December 2008 « HFO (Happiness and Fitness Online)

Archive for December, 2008

The Year That Was

December 20th, 2008

In a couple of weeks the year will be over and I thought it best to put in a bit of introspection before it will totally be over and be just like a dream, totally unbelievable, yet insightful, in the face of the new realities the coming year brings.

By year-end, I shall have dabbled at Internet marketing for a year and one month. During that time, I had climbed several mountains that proved to be hills, chased pots of gold that proved to be panning tins that never saw even the glimmer of the precious metal. I have had my dreams dashed to a thousand pieces, lured by hundreds of sales letters and websites that gave me nothing but a huge hole in my credit card.

Why I persisted? I don’t know, really. I guess it’s out of the dread of failure. Nothing is more scary than to have failed without really trying. Besides, I believe in the magic of numbers. Michael Jordan was good because he tried more often than the others; he worked at it more and longer than the others and he made more mistakes than the others. Because at the end of the day, nobody would really care about the journey but at having arrived at the destination.

Two weeks from now it will be Christmas. Though the occasion has not lost its magic on most, even for a 60 year old guy like me, but it has given a new dimension to others. There was a time when I looked forward to the gifts I expect to receive. Now, even to think of lavishing myself with something is a burden. Last year I treated two orphans to lunch and gave them money so they can buy themselves presents. This year my daughter has taken on this task. Isn’t it great?

Last October, I and my children celebrated the first death anniversary of my wife and the month after, we had an expensive dinner to celebrate her birthday. I had the waiter put in an extra plate for my wife so she may know, wherever she is, that she is not forgotten.

Not forgotten, as well, are the lessons I gained in the year that shall soon be over.

Lesson #1: FREE always has a price tag:

If there is one thing these Internet gurus have mastered, it is the art of double-talk. They lavish their sales letters with words that can make an SEO go nuts. “Free” is probably the most used word in the Internet marketing vocabulary. Problem is that nothing is really FREE.

Lesson #2: Customer service is personal service:

Anybody who answers through an auto responder instead of a personal e-mail is not worth doing business with. Nobody can be that busy to show a little courtesy. Nobody is busier than God, yet He answers entreaties. If one asks me to submit a Ticket, I bug off faster than I got in.

Lesson#3: Focus:

It is easy to get waylaid by the thousands of offers that will land in one’s mailbox, all promising success and prosperity. Nothing can make one lose focus than to try grabbing at some of these without due consideration of the previous two lessons. I should know, I’ve been there.

For the past two weeks I focused on earning credits through the traffic exchanges, http://teprofits.com/r/joesfortune/. Though I was beginning to doubt the wisdom of my chosen method of Internet marketing and confided to my upline of feeling like an idiot, yet my activities the past two weeks have accomplished more than an entire year of shooting in the dark. My auto responder has registered three referrals and, finally, I have an in flow rather than an out flow of funds. Somebody bought one of the e-books that I am promoting. For the first time in more than a year I have sold a $5.00, http://teprofits.com/r/joesfortune/5dollar.php. It may not be much, but I consider it a fortune. Why? Because I am beginning to know some of the “hows” of Internet marketing. After a long, arduous and disaster-laden journey, I am beginning to see the welcoming shores of my destination.

Isn’t that great to end the year?

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exchange, newbie, traffic

Home-business Hurdles, Part IV:

December 17th, 2008

“The Good Guys“

Kenneth Koh of LeadsLeap (http://www.leadsleap.com/blog/how-to-create-an-online-business/?=michael02), is one among the hundreds of sites landing in my In-box with a difference. He is sincerely interested in his subscribers and offers them help, rather than sell them something.

To start with, membership is “really” FREE, the website easy to navigate and offers FREE advertising for one’s business provided enough credits have been earned. Earning credits is very much like surfing traffic exchanges or a membership with Affiliate Auction or List Bandit. The difference is that one doesn’t get deluged with a ton of emails.

Kenneth is a self-less e-marketer whose dream is to help newbies, like me, succeed. He is prolific too, coming up with new posts almost everyday and his customer service can be on the personal level, if necessary. He has a “Tuesdays with Kenneth,” for answering questions from his subscribers for the benefit of all.

Of late, he introduced MYOB (Mind Your Own Business), a downloadable website ready to promote anything a subscriber wants to promote as his own, in his own terms. I haven’t been into it yet. The downside is that it requires an above-average HTML knowledge, which I don’t have. It needs domain-hosting as well, which can be a problem to those with scarce resources.

Overall, Kenneth Koh is heaven-sent.

Forest Marie, (forest@forestmarie.com), is a software engineer-turned Internet marketer. He likes to flourish his “See You at the Top” slogan, to motivate those who are trying their hands at e-commerce.

He is relentless in this mission, coming up with volumes of articles for self-improvement, which can easily overload one with information.

He is currently pursuing his CarbonCopy Pro with the same passion. I refrained from getting into it for the moment for financial considerations.

Gordon Ferrel, (http://teprofits.com/r/joesfortune/) is another good guy in a haystack of e-spammers. Also a product of my constant search for an “honest” man in the electronic world, his e-book titled “Stop Being a Victim” is a reflection of the wrong things I did in my initial forays into e-commerce. It can help others avoid the pitfalls I crawled myself out from and the expenses that kept on showing in my credit card.

Gordon is strictly traffic exchange and his entry point is the link above. From there a subscriber gets to have the e-book “Stop Being a Victim,” an auto responder, which has a 30-day trial period, membership in Online Business Alliance (OBA) and links to several traffic exchanges.

Traffic exchange is, in a layman’s terms, “I’ll scratch your back and you scratch min,” kind of thing. I surf others’ websites so they can surf in mine. In the process I get subscribers, which my auto responder turn into friends and , hopefully, clients. There is no easier and cheaper way to start an Internet business. Besides, it it something one can do while watching a favorite TV show or reading a book. And it pays, rather slowly, but more surely than tother schemes.

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exchange, traffic

Home-business Hurdles, Part III:

December 2nd, 2008

Rays of Hope:

Working for money is easy – that’s why the majority of humanity is employed. Except for the hassle of an 8 to 5 existence, the in-between can either be hectic or pretending-to-be-hectic day. I know, I was working for money for the better half of my life. But just like the rest of us, we all go through different seasons in our lives. I am now in a different season. The difference between me and the others in the same season as I am is that I am trying to learn something new, and earn in the process. Hence I am into e-commerce.

There’s a big divide between what I was doing before and what I am doing now. While it is beyond argument that working for oneself brings in better and bigger rewards, but it definitely is not a walk in the park. My previous posts can attest to these. Now I am beginning to see the light, thanks to the help of some very well-intentioned people doing the same thing I do.

After firing so many shots in the dark, consuming much needed ammunition, not to mention the effort, I have come to realize that “focus” is the main point from where to start. Without focus, we jump from one offer to another, one program to another, one website to another. And at the end of the month or a year, we will find ourselves in the very same spot from where we started, only this time a few hundred dollars poorer.

Through these very helpful sites and people, I am beginning to set my focus on something to work on. And these are:

Right Personality:

The Internet is a bottomless source of websites promising instant wealth. They are sometimes innocuous, with a “come-into-my-web free offers to join,” to outright commando-type selling strategies. One can be scalped by those throughout the entire spectrum. My advice is for the potential Internet marketer to hold on to his/her marbles for a site that fits ones personality, feels comfortable with and offers help bordering on the personal. Though all have auto responders sending out impersonal and sometimes stupid e-mails, only a few give out email addresses where they can be reached for items one does not want discussed in forums. I found them in

o LeadsLeap for viral advertising by Kenneth Koh.

http://www.leadsleap.com/blog/how-to-create-an-online-business/?=michael02

o BetterNetworker for social networking:

http://www.betternetworker.com/

o TEP (Traffic Exchange for Profits) for the cheapest and easiest Internet marketing model.

http://teprofits.com/r/joesfortune/

Much will be written about the three in the coming posts.