Keeping it Stupidly Simple!

Keep it Simple Stupid

The main principles behind the Keep It Stupidly Simple System are speed and simplicity.   

Far too often in IM, people will create grand plans for their business… 

…Plans that include every single thing they have read and learnt.   
Plans that incorporate all the elements of every successful marketer they have come into contact with. 
On paper these plans look fantastic, but unfortunately the vast majority never get any further than the page. 
I know this for a fact because this is something I experienced time and time again when I was starting out; lots of good intention and effort and zero to show for it. 
The thing is the initial motivation and excitement that creates the grand plan doesn’t last that long for most of us.   
Before very long the ‘Doubt Gremlins’ poke their noses in.  They provide that inner dialogue that usually sounds something like: 
‘Who do you think you are, thinking you can make it online’ 
‘You’ve never done anything like this before, you’re bound to fail’ 
‘You’re tool old/young/fat/skinny (delete as applicable) to succeed’  
etc, etc.   
I’m sure you could add your own ‘Doubt Gremlins’ inner voice favourite! 

So the idea behind my KISS System is to strip things down to the bare minimum and use the blitzkrieg principle on your ‘Doubt Gremlins’  (blitzkrieg : meaning lightening war). 
Get something up and running before the ‘Doubt Gremlins’ have even pulled their undies on. 
Although the KISS System, in itself, is not going to make you rich, it WILL create momentum for you, which in turn creates motivation and it will also create the foundation from which you CAN create a significant online income. 
So in summary, as you read the current steps, DON’T try to create the prefect version or over think it, just follow the steps one at a time and get it done…quickly 
You are not looking for perfection, you are looking for results.   
Good enough will do and then use the learning points to improve later versions. 
The system itself takes for granted that you understand the importance of building a list of individuals who all have an interest in a particular niche or topic. 

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How to Get More Likes, Follows, Stumbles or Subscribes

How to Get More Likes, Follows, Stumbles or Subscribes

Getting more likes, follows, stumbles or subscribes at the end of the day means you'll get more traffic to your website and more money in your bank account. It also means you'll have more long-term reach to launch viral campaigns from and promote new products.




So how do you get more likes, follows, stumbles or subscribes?

Make It Prominent on Your Website

• By default, Facebook has a very small "Like" button. The same is true for the default "retweet" buttons. In fact, each social network generally doesn't have buttons that are very well optimized for conversions.
• Did you know that you can actually create much bigger buttons? Depending on the service, you might need to use a program or just get someone to do a tiny bit of code for you ($5 to $10 outsourced), but you can really make your "Like" or "retweet" buttons look any way you want.
• The same is true for subscribes. Make sure it's large and prominent on your website. Don't just put your opt-in box in the upper right corner of your website and hope someone opts in. Have them appear across your site, in your posts, any where you can really.

Use Social Proof

• Another powerful element you can use to get more likes, stumbles, follows or subscriptions is to post how many other people have already done the same.
• Are you more likely to "Like" something if nobody's liked it, or if a hundred of your friends already have?
• There are many ways to take advantage of this principle. For example, for StumbleUpon, you can display the number of stumbles you've already gotten on your website. For RSS subscriptions, you can display the number of existing subscribers.

Ask for It in Your Content

• One overlooked technique is to simply ask. Want more follows on your Twitter? Ask! The call to action is so intuitive that some people leave it out. Yet the simple act of asking for it can make a big difference.
• An even more effective way to ask for actions is to give some sort of incentive for it. For example, tell people to "Like" your page, then post on your wall if they want to enter a contest. Since there's such a strong incentive, they're much more likely to do so than if it were free.

Give People Options

• Some people will prefer to "Like" you on Facebook. Others prefer to follow you on Twitter. Others prefer subscribing by RSS or by email. Still others want to "Thumbs Up" you on StumbleUpon and so on.
• Give people the option of interacting with your website in whatever way they like. If you only have the "Like" option, you'll miss out on all the RSS users. The opposite is also true.
• If you use social proof, make your buttons prominent, ask for the action in your content and give people options, you'll have a very high visitor-to-action ratio at the end of the day.

Affiliate Marketing Terms and Their Meaning

Affiliate Marketing is a concept with it's own terms. To get started, you'll have to know what the middlemen and affiliate program pitches mean when they use them, otherwise it will strike you as a bunch of gibberish. For those of you with some experience already in this matter, these terms are for the beginners.

These will get you started with your affiliate marketing understanding. Some programs are also multi-tier, which means you get paid on downline several tiers beneath you or more.

• Two-Tier Program: An affiliate program that pays you for your sales and those of anyone you recruit. For all intents and purposes, if you recruit and train your second tier, they will make you money.
• Super Affiliate: An affiliate marketer in the top 5% of all affilate marketers. These are the ones that make 80% of all the commissions in affiliate marketing and the aspiration of all affiliate marketers looking to get rich doing this.
• Pay Per Sale: The most common ways to get paid in affiliate programs. When you send someone to a site and they buy a product, eBook, download, or membership, you get paid a percentage of the gross on it.
• Pay Per Lead: This one is not common but very handy. When you send someone to a site and they sign up for a free trial, e-mail list or sales call, it's called a lead. Some companies pay you to give them leads, which is good for you, because you are getting paid to give a potential customer something for free.
• Pay Per Click: You get paid anytime someone clicks on a link from your site. The biggest example of a program that does this is Google AdSense, which gives you Pay Per Click ads to put your site and pays you every time someone clicks on it. Miva ARX and Yahoo! also have ad programs that work this way.
• Creative: The collective reference given by some programs to the sum total of all their advertising stuff, like ad gif's, testimonials, product photos, and copy text.Conversion: The percentage of people you send to an affiliate site that buy. 1% is the industry average. Getting conversions is the name of the game in affiliate marketing.
• Commission: This is how you get paid by all affiliate marketing programs. It's not a salary or a fee, and taxes are not deducted and thus your problem to track. Commissions are usually expressed in percent, although some are given in dollars per sale.
• Affiliate Program: An agreement with a given company that has this sort of program to advertise and promote their products in exchange for payment, usually as a commission per sale. You do this at your own expense, although the programs themselves are free to join. I have heard of those that require payment to join, but I strongly recommend against them, as there are plenty of good programs you can join for free.
• Affiliate Link: This is how the company knows who to pay. These are the hypertext links given to you by the affiliate program that differentiates you from generic traffic at large. Unless you send someone through an affiliate link, you don't get paid.
• Ad Copy: A written sales pitch, also known simply as 'copy'. Most follow the AIDA form (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action) and examples can be seen on any site that's selling something.

5 Common Mistakes That Drive Visitors Away From a Website

The way your website is designed and presented influences your opportunities to make money online. A professionally designed and well presented website will bring you a lot of customers and sales.

So, what common mistakes drive visitors away from a website?

• A template that is similar to other websites. There are a lot of website templates which although they make things easy for you since you get a ready-to-go website for your online business; they are not good for your business in the long term. It is not good for your business if your website is similar to hundreds and thousands others. Online customers do not want to see precisely the same website layout. Have your own original website designed, or if buy the ready made website template, it is highly recommended that you hire someone to adjust your template to personalize it and make it your own.
• Confusing websites. These are the websites whose layout is not efficient, and you can not easily navigate the site. For some websites, the website name, URL and blog names do not seem related to the website’s focus. These websites can also have a lot of products and services on offer that are not related. Make sure that your website, as well as services and products you offer are focused.
• Too many graphics. Too many graphics simply make your website slow to load. For many people websites with too many graphics can be annoying and unprofessional. These graphics do not add much to your website in terms of search engine rankings or user-friendliness, and are not therefore helpful for your online business. What is important to have on your website is distinctive, relevant and high quality content.
• Ineffective use of keywords and phrases. This is essential for your visibility on search engines. Make sure that your website is well optimized.
• A website that lacks any ‘benefits’ to prospects. Although you are selling your online business’ services or products mainly, your website must also offer the reader high quality unique information.

Also, if you offer an e-zine or e-course on your website, it must also offer some useful information. It is also a good idea that you get creative and offer many other ‘stuff’ that relates to your website. The idea is to make visitors want to come back again.

If you want to succeed online, it is important that you avoid these common website mistakes. A professional and informative website will make your visitors want to come back again, which is good for your business.

The Seed of Internet Marketing Success

Selling other peoples products is all well and good, but every successful marketer will tell you, that to reach REAL success you need to create your own products and put them into a funnel.

It is vital to create a product that will allow you to eventually expand into other markets. The goal is for the people who initially buy your product to also buy your next products. Since you have proven that you can be trusted by delivering a product to your clients that they love, it should be much easier to obtain their business when your new item hits the online marketplace. We need to understand a seed is truly important indeed. You need to see your first product as that seed.

You see this is about creating an Internet marketing kingdom, a virtual empire of products that all start with one tiny seed that is planted in the fertile soil of those hearts that are eager for your particular product.
Here is an example, someone I know is in the process of creating a set of online videos where they teach students the various techniques needed to speak English. Their area of expertise lies in the field of ESL (English as a second language) of which they have been blessed to have over 10 years of experience teaching to adult learners.
Their target market would be foreign adults who wish to learn English via video. They realize though that if they want to branch out and sell different yet similar products later on, they will have to pick a product that these learners would also enjoy.

This led them to recall the great end of the semester food parties in the classes that they taught where both they and their students brought in dishes from other countries that many enjoyed. Now they know that their second product launched could be an ESL cookbook with recipes submitted from actual students. The cookbook will be sold to other ESL students online. Branching out even further, a cooking forum would be established as well as an online cooking class with graduates of their ESL video courses eventually teaching the course.
It is amazing to see how all this began from the planting of one little seed. The online ESL videos seed grew to become a cookbook, an online cooking school and a cooking forum. As we all know marketing is a numbers game and the bigger number of people you have on your marketing list the better your chance of survival and dominance.

Think about your online marketing seed before you plant it. You want to plant something that will grow into something huge.

When you look into the jungle you see an incredible array of trees. That is what you should want your seed to turn into. The trees in your Internet jungle will be represented by the vast amount of names on your email list who want your first and additional products.
The product you create should also appeal to as many people as possible. I know those who may not be interested in ESL may be interested in cooking and vice versa.

I could use the cooking bait to reel in the ESL fish and use the ESL bait to reel in those who love cooking! See what I mean?

When your Internet marketing seed is sown you will reap the harvest of personal and time freedom. In fact done digitally, this also gives you location freedom as well, so you can run your online business from anywhere in the world.

This translates into having the freedom to spend time doing what is really important. Even though I am blessed to be doing well working from my home right now, my goal is to create an online marketing kingdom.

It all starts with that tiny Internet marketing seed. You need to have blind faith and then you can see what can happen. We have to have dreams, big dreams and seeing those dreams become realities is quite inspirational and shows that this Internet marketing thing is real. No one in your circle of naysayers can argue with your results unless they choose to be up against the truth of your success.  

Internet Marketing for Beginners

Really useful vlog and well worth grabbing a coffee for!