I see a lot of people wanting to start a home business because they want to get rich quickly. Of course, they quickly find out that it just isn’t that easy. It takes time and effort to get a solid business going. Very, very few people ever hit it lucky. Everyone else has to work and work hard.

Many of your day to day habits can also make it harder for you to get rich. If you have large debts, it’s going to be really hard for you to get rich. Everything will go to your debts. You’d do better by far to get your spending habits under control than to live a lifestyle you cannot afford.

If you don’t have goals you are depriving yourself of a vital tool. Goals help you to stay focused. But it takes an action plan to reach your goals.

And of course, if you believe in “get rich quick” you probably aren’t going to get rich quick. You have to study your business and how you will reach your goals. You have to be prepared to invest. You have to be prepared to fail. You have to be prepared to watch your business progress slowly. And you have to be prepared to succeed.

Not everyone is going to succeed in a home business. Not every failure means that you’ll never make it. But if you don’t try for success you aren’t going to succeed.

Technorati Tags: home business success, get rick quick

Yes, kind of silly but also very cute. But with a chance to look at this iPhone Review and Video website, I couldn’t resist. I think the dog needs a bit more training yet.

YouTube is an interesting way to promote a website. There’s been more and more of it, some good, some not. Do you think this video will be effective?

If you read much about what Google likes in an affiliate site, you know that they aren’t all that fond of thin affiliate sites. You know the kind… all datafeed or ads, no originality. And really you can’t blame Google or any other search engine for not liking them.

But if you have struggling thin affiliate sites you might appreciate this advice on making them appear thicker. It’s extra effort, but it can be very much so worthwhile.

The advice given is very simple, with the two main points being that you can add original content to pages with duplicate content to make the site look thicker, or you can add serious, original content pages to the website. These pages need to be capable of attracting attention on their own.

This is great advice if you use datafeeds for your websites. The problem with them has long been that many sites will have the same information. Some people can make a living off this, but it is getting harder as the search engines get smarter. Making sure that you stand out somehow is always a good idea.

I’ll also echo one of the comments: Make sure you link out to authoritative sites with regular links. You don’t have to make these prominent, but they make you look more honest. I will sometimes quote pages on goverment sites that are relevant to the product, linking to that page. It’s a site I know won’t be competing with me to make the sale, but will be an honest resource.

Technorati Tags: thin affiliate websites, thin affiliate, thick affiliate

And how are you handling the registrations?

Have you ever even thought of holding your own event?

It’s not something I’ve really thought of, but then again, holding an event would probably mean getting up and talking to a room full of people. And I have horrendous stage fright. But at the same time I can see some great advantages to planning an event to build your business. Quite the way to build a reputation.

But in any case, having your event registration online would be a big help. Really increase your reach. Doesn’t even really matter if your event is online or not, having online registration gives you a lot of freedom and makes things easier for people wanting to come to your event.

That is what I like about RegOnline’s services. It simplifies the entire idea of having online registration. Let them handle it! They can handle the registration and payment processing for you, saving you a lot of time in coming up with your own solution for this. And they offers some good analytics so you can find out a lot about how people are interacting with your registration form. Sounds really nice.

It’s about time! I can’t believe it took them this long to realize that recurring billing is a good thing to offer when you focus on downloadable products.

This is great news for affiliates and merchants. I expect we’ll be seeing a lot of new offerings taking advantage of the recurring billing feature.

It should be interesting to see what kind of rates merchants decide to offer on recurring billing, since the affiliate will continue to earn commissions. After all, with your standard purchase the merchant is earning for the purchase of a single item. If they want to sell more to the customer they can, but that has nothing to do with the affiliate.

But with recurring billing, the affiliate gets a commission for the duration, while the merchant has to keep things going. It’s going to be interesting to see how this balances out. Frankly, I think merchants would love to see a way to offer a higher initial commission and then lower during the subscription, but I don’t think that will happen. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been spending some time thinking about the tools that help me the most in working on my home business. I’m not talking about the forums and such that I find valuable (maybe another day), but the actual tools I use to get my work done.

A word processor

I don’t care if it’s Microsoft Word or one by another company, a good word processor is a must, and something most computers will have already. It’s useful when I want to write articles, brainstorm and so forth. Read the rest of this entry »

Throw up site after site and hope something sticks? Put your heart and soul into one really great site? Something else?

Despite what some people think, search engines don’t particularly hate affiliate sites. They hate sites that don’t have something unique to offer, which is something many affiliate sites fail to do. That’s a big difference.

But putting everything into one site is risky too. If something goes wrong, all your efforts can go down the drain. Having at least a couple sites, even if they are on related topics, does have its advantages. You are less likely to lose all your business if your rankings drop suddenly. Flexibility is a wonderful thing.

I had a great time reading this post on this very topic over at SugarRae. Affiliate marketing is evolving and will continue to evolve. As she notes, the people who thrive won’t be relying solely on the latest technologies. Rather, it will depend on who has great strategies for running their sites.

Many of the points she makes are things I’ve been realizing myself over the past year. Most of my sites are run either with blog software or with Instant Site Comments, so that people can interact with me. Which I use depends on how I want to run the site. I love having the flexibility to decide which is for me. I’ve also been focusing on how to take advantage of social bookmarking, which is something I should have gotten into much sooner. Read the rest of this entry »

Writing a book is a great way to show that you know your stuff and establish yourself as an authority on your topic. Writing ebooks is one way, but sometimes publishing a book in paper form is better, if far more challenging.

The easy way, of course, is to get self-published. Depending on the company this can get expensive. However, if the company offers print on demand services you don’t have to worry so much about the cost of printing the books; this can be absorbed into the price you charge.

But why go with a physical book rather than an ebook? A real book has the advantage of being, well, real. People can carry it around. People know it’s harder to get a book published on paper, so they may take it more seriously. These are advantages to you as an author and as someone wanting to appear as an authority.