How Persistent Are You With Your Online Business? Check Yourself!

How persistent are you? Would you like to know your persistent levels? Would you like to know where you have strengths and weaknesses? In one of my proceeding articles, I shared with my readers the importance of persistence and tips on how one could train himself/herself to become persistent. This time, I would like to focus your mind on this important question: “How persistent are you?”

Through this article, I would like you to carry out a self-evaluation exercise on how persistent you are by using the following guiding questions to weigh yourself. It would be nice to write somewhere your responses as to what exactly you are. This will hopefully help you to know your weaknesses and your strengths. It will also enable you to work on your weaknesses with an aim of becoming a more persistent person. Will you do that?

Well, answer genuinely the following 20 questions to discover your strengths and weaknesses. If your strengths outweigh your weaknesses by a very big margin, then you can consider yourself to be on the right track. But if your weaknesses exceed your strengths, you have a great job of training yourself to become persistent. I believe at the end of this simple exercise you will have known how persistent you are.

1. Do you have a purpose and clear reasons as to what you want to achieve in your business and your life?

2. Do you always find yourself postponing your decisions, plans and actions?

3. Do you have interest to acquire new knowledge and skills and apply them?

4. Do you find yourself doubtful and undecided on some of the important decisions you have to make in your life?

5. Do you feel complacent (feeling of self-satisfaction) about your achievements, what you are and what you have?

6. Do you feel indifferent or unresponsive to issues or obstacles you encounter in your life or in the course of doing your business?

7. Do you find yourself transferring the blame to others for any mistakes made by you?

8. Do you have a strong desire to do online business?

9. Do you create plans to guide you in your work?

10. Do you work according to your written plan or you find yourself doing things haphazardly?

11. Do you find yourself willing and decided to quit what you do when you are faced with some temporary defeat?

12. When people recognize opportunities for you, do you shy away from them?

13. Do you wish instead of taking action?

14. How ambitious are you at becoming financially secure or rich?

15. Do you believe in working to get money and riches or you believe in luck and easy ways of making money?

16. Do you fear to create plans and put them into action because of being criticized by others?

17. Do you feel passionate and enthusiastic about what you plan to do?

18. Do you believe in being a boss of your own or you prefer working for others?

19. Do you believe that you can achieve what you plan to do?

20. Do you pursue your plans, activities and tasks up to the end?

If you took some moments to reflect on the above questions and to analyze them, you now have a deeper understanding of yourself as far as your persistence levels are. The analysis may have led you to discover your strengths and weaknesses.

If you answered positively to questions 1, 3, 8, 9, 10, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19 and 20, you have strength in each of them and a negative response implies a weakness. But if you answered positively to questions 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 11, 12, 13 and 16, you have a weakness in each of them and a negative response reflects your strength. How persistent are you?

Become Persistent: How You Can Train Yourself To Become Persistent

Can you become persistent?  The answer is yes. You can easily train yourself to become persistent, provided you have the right attitude and know what you want out of your life and what to do. Most successful people are not born persistent but they learn slowly by slowly through training themselves. I would therefore like to share with you some of the basics you need to change your state of mind, which will gradually help you to become persistent.

1. Have a purpose.

You cannot become persistent without having a clear reason for what your want in life. As you want start an online business, what’s your reason to join business? How strong is your reason? People whose reasons to join online business are out of stomach feelings end up pulling out at the initial stages. Having a strong reason compels you to overcome any difficulties you may come across in the course of doing your business. And it’s a perfect and most important step in becoming persistent.

2. Have a strong desire.

Learn to keep a strong desire for what you want to achieve in life and to distance yourself from any obstacles that might break your mental and physical energy. Desire and enthusiasm to do your business and succeed is one of the key factors in acquiring persistence. The stronger your desire to work on your business is, the easier it will be for you to become persistent.

3. Work with a plan.

Most people venture into online business without any organized plans. This is one of the causes of failure. Having a written plan and a calendar of activities to do, helps you to work towards a definite goal. Even if your plans are weak, they will still help you to become persistent.

4. Develop a spirit of hard work.

Becoming persistent necessitates you to focus your thoughts on working on your plans to attain your objectives. Focus your mental and physical energy on building your business, following your set goals and objectives. In the process you will be training yourself to become persistent.

5. Develop a spirit of self-reliance.

Most successful entrepreneurs believe in being masters of their own. They are self-driven and always follow their plans to achieve their objectives. When you believe in your ability to pursue your plan independently, you set yourself to work persistently towards the attainment of your goals.

6. Get the required knowledge and skill.

Knowing what to do and how to do it is one of the key elements of becoming persistent. Knowledge is power only when it’s applied. The best way to learn what you don’t know is either by getting a book to read or by getting someone who knows to teach you.

7. Develop positive habits

You can become persistent if your mind picks and becomes part and parcel of the daily experiences on which it nourishes. Repetition of tasks tends to override the fear and cynicism you had about your business. I have virtually written all the articles I share with my readers in various directories simply because I have made it a habit to write at least 2 articles every week. It’s no longer a big deal to produce an article. You, too, you can develop in you the habit of working on tasks consistently and repeatedly to become persistent.

8. Surround yourself with people who can support you.

Nobody has ever succeeded without getting support from others. Online business requires you to learn from other people some of the tricks of succeeding in it. You can do this by seeking support from experienced and successful marketers in various ways. When you surround yourself with positive people, you will be able to become persistent.

As I conclude, I would like to remind you that online businesses are very profitable and can change your life. But people who benefit from them are those who are persistent and hard working. They are not a get-rich-quickly kind of businesses. You have to work hard and persistently hard. Training yourself to become persistent is vital.

Persistence: The Pillar To Success In Your Online Business

Persistence is an important factor in online business. Success in online business demands a high level of persistence. It should be clearly understood from the beginning that for you to succeed, you have to persist a lot despite any hindrances you may encounter in the course of running your business. You have to consistently work on your business now and gain to convert your desires into their monetary equivalent.  Your will-power to continuously work on your business, day in day out, coupled with your ability to turn obstacles into success stories are key ingredients of persistence.

Since I started online marketing, I have realized that quite a good number of people want to start online businesses. In fact some even start by joining affiliate and networking programs, hoping to make a lot of money within a very short time. But after joining, they work on the businesses for a short time and withdraw. Others just join and leave it to luck. It’s one of the reasons why I have come out to share with my readers, in this article and other subsequent articles, the importance of persistence in online business.

Persistence is one of the great secrets that have helped many online marketers to accumulate a lot of money. Generally, all successful online marketers have persistently worked hard to get money. Hard work and persistence are the driving-forces that help you to turn the impossible into possible and to convert your desires and plans into their monetary equivalent.

If you are really determined to make money online, you must have the energy to work and to work persistently on your business. In online marketing, you can consider yourself successful, if you have been able to make some reasonable amount of money. But one thing you must know is that this kind of success does not come so easily. There are always ups and downs, disappointments and losses that may break down your will-power.

“When the journey gets tough as it sometimes will, rest if you should but don’t quit”, said Robert Schuller. The majority of would-be successful online marketers give up when faced with a temporary defeat. It’s only a few, who carry on until they attain their objectives that make money online. Don’t you want to be among them?

To elaborate this further, let me use an example of my former workmate a reputable organization 4 years ago, who abruptly decided to leave formal employment to do personal work of writing books for sale on Self-Discovery. When he mentioned this, everyone who knew him, especially his family, got concerned as to how he was going to survive without any reliable source of income. But he was tired of working for others and wanted to be a master of himself.

When he finally resigned, he used his terminal benefits to publish the useful books. But the going became so tough. Little did he know that his success depended not only on his skill and knowledge on the subject matter, but depended more on his ability to market the products. He didn’t have any marketing skills. He had used up all his terminal benefits and the books were not selling, as he had anticipated, to raise good income for him. Worse still, he had to attend to his family’s never-ending financial obligations. Each day, he was losing weight, getting disappointed and contacting his colleagues for support. But he never gave up with his business idea.

He worked on his business and looked for the market for his products. In the course of doing his business, he also realized that he could earn from organizing workshops and seminars mainly in schools on the subject. He also realized that he could use his books to advertize other people’s businesses and earn from providing advertising space. Actually his books are now full of various companies’ adverts.

As we talk now, he has established himself as an expert of self-discovery and earns a good living from his business. He is a self-made motivational speaker, writer and a publisher. The key factors to his success are mainly hard work and persistence.

Lack of persistence is one of the major causes of failure in online business and a weakness prevalent to the majority of people. To make money online, you must overcome this weakness by having some effort to work on your business consistently and by keeping your desire to make money online burning. How deep is your desire to achieve from online business?

The stronger your desire to make money online is, the stronger the results. The weaker your desires are, the weaker the results. A small amount of fire makes a small amount of heat. My friend, keep your desire strong and burning. It’s a key element of persistence!

Marketers who have made money online are those whose minds are prepared to attract riches. If you find yourself weak in persistence, it’s high time you learnt how to acquire this important behavior of successful entrepreneurs. In my upcoming articles, I will provide you with tips on how to train yourself to become persistent and how you can assess yourself to discover whether you have the character of being persistent.

Affiliate Products: 10 Considerations To Make As You Select Affiliate Products To Promote

Marketing affiliate products on your website along with your own products is a profitable venture. Most website owners earn extra income from promoting affiliate products on their websites. However, you don’t have to just promote products. There are some important considerations to make prior to selecting the products you intend to market. What are those factors to consider as you plan to start marketing any affiliate product?

Before venturing into affiliate marketing, it’s important to think about the products’ suitability so that you do not spend your time and energy marketing products that won’t give you good returns. I would therefore like to share with you 10 key factors to consider when selecting good affiliate products to promote.

1. Right affiliate product.

Suitability of the affiliate products you intend to promote on your website is a key factor if you want to benefit from affiliate marketing. You should focus on key aspects like the product’s popularity, quality, conversion rate and competitiveness. You should also be able to have enough information about it.  As a guide, consider selecting your affiliate products from the best sellers on the internet, which include mainly software, information, private sites and internet services.

2. Relevancy

How relevant is the affiliate product to your business? Is it connected to your niche? It’s recommendable to choose a product that is related to the product you basically trade in on your website. For instance, if you provide article submission services on your website, then promoting software that converts articles into videos is related to your core business.

Relevancy of the product is crucial because if you promote products that are not related to your niche or to the main products you market on your website, your targeted customer group may not be interested in those products. This simply means that they will click away without taking the desired action. Don’t you think you will have wasted your energy and time marketing affiliate products that don’t work for you?

3. Commission

We promote affiliate products to earn some income in form of commission. It’s therefore important to find out first how much money you will get for every sale you make. It’s equally important to ascertain whether the terms of payment are good for you to run a profitable business.

Ask yourself whether the commission can sustain you in business or not.  You can do this by looking at the time and amount of money you invest in your business. It’s advisable to promote a product whose return on investment is relatively good and where the commission rate is not less than 50% is good.

Apart from the commission rate, also consider the compensation plan. How good is it? Does it give you an opportunity to grow your business? I recommend joining programs whose compensation plan allows you to earn residual income from various levels of customers below you (your downlines).

4. Demand for the product.

Does the affiliate product have a high customer demand? Does it have the potential to prosper on the market? Does it fulfill the needs of your targeted customer group?

5. Usability of the product.

Is the affiliate product easy to use? Can your targeted customers comprehend it and use it easily?  Do they give a free trial for your customers to try it first? This is a vital aspect because most of the products you will promote (such as software) are not physical. But for your targeted customers to buy them, they should be able to use them. Never promote products about which you have inadequate knowledge or information.

6. Requirements

You should find out what is required to market the products. Find out if you are to pay a monthly subscription to keep in business and how much to pay. Is it within your means? Read to find out more about the affiliate program policies, terms and conditions before you begin promoting any affiliate product.

7. Costs involved

Although some affiliate programs are free at the time of joining, you should know that you have spend in some way to remain in business. As you select a product, how much you be spending each month. Is it reasonable and within your budget?

8. Reliability

How dependable is the affiliate program you want to join? What do others say about it? Having a sustainable source of income is another factor to reflect on as you promote affiliate products. 

9. Support

Is there any customer support provided to the targeted customers? Does the affiliate program provide enough customer support to its customers? Without a good customer support, it’s hard to turn your targeted customers into buyers.

10. Using the product

The best affiliate products to market are those you use in your online business. You can easily market them because you have gained expertise through using them and you can confidently convince your potential customers.

I always promote products I have used and know very well all about them. These include products like auto responders and web hosting. But this does not mean you only market products you use. There are many products you will not directly use but have other qualities I have already pointed out. The onus is on you to select the right affiliate products to market.

Success In Online Business – 3 Key Obstacles To Avoid In Business

Success in online business is not easily attainable. Most successful online marketers really work hard to succeed in their businesses. Hard work, as already pointed out in my article “Make Money Online – What’s The Secret Of Making Money Online?” is the driving force that enables you to attain your goals in life. However, in order to maintain the power to achieve, you must keep yourself away from obstacles that might prevent you from obtaining success in your online business.

Basically, there are 3 major obstacles that deter people from succeeding in business. They include negative thinkers, bad behaviors or habits and uncontrolled expenses.

1. Negative thinkers.

Success in online business largely depends upon the people that surround you. If you are surrounded by negative thinkers, it’s really hard to venture into business and succeed in it. They discourage you in each and every attempt you make to do something and end up draining your mental and bodily power to take action. Finally, they make you become a failure in your endeavors. The only solution to that is to cut them out of your life. They only keep you behind and make you fail to make any progress that will lead you to success in your online business.

Generally, people who think negatively build in you fear with their negative ideas. They make you fear to lose money and to make developmental decisions. They develop in you doubt and you begin to doubt your plans and your good decisions. What surprises me most is the fact that such people never tell you the causes of failure and how to overcome them. They simply discourage you to take action, drawing examples from their past experiences. Many times, these are people close to us such as friends, relatives and colleagues at work.

Success in online business necessitates you to learn to keep away from any source of power breakdown by cutting out of your way people, who discourage you from taking action which reduces your power to do things. It’s also advisable to cut out of your way the yes-men, those who accept anything you say even when they don’t perceive it well. Surround yourself with people, who have positive and constructive thoughts and have a development-oriented outlook to ideas. They will lead you to success in your online business.

2. Bad behaviors or habits

Do you have behaviors that can lead you to success in your online business? Do you know them? Do you have characteristics of successful businessmen? There are actually many bad behaviors, which prevent people from starting and develop a business. Such behaviors include among others cynicism, arrogance, laziness and procrastination. The worst of all behaviors is fear. It’s very destructive and a big hindrance to taking action. The more you fear to do something, the more you destroy both your mental and physical energy to achieve and the more you get swallowed up in fear.

As human beings, we tend to get worried of our future basing on bad experiences that happened to us or to other people we interface with. My advice is that learn to develop a positive attitude towards any bad occurrence in your life. Remember that worry has never helped anyone to achieve anything. It’s of no use to you. For example, those who fear to lose money never get the courage to invest it, which makes them to stay poor or financially unstable.

Procrastination, the habit of postponing something you could have done now is as bad as fear. For example, if you intend to start an online home business, start now or else you will never do it. If you want to do any promotional activity for your business, do it now. But if you postpone taking action, the chances are that you will never do anything and if you are already in business, you will never achieve your goals. Always take immediate action to attain success in your online business.

3. Uncontrollable expenses

Success in online business depends largely on your ability to make money online and get some income out of it. But many times, a good number of online marketers get bogged down with unnecessary expenditure. The only solution to this is to reduce waste. When doing online business, only spend where it’s necessary.

Let me conclude by saying that success in your online business is possible when you are able to ignore all people who mentally and physically drain your energy with their negative thinking, when you learn to keep away from  bad habits that make you lose focus and when you refrain from spending your financial resources unnecessarily. When you become aware of those three obstacles and learn how to avoid them, you will be able to keep burning the power to work on your business.

Make Money Online – What’s The Secret Of Making Money Online?

Making money online is easy if you have the right motivation to venture in any online business. If you already have an online business but still find yourself not doing well, it’s important for you to renew your motivation. Do you intend to start an internet business? This article reveals to you the secret of becoming successful in any business you want to start or you already have. It’s the power YOU have that will help you to prosper and to make money online.

Many prospective successful internet marketers hesitate to join online business. They tend to believe that it’s for internet gurus or people with a lot of knowledge and financial resources. While some little capital, good ideas and plans are needed for a start, success in your internet business is entirely built on YOU. You are the major asset of your business. Believe it or not, you are personally the foundation of your business. The power is exclusively in YOU to start a home business to make money online.

If you want to make money online, you MUST work hard. Not only that, you MUST work on your business regularly. That’s the real truth and the undisputable law of life. It applies to you, to me and to any other person who is success-oriented. People, who have successfully accumulated wealth from online business, are those who have worked hard. You must work hard on your business every day and over a reasonable period of time to start profiting from it. You need to make working on your business enjoyable. Develop the attitude that “I can make money online only when I work on my business every day”.

Amazingly, there are quite many people who join online business and sit to wait for returns without endeavoring to work on their businesses. Such people set up a website or a blog, sign up for any affiliate product or service and sit to wait for the money to flow in. They believe in luck. That’s wrong and it’s a very bad mindset, which is only a belief of people who aren’t success-conscious. You must work to succeed. You must work hard and persistently to succeed. Never permit yourself to believe in luck. Believe in hard work! You have limitless amount of power to perform tasks every day aimed at building your business from which you want to make money online.

Making money online demands you to use the power in you to work hard. Utilize that power to regularly work hard and smart on your online business. When you use that power well, then you have the potential to turn defeat into victory and loss into profit.

How do you bring out the power in you to make money online?

Firstly, you need to know that online business requires you to work on it every time and every day. But it’s also important to know that when you are working, it’s what you do that matters. If you want to succeed in any internet business, you must systematically promote your website every day. That’s when you will be able to make money online.

As a matter of fact, working hard and smart involves marketing your website with proven marketing methods, advertising it using effective advertising methods and working towards having your website ranked high in the search engines. Take your time to visualize, plan and act according to the objectives you have set for yourself. Then build up positive thoughts that will enable you to get the results. If you do that, you will be bringing out the power in you to take your business to a higher level and, sooner or later, make money online.

Lastly, I would like to conclude that success in online business is based upon your ability to bring out the power in you to work harder and smarter on your business every day. That’s when you can become prosperous in your life. And when you eventually become successful, people will admire you saying that you were born lucky. When they say that, simply reply, “The harder I work the luckier I become”.

Word Of Mouth: How It Can Boost Your Online Home Business

Applying the word of mouth in your marketing campaigns is one of the undisclosed methods of boosting your online home business. Many marketers focus on online marketing methods to grow their businesses. However, they overlook the effectiveness of speaking out their thoughts to friends and other people they personally relate with to convert them into customers. Ability to speak effectively can bring you customers, wealth, prosperity and anything you want to make your life complete. Complement your online marketing methods with the word of mouth!

How can you effectively use it to boost your online home business?

1. Through talking to people you get into contact with.

Let it be born in your mind that in whatever meeting you attend, family gathering you participate in, business conference you attend and whenever any opportune moment arises for you to market your business, speak to people. Tell them about your business. Give them a business card about your online home business and ask them to visit your website.

2. Through communicating your thoughts effectively

To benefit from the word of mouth, you have to learn to communicate your thoughts effectively. When you say “Good morning”, let it look good. When you say “Congratulations”, let it look enthusiastic and when you say “How are you”, let it be interesting. What’s important is to learn to use power words and how to use them to create a positive effect to the people. Getting the attention you want requires you to make a habit of using words with sincere feelings.

3. Through complementing your spoken words with gestures

Accompany your word of mouth with gestures to put life to your talk and to cause the desired action to be taken. When you speak to people with enthusiasm, they also find themselves interested in what you say and believe in you. If you practically apply those tricks, you will discover the strength of words in growing your online business.

4. Through taking the word of mouth online.

This can be done by creating live-talking videos from your articles or any other important written information concerning your products and services and upload them to your website to make yourself personable, real and perceivable to your website visitors.

5. Through talking in your articles

Put life to your article audience by becoming a renowned speaker in your articles. Become skilled at writing articles that engage your readers to feel like you are talking to them. Acquire techniques of making your audience to follow you in your articles from the beginning to the end. Speaking to them through your written work is an effective technique of making them feel like you are using the word of mouth to communicate to them.

Finally, the word of mouth has done wonders to most successful men and women. All the great human beings you may have known became prominent and victorious because they learnt how to speak clearly to move millions of people with their words. Learn to tell people about your website and the products you sell. Learn to creatively and rightly convey your spoken or written message in a way that inspires your audience to take action. You will eventually boost your online home business with the word of mouth.