One of the great things about the web is that things change so quickly - this allows new marketers to take advantage of novel trends and new developments. On the other hand of course, if you don’t respond quickly to new market conditions, your business - and income - can be adversely affected.

That’s why you need to have multiple streams of income - so that if your current top earner disappears off Google’s radar or one of your many competitors introduces a new product that wipes the floor with your best offering, you have other income streams to fall back on.

It’s just like buying stocks and shares - you want to have a diverse portfolio to avoid any sudden spikes and glitches in the market. Or put it another way - don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

That’s all well and good, but just where are you going to find these multiple streams of income? Sometimes it can be difficult to find even one business opportunity that’s worth investing your time, energy and money in. The first logical place to look is the market.

It’s not always easy to get hold of hard facts and figures when it comes to marketing and often, when you do get some, they are well out of date. However, the figures below show the UK market percentages of directly sold goods for 2000, a year when the total spend in this area was $2 billion. These figures are sourced from the UK Direct Selling Association and make interesting reading.

Services 32%

(telecoms, utilities)

Personal 26%

(cosmetics, fragrances, skincare…)

Family 17%

(Books, toys, games, business aids …)

Household 14%

(Security, water treatment, electrical…)

Wellness 7%

(Nutritional, diet plans, supplements)

Food 4%

(Frozen)

The first step is to map out how large an area you want for your garden (business plan) and what types of seeds (new products) you want to plant (launch). You might try starting the plants indoors (test marketing) before exposing them to the perils of he natural elements (retail market). Don’t forget to prepare the soil before you plant. You may need some soil amendments (new marketing VP) to give the seeds products) the best chance of sprouting (being profitable). Some gardener’s (CEOs) maintain a compost heap (last year’s marketing ideas and mix that into the soil; others say that compost just gives off gas and smells bad. Fertilizer (advertising) is a must. But how much to add (spend)?

You surely don’t want to saturate the earth (market) with manure (your commercials). In fact, successful gardening is a matter of carefully regulating (cost controls) all the raw materials you add– nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium, even water.

Regulating (managing) the sun (the economy) is out of your control, of course. Some tender sprouts (new products) require more shade (patent protection) than others in order to survive first few critical weeks.

Controlling pests (competitors) is a never ending problem. Some of these fly into your garden (market) from out of state, some simply crawl, after all they are vermin. Trouble is, the more bountiful (profitable) your garden, the more they swarm. To rid your garden of pests, you might try making it bigger and stronger (grow by acquisition). The natural methods of pest control (better service, higher quality products) are usually preferable. A strong chemical herbicide (price war) might work temporarily, but could do more harm than good in the garden in the long run, and is bad for the overall environment.

As harvest time approaches (year-end), you can look over your garden (company) with great satisfaction. Look at that yield (ROI)! It’s a bumper crop (record profits). All that toil and swear was certainly worth it — right?

Now you can enjoy the fruits of your labors (profit distributions) after you pay a few people back who helped you grow your garden. Let’s see, the garden supply store gets 20% of our vegetables, for the tools and seeds you bought. The investors who let you use their land (money) get 45% of the crop (investors eat more than normal people). And the government gets 35% because…hmmmm…because they sat there at the edge of the garden and watched you work, I guess.

Well, you get to keep the satisfaction.

Brian Hill and Dee Power can be reached through www.capital-connection.com They are the authors of “Business Plan Basics,” “Inside Secrets To Venture Capital,” Attracting Capital From Angels,” and the novel “Over Time: Money, Love and Football, all the important things in life.” www.OverTimeTheNovel.com

Once you obtain business, do you give much thought to protecting yourself (and your income)? Often, we’re so exhausted by our business-building efforts, and so exhilarated when we get it, that we simply shift to concentrating on closing the deal - and ignore potential adverse situations.

The following scenario recently happened with one of my real estate coaching clients. While this exact situation may not happen if you’re not a real estate professional (or other professional for which proving you’re the “procuring cause” of a sale is crucial in determining whether or not you get paid), the concepts are valuable for life and business in general:

Shortly after she and I began working together, my client began working with a couple who wanted to buy a home. She showed them several properties, one of which they were interested in buying. They made arrangements to meet her at the home the next day so they could look at it one more time and sign an offer to purchase it. They never showed up. She called and called, leaving several messages on cell phones and home phones, worried that something had happened to them. She even e-mailed them, worried that maybe their cell phones weren’t working, or they weren’t able to pick up their phone messages.

A few days later, the home went under contract and she learned through the grapevine (remember, no matter how big your area is, it really IS a small world!) that her buyers were the ones who were under contract to buy that property; the offer had been submitted by a different real estate agent. She also learned that this agent was selling their home in another area and when he discovered that they had already found another home to purchase, promised to “kick back” a substantial sum of money to them if they’d put the offer in through him vs. the agent who had shown them the home. (For those of you wondering, no - she had not asked them to sign an exclusive buyer agency contract, which may have prevented this problem from happening.)

The upshot of the situation is this: The case ended up going to arbitration so each side could present their arguments as to why they deserved the selling side of the commission. My client had brought the home to their attention, brought them there (and to other properties), done research for them and made plans with them to submit an offer. The other agent had never seen the home, didn’t know it existed until his sellers told him they’d found it, and then simply convinced them to disrespect their own agent (out of greed - shame on them) and put the offer in through him (out of greed - shame on him).

As I mentioned, my client had just started working with me and had just begun using several checklists I gave her for documenting her efforts. She also made copies of EVERYTHING she did: letters sent or faxed, e-mails, even writing down dates, times and brief details of phone conversations. Due to these efforts, she had all the proof the arbitration committee needed to convince them that she actually had been the procuring cause of the sale and she won the case! Oh, and did I mention that this home sold for nearly $900,000? This was a substantial commission at risk.

What convinced the arbitration committee to rule in her favor? The fact that she had everything documented and organized, with copies for everyone on the arbitration committee, and presented her arguments in a logical fashion (which her documentation helped her do). The other agent had no documentation (no surprise, since he hadn’t done anything with regard to the home prior to submitting the offer) and had no organized or logical arguments to help the committee rule in his favor.

I have been told by several attorneys that documentation is KEY whenever presenting an argument in a legal or quasi-legal proceeding.

Documentation is proof of the facts. Without proof, there is no argument. (If you don’t believe it, just watch Judge Judy or The People’s Court sometime and watch those people try to “dance” without proof!)

Also, by documenting everything, you serve your customers better by:
1. helping refresh your memory on what you’ve already done for them, eliminating redundancy and confusion
2. documenting and reminding you (and them) of what was said, so you can determine their needs
3. helping them prioritize by providing lists of factors they must use as criteria to enable a sale
4. acting as a checklist to prevent forgetting a crucial item that must be accomplished

This is a good strategy for business and for life: be thorough, be organized, be documented - and proceed with confidence!

National speaker, trainer and coach, Sandy Geroux is an award-winning salesperson who helps others achieve breakthrough performance through her programs on sales, customer service and effective risk-taking. Visit her on the web at http://sandygeroux.com/ or e-mail her at sandyg@sandygeroux.com.

Foreign Currency Direct is the United Kingdoms starring independent currency brokers, www.currencies.co.uk has been around from the year 2000 Foreign Currency Direct are nowadays practiced in the industry & have a terrific team of agents that are all set and waiting to serve you with almost anything you might often require.

www.currencies.co.uk offer one off overseas payment, so should you yourself need to move a lump sum to an overseas country. www.currencies.co.uk are also able to provide one with a specialist account manager to control all of the stages of the transaction. Saving up to 0.04 against normal rates sold through high street brokers can make one’s transaction noticeably cheaper as well as tension free. Foreign Currency Direct additionally offer spot contracts targeted at settlement within 2 working days and also direct transmission to the bank account one stipulate, & forward contracts to set up a currency exchange rate aimed at the future, for example, when a apartment completion is scheduled targeted at quite a few months time, by using a forward contract you yourself will know how much pounds you might well need for a future requirement for an overseas currency.

Foreign Currency Direct don’t forget specialise in timed overseas payments, if you yourself own a EUR mortgage in France, Spain and Portugal there regular payment plan is an awesome method to minimise a monthly sterling cost. the company sell free payments for transfers and also no bank charges for transfers more than £300. Lastly but not least the business are specialists on transferring foreign currency back home to the U.K., for the reason that you should be selling some overseas house & need to transfer overseas currency back to the United Kingdom in great British pounds, then Foreign Currency Direct should assist you. People could utilise a accomplished account managers that may share their capable knowledge with customers and also serve customers conduct every one of its’ required arrangements. www.currencies.co.uk have experience in currency exchange, they have a dedicated team of dealers that can secure currency exchange rates lower than high street stores.

In honor of the birthday of one of the most famous Internet millionaires, Mook-Jon, I’m going to try to cover something that he says is one of the keys to his success researching a niche for your website. BTW, Mook-Jon now writes for WebsitePublisher.net. He has written a birthday blog entry ruminating on success, drive and his life. Happy Birthday, Jon.

Meanwhile I’m still out there working hard for you, the reader. I’ve been speaking via email, IM and even phone with people who are making good money online. They are all reluctant to talk, but I’ve managed to coax information out of them. My first observation was the importance of viral marketing to their success, which I’ve covered in other posts.

I’m a fan of the content-rich site. I think providing information to your prospective customers is what will make them customers. Google agrees with me, and is moving its pageranking system to reward so-called authority pages, meaning information rich pages that link to other sites and have other sites linking to them.

Most good websites exploit a niche - that is an area of focus for your content-rich site. Coming up with that niche is probably the most difficult and most important part of your Internet Marketing strategy.

You need two things: A subject and an angle. We’ll work on subject first.

As I have said countless times, most people just need a little push to get started, then everything starts flowing. You should always be in niche-hunting mode. I keep a small, spiral bound notebook next to my laptop and I write down ideas as they come to me. When you are looking for something on the Internet and can’t find it, that something needs to go in the book once it passes this simple test:

Will someone pay a reasonable amount for that product, service, or idea?

If the answer is even probably, it needs to go on the page. I always start with broad, general categories and drill down later.

Why not start with yourself? Take a moment right now and list your interests. What do you search for on the web? Put that on the list. Think about all of the things that fill your day at work or at home. While you are living your life run stuff through the niche filter in your mind there’s always something that you can add to the list. If you don’t have something to write it down on, call yourself and leave a voice mail. I’ve done it many times. Everyone says I wish there was a [insert something here] on the Internet. Some of us say that a lot. Put it on the list.

Work with someone I find that my wife is a great person to bounce things off. When we are going somewhere in the car we often brainstorm my latest ideas and she usually has a lot to add. In no time you should have a good-sized list.

Still drawing a blank? Here are some places to pick up some good general categories:

1. Alexa - Look over the Top 100 and the Movers and Shakers. Delve into the categories that appeal to you and see what strikes you. Write it all down, because you’ll end up clicking all over the place and will never re-create the path.

2. Sites that show you what people are searching for. Try Google Zeitgeist or The Lycos Top 50. There’s a fairly long list of such sites over at Search Engine Watch that I’ve bookmarked.

3. Google Answers. I am fascinated by Google Answers, and I sometimes spend a long time looking over what people will pay to find out. There are some great ideas here too.

You could even go to Alexa and look over the top sites trying to come up with an angle that would make them better or easier. Or you might come up with a complementary site (MySpace companion sites come to mind).

Once you get your general category ideas together it’s time to do some supply and demand research, along with what I call sanity checking.

This is the first in a three part series. The other two parts can be found at www.affiliateblog.com.

Matt DeAngelis runs Affiliate Blog. Matt is the former CTO of Modem Media, a pioneer in the Internet ad space. As a foot soldier in the Internet revolution, Matt devised the technology behind many of the most successful ad campaigns of the time.

To succeed in business on the Internet, or in the off-line world, requires an understanding of the fundamentals of business and using them to your advantage. In this article, I will outline what I consider the fundamentals of business success are.

Believe in Your Product or Service

First, you need to believe in your product or service. If you don’t believe in it, you will have a great deal of difficulty selling your product or service to other people. You also need to have confidence in your ability to provide and promote your product or service. An old saying sums this up best by stating: “All things are possible to he who believes”.

Aptitude for the Business

Secondly, you need to have an aptitude for the business. You will also need the motivation to acquire at the very least basic skills and experience before you start your business. If you were to set yourself up as a web designer but did not have any skills or training in this area, then you will almost certainly fail. However, if you are employed as a bookkeeper and you enjoy the job, then setting up your own bookkeeping service would be a sensible choice with a greater chance of success.

Be Responsible

Thirdly, you need to be responsible to your customers. This is achieved by only making commitments you can keep and by not engaging in misleading or dishonest advertising. If you want to build long-term success in your business, then you need to develop long-term satisfied customers. When their needs are being satisfied, customers are at their happiest.

Aim for High Quality

The next principle is that you need to have a high quality product or service. This will be your best advertisement. Inferior quality products usually generate poor customer satisfaction. A dissatisfied customer can be very dangerous for your business. Usually they tell on average about fourteen other people who will then be disinclined to buy your product or service based on the experience of that one dissatisfied person. Therefore, always aim for a top quality product or service.

Make a Profit

However, it is not enough to have a top quality product or service. You also need to have a product or service that will generate enough income to cover all your business expenses and give you a satisfactory wage. A friend of mine once said that business is only about two things: satisfying customers and making a profit. A simple statement but very true.

Sufficient Start-up Capital

You also need to have access to enough cash to set up and run your business, and enough income to meet your private expenses during the start-up phase. A major problem with many home and small businesses is that they fail to have enough money available to ensure their success. There is nothing more discouraging than having a great idea, getting it started on a shoestring, not being able to expand due to cash shortages and seeing a competitor come along and steal your market.

Start Small

Another fundamental principle of home business success is that you start small. This will enable you to minimize your overheads until you are confident of your success in the marketplace. For many of you, this would mean starting part-time while retaining your full-time income source. When you can, expand your business into a full-time venture. This is a great way of minimizing the risk of failure.

Be Well Organized

Successful businesses are well organized. They have a system for keeping track of expenditure and earnings. This level of organization in your business will help to ensure that you are providing your customers or clients with a top quality product or service. It will also ensure that you have enough information available to maximize your profitability and to satisfy your legal requirements for record keeping.

Be Prepared

Preparation is another key ingredient in your business success. This preparation will include being aware of the regulations and laws affecting small and home business. Armed with this knowledge, you should not have any nasty surprises from unintentional violations of the law.

Have a Business Plan

Finally, successful businesses have developed a comprehensive business plan. This is their road map to success. It tells them where they are going and how they are going to get there. There are a number of good resources about business planning on the Internet. Here are some:
http://www.bplans.com
http://www.businesstown.com/planning/creating.asp
http://www.bizplanit.com/vplan.htm

Conclusion

It has been said that genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. The same can be said about business success. Without having the fundamentals in place, a great business idea will usually fail. Set yourself up for success by considering each of the points raised in this article.

Article by Kevin Sinclair, CPA, of Personal & Business Success Resources. Visit his website at www.business.ksinclair.com/ .

While the sad truth is some people will or are falling into this very situation right now everyday, of not being able to afford going to work because of the price of gasoline. How sick is that. As people struggle to pay their bills, gas prices will keep them from driving to work. In essence most people will be caught in this catch22. Either work to pay your bills or work to feed your car.

As the gas prices rise so will the internet scams that you see by desperate attempts by people to make a living.

They say there is enough oil in the ground to pump 1000 times there production level of all the oil refineries in the world for the next 4000 years. The sad truth is eventually, they will pump it dry.

Business on the internet will ultimately start to pick up even more as people fall into this gasoline trap. Internet scams will probably be at record highs by the end of this year alone. So you need to be even more careful and learn to depend upon each other as trusted internet professionals and a credible source of information to help others that are seeking refuge into this new market.

So over time by banding together in these forums we will be able to recognize the scam artist and they will be booted by most of the forums out their, which will provide the safety for the newer internet marketers to come into our forums, without the threat of being scammed.

The people who have the real and time proven, work from home business opportunities will have gained the trust over time and be elevated to these internet marketing circles or communities as the marketing professional in their field.

For all the people looking to start there home based internet business they can then feel confident to come to these business communities or forums knowing they can start a new business or career without the threat of being scammed.

Business will prosper for us first few work from home pioneers already here, fairly quickly in the next few years; it has no choice as long as you are honest and have a real time proven work from home business model for people to make money with. In turn these newer generations of marketers that were once reluctant to start an internet business will be looking for advice from people like us to help them provide for there families and there future. We need to be able to help and teach these people and show them the proper way to do business while being creative enough to find there own niche market as well.

If you are serious about making money and a solid future, think about your business and what it provides for the future. If you are here to get rich quick, probably a few people will, but as we move forward and grow as a tight niche family oriented business community, we will recognize the scam artist and boot them before the do any serious damage.

Then the people with the real and proven work from home businesses will be able to provide the way for all the new generations of people turning to the internet to make there living.

Within the next 15 months you will notice a very large change in the way we work from home marketers are viewed.

I have been reviewing all the work from home business opportunities and providing critical reviews of each of them. My name is Edward Pizzo I have worked on Wall Street for many years and researched thousands of businesses and I am listing them all here at my website. http://www.yourquestreviews.com Including my reviews site I am currently building the Quest Forums where people are helping people please visit them here at http://yoursolutions.proboards57.com

Edward Pizzo

Our lives, personal and business are made up of a series of
goals. We want to be successful, happy, earn a good living, have
a family and so on. But how do we achieve these goals?
Hopefully, in our personal life, we meet the right person to
help us make our personal goals happen. For some of us, this
happens right away and for some it may take a lot of years. When
it does happen, all of your personal goals can become reality.
Our business goals on the other hand, may take more work to make
them happen.

When you are deciding on your business goals, one thing you can
do is divide your one main goal into several smaller goals that
will make your main goal seem more attainable. Instead of your
goal being to make a million dollars a year, you can divide this
into yearly, monthly, weekly and also daily goals.

For example: If you are an ezine publisher and your goal is
100,000 subscribers, your first year goal could be set at 1000.
You make your goals into attainable steps and follow those steps
to success. You will accomplish more and not be so easily
discouraged by working your business this way.

When you first decide you want to start your own business, what
you should do is write down your plan for your business and also
what you want your main goal to be. Put all this in an outline.
Then you decide on smaller monthly, weekly and yearly goals to
work for in order to achieve your main goal.

Another good idea is to organize each day by what you want to
achieve for that day. Organize your time each day into blocks
and write down what is to get done in each time block. Example:

6:00-7:00 Breakfast and kids to school. 7:00-8:00am Read and
answer all emails. 8:00-10:00am Domestic Chores 10:00-12:00am
Promotion & Site Maintenance 12:00-1:00 Lunch Break 1:00- 2:00
Answer Emails 2:00-4:00 Work on Ebook and/or Website 4:00-6:00
Cook & Eat Supper & Do Dishes 6:00-8:00 Work on ezine &
articles. 8:00-10:00 Break 10:00-11:00 Answer Emails

You can also put down in more detail what has to be done in each
time block.

This is a typical day of mine, however all of our schedules are
different. You have to organize your daily goals to best fit
your schedule. This can help you get more work done and be less
overwhelmed. I used to start my day knowing I had to do this and
that and then some more and I wouldn’t know where to start and I
just felt lost. Writing down and scheduling my daily goals has
really helped me get more work done.

You should also write down your weekly and monthly goals in the
same manner. Check on these periodically to see if you are doing
what needs to be done. One word of advice, use these as a guide
and do not beat yourself up if you do not make them exactly as
you have written. Some goals may take a little longer to attain
than what you think. Organization is the key to getting more
work done and feeling more in control of your goals.

For more information on attaining your goals and organizing your
time visit these sites:
http://www.win-winresourcecenter.com/lookherfordi1.html
http://www.topachievement.com/
http://www.mindtools.com/pggoalef.html
http://www.iss.stthomas.edu/studyguides/scheduling.htm
http://www.findyourdream.com/Network_Marketing/settinggoals.htm
http://www.organizing-solutions.net/

With a little time and organization, you can reach all your
goals!

I am always railing on and on about why people should buy businesses worth at least a million dollars or more. That are big, with lots of cash flow and with a management team already in place who know what they are doing — so you can just sort of step in and let things go “as is” and not have to think about it.

However, besides all the financial reasons, there is another — very powerful — reason to only go after large businesses like this. A reason almost nobody ever talks about and yet, is probably a more important reason than any other.

And that reason is, quite simply, people who own large businesses, that have good numbers, and that can prove their business is what it is, are almost always straight-shooters and not crooks.

It’s true. I have been doing this for over 50 years and I can tell you right now, the chance of you running into a person that has a business making a million a year that doesn’t have a good word or isn’t a good person…is almost zero percent. There may be exceptions to this, but I have never, in all these years, run into one that wasn’t a man of his word and didn’t genuinely want the deal to go down fairly, squarely and exactly as we agreed to.

Does this mean they are all going to be your best friend?

No. In fact, I have run into one that I haven’t gotten along with. But at this level, where there’s a lot of money at stake, they’re basically all nice people. They’re easy to get along with. And keep in mind, one of the main reasons they are so nice and friendly is because they know you have cash. When you pay cash (using investor financing) you do all the talking. You’re the one who is really in control, and they know it.

Arthur B. Hamel has bought over 200 businesses in the past 50 years, and is a well-known author, consultant, investor, business owner, and dynamic lecturer who has shared the stage with such business greats as Robert Allen of “No Money Down” fame. For the past 20 years Art has taught thousands of people around the world — even so-called “little guys” with no formal education or money — how to quickly and easily buy large, multi-million dollar businesses with no credit, banks or prior business experience. He has recently decided to share his unique business-buying secrets and tactics free of charge at: http://arthurhamel.com

Make $1000’s monthly! Over 300 work at home firms are in need of
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please email me at clemons_bobby@hotmail.com

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Bobby Clemons