There are many ways to reach your audience nowadays, but what makes you think they will want to listen? If you are selling the same products or service as the next guy – why are they going to pick you? We all have the right to speak, but we need to earn the right to be heard.

There are technical aspects that you can implement, link building, keyword research and so on – but once that traffic arrives – what have you got that will make them want to sit up and take notice?

The best way to build a relationship, whereby that customer wants to buy from you and only you – is to build it prior to their arrival on your money site.

In the world of business, it’s not always about undercutting the competition or hiring the best SEO contractors, it’s more about the core of what you and your business stand for. And by this I mean your values, integrity and commitment to the cause.

We all have a fundamental right to speak, sell, do business but that doesn’t mean anyone will want to listen, buy or connect with us. We need to earn that right by the way that we conduct ourselves.

Becoming an Expert in Your Field

if you want your audience to pay attention to you, then you need to become a proven expert in your field and there are many ways that you can do this. If you are a teacher in some shape or form, then you need to get out there and get your voice heard. Create lots of good material and start to build up a reputation as the ‘go-to’ person within your niche. Always give great value and consider the needs of your customer before your own.

This same concept can be used for any business model whether it’s marketing, selling, coaching and so on. You need to give proof that you are the expert before you climb onto the plinth and start preaching.

Here are some ways that you can start to let your expertise shine through;

• Don’t just get a blog – get a blog and add really incredible content. Write for your market and give them a reason to want to read what you have to say
• Start networking within your niche. networking can be a very powerful way to start getting your name recognised within your industry
• Consider talking at a conference or hold a few workshops or demo sessions
• Start creating videos and uploading them to YouTube. Use a video aggregator like Tubemogul to dispense your videos further afield
• Create some tutorials and add them to sites like eHow.com or tutorialized.com – you don’t need to be in the field of training to do this, you could be demonstrating a product
• Write articles about your subject and submit them to the big article marketing directories. There are many to choose from, but start with ezinearticles.com and then find some more that are tailored specifically to your niche – ie. Health – this has lots of article directories aimed specifically at this niche
• Create some screencasts using Powerpoint and upload to places like screencast.com
• Take some of your articles and upload to the pdf sharing site Scribd.com
• Create a weekly podcast and post it to your blog and to iTunes

What you are effectively doing here, is dominating your niche with your expertise. So whatever media your customer prefers, they will always be able to find you, your brillaint products, services, solutions and see the passion and the expertise that you have.

Now that they have found you, don’t disapoint at the last hurdle. Look after them, reinforce the idea that they made the right decision to choose you and always, always be better educated and more informed about your customers needs that the competitor.

Now you can climb onto that plinth and smile down at your audience!

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What Kind of Person Are You?

I’ve been doing some thinking and I’ve read many, many times (that in itself is a bit of a clue here) about people who ‘take action’ and people who just – well…..don’t!

I think it extends way beyond what we wallow in here on the Internet – we buy marketing products and courses to improve our chances of making money online, we buy books that will tell us quick ways to achieve our goals and then about 10% of us actually read those books or do that course. Of that original 100%, only about 2% ever take any action even if they finish the book or the course. But in our every day lives away from the Internet – we do the same crap!

How many of you have exercise dvds? Or have joined a gym and paid for the membership each month without actually going?

The action takers among us have every right to a selection of a few exercise dvds – they use them and a bit of variety in your fitness regime is a good thing. The rest of us who buy the latest dvd becuase this will be the one that ‘makes the difference’ should put our hands up and confess to being a limp ‘Non Action Taker’.

But at that very moment, when we see the new, shiny dvd being adveretised with the ‘before and after’ pictures, we feel in control and powerful – it’s a heady feeling because most of the time we just bitch and moan about how unfair everything is.

So we seize that moment to really soak up as much of that feel-good factor that we possibly can. Now that we’ve ordered that dvd we are going to be fit in five months time just like the woman in the dvd – that 28lbs is sooo gone!

Or is it?

Maybe the 28lb will be 30lb in 5 months time because we are too damn lazy to actually take any action to get the results. Even taking the cellophane off the dvd is too much effort – far better to pop it in the cabinet with the 7 other fitness dvds because there is a much better one coming out and this has had AMAZING results.

What about that gym membership?

We don’t go because some pointless shit has happened that we really need to attend to RIGHT NOW but we will obviously go next week (lmfao), we can’t possibly cancel that membership or we might…..get fat…..ter? The fact that the money comes out each month makes us feel a whole lot better because we are doing SOMETHING about our problem – the only exercise being conducted here is a completely pointless one.

If I asked you if you were a liar you might be quite offended, you don’t lie – it’s wrong….cruel….mean and you’re a nice person.

So why in the hell do we lie to ourselves? Why do we keep trying to convince ourselves that paying the monthly membership fee to the gym will make us thinner, fitter and an all round better person…..even if we don’t go?

Because we hate failure almost as much as we want to succeed

- but unless we put a stop to this continuous wheel of deceit – our chances of success are little to none.

All of these things are like a security blanket to the serial ‘non action taker’. By constantly researching the next best thing, the non action taker tries to convince him or herself that they are indeed taking some sort of action. The fact that it’s a time wasting, often money sucking kind of action is irrelevant.

How many times have you read about ‘taking action’? If it’s more than a handful of times then you probably also have a membership subscription of some kind that you don’t make use of. Either that or a shelf full of ‘self help’ books that haven’t helped…..cos you haven’t read them! Or else you read them and…..did nothing?

Joining in the throng of ‘yeah, I’m gonna take action this year’ and then moving on to the next blog to beat your chest again about taking action….isn’t taking action.

Reading about or watching the success of others isn’t going to make you successful.

Me telling you to take action and be one of the 2% isn’t going to make you successful either.

You putting the dvd on, heading out to the gym, working through the course and actually doing something proactive to get you to the next step is going to make you successful.

Below is a video with snippets from Will Smith (posted over at YouTube) and he is a perfect example of someone who takes action. The whole video is excellent and I’d encourage you to watch it through to the end, but there is one part of it that really stands out for me.
Will says that as a boy, his father tore down a wall and asked Will (12) and his brother (9) to rebuild it. They said it was impossible and it took them a year and a half – but they did it. Their father then said to them ‘Don’t ever tell me that there is something that you can’t do’.
Will then goes on to say that you don’t set out to build a wall, you lay the first brick as perfectly as a brick can be laid and then you do the same every single day and soon you have a wall.

So in 2010 are you going to start construction? Or will you order the ‘How to Build a Wall’ manual and leave it on the shelf?

If you are looking to be one of the 2% you might be interested in what we are offering over at Web Mums – start off with this competition – the prize is worth clicking through for, better hurry though cos it’s closing pretty soon. And take some damn action by leaving a comment – tell me your thoughts and plans then come back in a week and let me know that you made a start…..

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That is a simple fact and there is no hoodoo voodoo working its mojo, giving some folks a break and others a damn hard time. The fact is this; the people who are living the lifestyle that most folks crave simply worked hard for it. They wanted it more than the next person. They sacrificed more time, gave more effort and now they are reaping the rewards.

Have you ever darted from one site to another looking for ways to make money? Start a business? Get rich quick? Work from home? I’m sure you have and I’m sure you have read some valuable information. There is a wealth of it online, you have access to the best resource in the world when you connect up to the Internet but that’s the problem – there is sooo much of it.

Think of yourself as a sponge, you flit from one site to the next absorbing more and more information. Eventually you won’t be able to hold any more and you will start leaking the information down the plug hole – that’s an ugly image right there!

And Hey! – Some Guy Wrote That For You – So Feel Bad

You read it, thought it was great but you just needed to find out a bit more (yawn) about how to incorporate it into your business model. Whilst you have been searching around for that missing piece of the puzzle, new things have caught your eye, more schemes, some scams and gradually you have forgotten what it was you were looking for hours ago, or was it days? Maybe it was weeks, months or even *gasp* years!

It’s like me trying to walk past a shoe shop or a jewellers without being attracted to the shiny things – it aint gonna happen – unless you condition yourself!

So what have you learned?

And More Importantly – What Have You Earned?

Take some info and take some action. You don’t need to learn everything to get started – trust me; I found this out the hard way. I spent years learning everything as I felt I needed to before I would deem myself worthy of starting a website, giving advice, designing a webpage and so on. I could have been tipping the top by now if I had only put out a product back when I first learnt about affiliate marketing, e-commerce, SEO and marketing.

Don’t waste time learning it all, learn and grow as you go.

Find one site or one mentor and learn something. Then go away and try it – please try it. Just try doing one thing and then add to it. Once you have found one or two places that give you the info or training or whatever the heck it is that you need, stick with them – don’t squeeze them out of the bottom of your sponge by piling loads more on top.

But I Do Work Hard…

I imagine you are reading this and thinking either ‘Yep. That’s me – I flit and don’t actually achieve anything’ or you’re thinking ‘That’s rubbish, I really need 8 tons of info to succeed’ or maybe, just maybe you fall into one final group. Now this group tries hard, follows the rules – they don’t waste time flitting (too much) they come home from their regular job and follow (to the letter) everything that their guru has taught them – to no avail. On the forums they frequent there are success stories and those guys don’t seem to be doing half the amount of work – so what gives?

If you are at this point then something just isn’t clicking – you need a little outside help, someone who can have a look at what you are doing and give you a little guidance. It’s often something quite simple, a step in the process you’ve missed, the wrong target market, incorrect market research or you’ve no passion for it.

If you genuinely feel that you have worked as hard as you could and it’s still not working out for you then get some advice. This could be from forum members, the guru (if you have direct access), some business coaching or even a friend (if they are business savvy).

It might just be that your particular project isn’t viable and it’s time to walk away or it may be that you need a little push in a certain direction. You’ve already learnt a lot so don’t let all of those hours go to waste – you can use that info to take it to the next level or plough it into your next venture.

So in conclusion; if you’re flitting – stop it and put what you’ve learnt into practice before you forget it. If you can’t sleep until you’ve bought the next big idea or read the latest shopping cart review, or decided between wholesale and dropshipping, or visited another forum to find out the quickest way to make a buck – then you are doomed to fail. I’m really not kidding you – you will fail. Every successful online business leader found out what they needed to make their business work and then they did it.

They didn’t buy an endless ream of reports and e-books to get there; they just took what they needed and did it. Of course that isn’t to say that you shouldn’t always be learning because some of these courses will add to your arsenal – but study and do, don’t just study.

If you fall into the second (minority) group then get some guidance. Don’t waste any more time asking yourself ‘why’ your business isn’t succeeding when you are doing everything right – get out there and find out why! Then correct it and/or move on.

Passion, patience and perseverance people, now go get yourself a slice of the pie. (That was a figure of speech – do not head to the fridge for a slice of pie – do some work!)

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