RosalindGardner.com

Learn Blogging & Affiliate Marketing with Rosalind Gardner

Work-at-Home Scams: How to Avoid Them

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I recently received the following email to my Super Affiliate Handbook ebook support address from a fellow who is obviously more than just a little bit cynical about Internet marketing business opportunities due to work-at-home scams:online scams

HELLO

I've just recently been ripped off by a work-at-home scam and I need to be sure you are not going to do any of the following.

  1. Leave me with no way to contact anyone for support.
  2. Ignore my emails but at the same time send more of your own FORM emails trying to make a sale.
  3. After I order your product, you then proceed to tell me that I need to pay more money for coaching, mentoring, or to move up to the next level

You see, I have never had an online business and have no website and I am interested in affiliate marketing but need a lot of help to implement this project. I am willing to work and have the desire, just don't have the knowledge.

Need to know you'll be there.

Please email back.

THANK YOU,
Joe

Here's my response to Joe and everyone like him…

Dear Joe,

I appreciate what you are asking, as I know there are many work-at-home scams out there and I'm very sorry to hear that you were caught up in one.

I appreciate and applaud your due diligence in researching my product prior to investing in it.

However, there is a limit to what one can expect to receive in terms of support depending upon the amount you pay for a product.

If you buy a $5000 coaching program, what you are asking for is completely legitimate.

On the other hand, when you buy a $27 ebook, expecting much more than product download support is somewhat unrealistic.

Granted, I personally answer questions here on my webmaster information site but what I personally do is beyond what you can normally expect from industry ‘experts'.

So-called EXPERTS typically sell you their knowledge via ebooks on the cheap and then never answer your questions. So, if you want to ask questions about the content in their books, you should be prepared to pay for their time and advice.

In other words, before you buy a product, you should research all the offerings your chosen expert has available and if those products meet your needs.

For example, if you want personal feedback, check to see if your expert has an ‘ask questions page‘, a membership site, or offers one-on-one consultations.

To be clear, personal consultations are generally more expensive than membership coaching offers.

For just a moment, put yourself in the busy shoes of your ‘expert'.

Would you spend much time answering questions from people who spend $27 to buy your book, or, would you choose to work harder with those who pay more for your valuable advice, i.e. one-on-one coaching and consultations?

Take that as a BIG hint as to how you should build your business AND avoid work-at-home scams.

Cheers,
Rosalind

Comments, questions or suggestions? Please leave a comment below!

Cheers,

Ros

How about a 2-Hour Work Week?

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Work the SystemWant to work less and earn more?

I recently read a book that teaches you exactly how to do that.

Sam Carpenter's “Work the System” has a higher percentage of 5 star ratings on Amazon than Michael Gerber's 30 million selling ‘E-Myth' AND Steven Covey's legendary ‘7 Habits of Highly Effective People'.

Sam is remarkable.

He worked a soul-destroying 80-100 work weeks running his business for 15 long consecutive years.

By that time, he was a physical and mental wreck, had lost all his friends, and had no life whatsoever outside of work. Then — just days before his business was about to collapse something happened which changed everything…

He now works 2 hours a week, is in the top 1% of income earners and wakes up every morning and chooses exactly how he wants to spend his day.

Better yet, though, is the fact that he documented what could well become the new global blueprint for working less and earning more, so that you can follow the exact system he created. If you think this won't apply to your situation/business you NEED to look at this…

I've teamed up with the author to offer you a complimentary copy of his remarkable book as part of the launch of the 3rd edition. Share it with your friends and you'll also get the Audiobook gratis.

Get the Work the System book by Sam Carpenter for free today.

10 Resolutions for Better Online Business in 2012

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The end of the year is a fabulous time to set goals that will help you make more money online in the new year (and beyond).

Here are a few New Year's business resolutions you might want to consider adopting:

  1. Ask for help

    We often fail to achieve our goals because we don't ask for help. Don't let ‘not knowing' or ‘not understanding' undermine your potential for success. Reach out and ask for mentoring, guidance and support when you need it. Join a membership site that teaches what you want to learn and has a community forum in which you can get answers to your questions.

  2. Cultivate a positive mindset

    Success is nearly impossible to achieve when we focus on our failures, doubts and worries. View mistakes as part of the process. Learn from them and be grateful that no one died. 🙂 Derive motivation and inspiration from the success of others.

  3. Be realistic

    Making a million dollars in the next 30 days is unlikely (despite what scam marketers tell you) unless you win the lottery or your rich uncle croaks and leaves you his fortune. Recognize that reward is in direct correlation to effort made.

  4. Learn something new

    Do some reading or take a course to improve your writing skills. Read a book to improve your self-confidence or your self-discipline.

  5. Adopt new methods

    Investigate different strategies that you can adopt to grow your business. Add product sales to your Adsense site. Add Adsense to your affiliate blog. Offer one-on-one coaching to your repertoire. Turn your blog into an exclusive membership site. And for Pete's sake, quit relying on Feedburner alone and install that Aweber code!! 🙂

  6. Focus on your target market

    If you sell medical and health products to boomers, spend more time where they hang out online and less time tweeting about Kim Kardashian's antics.

  7. Know your numbers

    Analyze your best traffic sources, best-selling products and blog posts from the previous year. Focus on those to make additional recommendations and sales to your existing audience.

  8. Get more social

    Social media marketing will continue to explode in 2012 and is clearly the best way to get free traffic to your blog. Ramp up your Facebook and Twitter activities to grow your reader and customer base.

  9. Respect your time

    Learn to automate every process that can be automated. For example, use Aweber's blog broadcasting to automatically deliver your latest blog posts to your subscriber list and Twitter. Be sure that each of your blog posts, Flickr and YouTube uploads also get posted automatically to Facebook. Increase your productivity with simple and inexpensive webmaster tools.

  10. Celebrate your accomplishments

    Savor and enjoy every step you take, no matter how small it seems. Give yourself a pat on the back or reward yourself in some way. Success isn't really success unless we enjoy it.

I hope those suggestions help you make more money online during the year(s) to come. My best wishes to you and yours for a happy, healthy and Prosperous New Year!

P.S. Please help out a fellow blogger and add your suggestions in the comments section below.

Note: This post was originally published in 2010 and has been updated for 2012.

Money Management 101

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Here's another article by Finance Expert Brandon Lamb with some no nonsense money management tips (new to some, reminders for others… who, me?) 🙂

No matter who you are, at some point in your life, you will have to manage your own money. Unfortunately, few of us receive any formal instruction for this essential skill. We must learn it the hard way – through trial and error.

Even in the best of times, the trial and error method is fraught with peril. Every mistake can be reduced to a dollar amount. In the past, maybe those amounts, while certainly unpleasant, weren’t crushing. Times have changed. The stakes are greater, and so are the penalties. Defaulting on a cell phone bill means $500 to $1000 on top of the amount already owed. If your car breaks down on the freeway, and you can’t afford to have it fixed, or even towed, it could cost you thousands of dollars in towing fees, even if you simply sign the title over wrecker so he can sell it. What’s even worse, these mistakes will be reported to the credit agencies, which can damage your financial health for years to come.

But perhaps the worst effect of money-management is the stress and worry it creates in your life. Did you know that the number one source of friction between married couples is money?

Now, I’m not saying that managing your money successfully will mean that you won’t ever worry about money. Probably the only way you’d ever stop worrying about money is if you owned a few thousand shares of Apple stock. But it can help you reduce your worry over money. And who knows, maybe even improve your relationship.

The first thing you should do is research. It’s the key to everything, and it’s usually free. Start out online. Find some financial assistance sites and absorb their free information. But please take their suggestions with a grain of salt. Not everything you read online is factual or even complete. Simply use this as a starting point, gleaning the most basic information. Then go to the library. What you need absolutely need to know is:

• How to balance your checkbook
• What interest rates are
• How to pay off loans
• How to save for retirement

Next, make a list of your financial responsibilities. Write down what you owe, who you owe, what the interest rate is, and minimum payment amounts. Be sure to include daily expenses, such as food and gas.

This is your basic budget. If you match these expenses to your monthly income, you’ll see areas you might be able cut costs as well as how much money you can set aside for retirement, or a savings.

One last piece of advice: Try to avoid credit card debt under any circumstances. Don’t charge anything that you won’t be able to pay off at the end of the month.

To learn more about how you can manage your money better, slash your spending, and put more money in your bank account, visit Brandon's Slash Your Spending or read my review of his book.

Why I Killed My Blog

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Most Super Affiliate Handbook readers and Affiliate Blogger PRO members will be familiar with a personal blog of mine that was used as an example of an affiliate site until about a year ago.

The blog was called Roamsters and I had a lot of fun building and working on it.

It was the only one of my blogs where I could write about whatever I wanted… whenever I wanted. I posted mostly about my adventures near and afar, but the blog didn't really have a defined niche.

As a professional blogger / Super Affiliate, that removal of pressure to post regularly about a specific topic is a welcome change of pace.

It also introduced me to a whole new audience of people who shared my personal interests in travel, cool gadgets and shoes. 🙂

So, why did I kill it? Here are my reasons:

  1. Roamsters began life in 2006 as a joint project with my friend, Ed, who had recently retired and wanted to supplement his retirement income. Ed, however, never really ‘took' to blogging, so I soon found myself as the only contributor.
  2. Using the site as an an affiliate site example required that I maintain and upgrade the core and theme components when necessary. Not a big deal, but around the same time, StudioPress moved to the new Genesis Framework, so changing over to that and a new theme involved a bit of a learning curve.
  3. I also had to regularly check to make sure that the affiliate links were still valid and working. On a non-niched site where you are dealing with many different merchants and product types, checking and changing affiliate links and products can get time consuming.
  4. Attracting free search engine traffic to a blog without a specific topic is much more difficult than if all your posts are within the same niche. And because it was a hobby blog, I wasn't keen to use pay per click advertising to generate traffic.
  5. Another reason I didn't want to use PPC was because it got to the point where I didn't care if the site made money or not. Hmmmm… can you see a decided lack of motivation?

I already RosalindGardner.com, which at the time was being used as a business card site. Redirecting visitors from Roamsters would not only boost traffic, rankings and sales; but personal brand awareness as well.

That realization alone cinched the deal to kill the blog.

Combining the blogs would save time (time is money) and make more money — which is exactly what I did. I moved all relevant posts over to RosalindGardner.com.

Nowadays, if you try to visit Roamsters.com, it redirects to RosalindGardner.com.

The lesson?

Don't work on sites that don’t serve a real purpose or for which monetization is difficult. Kill it or combine it. Just do whatever is necessary to keep your blogging business and brand growing.

How to Spot a Scarcity Marketing Scam

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Scarcity marketing is a strategy used by sellers to create a sense of urgency in the prospect to buy a product immediately.

This is most often accomplished by stating that the product is available for a limited time or in limited quantities, e.g. “Offer ends March 31st” or “Only 36 copies left”.

The latter tactic works especially well when the prospective buyer knows that there were only a couple hundred units originally and now there are only 36 available.

For example, take a look at the screenshot below which shows the order page for a Clickbank product that I looked at this morning.

“WOW!, that is selling like hotcakes – I'd better buy it now!” you might think.

That's almost what I did until I stopped and thought harder for a moment.

The text under Item Description, “… WARNING: ONLY 36 COPIES LEFT…” is the description that the vendor supplies to Clickbank when they post the product in the Marketplace.

Smell a rat?

Wait, it gets stinkier still.

A seller might want to limit sales if they have a training program to which they attend to students personally (like I do at Affiliate Blogger PRO) and therefore more sales means more work.

But no Clickbank vendor in their right mind would limit sales of an ebook to 215 copies. It just doesn't make sense. Maybe if they were doing a deeply discounted offer – but not for the full price of $47.

Nor would that Clickbank vendor get hundreds of affiliates to promote the product. Seriously, would YOU bother to promote a product where there were only 215 copies available and you knew that all the so-called ‘Top Guns' were promoting it as well?

I hope not!

Don't get me wrong.

I'm not saying that scarcity marketing is not an ethical strategy – it IS, when used in an honest and upright manner.

But I sure as heck wouldn't even consider buying a product from someone who so blatantly lies to (tries to scam) their prospects.

Anyway, check out the sales page (it's great copy although I wish he'd stop yelling at some point) and then click through to the order page and see if there aren't still just 36 copies left. LOL

By the way, if you really want to buy the product – that is my affiliate link – feel free to use it. 🙂

As always, stop and think before you click “Order”.

8 Tips for Asking Better Questions

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In the 10 Resolutions for Better Online Business in 2011 article, the very first tip was to “ask for help”.

In this article, you will learn how to get the help you need – when you need it – by asking better questions.

Here are 2 examples of how NOT to write questions.

how do i get started with cpa? is affiliate marketing hard? when can i start earning some income? can 250k my first year? can i earn millions? do you work alot?

Could you point me to an article that explains step by step how to get started with blogging from beginning to end? I need every detail of the process. Thanks for sharing your experiences and advice for success.

Yes, those were real questions that were posted to the NPT blog and guess what? You won't see those questions posted anywhere, because my eyes were rolled too far back into my head that I couldn't see to answer them.

To avoid frustrating your expert to the point of blindness, here are 8 tips for asking better questions.

  1. Do your homework. Between topic and product research, writing blog posts, tending to social media marketing and responding to comments on their blogs; most professional bloggers are very busy people.

    Respect their time.

    Before asking “what is affiliate marketing?” or “what is a blog?“, try Googling your query or look for a Glossary or a FAQ on your expert's blog.

  2. Ask the right expert. As much as I'd like to help everyone all the time, there's not much point in asking me how to improve your golf swing or get rid of belly fat.

    Those clearly aren't my areas of expertise. 🙂

  3. Be concise. Although I really enjoy learning about my readers' lives and interests, I don't have time to read through a book's worth of anecdotes while trying to field and answer 10 questions.

    Share personal stories in private member forums where such information is encouraged, welcomed and enjoyed.

  4. Ask precise questions. “I don't know how” and “I can't” are the basis for statements, not questions.

    Well-formed questions make the “I don't know's” obvious.

    Preface questions with “what, who, when, where, how or why”, eg. “How do I change my H1 font colors?”

  5. Ask just one question. Peppering a comment form with several unrelated questions is just poor form.

    Look for posts relavent to each question and post them separately.

    This approach is much more helpful to other readers of the blog and will serve you better in SEO terms as well — providing more backlinks to your site.

  6. Be literate. Native English speakers could (and should) use what they learned about punctuation and grammar in Grade 2 if they want their questions taken seriously — especially those posed by aspiring bloggers!

    Using ALL CAPS is only slightly more annoying than using none.

    Missing commas can completely change the meaning of a sentence, causing confusion and wasted time during clarification. Eats, Shoots & Leaves is an excellent resource for the comma-challenged.

  7. Be patient. Unlike my tech guy who apparently gets a wakeup call everytime a tech support request arrives by email, I cherish my sleep. I also value my time off and the ability to go to lunch with a friend at the drop of a hat without communication devices at hand. Those are some of the biggest benefits to having an online business.

    So, if you don't get a reply to your question within 2 minutes of posting it, consider the many reasons your expert may not immediately respond. They may live halfway around the world, be offline (on an airplane or hiking in Alaska) or attending their godson's birthday party.

    Be patient. Allow 24 – 72 hours for a response. If after 72 hours you still haven't heard anything, revisit the question to determine whether it follows the recommondations above.

    Most of all, don't badger for a response. Sending 5 followup emails is a sure way to get ignored and your address blocked.

  8. Be courteous. Courtesy might not help get your question answered, but it certainly won't hurt. “Please”, “Thank you” and acknowledging effort go a long way to cultivating goodwill.

In a nutshell, all of the recommendations above boil down to a single element – Respect others' time to gain respect (and help) in return.

Any questions? 🙂

Comments, questions or suggestions? Please leave a comment below!

Cheers,

Ros

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