To Blog or Build a Site

There is much noise about the benefits of having a blog. Do blogs work better than websites? Should you have a blog and/or have a website for maximum exposure? Why would you bother paying for a website when you can blog for free?

These are all questions that I grappled when I was a total newbie. For a while I was struggling to understand the difference between a website and a blog!

Find out if you should be blogging or building a website (or both) by reading this article To Blog or Build?

No website? No problem. A simple business idea to try.

Don't let the fact that you don't have a website stop you from making money on the internet.

Just copy this business idea. Only cost is in advertising with Google Adwords, but that doesn't need to cost a fortune. I started with about $50 to discover what would work and what wouldn't.

When you see some success from your adverstising you will want to ramp the business up and that will cost a little, a very little!

Essentially, what I'll describe in this blog is how to advertise and sell downloadable audio books online. Think how huge the market for audio books is. Commuters, the blind, people who have difficulty holding a book, and so it goes.... Most people these days have an mp3 player or CD player.

First of all you'll need to sign up to be an affiliate of an audio books store. Leisure Audio Sales has a fabulous range, great affiliate support and training, and offers free excerpts so that customers can try before they buy.

Then you need to decide what titles you want to promote. Do you want to promote specific titles, an entire category or perhaps the entire store? The training section for affiliates gives ideas on what to promote and how (even offline promoting at doctors surgeries etc).

You'll need to sign up for a Google Adwords account. Get the advanced account straight away. It doesn't cost anything and it's a lot more flexible.

Learn all you can about Google Adwords from their website and do this free 5 day Google Adwords ecourse by Perry Marshall.

One thing you will learn is that you'll need some keywords for you ad. Keywords are how people search on the internet ie. what they type in to the Google search box. Google adwords are displayed on the right hand side of the returned results. This is where you want your ad to appear.

Your keywords will need to be things that people are actually searching for. To find this information you can get a free 30 subscription to Wordtracker. However, before you do this make sure you have completed the course and signed up for and found your way around the audio books website. That way, you'll have a full 30 days to concentrate on your keywords for no cost.

I'd be interested to hear how you go.

Until next posting
Sharon

Your opinion doesn't matter.

Now, don't be offended! Read on and you'll know what I mean.

When deciding on a home based business a lot of people think about property investing, share trading or internet. (Funny about that. They're the businesses I'm in.)

Anyway, I have found opinions to be unhelpful at best and downright dangerous at worst.

With my share/CFD trading I have a system that is very easy to follow. A monkey could do it! A couple of weeks ago I formed the opinion that the financial sector was going to fall even more. As luck(?) would have it, it bounced up giving me a lovely opportunity to go short because my opinion was that it still had further to fall.

Trouble was I had no signal to go short as per my trading plan, but I wasn't going to let that minor detail stop me. I went short, but guess what? The financial sector kept heading up. Lucky I adhered to my stop and didn't lose too much money.

So much for my opinion, I should have stuck to my trading plan.....

Now to property investment.

My opinion is that a lovely blue feature wall looks lovely with yellow walls. An ochre coloured feature wall takes my fancy too. And purple, my favourite colour must fit in there somewhere, doesn't it?

Sound yucky? May be it does, may be it doesn't. The point is that such colours will clash with the majority of renters furniture. The renter who has the perfect furniture and loves those particular colours may not get to see your property at all!

So even though neutral colours may, in your opinion, be boring the fact is they would suit the vast majority of renters. If the renter wants colour they can get some vibrant cushions and throw rugs etc.

Now let's get to the internet.

In my opinion I have written some fabulous ads to post on traffic sites. I expected to see a big boost in the number of visitors to my site, people signing up for my ezine and success course etc.

I thought that if I did a google ad campaign for an audio bible over Easter I was bound to make a ton of sales.

Yes, I got a few sign ups for my ezine. A few people clicked on my bible ad but failed to buy.

See where having an opinion gets me? NOWHERE!

As Dr Phil says "... and how's that workin' for ya?"

If somethings not working, despite our opinion to the contrary, we have to change our tactic. It's not about being right or wrong, it's about doing what works. Usually, we have to work on ourselves before our business can possibly be successful.


Feel free to share some of your opinions.
Sharon