– zeroing in on the needs of a certain niche in the marketplace end up being most successful.

The goal is to find your niche (identify a group of people whom share similar characteristics that you would like to serve with your products or services), narrow it down as far as possible and then hit it with all you’ve got. The narrower your market the broader your chances of success in this hypercompetitive, over-communicated to society. In short, specialization or niche marketing implies superiority. Niche marketing is the wave of the future! The greater the competition, the greater the need for specialists. What will YOUR specialization or niche be? Where are they? Make sure you show up there. What do they read? Be sure to write an article for that publication. Become so entrenched in serving your niche, that you are clearly seen as the expert and thus, the person your prospects trust and do business with.

3- Become an expert!

Consumers (whether businesses or personal) want to minimize any mistakes. So they will trust and eventually do business with those professionals who are seen as the expert in their chosen field. You should make it your main purpose to position yourself and be an expert. You do this by reading, researching and investigating various aspects of your industry. This work will give you the valuable information you need to take your new found expert status to the next level. Once you have enough foundational information related to your product or service, you need to be writing articles, speaking at events attended by your niche, and continually getting your name out there in the marketplace as an expert. Ask yourself, “What free report(s) could I create and make available to my prospects?” “What information related to your product or service are your prospects wondering about?” “What could you research and provide to them that they would appreciate?” Share your industry knowledge and expertise with others. It is probably one of the most successful ways to be seen as an expert and inevitably be the one chosen to do business with.

Can all of this be done overnight? Certainly not. However, taking small steps on a daily basis will get you closer to your marketing yourself to a thriving business full of clients who are all too happy to tell others about you.

You can do it!

If you would like help moving your business to thriving, contact Janice to schedule your complimentary consultation.

Janice Copeland, President and Founder
Unlimited Growth Potential
Contact her for your FREE consultation
703-727-4155
www.UnlimitedGrowthPotential.com
Janice@UnlimitedGrowthPotential.com ©

Janice M. Copeland, author of 15 No-nonsense Success Strategies for Women and myriad self help CDs covering topics pertinent to sales, marketing and entrepreneurial success for women, has over 20 years of combined corporate and entrepreneurial success. Climbing the corporate ladder to a senior level position with responsibility for a team of hundreds taught her many life lessons that she shares readily with her coaching and consulting clients.

She coaches women who are ready for positive change. Women who know there is more to life available to them, but don’t know how to claim it.

Check out all of her resources geared toward helping busy women, like you, live a more balanced, stress and guilt-free life sprinkled with success after success at http://www.unlimitedgrowthpotential.com or call her at 703-727-4155 and ask her your toughest questions. She looks forward to helping you live a vibrantly meaningful life! Yes, you can do it! (even with kids, laundry, hubby, a pile of dirty dishes and a dog that slobbers :))

The word’s out that it’s possible to make a good income from the internet without even owning a website.

It’s an appealing proposition, but is it too good to be true? I used to think so. But now I know differently…

Have you noticed the ads down the right side of the Google search results screen? Those little squares of text are changing the face of the internet. They are changing the way we use it, and the way we can earn from it.

These are “Pay per Click” ads. When you click on them, the owner of the ad pays. Usually something between a cent and a few dollars.

Welcome to the Wealthy World of AdWords

The bare facts: If you have a good product to sell, and know how to write an eye catching ad, you can make money on the internet without a website.

The harsh reality: You can run up a huge bill and sell nothing if you don’t know what you’re doing.

The secret: Finding the right product, and getting that ad to work without costing you a fortune in costly clicks that don’t result in sales - that’s the secret to success.

The AdWords Academy

Google runs an online training school for adwords that takes you step-by-step through the process of how to set up an ad and get it running. It’s a good way of learning the basics… But if you are serious about earning money and saving time by stepping round a huge and costly learning curve, you could do with consulting the experts.

One such expert is Wade Winger, author of the Google Profits ebook. Following his advice I have a campaign up and running and getting clicks for just pennies a day.

The Google Proftis ebook gives excellent step-by-step guidance on the two sides of the Google money making coin.

The two-step Google Profit Process

1. find a good product to sell

In this case - ebooks that pay affiliate commissions. There are literally 1,000’s out there and they often pay around 50% of the full selling price to affiliates. Wade’s recommended source and system is Clickbank and I agree with him.

Google Profits takes you step-by-step, with screenshots, through the process of setting up a ClickBank account and choosing products to sell.

2. make Google ads work for you

Most of us get nervous when it comes to committing to a paid for ad service that we barely understand. Google Profits is the highway code of the AdWords system. Once you know the “rules of the road” everything becomes less daunting and more doable.

The Google Profits ebook even gives working examples to follow, and tells you how to tweak your ads to get you more clicks for less money.

I’d love to hint at Wade’s secret formula that makes sure you get results without having to worry about running costly test campaigns - but I’d probably have a law suit on my hands!

Instead I’m inviting you over to find out more about Google Profits on our Health & Wealth ebooks site.

Happy profiteering!

Gary Paul is an independent reviewer of ebooks. Find out more about Google Proftis at www.healthandwealthebooks.net along with free articles on earning money from writing, blogging and building website traffic.

Homebuyers have several loan options. Hence, purchasing a new home has
never been easier. Individuals who cannot afford a down payment or
closing costs may take advantage of loan programs that offer assistance.
Furthermore, those hoping to obtain a low rate mortgage may consider a
loan with an adjustable rate. Because of the initial low cost of
adjustable rate mortgages, monthly mortgage payments are also lower. However,
low rate mortgages are short term. To avoid an interest rate hike,
homeowners should refinance before rates begin to increase.

Advantages of Adjustable Rate Mortgages

There are several advantages to accepting an adjustable mortgage. For
starters, a low rate mortgage allows buyers to purchase pricier homes,
while maintaining an affordable monthly payment. Moreover, because of
record low rates, homebuyers who obtain an adjustable rate mortgage can
enjoy falling rates without refinancing their mortgage. Thus, they avoid
closing costs and other fees.

Adjustable rate mortgages are also ideal for individuals who plan on
moving in a few years. Some people enjoy the stability of living in one
place for many years. In this case, refinancing for a fixed rate is a
wise choice. However, if you prefer the flexibility of moving every three
to five years, you will save money with an adjustable rate.

Pitfalls of Adjustable Rate Mortgages

While adjustable rates offer many attractive features, one major
drawback is that low rates are temporary. If interest rates continue to fall,
you will not be subjected to the dangers of these loans. However, if
rates begin to climb, so will your mortgage payment. Homebuyers who
cannot afford an increased mortgage are at risk of losing their home. Thus,
if your goal is to remain in your current home for many years,
refinancing for a fixed rate will offer predictable mortgage payments.

How Soon Can You Refinance a Mortgage?

Fortunately, home mortgage loans can be refinanced whenever you like.
Some lenders suggest allowing the loan to mature at least 12 months.
However, if you detect a change in market trends, refinancing shortly
after purchasing your home is a smart maneuver. Those contemplating
refinancing must be prepared to pay additional closing fees. Moreover, contact
your current lender and inquire of prepayment penalties.

Carrie Reeder offers advice about
Mortgage Refinance Loans Online.

View our Recommended Lowest Rate Mtg Refinance Lenders Online.

For many companies, the ability to provide group health insurance to their employees is a huge benefit that hard workers will truly value, especially if they have a family to take care of at home. However, sometimes the task of setting up a group health insurance program can be difficult for many new and smaller companies. Fortunately, a group health insurance broker can be readily and easily used to setup and administer such a program for any company desiring to provide health insurance to their valuable employees.

A reputable group health insurance broker will normally answer any questions a company may have about providing health insurance to the members of their company. For instance did you know that a group health insurance plan will only cover full time employees? Your group health insurance broker is responsible for providing answers to questions similar in nature. In fact, many health insurance companies define a full time worker or employee as someone that works a minimum of 30 hours a week at their place of employment.

In order to qualify for group health insurance a company must have at least 2 full time employees on the payroll. Naturally more is better and a group health insurance broker will advise a prospective company of facts just like this. Additionally at a minimum 50% or more of a company’s full time staff must enroll in the offered group health insurance and coverage provided by the company. There are additional rules and regulations to follow when it comes to adding dependants and newborn children to an existing health insurance plan that covers an individual as part of a group.

When it comes to the cost of a group health insurance plan a broker will inform you that the company is required to provide or pay at least half of the health insurance premium for their full time employees. In most cases they are not required to cover any of the expenses associated with providing health insurance for an employees dependants.

One of the best benefits a group health insurance broker can provide assistance to a company with is the proper administration of their health insurance policy. Generally speaking it normally takes about a week for a health insurance provider to review any group health care plans submitted by a company hoping to obtain health insurance for it’s workers. Sometimes this waiting period can drag on, especially if there is a multitude of paperwork that needs to be completed in order to obtain the health coverage.

Clearly, in the case such as the one mentioned above a knowledgeable group health insurance broker is worth their weight in gold as they can be tasked to properly prepare all of the administrative paperwork needed to complete the group health care coverage application. Their knowledge and expertise can also be used to handle or field any questions during the insurance underwriting process, which can sometimes be a very complex procedure.

As you can see the difficult process of setting up a group health insurance plan or coverage for the full time employees of a company can easily be managed and controlled with the helpful assistance of a group health insurance broker.

Quickly find more money saving health insurance tips and information on how a group health insurance broker can help you by visiting GoodHealthCoverage.com a website created by Sharlene Raven, a respected webmaster whose site specalizes in providing health insurance information you can trust.

Are you looking for a long lost friend or even a relative that you’ve fallen out of touch with? If so, online People Finders are one way to help you get started with your search. But with so many online services out there, it can get a little overwhelming. And you don’t want to get ripped-off either if you decide to go with a pay service.

One of the problems, even with the ‘free’ people finder services, is that they’ll supply you with a city of residence, but not much else; if you want more information, you have to pay for it. In some instances, the name of the town they live in may be just enough information for you to call the local information service in that area, and if your party doesn’t have an unlisted number, you’ll at least get a phone number.

WhitePages.com is one site that will actually give you the street address and telephone number for free when you enter the person’s first and last name. City and/or state is helpful here, and as long as your party has a listed number in their local phone directory, you’ll able contact them this way.

Peoplefinders.com is another ‘free’ online services that provides you with a current city of residence and actually every location that person has lived in for more than the past ten years. By entering the person’s first and last name with middle initial and birthday if you know it, the site responds with their present city of residence and even any AKAs they’ve had in the past like maiden names or original last names if they’ve ever changed it. It also supplies you with their mother’s last name and age.

Usa-People-Search is a site that is similar to PeopleFinders where you can go to enter the person’s full name in the search window, and the site will then supply you with all of people matching that first and last name, their age and what town they live in. You’ll have to pay to get exact address here also but at least you’ve got a starting point with the basic info they give you.

If you’ve browsed around at some of the people finder sites and just can’t seem to get anywhere, you may want to think about an online service where you pay to get more data. But do yourself a favor first and take a look at one website called the OnelineReviewBoard that has researched this subject at great length to get some advice about what to do and not to do to protect yourself. The link to their ‘Truth Behind Online Investigation Services’ page is: http://www.onlinereviewboard.com/bestonlineinvestigation2005.htm. Good Luck!

A Successful Team is built around mateship, around respect for your team mates and for yourself. I am not saying that everyone will get on like best buddies, what I noticed is that in all our ‘differences’ everyone was accepted as they were, got on within the boundaries of the club and got the job done. I have seen teams that have been full of stars, as I am sure you have too, and those teams have not succeeded. They have not achieved their full potentials as individuals or as a team.

Does that seem a strange notion when I say that an individual can achieve their full potential as part of a Team? Many professional athletes in team sport who train together regularly, learn about each others strengths and weaknesses and funny enough your weaknesses become very apparent and they will get used against you to keep your feet on the ground when you have performed exceptionally well one week!! A good team leader or coach will gather all this information and put his team together according to the collective strength and weaknesses of every person in the team. In that environment everyone has a chance to shine and achieve his full potential, assisted by his or her team mates.

The goal is to cover the team’s weaknesses, exploit their strengths and produce a unit that functions and works very well together for the common good, for the team goal. Everyone is involved, everyone has a job to do for the success of the team so that individuals share the victories with their mates and celebrate as a whole. A common acronym for TEAM is ‘together everyone achieves more’. It is for these reasons that an individual can fulfil their potential in a team setting.

As an Affiliate Marketer, in my naivety, I thought that I was going to work the Net in my ‘Home Based Business’ and do remarkably well financially all on my own. I have since found out that any business, even Internet Business requires team work to succeed.

In Network Marketing, Multilevel Marketing, Internet Marketing or even Affiliate Marketing you will only ever do well if your team is doing well. Everyone needs to be taught and trained by your up line, you need to do your own research, take what you can use from your up line and then you need to teach, train and encourage your own team, your down line. A good leader will always tell you that his success in achieving and fulfilling goals and dreams has always occurred when he has had a good team and everyone rallied together for the common goals of all concerned.

The same principles of leadership in sport apply in business, in fact anywhere there is a collection of people who hope to work together. You need to have a common goal or vision and all work toward helping each other by swapping ideas, communicating with each other effectively, working together, putting the groups interests sometimes before your own. But at the end of the day, remember, there can only be one boss. This sometimes needs to be sorted before any team will succeed, one person becomes accountable to all, they take on full responsibility for decisions made and they should have the respect of all concerned.

If they don’t then your business won’t exactly be flying along to the top of your industry.

As an Affiliate Marketer my goal is to be debt free, financially independent from the common systems of employment and have more time to spend with my Family doing the things we like to do.

Are your goals similar? Does your Team liase with each other for the common good? If not it is time to do something about it, re-establish communication channels and set new goals, reassess the group vision and create a mission statement so that everyone knows where they are going. Success will come when you work Together.

As you study for your CCNA and CCNP exams, particularly if you’re getting hands-on practice in your home lab or rack rental service, you’re going to be sending a lot of pings. As a CCNA or CCNP candidate, you know that five exclamation points (!!!!!) as a ping return indicates that you have IP connectivity to the remote destination. Five periods (…..) indicates that you do not have that connectivity.

It’s not enough to know that you don’t have IP connectivity to the remote device, you’ve got to know why. Ping is a great first step to network troubleshooting, but the results are quite limited. As a CCNA and CCNP, you’ve got to know how to diagnose the problem and resolve it. Just looking at the routing table is not enough - a high-powered Cisco debug, debug ip packet, can often show you exactly where the problem is.

WARNING: debug ip packet should not be run on any production router without understanding the effect of this command on your router. This command results in a lot of output and can actually lock up a router.

In this case, we’ll run the command on a home lab router that cannot ping 22.2.2.2. The debug will be turned on and another ping sent.

R1#debug ip packet

IP packet debugging is on

R1#ping 22.2.2.2

Type escape sequence to abort.

Sending 5, 100-byte ICMP Echos to 22.2.2.2, timeout is 2 seconds:

3d23h: IP: s=1.1.1.1 (local), d=22.2.2.2, len 100, unroutable.

R1#undebug all

All possible debugging has been turned off

I’ve edited this output for clarity; the important word is “unroutable”. This indicates that the packet is not leaving the router because there is no match in the routing table for this destination. We’ll configure a static default route and send the ping again.

R1#ping 22.2.2.2

Type escape sequence to abort.

Sending 5, 100-byte ICMP Echos to 22.2.2.2, timeout is 2 seconds:

U.U.U

Success rate is 0 percent (0/5)

That output may surprise those of you who are used to getting five of the same symbol back whenever you send a ping. We got three “U”s back along with two periods. We’ll now run debug ip packet and send the ping again.

R1#debug ip packet

IP packet debugging is on

R1#ping 22.2.2.2

Type escape sequence to abort.

Sending 5, 100-byte ICMP Echos to 22.2.2.2, timeout is 2 seconds:

3d23h: IP: s=172.12.123.1 (local), d=22.2.2.2 (Serial0), len 100, sending

R1#traceroute 22.2.2.2

Type escape sequence to abort.

Tracing the route to 22.2.2.2

1 172.12.123.2 36 msec 36 msec 36 msec

2 172.12.123.2 !H * !H

R1#undebug all

All possible debugging has been turned off

Again, I’ve edited this output. The key word in this output is “sending”, meaning that the packets are leaving the router. The ping return of “U.U.U” is a general indication that the packets are indeed being transmitted, but that a downstream router is having a problem routing the packets. Running traceroute reveals some more interesting return characters! In this case, the downstream router did not have a match for the destination in its routing table.

It’s easy to concentrate on the local router when you’re not getting positive ping returns. When troubleshooting this kind of issue, keep in mind the problem could be on an intermediate router and not on the local router. Use debug ip packet to make sure the packets are leaving the local router, and traceroute to determine what downstream router may have the problem. And get used to the fact that pings and traceroutes can give you some unusual-looking returns!

Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933, is the owner of The Bryant Advantage, home of free CCNA and CCNP tutorials, The Ultimate CCNA Study Package, and Ultimate CCNP Study Packages.
For a FREE copy of his latest e-books, “How To Pass The CCNA” and “How To Pass The CCNP”, visit the website and download your free copies. You can also get FREE CCNA and CCNP exam questions every day! Pass the CCNA exam with The Bryant Advantage!