“What is the best legal MLM program that we can join to make fast money online?”

Click on the link above to my answer as well as how others answered the question.

If you like my answer the best, vote for it!

Thanks,

Garland Coulson, “The EBusiness Tutor”

Here are links to some questions I answered

• Choosing keywords for search engine optimization?
• Career:  Should I choose SEO or IT?
• How can I find people who are interested in learning NLP or Hypnosis online?

Check out my answers, and if you like them, vote for them as the best answer.

Garland Coulson, “The EBusiness Tutor”

I stood out at my garden the other night, trying to decide whether to start weeding or to start planing new plants I had purchased.  While doing this, I also started wondering if I had made the right choices for deciding what the garden should look like.  15 minutes later, I was still thinking and not one weed had been pulled or one flower planted.

Either choice would have been fine – it was the “analysis paralysis” that was keeping me from moving my garden project forward.

If garden choices are this hard, what about work and business choices?  Whew!

For years, I had run a successful consulting business, but I knew I had to start creating products where I could earn money without trading time for money for time.  I had many ideas on how to do this, but I struggled with which one to focus on.

So, over 5-6 years I ended up with 10-20 different product ideas partially done and zero complete and none earning me money.

Finally, I decided and fully committed to one product, worked hard on it for 6 months.  Within 6 months, it made a profit.  Within 2 years, this product increased my income to 6 figures.  But for about 5-6 years, I flitted from one product idea to another, wasting time.

Was the product idea that finally made me money the best one of the bunch?  Probably not.  But the reason it worked was because it was the only idea that ever got finished!

Finished is better than perfect.

Finished business ideas make you money.  “Perfect” business ideas that are never completed because you want to make them perfect make you zilch.  And if the idea really is that good, someone else will come up with a similar one and get it launched and out there earning money while you are polishing every facet of your gem of an idea.

So how do you avoid “analysis paralysis” and get your business idea moved forward.

1.  Let Go Of Perfection:

Let go of finding the perfect one an choose the “good enough” one.  Remember that launching one product now doesn’t mean that all your other ideas die – rather it means you will be able to get more of them finished and launched as your income grows from the first one.

Pick the one that seems the quickest and easiest to get going and get started.

2.  Commit Fully To Your Decision:

Often we decide what project we are going to do, but we don’t fully engage.  It is like we are keeping our options open so we can change our mind.  So we only do bits of work on the project and eventually abandon it.  Commit fully and it will get done.

3.  Assign Time & Resources To Your Project:

Saying you are going to do it is not enough.  You actually have to commit time (yours and others) and resources (money, tools, staff) to the project.  If you are working along, choose a certain time of day (perhaps 1pm to 2pm) and work on the project during that hour every day.  You will be amazed at how fast it moves forward.

4.  Outline Your Project:

Put together your plan.  Use an outliner, mind map, project management software, graph paper, notebook, recipe cards or even yellow stickies on a wall.  But get a plan together so you identify what needs to be done and in what order.

5.  Delegate:

Once you have your idea chosen, quickly assign out all the tasks associated with it such as web building, graphic design, writing, programming etc.  Other people won’t have your same paralysis about it and will just run with the project you have given them.

6.  Follow-Up & Persistence:

Continue to follow-up with anyone you have delegated to to make sure they keep on top of their tasks.  Make sure you persist yourself on your portion of the project so it gets done.  Keep to your chosen hours for the project and let NOTHING keep you from spending the time needed to grow your project into a bountiful harvest.

You’ll be glad you did…

Garland Coulson, The E-Business Tutor”

Every week, I approach new potential joint venture partners and every week I have many people wanting to partner with me.  Over time, I have developed definite preferences in the types of joint venture partners I deal with.

So I decided to write this article to give tips to others looking to do joint ventures as to what works.

Work With Compatible Audiences

My own list consists of people wanting to learn how to make money online.  So I would burn my list if I started sending them info on unrelated topics like weight loss, quitting smiling or credit score products.  So before you approach a potential partner, look at their web site addresses to see what would interest their subscribers.  This will keep you from wasting both your time and the partner’s time.

Build Your Own List First

To be brutally honest, I don’t need to promote your product to my list.  I earn 1,000s of dollars each month promoting affiliate products  but places like ClickBank have an unlimited supply of products for my niche.  So I am not looking for more products to promote to my list.

What I AM looking for is to get my products out to more people.  So if you have a list of people who are interested in products like mine, we can talk.

But be realistic.  If you tell me that your new “system” for making money online is fantastic but it has only managed to get you 100 subscribers, you have NO credibility with me.  Why would I tell my list of 75,000 subscribers about your product in return for you emailing your 100?

So build your own list first and work with smaller list owners while you build until you get a substantial list of your own.  I do understand what it is like to start out, so I will work with lists as small as 5,000.

Have A Good Alexa Ranking

I have many people claiming to have very large lists wanting to work with me.  But how do I know if it is true?  Well, I ask them for their list size and the url where their subscribers sign up.

Then I check their Alexa ranking.  Alexa rankings are based on the activity of people who have the Alexa toolbar installed.  It isn’t a perfect tool, but it is reasonably accurate in the Internet marketing field because of lot of people in the Internet marketing field have it installed.

The lower the Alexa ranking, the more popular the site is.  For example, at the time of this post, Google is #1, American Express is #585, Well-known Internet entrepreneur YanikSilver.com is 68,702 and my own FreeTrafficBar.com is 28,526.

Recently I heard from a person who claimed a list of 50,000 in the Internet marketing field, but his Alexa ranking on his subscriber signup page was over 1.3 million.  This didn’t seem to match, so I declined the ad swap.

So install the Alexa toolbar (I put mine at the bottom of my browser out of the way) so you can see your Alexa ranking and work on building your traffic.

Have A Unique Product

One of the annoying things to me lately is that a lot of the ad swap proposals are all for similar products.  Everyone seems to have a new “system” for making money online and they are all starting to blur together and sound alike.

My niche online has been to focus on creating unique products.  My Free Traffic Bar,Screen Swarm, Internet One System and Resale Rights  products have only 1-2 competitors each.  So they don’t compete with all the other systems out there.

Make your product approach unique and I am much more likely to want to offer it to my members.

Have An Affiliate Program

While I have an unlimited supply of Clickbank products I can earn money on, I would also like to earn money on the ad swap I do with you.  So you should have an affiliate program I can join so I earn commissions when I promote your product.  I pay a 50% commission to my ad swap partners, so it would be nice to make some money in return.  And if your product is a ClickBank product, that works tool.

Free Plus Upgrade

My audience is a lot of Internet marketing newcomers who are just learning how to make money online.  So they are very interested in valuable “free” reports, ebooks, videos and other tools.  Definitely add an upgrade or one time offer so we can both earn month, but adding something of value for free gets them into your list and gives them a great first impression.

Strong Landing And Offer Pages

Since part of the reason I am promoting your product is to earn money, I always look at the landing page where I am sending my subscribers.  Does it look professional?  Does it clearly explain the offer?  Is it compelling?  Do I think it will convert well?  If you have a free offer on the front end, I would also like to see your back end offer as this is the part where I make money.

Offer Bonuses But Automate Them

I really enjoy it when my partners can offer bonuses, BUT I need them as automated as possible.

I don’t want to have my staff getting support tickets and having to scramble to get our subscribers their bonuses from you.

On my first big ad swap, I spent 3 days adding the bonuses manually to my new members accounts!  I swore never again.

So, I had my programmer design an automated coupon system where I could give away blocks of free advertising credits.  This has worked very well for my partners.

I Hate Prelaunches

Maybe it is just me, but I hate prelaunches.  Usually the page I am supposed to send people to has almost no information about what they will be getting.

It is ok to have joint venture partners sign up ahead of time to submit bonuses and get material ahead of time, but usually, I just wait for the actual launch to promote.

I Hate Short Notice

My solo ads are on a schedule and I have many projects on the go.  So I can’t drop everything to try to pull together bonuses and a solo ad for you when you give me only a couple of days notice.  If I am a valuable partner to you, let me know about your upcoming projects weeks ahead of time and I can work with you on them.

Conclusion

So these are my thoughts and rants about ad swaps and joint ventures.  I hope you will think of these as you build your own online income through ad swaps.

Garland Coulson, “The EBusiness Tutor”

Tragically the laptop held about a year’s worth of family pictures including irreplaceable pictures of her newborn.

I just wanted to advise everyone to make sure you do regular backups of your computer. An external had drive is about $80 to $100 and can back up all your data, pictures and music.

If you run an online business, this will get you up and running again right away.   If you just use your computer for home use, backups will protect precious family photos and other information.

It is CRITICAL that you keep the backups off site. A backup on a spare hard drive does no good if they take that too or if you house burns down. Keep the hard drive in a safety deposit box or at a friend’s or relative’s home

Also a good idea to videotape or take pictures of your possessions and keep a list of your possessions and serial numbers. You can also put stickers in hidden areas or otherwise engrave or label your stuff.

This will help with your insurance and also help police trace stolen goods.

Garland Coulson. “The EBusiness Tutor”

Garland Coulson, “The EBusiness Tutor”

I love being able to check my email from anywhere and the spam control is excellent.

But Gmail isn’t perfect.

Previously while using Thunderbird and Outlook Express, I used to like keeping my emails in nested folders.   So if I had a partner named Bob Smith, I would create a folder for Partners and then within my Partner Folder to have another folder for Bob Smith.  This made it very easy to find all the emails I exchanged with Bob.

Gmail works with labels instead.  I like the label system, but I now have over 185 labels.  So it is hard to find Bob’s emails when I need them because Gmail doesn’t let you nest your labels by putting them into categories.

Then I came across a product called Better Gmail.

Better Gmail is a free add on for FireFox that provides a bunch of very useful add on tools for Gmail including nested labels, unread message icon on your browser tab, file attachment icons, and more.

I installed the add ons and now I can easily created nested labels by using this format for naming or renaming Category/Label.  So, for the example above, I would rename my Bob Smith label to Partners/Bob Smith and the add on will show the label as Partners with a plus sign next to it.  When I click on the plus sign, the Partner category label opens up and shows me all the partner labels underneath.

One tip – make sure you change your settings in Gmail to show ALL your labels.  Better Gmail needs all the labels showing to properly move them into their categories.

Better Gmail makes it much easier to organize my hundreds of labels and really increases the usability of Gmail for me.  I highly recommend it.

I am not affiliated with Better Gmail – it just works great for me!  And t has over 3.3 million downloads so many others agree.

Garland Coulson, “The E-Business Tutor”

• http://wpgoldmine.com/?hop=gcoulson

Will now look something like this:

• http://8e7281hnz90frk2h03y6gkskpf.hop.clickbank.net/

The old links still work, but whenever you grab your affiliate link from ClickBank it will be in the new format.

Their reason is to encrypt the links so that people can’t remove your affiliate ID or so that spyware has a harder time stealing affiliate traffic.

However, this can cause problems in web sites that include downline builders where members can enter their affiliate IDs and know their downline is joining under them.

So here is a useful tool ClickBank offers that will let you decode your new style affiliate link so that you can get downline builder friendly urls.

• http://www.clickbank.com/hoplink_encoding.htm

You can also use the link to encrypt old style links if you want to protect them.  I was glad to find ClickBank had provided this as I was worried I wouldn’t be able to add new ClickBank products to our downline builder.

Garland Coulson, “The E-Business Tutor”

But this actually happened to me…

When I launched my first online products I made sure I included an affiliate program so that I could have 100s of others help promote my web site.  So I started inviting other web site owners to my system to join as an affiliate and I invited people who had large lists of subscribers to partner/joint venture (JV) with me on cross promotions of our products to each others lists.

Most of these emails were never responded to, but I did receive some positive responses and started working with these JV partners.  One of my new JV partners mentioned my products to one of their colleagues who asked me if she could also partner with me.

Over the next few years, these two partners generated over $15,044.80 in sales for me and continue to generate new sales for me EVERY month.

All from a single email to the right person…

How can you do this for yourself?  Here are some tips:

• Create a product that pays good commissions to partners
• Build your own subscriber list so you have something to offer in return beyond just commissions.  Create a win-win environment for both of you.
• Build your systems so that you can offer bonuses to your partners.  We have a coupon system in our back office that lets our partners give away special offers to their list members
• Learn how to approach list owners for Joint ventures and partnerships
• Regularly follow up with existing and new JV partners
• Once you start to gain success, outsource your followup to save time

JV partnerships have been one of my most powerful boosters to my success – and, unlike advertising, this type of marketing  ONLY costs me money for successful sales (commissions).

Learning how to JV partner with others is one of the key things you will need to learn to successfully work towards your own “4 Hour Work Week” like I am.

Garland Coulson, “The E-Business Tutor”

After about a week, I noticed an interesting trend.

While CD Baby offers both physical CD and MP3 downloads of the album, 70% of people who purchase the album are choosing to download it rather than to have the physical CD shipped to them.

This is cool for a number of reasons:

1. It means we have to produce less physical CDs, lowering our production costs
2. CD Baby pays us more on downloaded albums than physical CDs, so our profits are higher.

CD Baby is an excellent way for musicians to get their music out to their audience.  We make much more per sale than a musician usually gets after the record label takes its share and we control all the rights to our music.  CD Baby also gets our music on iTunes, Amazon and other online music retailers.

An excellent resource for  aspiring songwriters and musicians.

Garland Coulson, “The E-Business Tutor”