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First let me start by explaining exactly what an automated business is.  Very simply put, an automated business is using the the internet and today’s tools and technology to automate the tasks that you would normally do manually.  An automated business makes your life much easier by freeing up time so you can spend that time doing other things.  Namely working your internet business in other ways, or my favorite… taking long vacations!

The technology today makes this possible by providing you plenty of programs and tools to automate different aspects of your internet business.  Using these auto programs may cost some money but think about how much time you will save with this investment.  It could literally free up hundreds of hours of your time.  And we all know time is money, so it only makes sense to automate all you can.

There are many reasons that some businesses succeed while others don’t.  But I would say that the main reason why those businesses are successful is because they are able to automate much of the work making it possible for them to use that free time to grow their business in other areas.

What Will Automation do for your Business?

Boost your website traffic - You can have many of the traffic boosting tasks automated for you.  The article writing and submitting., forum posting, press releases, and everything.  If it can be written, it can be outsourced and automated.

Make more money and increase profits - Selecting an auto responder service like GetResponse will allow you to create an email marketing campaign on auto drive.  All you have to do is get interested parties to sign up for your newsletters and the service will automatically deliver your emails.  The system will allow you to setup everything customary so you can tweak it to boost your conversion rates.

Automate your admin - We all know how time consuming it can be to answer the hoards of email we get.  Well, this process can be automated as well.  There are services you can hire to do the job for you.

Run your internet business from anywhere - This may be the most beneficial aspect of automating your internet business.  Not only can we run an online business anywhere that there is an internet connection, but once the business is automated, we really don’t have do too much.  We can even take vacations without having to worry about any meltdowns or lost income with the time off.

Of course there will be some times when there will be some minor break downs or some twitches that need to be made, but for the most part, automation of an internet business means the decrease of your own problems.

Take the time to make your internet business into an automated cash machine.  The piece of mind you’ll receive will be well worth the efforts.

Matt Helphrey
p.s. Look for part two of automating an internet business tomorrow where I will be discussing the importance of setting up an auto responder.

Popularity: 1% [?]

There are plenty of ways, methods, and even tools to create traffic to your blog.  Some people write daily yet don’t see any progress in traffic.  Some people pay for advertising yet don’t see any increase in clicks or sign ups.  Some people even have all the knowledge and tools to succeed but are just too lazy to make them work.

The point is there are really only three things you need to increase traffic to your blog on a consistent basis.  That is great content,  great promotion, and posting to your blog on a regular basis.

Great Content

Great content is by far the most important of the three aspects.  Your blog could be littered with articles but if your articles are crap, you aren’t going to gain much in terms of follow up traffic or repeat visitors.  The content on your blog is what captures the readers attention.  They are either going to think, “Wow, this blog has a lot of great information, free tools, and useful links. I’d better bookmark this.”  Or they may think, “I can’t even read this stuff.  It doesn’t make any sense.”

If you think your blog is providing the latter, it may be a wise business move to outsource your writing and find someone who will add the great content for a small fee.

When you provide killer content, and by killer I mean better than good, you are apt to gain readership because if a reader likes what he or she sees, they are more apt to tell someone else who in turn will tell someone else and on and on.  Word of mouth spreads fast, so work on quality content first and you will see an increase in traffic to your blog.

Great Promotion

Great promotion refers to the plan you have to get more traffic to your blog every day of the year.  That means you are taking action every day to get more traffic to your blog.  It may be paid methods like Google Adwords PPC, or solo ezines.  It may be free methods like article marketing, networking with business partners, posting in forums and so on.

What you do or how much you spend is not important so long as you are driving more traffic to your blog and that traffic is converting to more money back for you in return of those efforts.  If you have budgeted $100 a month in advertising and you are able to document that the $100 spent made you $200 in profit, would it not be smart then to turn that $200 into $400?  Damn right it would!  That’s how a business man/woman thinks, and that’s what you have to do if you want to succeed.

What I suggest is to find a promotion method you are really skilled at and use it to your advantage.  Use that one method and just promte the heck out of your blog using that one method.  Hey, if it works, why not run to the bank with it?!

Post to Your Blog on a Regular Basis

This last aspect differs for so many people and what works for one may not be the case for another.  What I do know is that the search engines do reward blogs that are updated and added to on a consistent basis.  Whether that means seven times a week or twice a week is up in the air.

What I suggest again is to find a nice medium and one that doesn’t have you overworked and a stressful writer.  Don’t just write to your blog because you feel you have to.  That shows and what it shows is that it wont be that great of content.  Post when you are ready to write and your readers will enjoy the content much more.

Write as often as you can though and as much as your audience wants you to.  Try an experiement and see how many readers you get adding two articles a week, then add seven and compare the results.  If there is not much difference you may be overworking at seven a week and could settle for three or four.  Work ahead and have 20 - 50 articles already written so all you have to do is copy and paste.

Conclusion

All three of these tips will really help you to increase traffic to your blog.  Stay focused on your goals and take daily action.  Action will lead to the inevitable…money in your pocket!

Be sure to sign up for my free newsletter for more insight on how you can make money online.

Cheers for now,

Matt Helphrey

Popularity: 8% [?]

Running a successful online business will require you to be creative and create a few sales funnels that will net you and your business constant sales. Not all of your business ideas are going to succeed but it is important to take action and keep trying until you have a few that do.

As internet marketers, many of us are busy with day to day back linking techniques such as article writing, forum posting, blog commenting and social bookmarking to name just a few. Now this is all good and dandy and is going to create a nice steady flow of traffic for you in the long run but all of these tedious activities are not going to make you any immediate money or income and can lead to a lot of frustration. Here’s my advice to create some sales funnels that are guaranteed to make you some real money for your efforts…finally!

It is important not to get behind on the daily activities that I was just speaking of, so…what do you do?? How in the world are you supposed to create a sales funnel when you are so busy with your daily activities? The answer…outsourcing.

You can’t possibly do all these things yourself so you’ll need to find someone to outsource to. Keep doing the things you are good and efficient with and outsource the rest. Of course it’s going to cost you some money but you have to view this money spent as an investment that will result in you receiving more money back in the long run.

One sales funnel that will pay over and over again is creating an email marketing campaign. There are several ways you can do this. You can either sign up through an affiliate program and promote their products or create a product of your own. Once you decide what product or program you are going to promote, you’ll have to write a series of sales letters pitching the benefits of that product or service. It could be as few as one letter or as many as a hundred. It all depends upon what you are promoting and you’ll have to do some trial and error to see what the optimum amount is.

You’ll also have to create a squeeze page that people will view and want to sign on to your list. Once they are on your list they will begin to get the sales letters and hopefully convert those sign ups into real sales. Find a decent auto responder company to sign up for to run your email campaign. I use GetResponse and it works well for me. Aweber is another legitimate company.

Another sales funnel idea is to create your own Ebook and offer it to fellow affiliates to promote. They’ll be more apt to promote your product if their is an opportunity for them to make money as well. What you can do is offer the affiliates a 50% commission at a real low price, have the interested buyers sign on to a list, then back end them a more expensive product on the back end through another email campaign. Or you can offer a 100% commission to affiliates, then after every sale you make or they make, send the buyer to another sales page promoting a higher end product as well.

Whatever you decide to do, just be sure to do something. Money will not result without taking action. Don’t even worry about creating the perfect product or creating the perfect email marketing campaign. Just get it going and make the changes later. The money will come if you take action to make it happen.

Matt Helphrey

Popularity: 11% [?]

Not a single day passes without more and more people searching for new work-at-home job opportunities. With the revolution in the internet, such job opportunities have increased as there are a large number of businesses that provide such work at home jobs that are not scams in the marketplace. The online work-at home job scams have also become common. Those people who are behind these scams keep looking for desperate people who are too keen to join work-at-home jobs and do not think twice before joining one. Before jumping into any of such scam proposals, you must have thorough knowledge about theses scams and how to identify them.There are two jobs where there are greater chances of scam involved and they are “paid online survey” jobs and “data entry” jobs. It is pertinent to know what is involved in these two jobs. You should know what are the exact terms and conditions.

In a paid online survey, you get paid if you complete a survey. There is no need to pay money for it. If money is asked upfront to join any such site, you can assume that it is a scam.

Other potential scam jobs are data entry jobs. Check out what is involved. You may be required to fill in a data sheet with some information as per company’s requirement. There are host of such companies who offer such jobs, but for a small fee. They promise astronomical incomes but, in fact, they are just playing with emotions and you should be careful before enrolling with one of them.

You should not assume that there are no ways to find work at home jobs that are not scams. The best way to know about various work at home jobs that are not scams on the internet is to become a member of various forums for online work-from-home jobs. Through these forums you can exchange your views with other members and you will know which job is a scam and which is not. Also, you will be provided guidance on where to look for legitimate companies providing regular work-from- home online jobs.

Another way to search for work-from-home online jobs that are not scams is to visit freelance websites. You will find various jobs in numerous categories and you can choose the job which matches with your skill set. All these jobs are from legitimate companies and persons. You can take help of redressal system if you have any dispute with the company or service buyer.

Another avenue from where information about work at home jobs that are not scams can be had is the Better Business Bureau and Federal Trade Commission. These organizations help you by providing information about companies and websites that are involved in work-at-home job scams. They also help you in verification of any offer and to file complaint if required. You can also take help of websites that are in business of catching scam masters like ScamBusters.org.

You must have realized that it is possible to find work at home jobs that are not scams provided you are careful and use some common sense to identify scams and legitimate jobs.

Matt Helphrey

Popularity: 11% [?]

In case you have decided to start an internet business, then the most important aspect is to be aware of the current market situation and top internet businesses. You would like to opt for the top internet business, but you need to distinguish between great business ideas and loss-making one’s and then proceed in a systematic manner. You need to do some search and also research as regards to what is the latest trend…

Which internet business is more lucrative and how? Which business operates on minimum cost etc? If you answer a few of these questions, you will realize that searching for top internet businesses is not that difficult. These top internet businesses have been around for quite a while. You only have to figure out which one is more beneficial from your perspective.The latest of the top internet businesses are social networking websites. It has been found by various researches that out of every 10 individuals who are on the internet, eight are into social networking. Most of them are youngsters, although others are also utilizing these websites for various purposes.

What you’d have to do is select a niche for your social networking website and invite people to sign up. It should be a platform for people to express their views on specific topics based on the subject of your website. This will help in establishing a network and in turn you will generate revenue through advertisements and back links. Of course you would need to buy social networking software and allow members who have signed up on your site to take control and build it brick-by-brick. You need not do anything more than that. The latest trends in social networking are music sharing, photo sharing, video sharing, broadcasting, and movie sharing.

Another of the top internet businesses you can try is starting a dating website. It has been observed that the dating industry is one of the most lucrative business ideas online. The latest trend in dating is online dating and speed dating.

You have the option of getting paid for blogging as well. Blogging has turned out be very popular online activity and there are number of people who eagerly wait for any new blog to come onto the horizon. You just have to sign up for a blog on one of the many blogging sites. Then search for those websites that pay you to blog. You just express your views on a particular topic as determined by the website. In return, you have to include this particular web site’s link on your blog.

These are just a few of the host of other top internet businesses that may mint money for you if done in a systematic manner. The key to success is a good plan, perfect execution of that plan and some patience. It takes time for any internet business to make money, though you can start earning instantly in some cases. But once these businesses start making money, there is no looking back.

Matt Helphrey

Popularity: 6% [?]

With the advent of e-commerce and great advancement in internet, it is easy to make extra money online. One way of generating huge income online is by way of affiliate programs. There are numerous affiliate programs that can help you make money online. If you own a website, then you can make money by advertising and generating traffic for your products and services through affiliate programs.

It is not necessary to own a website to monetize from an affiliate program. You can just choose one good program and use its tools to earn affiliate commissions. There are huge advantages in choosing the correct affiliate program. As there are number of affiliate programs, the task of choosing the best and the most lucrative program becomes difficult. By following a few steps, you can be in a better position to select the best affiliate program that meets your requirement, and make extra money online.

First, it is pertinent to devote some quality time doing research to find out as much as possible about the program that you are likely to select. Make thorough inquiry regarding every aspect of the affiliate program and check whether the claims made by the program are factual and not just tall claims.

Next, check out whether the chosen affiliate program offers support to its affiliates or not. You definitely need some kind of support system and tools to practically make extra money online. If you are not making money, then everything is futile because that is the main objective of joining an affiliate program.

A good affiliate program has an ample selection of tools like sample sales letters, keyword lists, keyword generation tools, banners, pop-ups etc. that help you in generating income. It should also provide a variety of landing pages which will help in setting up a different landing page for each banner, ad links and text.

Check whether affiliate program software supports various types of commission structures. Also, the affiliate program must be in a position to give correct statistics to an affiliate in order to help him in tracking his advertisement campaigns, help him in making necessary adjustments to his campaign and thus attract more sales. A sustainable and lucrative affiliate program should also be able to offer referral bonuses. Although you are here to make extra money online, all the involved parties are here for the same too. If an affiliate program is able to provide referral bonus along with second and third degree commissions, it ought to be most lucrative program as this is going to increase your income considerably.

A good affiliate program should have a redressal system use of which helps affiliates to air their views on the various features of the affiliate program. This feedback will in turn help program owners to update or make corrective changes in the features of the program if necessary.

Thus, selecting a good affiliate program is very easy if the above-mentioned points are kept in mind, and you can be well on your way to make extra money online. If you choose a wrong affiliate program, then you loose on two counts. A lot of time you have spent on selection process goes waste and secondly, you are totally ignorant about the program and you cannot generate any income from it as you do not know much about it.

Matt Helphrey

Popularity: 6% [?]

If you really want to make money with an internet business, it is imperative that you treat that business as you would a real job. One that will not put up with employees who slack off, don’t work hard, and are lazy. Keep in mind that you are your own boss so if you have the tendency to be lazy, you probably wont get far with an internet business.

There are going to be plenty of days where you are not going to feel like doing the work needed to keep the steady flow of traffic coming in. Everyone has these days, but only the successful people persevere and move on pushing themselves to succeed at all costs. This is the type of attitude you will need if you ever want to make money with an internet business.

Remember that habits can be broken and it only takes about 2-3 weeks to break an old habit and develop a new more productive habit. Get yourself on a pattern that will be benefit your internet business and stick with it. Here are 4 helpful tips to make money with an internet business.

Make Money With an Internet Business Tip #1

Write down everything. You should be writing down exactly what your goals are, what you need to do to achieve them, and your daily tasks to move towards those goals. Jotting down everything will really help you organize your thoughts and will keep you accountable for the things that you strive to do.

Make Money With an Internet Business Tip #2

Keep your to do list simple. You do not want to write down things that are complex and say little about what should be done next. Break it down to simplified steps that are attainable and tangible.

Make Money With an Internet Business Tip #3

Don’t wait to do something, do it now! If you write it down, it is up to you to get the task done. You may as well just do it now.

Make Money With an Internet Business Tip #4

Keep all of your tasks filed away. Use a good filing system to file away emails and documents so you can easily refer to them at a later date.

Using these 4 tips will certainly help make it easier to make money with an internet business. The more serious you take your internet business, the more income you will see.

Matt Helphrey

Popularity: 7% [?]

Promoting and marketing affiliate programs can prove to be a very lucrative method to make money online. To do this correctly will require a good amount of patience and persistence with your efforts.

To make money online with affiliate programs you will first want to get your own website. This is a real simple process. Choose your own domain name, then find a reputable host to put your website on. There are cheap hosts that offer valuable services but I would not recommend choosing a free website. These websites almost always have ads promoting other products and can shut you down with little or no warning.

Once you have chosen a domain name that represents your site well and have found a reputable host that has a good, clean history, you can then begin the search for affiliate programs. There are many affiliate programs that you can promote. Look for some that offer products or services that you can easily write about and believe in what they are offering. Find likewise programs that promote the same products or services so you can promote them on the same website rather than having to worry about several websites.

Most affiliate programs offer training and tools so you can learn and succeed. Many people come into these programs not knowing the first thing about making money online with affiliate programs and do just fine. Many people go above and beyond and make it their primary source of income. You ultimately choose the amount of income you make by the work and effort you put in.

To make money online with affiliate programs and succeed long term, you will need to set your website up first. This could take months, years perhaps. It all depends on how much time or money you have to put into your home based business. Money will allow you to take shortcuts by purchasing advertising or software to make things easier. Time will allow you to push your back links all over the internet, a very slow and tedious (but free) process.

Having both time and money would be nice, unfortunately that is not the case for most people. Anyone can succeed and make money online with affiliate programs with the right desire and dedication. There are plenty of people who are having success with affiliate programs. Why not you?

Matt Helphrey
Make Money Online With Affiliate Programs

Popularity: 16% [?]

What does it take to make real money using the internet?

Well the answer is quite simple. Besides a website, a product to sell, and a way to get paid, all you need to make real money using the internet is targeted traffic.

Anybody that’s interested enough in making money online can figure out real easily how to set up their own website so I will just focus a little bit on how to bring targeted traffic to your website once you have it up and going.

Make Real Money Using the Internet Tip #1

Targeted traffic can come from many forms of promotion and advertising. The best type of targeted traffic comes free from the search engines. To get this traffic you must do some research on which keywords will attract the highest amount of people yet not be too competitive in order to get your website ranked high.

Let me expand on this a bit. Keywords are terms that people type in the search bar to get information about a particular subject. Once the words are typed in, the search engines shows all the results that best fit those keywords. You want your keywords to bring in your targeted customers so keep that in mind when choosing which words to use. For example, if you type in the words Internet Based Affiliate Marketing you will see my website ranked usually around the 3 or 4 spot for those particular keywords. My website is geared towards the affiliate marketing niche so it works out great for me.

What I mean by not too competitive is that you don’t want to select keywords that get the biggest number of searches per day because that’s what everyone else is trying to do. You will have to compete with the corporate websites that have been around for quite awhile and you’ll find it to be a losing battle. Focus on other keywords that will at least land you some traffic then move on to another non competitive keyword. It should be your goal to go after different keywords so you will have traffic coming in from them all rather than just one.

Make Real Money Using the Internet Tip #2

Once you have selected your keywords you must next focus on getting back links to your website. The more back links you have, the higher your website will show for your selected keywords. Work on getting back links every day by writing articles, submitting your website to web listings or directories, posting in forums, and commenting on others blogs.

The best way to get your keywords ranked is to hyper link your keywords to a like wise page. For example… internet based affiliate marketing is a hyper back link to my website that is titled “Internet Based Affiliate Marketing”. You can do this for all of your keywords.

There you go. Anybody can use these tips and advice to make real money using the internet. Just make sure you make the commitment to succeed and then take the action to make it possible.

Matt Helphrey
Make Real Money Using the Internet

Popularity: 16% [?]

There are so many ways to make money online but the one thing you must do to ensure your success is…do something everyday. This may not sound like sound advice or the advice you were looking for but it is the absolute truth. You can read though all the information, buy all the tools, and setup the perfect marketing plan but if you don’t put it into action on a constant, daily basis, your home based business will not make you a measly cent.

Of course all of the aforementioned tasks (seeking info and help, purchasing software and tools, setting up a plan) will help you succeed in making money online and are equally vital. But the call to action is what your main focus must be on.

The best way to do this is to get in a daily rhythm. Physically write down some things that you would like to or need to accomplish each day. For example, in my business I constantly have to be getting back-links to my site. I have a checklist in front of me so I know that before I do anything else, I have to submit 10 forum posts, write either a blog post and/or an article, submit that article or blog post, then submit my website to 20 directories.

At first this may seem like quite a task, but after doing it several days and weeks in a row, the task becomes much smoother and much easier to do. In fact it becomes so efficient you are able to step it up a notch and add more “to do” things and push yourself to do more every day.

So…if you want to make money online, you have to find that drive and determination and make the commitment to succeed. Do something productive towards your home based business every day, then push yourself to do more.

A brief warning: There will be times, many times that it may seem as if your efforts are going to vain. You’ve been working hard for quite awhile and still have not seen the results you had hoped for or expected. My advice when that happens…do more. Seriously, find the time, lose out on some sleep, do whatever it takes to succeed. Just don’t give up.

Ask yourself, “How bad do I want this?”

What works for me is to set up visuals of my goals and aspirations. For example, I wrote out a fake check with the amount of money I will one day make and pinned it up on my desk where I can see it every day. As soon as I feel like I’m tired or don’t want to do anymore, I see that check and it reminds of what I am working for…then I’m back at it.

Focusing on the end result and having a constant reminder will really help with your efforts. If making enough money online to quit your day job is your goal, just think how good it will feel the day you can walk out of that job and never have to walk back in again. Acheving a goal you’ve worked so hard to get has to be one of the best feelings in the world. Focus on that feeling…do something everyday to get there.

Matt Helphrey
Live Life To The Fullest

Popularity: 14% [?]