The Silent Avatar Speaks

You know we all grow up with dreams of being financially secure and get there by doing what we love most.

The thing is is takes some time to live your life before you get a grasp of what it is that you realy want to do.

When you are younger it’s easy to say “I want to be a movie star” (or something like that), without researching what is really required to be successful. It’s more sobering as we grow older with previous life history behind us to really decide what you want to do given what life has shown us to be the truth about what we thought we wanted.

I remember a quote I read some time back which said “Do what you love and you will never work a day in your life”. These are great words, and now more than ever you can become financially free by doing what you love. You just need to be the expert, the maven in your chosen field.

Becoming an authority on what you love requires hard work, but if you love what you are doing you aren’t really working are you? It’s fun. It’s exciting. It’s inspiring. You get up in the morning and you just can’t wait to do more.

But how do you move towards becoming a maven, an authority, an expert?

Where do you start?

You start

• a blog
• you participate in forums and give of your knowledge.
• you write articles and submit them for others to read
• write an ebook about your knowlege and give it away

and you do it all without any expectation of being paid.

The world we live in is nothing but energy, and when you give of your energy to help others it is returned to you multiplied.

Of course you need to keep in mind your goal is to expand and become known, and this may mean you will have to increase your knowledge to keep abreast of technology, and learn what tools you can use to expand your reach to a world wide market.

The world has become a lot smaller since the advent of the internet. Billions of people all over the globe are using communities like Facebook, MySpace, YouTube to connect with others of like mind.

Forums are a great way to get authority status by sharing your knowledge.

All it takes is the first step and then to consistently keep moving towards your goal.

Even if you only contribute an hour a day towards your goal, then after a year you have contributed 364 hours, or a solid 15 weeks of yur time towards your goal.

Little steps one after the other always lead you on a great journey and to an ever better destination. Just do what’s obvious.

Tags: General by the silent avatar
No Comments »

Today’s blog is in answer to a question not uncommon to those who are venturing into a web presence, and a common thread is “I have no idea what I want, or “I’ll leave it to you to decide”, or, “I don’t know where to start”.

In a lot of ways designing a website is a bit like having a baby.

First there is the thought you would like to have a one. You’ll consider if you have what it takes to handle a baby – you research what’s required.

When you decide that you do have what it takes to have a baby, you then you move into the “conception stage”. The conception stage is laying down the DNA. It’s the blueprint for the baby (this is the design process stage).

Then the “birth” stage commences – the design work is undertaken to bring it to launch status (when the site goes live).

Then after the birth (the website launch), we move in to the “teething problems” stage, monitoring any problems and tweaking the site until things settle down.

Then there is the growth stage – When you actively grow your site by increasing visitor traffic.

And last of all comes maturity – that time when the website is just about on auto pilot, where the plans laid down in the conception days start to bear fruit.

So the laying down the blueprint stage is the most critical. It will determine how your “baby” proceeds once the blueprint is determined. You efefctively are charting a course for birth.

One of the messages in “The Secret” (and if you haven’t heard about The Secret” I suggest you have a look here), is “our throughts create our reality”.

So the best place to start is imagining what you end goal is like. Start imagining.

If you have other areas of your business which are demanding your attention, then leave the “planning” of your website until your mind is clear and focused on the process of designing the website. Your whole attention needs to be focused on the preparation .

Of course you could leave it all to the designer, it’s just that in order for the designer to get an idea of what you want involves questioning you about your expectations for the site.
Leaving it up to the designer will still involve input from you in some way.

So focus on your tasks at hand which have a higher priority at this time, mindful of the tasks that a designer is required to undertake when designing a site so you can marry what you are doing now to what may be required later.

For an overview of the process just click here

One of the areas which you may have never given any consideration for is how many vistors to the site do you expect?

If you currently don’t have a website this is probably an unknown , however with a bit of maths you can get an idea of what you need to make the site a viable business to bring you sufficent income to support you.

To do this you need to sit down with a pen and paper.

Start by deciding how much income you would like to make from your website.

This is a figure only you can determine, but for the purpose of this excercise let’s say $1000 a week.

Now if you sell widgets which cost $10 each, this means you would have to sell 100 widgets to make this income – and you have to have available 100 widgets to sell!. You will also have to consider your “outgoings”, and factor them into the equation.

Now based on 100 sales you may find you need 400 visitors to your site each week to generate 100 sales (conversion rate of visitors to sales is 25% in this case). Typically conversion rates are lower, oftentimes around 5%.

Doing this excercise will focus you on what the goal is. It will also probably scare the hell out of you. You’ll probably think” how on earth am I going to get 400 (or more) visitors to my site consistently”?

Remember… we are starting with the end result in mind. We are looking to build a site which will handle this number of visitors (minimum).

Don’t worry about how this will happen at this point. If a designer has this information, then the functionality of the site can be geared towards this end result.

Every website comes with ability to track how many vistors come to your site. Monitoring this figure will determine whether you need to up your traffic generation strategies. (You can click here to see my tips on generating traffic at no cost).

Of course a designer can offer their expertise in determining what your site should have, but they still need an overview of your expectations. And you expectations are related to the end result. That’s the purpose of a design questionaire.

For those who already have a website and it’s not performing to the level they want, it’s usually better to scrap what is, and start again. Certain elements of the existing site can be usedagain, however if the site is not meeting your standard to what you envisage as your end result then you can see that things need to change radically or need to start over again.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The planning stage of the site is the most critical. It’s a project. It’s not something you do when there’s nothing else to do. If you have other projects on the boil wait until you are free to give it your attention.

After all it’s your “baby” and you are the creator. Give it the attention it deserves and you will reap the rewards.

Tags: General by the silent avatar
No Comments »

I had the opportunity recently of trialing a membership to the Internet Entrepeneur Club. It’s run by a guy called Derek Gehl, and I’ve got to say if you were going to spend money on something really worthwhile to your business success then I would receommend signing up for this club.

It’s through this club I’ve heard about this new book called “The 4-Hour Workweek” written by a 30-year-old millionaire named Timothy Ferriss — and this books apparently is flying off the shelves in the US.

The book’s philosophy essentially boils down to this…

If you manage your time, your goals, and your priorities effectively, it’s totally possible for you to generate a comfortable, full-time income working just 4 hours per week.

Goodbye trying to fit your social life around your 9-to-5 job, and hello freedom and prosperity!

Seriously though — who doesn’t want that? No wonder thisbook’s become an instant best-seller.

But since releasing it, Tim Ferriss has come under some serious fire from prominent entrepreneurs who are whining(let’s be honest) that designing your ‘ideal lifestyle’ of minimal work and maximum play is not that simple… that it takes YEARS of hard work, blood, sweat, and tears to make that happen.

But I beg to differ!

I’ve read about many people who have started their own moneymaking Internet businesses from scratch. (In fact, I count myself among their number!).

What I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt is this:

The success people like us have achieved did NOT come as a result of how much time we’ve spent working on our businesses, but what we’ve DONE with the time we’ve spent.

For example: Someone with clear, intentional goals and a step-by-step action plan will accomplish wayyyyy more in 60 minutes than someone who is mired in information overload and analysis paralysis will accomplish in 8 hours. You know this is true.

The internet is littered with stories of high school drop outs, retirees who are downright scared of computers, and even teenagers who achieve *massive* success on the Internet ‘working’ as little as 4 hours per week… and in some cases, even less than that!

It’s know it’s possible — I’ve seen proof of it. So what’s to stop you doing it?

To find out more about how it’s done, click here now:

http://tinyurl.com/ytu8hg

P.S. Here’s another secret for you…

You don’t have to know it all, learn it all, or spend days at a time researching your next step to generate a full-time income on the Internet. You simply need to surround yourself
with people who have the expertise that you don’t, and let them steer you along towards success.

But where can you find such experts willing to openly share their expertise and stand over your shoulder as you grow your own moneymaking website? Click here now to find out!

http://tinyurl.com/ytu8hg

Tags: General by the silent avatar
No Comments »

The more I talk to people in business the more I have come to understand that the majority of business owners have no idea what they are missing out on when it comes to utilizing the internet as a medium for addding additional money to their business.

I guess it’s very easy for business owners to get caught up in the day to day running of a business, so after you put in a long day you really just want to put your feet up , and switch off in front of your favourite TV program(after you have done the obligatory paperwork to appease the government of course!)

The problem I see with doing this is they are allowing themelves (and their business) to fall behind the competition who is keeping abreast of what’s happening with on the World Wide Web!, and as a resulkt are forging further away from their counterparts.

Having said that, when I do start to share some of the benefits of taking their business online, they invariably get excited about the potential of their current business.

It’s hard not to get caught up in internet marketing once youu have had a taste. It’s easy to create and dream a lot bigger when you start to see the potential of reaching beyond your local market.

The aim of this blog is to present to you ideas, concepts and happenings within the scope of online business.

Whether you are a hobbyist who wants to share their wares to the world, a sole trader doing it all for yourself, a small family run business, a medium sized organization, or a an establised company with a lots of employees, each and every one of these various levels of business can reap untold rewards from commiting to take their business to the next level (and beyond).

I hope that you enjoy the content which I present to you, remembering that I too have been a business operator, and an upper management person in a extremely large corporation, and now a “work from home” business person. This scope of my past enables me to empathise with your situations, and the ability to offer you tantalizing ways of increasing your income, with the sole purpose of (if you choose), doing away with the “brick and mortar” business and all of the associated costs (which just aren’t there in the majority of online busines), and allow yourself more freedom to work to your rules, not someone else’s.

It’s a fascinating journey, with its own language, all (for the most part), done without ever meeting your customers.

Is it the start of something big?

No. It’s already big.

Enjoy.

Tags: General by the silent avatar
No Comments »