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Welcome back to mindset mondays - sorry its a little delayed and for some of you it will already be Tuesday.

Talk about busy… and at the same time I’m still reading and re-reading the ‘4 Hour Work Week’ by Tim Ferris, on one hand I have a lot of activity going on in my life:

• Engagement Planning
• Wedding Planning
• Honeymoon Planning
• Building a new house
• Launching and Developing new projects
• Blogging
• Teaching and Training
• Exercise and Fitness
• Relaxation and Relationships

And I’m realising more and more how important it is to not allow some tasks, however urgent to take my focus from the important.

Segue - into today’s Mindset Monday…

What you focus on, you move towards!

This statement is not just a cliche, it’s a neurological reality.

I’m sure I’ve touched on this before but I’d like to bring you back to remind you.

If you allow yourself to dwell on the negative aspects of your life, you will only magnify them.

Let me give you a real world example:

You’ve decided you want to buy a new car… A Black Mercedes SLK convertible!

As you drive around town now, all of a sudden you see all of the Black Mercedes SLK convertibles?!

Were they not previously there and now because you’re thinking about buying one, they’ve all of a sudden appeared?

NO!

Because you’re focusing on that particular car in your mind, conscious and subconscious, both your attention and your physiology is drawn towards that car.  They were there before, but now because you have made a decision to focus your attention on them, you’re more aware of their existance and you’re drawn towards them.

So for our application in building a business, creating a lifestyle of success or achieving our goals, we must be sure to make a conscious decision to focus on where we would like to be, rather than focusing on the obstacles which are in our way.

Another real world example:

Have you ever seen something on the side of the road which caught your attention, while driving, and found yourself steering in that direction.  You found your car pulling to that side and had to correct to straighten up your vehicle before you hit the curb?

What you focus on, you move towards!

So what are you focussing on?

If your goal is to create a secondary income, which then can replace your primary income, and build a full time online business…

Are you focussing on your goals - make $100 per week, make 10 sales per week, write 5 paid blog posts per week, attract 5 backlinks to your blog per week…

Or

Are you focussing on the bills which are coming in and need to be paid, and how little time you have to conduct all the tasks you need to conduct in order to achieve the goals you’ve set?

Do you see the difference?

Its very easy to become distracted by the obstacles, and the struggles which are in play when we start to move towards our desired outcomes in life…  But when we start to focus on the obstacles and the negative, we give power to those things, by magnifying them in our view, and allowing them to have mindspace which they do not deserve.

3 Steps to Laser Focus

1. Write Your Goals and Keep Them In View Everyday

This isn’t about goal setting, but very quickly…

Goals should be:

Specific - You should be able to write down your goals in a very specific and concise manner.

The 6 W questions are often good for developing Specific Goals: Who, What, Where, When, Which and Why.

Measurable - You should be able to measure progress towards your goals very specifically, questions like - how much? how many? when will it be accomplished?

Timely - A goal should be grounded within a time frame. With no time frame tied to it there’s no sense of urgency. If you want to lose 10 lbs, when do you want to lose it by? “Someday” won’t work. But if you anchor it within a timeframe, “by May 1st”, then you’ve set your unconscious mind into motion to begin working on the goal.

The bible says “Without a vision the people perish” and I believe this to be so on an individual level, without a vision, or a specified desired outcome, people end up floundering, and when you’re not growing what are you doing? Dying!

So write down your goals, write down your vision (a vision is simply the articulation of a picture of your preferred future).

Break down your goals into 3 and 6 month blocks…

What do you want to achieve in 3 months?

What do you want to achieve in 6 months?

Then break those goals down into actions…

What activities do I need to do, to achieve those goals in that time frame?

Daily activities, weekly activities, monthly activities - be specific, write them down, add them to your daily ‘to do’ list.

2. Read Your Goals and Your Vision Statement Every Morning

Unless we keep our vision and our goals in front of our eyes each day, it is easy for us to get distracted by everyday information, and also the obstacles which will begin appearing as we move toward our goals.

Remember, what you focus on you move towards!

Continually focus on your goals, focus on your picture of a preferred future, keep them in the front of your mind.

As you real your goals and vision each morning, imagine your life when you have achieved those goals.  Picture yourself in that situation, driving the car you want to buy, living the lifestyle you want to live, marrying the girl of your dreams, earning the income you want to earn, impacting the lives of people in third world countries…

How do you feel? What emotions do you feel as you imagine yourself in that position…

Tap into those emotions, the happiness, the fulfillment, the satisfaction… and when you start to feel overwhelmed by the obstacles or struggles of life, remind yourself of these feelings.

3. Recap On Your Day At The End of The Day and Focus For The Next Day Coming

Its always good to reflect at the end of the day…

• What did you achieve?
• What did you do?
• What could have been improved?
• What opportunities did you seize?
• What opportunities were missed?

And after a time of reflection, turn your attention to the next day… develop your daily “to do” list the night before, as a way of downloading so you’re not thinking about all the things you need to remember the next day as you lie in bed.

If you follow these 3 simple steps to laser focus, you will find yourself becoming more focussed on your vision and your goals, and less distracted by the obstacles which try to steal our focus.

I was once told that to drive a car through a narrow space, dont look at the obstacles either side, simple select a spot infront of you and focus on it as you drive straight ahead.

Focus on your goals!

Focus on your desired outcomes!

and you will drive right past the obstacles without even a hint of diversion or distraction.

If you found this post valuable and you want to learn how to develop a  make money blog, dont miss the next one, enter your email address and get future blog posts delivered right to your email box - subscribe to my blog feed AND you’ll receive 5 FREE Money Making Ebooks

Lets Make Money!

         

Today I was at the supermarket buying the ingredients for my dinner, steak and vegetables… mmmmm!

Anyway, food will always get me off track, so I was in the vegetable section and something caught my attention, which is my inspiration for todays post.

Are You Just A Regular Carrot, Or Are You A Juicing Carrot?

So what the hell does that mean and what does it have anything to do with Internet Marketing or learning how to Make Money Online?

Well the story continues as I was buying carrots, and I saw a bag of carrots, pre packaged, with this label “Juicing Carrots”.

This new found revelation of pre packaged carrot specially grown for juicing started my mind ticking over and here’s my train of thought.

• Are they really any different from regular carrots?
• They look a little fatter than regular carrots.
• They’re more expensive than regular carrots.
• But are they just fatter regular carrots packaged together, and branded ‘Juicing Carrots’?

Now if you’re a grower of ‘Juicing Carrots‘ then maybe you can shed some light on this for me, but for the sake of this blog post let me walk out today’s lesson.

In the world of Internet Marketing and even business in general, if you do not stand out from the crowd, if you’re not ‘Remarkable’ as Seth Godin would say, you’re going to get left behind when the NBT (Next Big Thing) comes along.

So again let me ask you, Are you Just a Carrot or Are You A Juicing Carrot?

You may not really have anything that spectacularly different, unique or remarkable which can set you apart from the crowd initially, but what qualities or expertise do you have which you can capitalise on, brand, market and leverage to set you a part.

Back to these fat carrots…

They were nothing but fat carrots, which to me, would be the ones I would ‘not choose’ when selecting carrots for my dinner, I tend to go for the nice looking long carrots.

These were reject carrots, but someone had a fantastic idea, saw a need in the market, and capitalised with some clever marketing and packaging and created ‘Juicing Carrots’!

You might think that you’re nothing special, you might even think that you’re a reject, over weight, out of shape, left at the bottom of the pile, but I know you have a story, you have seeds of potential inside of you, but left to sit they remain seeds.

I have heard it said that “You can count the seeds in an apple, but you cannot count the apples in a seed.”

Within you, you have seeds which need to be sown into the right soil, nurtured, watered, maybe fertilized a little, but given the right environment they will flourish to produce a fantastic harvest.

So the question remains, Are you Just A Carrot Or Are You A Juicing Carrot?

1. Identify Your Niche

• What are you passionate about?
• What keeps you awake at night?
• What can you talk about for hours?
• What expertise do you have?
• What problems can you solve?

Find your niche and begin to own it, dominate it, live it, breath it, as Gary Vaynerchuck would say Crush it!

Start a blog about it, start a facebook group about it, network with other like minded people.  Begin to ask questions which could identify potential markets in your niche.  Identify problems which need solutions and work out how you can turn your fat arsed carrot into a neatly packaged profit machine!

When you identify your niche - STICK TO IT!! Dance until it rains!

2. Brand Yourself, Your Product, Your Business

Branding is such a massive topic on its own, but it is in essence your style, your persona, your image, your language.  The brand elements are the unique qualities and elements which identify you as you, your product as your product and your company as your company.

Be remarkable, be unique, be quirky, be sexy, be appropriate to your target audience.

Develop your own tag line or call sign.

Develop some sayings which you can own and become known for.

If you have a bit of a budget, get a graphics guru like Design Guru Ryan to whip up some funky graphics and logos for you and use them everywhere!

Remember if the bag didn’t say “Juicing Carrots” they would simply be Fat Carrots, so if you dont brand yourself somebody else will.

3. Package Your Product

Whether your product is yourself as an expert/consultant, or whether you develop information products, sell affiliate products or build a mega successful internet marketing business teaching people how to do xyz, you need to learn how to package your product.

Take the Obese Carrots for example, they were nothing but Reject Carrots, sitting at the bottom of the pile until someone had an idea.

So you grab 15 of these Reject Carrots, put them together in a plastic bag, slap a name on them like “Juicing Carrots” and whala, you have a product, mind you the price for this product has now increased compared to if you bought those 15 Reject Carrots without the plastic bag and name.  Do you see the power of packaging your product?

Now i’m not necessarily talking about the plastic wrapping, I’m talking about the ‘Offer’.

How can you create a compelling offer by packaging 2 or more products together, or even shining one product up to make it appear more valuable (perceived value)?

Let’s take another real world example:

A Tie shop had silk hankerchiefs for sale in a discount box for $5 each, but they weren’t selling very well.  So a marketing specialist came along and thought, what if we spend $0.25 on a plastic hook and hang them on a nice hanger - I reckon we could sell them for $10 each.

The plan started to work, they were selling way more at $10 than they could at $5 sitting in a discount bin.

So they continued thinking, and this marketing specialist thought I wonder if we spent another $0.50 on a metal ring to put around these handkerchiefs whether we could sell them for $15 each hanging on our hanger.

And they did!

They increased the price by 300% ($10 per unit) by spending $0.75 and increased the perceived value to the customer.

How can you package your offer, yourself, your training, your expertise, so its perceived value is greater than it is now?

4. Dont Just Be An Everyday Carrot, Be Remarkable!

Everyone is trying to compete now in the ‘Make Money Online‘ Niche and whether or not they have any real world experience or scars to prove they’ve really been into battle, but now they’re just becoming another carrot.

There are now 171,000,000 websites which compete for the #1 spot on Google for the keyword phrase ‘Make Money Online‘, just another carrot in the pile.

So what are you going to do to stand out?  Whether your niche is teaching people how to make money online, or writing a make money blog or if you’re in the fitness niche or the weight loss niche, whathever it is, dont just be another blog on the pile, or website in the results of google, be remarkable.

Do something which will cause people to stand up and pay attention!

Be an innovator!

Do what no one else is prepared to do!

Go to Infinity and Beyond! (gotta love buzz light year).

And if you’re just here to make money, then you’re going to have a hard time, because money will not sustain you, only passion and purpose can sustain you.

So stop being a regular carrot, or you’ll just end up with all the other regular carrots, in a pot of boiling water.

If you found this post valuable and you want to learn how to make money online, dont miss the next one, enter your email address and get future blog posts delivered right to your email box - subscribe to my blog feed AND you’ll receive 5 FREE Money Making Ebooks

Lets Make Money!

         

Whether you’re in denial and like to think that you’re not effected by this Magic Marketing Word, one of the most powerful marketing strategies which has even become a business model is the ‘Free’ marketing strategy.

For a long time marketers online and offline have used a Free offer as a hook to get people into the store, trying their product for a limited time, or subscribed to a list

I have noticed big trend in the Internet Marketing industry, with many of the big name Internet Marketing Gurus launching new products or 2nd versions of old products, and giving them away for FREE! These aren’t just digital downloads, these are full home study guide with 8 set dvd’s and 8 set cd’s and a set of printed work books.

One of the biggest brand names online, which is a household name worldwide, ‘Google’ operates under a ‘Free Business Model’ and will launch their very own computer operating system in the not too distant future, taking on the Microsoft giant with a FREE operating system.

So how can the every day Joe apply this same phylosophy to our own Online Business, blog or even MLM business?

1. Use a FREE Offer To Build Your List

Whether you have a website promoting your business, a blog which you want to build a subscriber list for or an MLM business, you can use this strategy to increase the conversion rate of visitors to becoming subscribers.

As you will see here on this blog, I offer 5 FREE Money Making Ebooks, for anyone who subscribes to my RSS Email feed.

Why bother?

Well as soon as I have someone subscribed to my RSS feed, I have their permission to contact them, and they have a much higher likelyhood of becoming a repeat reader and even a customer if I bring out my own products some day.

I have written before about the fact that the money is in the list, and how a friend of mine, talking to me about his online business, expressed that as long as he had his list to market to, he would have a business.

One of the hardest tasks online is driving traffic to your webite, blog or offer, so if you have a visitor on your site you should do everything you can to capture their details to increase the likelyhood that they will return again.

Some marketers will even tell you that with the right approach, your list should be worth anywhere from $1 to $10 per person/per month, so the money really is in the list if you work it right.

“But I dont have anything to giveaway…”

Rubbish! Can you write a 10 page report? A 6 steps to success? Can you buy some Private Label Rights Ebooks? No one has any excuse, it simply needs to be attractive enough for people to want to give you their name and email address to be able to download it knowing that they will also receive your newsletter or blog posts in the future.

2. A FREE plus Shipping Offer

To take the Free offer just one step further a lot of successful marketers have started using what I call a ‘FREE plus shipping offer’.

This simply means that they will give you their physical product for FREE, you just have to pay for it to be shipped.

On the surface this doesn’t appear all that clever, but if you understand the psychology behind it it is brilliant.

You see, while the customer is thinking about how they are getting such a great deal on this FREE offer, and the fact that they only have to pay for the shipping which might only be $9.95, they have got their credit card out, and the first barrier has been broken down.

After they’ve paid for the shipping, the marketer will then present them with a One Time Offer (OTO) or Upsell, while they still have their credit card out, and often marketers are seeing a 30%-60% uptake on these OTO’s and Upsells after presenting the client with a FREE plus shipping offer, while if they had simply pitched the product offered in the OTO or upsell they would usually get 20%-30% conversion.

3. A FREE Trial with Forced Continuity

Often the FREE plus shipping offer can include a FREE Trial with Forced Continuity and a FREE bonus.

An example of this would be a One Month FREE Trial to a print newsletter, with forced continuity, meaning that the customers credit card is billed automatically (because you already have their details from the FREE plus shipping offer) for the 2nd month of the newsletter.

This is where the big guys like Mike Filsaime, Frank Kern and Russell Brunson are making the big dollars (like 6 figures a month), giving away their products plus shipping, offering a free trial to a print newsletter or membership site with forced continuity for the future months.

The offer of something for nothing is just too good to pass up on, and if your content is valuable enough there is no reason that your clients shouldn’t remain faithful and not opt-out before you have the chance to make a dollar from them.

But when you have the ability to use the FREE hook to attract your prospect, then have them take out their credit card all in the one action, you’re in a position to capitalize on the opportunity with the right mix of products and value.

Now please dont start quoting me and saying that I’m promoting using trickery to get customers to give you their credit card details so you can profit from their naivity.

These are simply methods for honest marketers such as yourself to get through some of the barriers to converting your visitors into customers, and its up to you to have the depth of value in your offers to ensure that they remain happy and satissfied customers for years to come.

If you found this post valuable and you want to learn how to make money online, dont miss the next one, enter your email address and get future blog posts delivered right to your email box - subscribe to my blog feed AND you’ll receive 5 FREE Money Making Ebooks

Lets Make Money!

         

Welcome back to mindset monday, to be honest I look forward each week to monday’s and an opportunity to share something about personal development and a mindset for success.

Believe it or not but your success in online business has more to do with your mindset than it has to do with your skills or your abilities.

Your mindset, your beliefs, your world view, your attitudes, your thoughts, will direct your destiny and your future.

Even the most skilled internet marketer or business person will be set up for failure if they have a negative mindset or the wrong attitude.

I know from my own journey my mindset has directed me to both success and failure, but as I’d like to discuss in this post, we may fail in one or two or even more attempts to create success, but we only fail if we choose not to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and try again after reassessing the reasons we found ourselves short of success.

Failure Is Not An Option

I’d like to suggest that some of the most successful people in the world, whether they be Donald Trump, Richard Branson, Walt Disney, Henry Ford or Bill Gates, adopted this attitude towards building their business and creating success, and built a belief that failure is not an option.

This does not mean that they didn’t have failed attempts at business startups or ideas.

Richard Branson for example and his global brand ‘Virgin’ is littered with so-called failures including;

• Virgin Cola, which was touted to be the next Coca-Cola.
• Virgin Clothes which was floated on the stock exchange in 1996 folded including losses to shareholders.
• Virgin Money was launched with a glitzy advertisement of Branson emerging naked from the sea, but did not deliver the expected big financial rewards.

Then theres;

• Virgin Vie
• Virgin Vision
• Virgin Vodka
• Virgin Wine
• Virgin Jeans
• Virgin Brides
• Virgin Cosmetics
• and more…

None of which fulfilled the creators vision of success.

But… you must have a big But to be a success, dont forget that…

But… This did not stop Richard Branson from building a Global, and now Intergalactic brand which we all know as ‘Virgin’.

Failure was just not an option… it may have been a pause or an intermission between his successes, but failure was never a place where he allowed himself to dwell.

Decide right now for yourself, whatever it is that you’re attempting to build - Failure Is Not An Option!

How does this apply practically?

1. Accept failures as test on your way to success

When we determine in our mind and our heart that failure is not an option that is not to say that we will hit our homerun first time we step up to the base.

I stepped into business at a young age and with a mega positive attitude and false expectation that unlike most successful entrepreneurs, I was not going to take 2 or 3 goes to make my millions… no sir.  I would be an exception to the rule, and everything I touched would turn to gold baby!

Now I encourage this positive outlook, but if you dont hit the homerun first time you step up to the base, be ready to refocus and go again.  Its one thing to have great expectations and dreams, but dont spit the dummy and take your bat and ball home if you dont achieve them first go, or if the results dont come for you the first time.

Its okay for failures to be stepping stones, just dont let them be your tomb stone.

2. Develop a Problem Solving Outlook

Failures are a great opportunity for improvement.  If you look at failures with a negative mindset you will only get discouraged.

Develop a problem solving outlook when you’re assessing your failed attempts and use it as an opportunity to do better on your next try.

Ask yourself these questions:

• What went wrong?
• What would I do different next time?
• Is it worth attempting again?
• Is there actually a market for this?
• Who could I ask for advice in this field?
• Have I made this mistake before?

I’ve heard it said many times that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results.

Often we can create habits in our lives which create negative results, but fail to change those habits and create new ones, building patterns of failure in our life.

Develop an outlook to analyze and assess your business or project to identify opportunities for positive change.

This leads right into my third point…

3. Turn your failure into success!

Do you know that your failure could ultimately become your success if you address it with the right attitude.

“How?” you say…

Well if you’re not reaching your goals in a particular field or business endeavour, then chances are there are other people around the world who are in the same boat right?

So…

Step 1. Identify the issue

Be able to articulate the issue precisely and succinctly.

Step 2. Develop a solution

Firstly identify a solution.  Ask other people around you if they have a solution, speak to experts, research your issue, become the expert in the field.

Step 3. Develop a product to teach how to apply the solution

Once you have a solution to your issue you can easily develop an information product teaching others how to apply the solution and achieve the desired outcomes.

This could take the form of a cd, dvd, live presentation, mini-course, home study course, membership site etc

If there are enough people searching for this solution you have yourself a business - it’s that simple.

4. Dance Until It Rains!

When failure is not an option we dont continue to do the same actions expecting different results but we dont ever give up on our dreams and our goals.

The path may change from where we started out, the methods may be adjusted, but we dont give up on our journey to success, whatever success may mean to you.

I heard a fantastic story of an american indian tribe who were known for their amazing ability to do the ‘rain dance’ and see results, they were known throughout the land and other tribes would travel far and wide to learn their secret to bringing rain and what was so special about their rain dancing ability.

One day an elder of another tribe travelled days just to speak to an elder from this famous tribe to learn of their secret.

He arrive after many days travel, sat down with this elder, expectant, waiting to hear their secret.  He asked them “what is your secret? How do you see such success with your rain dances?”

The elder replied “We dance until it rains.”

Dance Until It Rains!

As long as you know you’re on the right track, and your actions are the right actions - dance until it rains!  Persistance pays off.

As the saying goes there’s no point flogging a dead horse, but it is also true that so many people give up right before their point of breakthrough.

Did you know that according to physics, the resistence is greats right before the point of breakthrough.

Dont give up - push through to your breakthrough.

If you found this post valuable and you want to learn how to make money online, dont miss the next one, enter your email address and get future blog posts delivered right to your email box - subscribe to my blog feed AND you’ll receive 5 FREE Money Making Ebooks

Lets Make Money!

         

A very important element of making money online, whether it be through blogging, marketing info products, real products or even using the internet to build your MLM business or home based business, is positioning yourself as the expert in the field.

Online - perception is reality!

So with that in mind, the internet is a fantastic medium to build passive income as it allows you to create a perception of being the expert in the field in record time compared to offline methods.

Now understand that I am not talking about lying or presenting false information, for any regular readers you would know that I am all about operating with the highest levels of integrity and trust, because a business which is built on falsehood will not stand the test of time.

But… the internet give us all a level playing field when it comes to positioning yourself as the expert in the field.

Now if you know nothing about the industry you’re targetting, or the market you’re targetting, then dont even attempt to position yourself as the expert, as it will all come out in the wash.  Its for this reason that I promote the online business approach which I call “turning your passion into profits”.  This strategy ensures that you are already knowledgable and well positioned to leverage that knowledge and passion about your chosen market or niche, and will then be able to leverage that knowledge to position yourself as the expert.

This doesn’t mean that if you dont feel particularly equipped in a specific market that you cannot position yourself as the expert, its just a matter of leveraging other peoples expertise and then using their knowledge to position yourself as the expert.

So enough of the vague ambiguities lets get down to business about how to position yourself as the expert:

How To Position Yourself Online As The Expert

1. Walk The Walk, Before You Talk The Talk

If you are wanting to make money online in any particular niche teaching, advising or consulting people about any market or industry… walk the walk…

Have experience in the niche before you try and position yourself as the expert.

Its no use to anyone if you want to build an online business teaching people the drums if you dont know the first thing about drums or drumming.

Now as always, there is an exception to this rule - which I mentioned earlier, and this involves you partnering with an expert in the field to build your online business, but that’s for another day.

If you want to teach people how to make money online but you haven’t made a single red cent online, DONT!  Until you have been able to achieve the results yourself that you plan on teaching and leveraging from, dont try to fool the market place, there are enough sharks and sheisters out there already.. just dont do it!

So be sure that you have walked the walk, before you talk the talk…

To be quite honest I’m sick and tired of marketers, or would be marketers launching into an online business ‘how to blah blah blah’ and their primary motive is to get rich quick.  Its these money hungry jerks who give the industry a bad name and ultimately it will come back and bite them on the bum.

With this in mind…

• What are you passionate about?
• What expertise do you have that would be valuable to other people?
• What can you do and teach to others?
• How can you help others solve a problem that might be a universal problem?

2. Develop Your Story

As you position yourself in the field as the expert, whether it be, expert - golfer, drummer, counsellor, business coach, life coach, psychologist, parent, entrepreneur, match making guru etc, have a story to tell.

• How did you get to where you are today?
• What struggles and hard ships did you go through on the way?
• What secrets have you discovered in your journey?
• What results are you now achieving?
• How has that impacted on your life?
• How are you now able to help other people?

All of these questions will help you build your story and help you to position yourself in the minds of your readers and market place that you are the expert in the field.

Making money online is all about finding a need and filling it with a solution, so your story should answer questions that your target market are asking, and help them to identify with you on a personal and real level.  They want to hear how you got to where you are today, because that’s where they want to be.  They want to hear what results you are achieving, because they want to know what they will achieve through listening to you, reading your blog or buying your product.

Make your story real, make it personal and allow your target market to identify with you.

Another great thing about working online is that it allows you to connect with your market in a much deeper level.

If you consider your perception of movie stars or rock stars, they’re very untouchable, unreachable and even unreal.

By positioning yourself as the expert, but being accessible, real and relateable, your target market can gain a confidence that not only are you genuine, but that there just might be a chance for them to become like you, through reading your blog, subscribing to your list or buying your product.

So start to develop your story…

3. Build Your Networks

Now that you have your story ready, you need somewhere to tell it.

The movement of Web2.0 and social media has created a number of great opportunities for ‘online experts’ to network and tell their story to the relevant target market.

I saw on twitter the other day someone posted a statement that went something like this:

“Your Network is equal to your Networth”

So if that is true, get started and build your networks.

As your network make sure that your online profiles are all telling the same story, painting the picture of “You The Expert” and ALWAYS direct them back to your blog or website.

Some great sites for you to start building your networks on are:

• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• MySpace
• Twitter
• Industry Specific Forums

Facebook, linkedin and myspace are all social networks where you can post profiles, join groups, comment on forums, build your own groups, chat and message people etc

Get into the online networks and interact, start conversations, ask questions and get to know your audience, and allow them to get to know you.

Twitter is a little different, and as a microblogging service it allows you to have semi real time conversations with your target market.  Using the search function on twitter you can do a search for people who are already talking about your niche or topic and join in their conversations.

One key for networking online that I believe is crucial to remember its all about the relationship.  Dont be a jerk and just go out to promote your product or your blog or web address.  People are over spam and they wont give you a second chance.

Treat online networking the same as you would treat a real life cocktail party. Would you walk up to someone at a cocktail party and say, “Hey check out my website” then walk to the next person and so on…?

Be real, be personable, be accessible, build relationship and provide value.

4. Have a Home Base

Finally… One must have element for positioning yourself online as the expert is the need for a ‘home base’.

Your home base may be a blog or a website… I’m a big fan of blogs, which is clearly why I’m here writing and you’re here reading.

Whether your home base is a blog or a website is purely up to you and may vary from market to market, but you must have a home base.

Somewhere you can point all of your social network profiles to.

Somewhere you have the facility to capture the name and email address of your visitors (like my RSS email subscription - top of my side bar ->>).

Somewhere you can update with new information and draw people to when you provide offers or product launches.

Somewhere that allows you to build your personal brand and gives you the flexibility to change design and layout as you require.

So be sure to get yourself a home base.  It doesn’t have to cost you an arm and a leg, (I can set you up with a simple blog, and a domain name and hosting, for just $97 - let me know if you’re keen).

Follow hese four steps and you’re well on your way to positioning yourself as the expert.

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