Work-Life Balance

First of all, running a business is time-consuming. Of course, you will need to give up some of your favorite activities to focus on your business. Maybe you have to cut that third TV show out of your schedule. Maybe you have to reduce the nights you go out with friends each week. There will likely even be some weeks you don’t see your friends at all. These are all reasonable compromises. They’re expected compromises.

At the same time, owning a business (this includes affiliates) doesn’t mean giving up everything you love. It’s all about creating a balance. Some weeks the weight might lean more towards business or personal, but it should even out in the end. If you’re going to the bar 4 nights a week, you need to make a change. Likewise, if you haven’t seen your family in 14 days, you need to make a change.

It can be hard, but find a balance and stick to it. Pick a few things you really love and refuse to give up on them in favor of your business. You’ll thank yourself later! Plus, maintaining relationships and other interests will make it a little less lonely once you get to the top.

Good at Everything

No one is good at everything. If you’re an awesome snowboarder, you likely aren’t an awesome ice-skater. If you’re an amazing baseball player, you likely aren’t amazing at basketball. The same goes for online activities.

Don’t go into affiliate marketing, or any other business, thinking you’re going to be good at every aspect involved. You might be a total design rockstar and a total flop when it comes to copywriting. You might be a programming genius and a PPC noob.

You’re not going to be good at everything. Don’t waste time trying to be!

Good at Something

The trick is to find the something that you’re good at. No, great at. Find the one thing you do better than anyone you know: PPC, SEO, social, design, programming, copywriting – whatever. Then, go to town and get to work!

Do what you do exceptionally well and outsource to fill in the gaps. Surround yourself with people who are smarter than you are. For example, if you kill it with the marketing strategy, look for expert designers, copywriters and programmers. Look for people who design, write and develop better than you could ever imagine. Work with them to establish a powerhouse.

If you follow this method, you’ll never get lonely at the top!

© JonathanVolk.com - A Blog about Making Money Online, 2011.

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One day after getting through one of the worst MYSQL database failures of my life, my work computer hard drive crashes.

It was a tough week to say the least.

It’s funny, the last time my hard drive crashed, I lost everything. I was devastated because I had to start over on so many projects, had so many lost photos, memories, documents, etc.

It was then that I went backup crazy. I got dropbox, carbonite, 4 external hard drives, and made sure that everything was always backed up. I also got a very expensive 15k rpm “tough” hard drive that is supposed to last longer than those cheap $50 hard drives you can buy anywhere.

You can probably understand that I was not too worried when that hard drive crashed. I had all those backups right?

My Carbonite Vs. Dropbox Experience

After I went and got a nice new solid state 256gb drive (soo excited to have a solid state finally), I reinstalled windows 7 and went about trying to recover all my data.

First thing was dropbox. Click, click. Installed and recovering all my data. I love it. So stinkin easy.

Next is carbonite. I install their software, and being the recovery process…

Recovering files with carbonite is like pulling teeth

• Anytime a file was remotely big (300mb+) Carbonite would completely stall. The entire restore process would be haulted.
• Anytime a folder had a lot of files in it, carbonite would completely stall. My music folder is not even 25% downloaded and it has stalled like 15 times.
• Anytime carbonite stalls, you must cancel the entire transfer and restart the transfer.
• I tried downloading the bigger files using their web interface thinking that it might be a program issue. No luck, their web login sessions are so short that you get logged out before you can download a 100+ mb file.

All in all, the entire carbonite backup system is awesome… until you actually need to restore any files. Seeing as I was paying $50 per month for carbonite pro, you’d think it would be so much better but it wasn’t.

Leaving Carbonite For Dropbox

After having all those issues, I decided to completely switch from carbonite to dropbox pro. I get 100gigs of space for less than $20 bucks per month, over 50% less than I was paying.

The only tricky part will be putting the files I normally used carbonite to backup, into my dropbox. Completely worth it in my opinion though.

What do you use as a backup solution?

© JonathanVolk.com - A Blog about Making Money Online, 2011.

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Who is Web Of Trust?

Web of trust is a user powered website that is used to rank websites that are classified as spam, scams, etc.

Places like facebook use them to check if links are safe to link to, etc.

How Web Of Trust is Being Completely Gamed By Five People… And How You Can Game It Too!

It all started a couple months ago… One day my Dad’s ecommerce site, which sells On Demand Hydrogen Generators for cars and trucks got flagged as being a spam/scam site. All his links on facebook stopped working.

In looking into it, it looks like a few regular ol’ users (five to be exact) on Web of Trust decided that the technology did not work. Despite having thousands of very happy customers, very real testimonials (verifiable by the way), etc these five users who have never purchased anything from his site were able to get it to be flagged as spam/scam.

I’m pretty sure that many of these trust sites seem to look at each other for information because shortly after, McAfee and some others quickly listed the same thing.

How is that even remotely a good process for determining what sites should be marked?

My site quickly follows

My dad’s website is hosted on this server and is registered on my registrar account but are completely separately owned entities. Soon after his site being flagged, they determined that if one site is flagged, all the sites on the server must also be bad!

Ergo, my blog now has a spam/scam/phish rating on it. I’m pretty sure they forgot to take into account the hundreds of thousands of visitors who have learned something here and the tens of thousands that have downloaded and learned from my free affiliate marketing guide. Lol.

Facebook Ads Guide was then also listed as an “affiliate scam”. Again, none of these people even know me or ever read anything I have done. They simply click a button and poof there is a rating. I think they completely forgot about the thousands of people who have read that ebook and been very happy with it… oh and the old forum members who have made a TON of money on Facebook because of it.

Think about this… All because of 5 users that have no accountability, no “real identity” or anything.

My Dad’s Customers Fight Back

What would you do if your website was being incorrectly marked as spam/scam? Of course you have your thousands of happy customers defend you.

My dad sent an email to his customers who quickly responded to his rating page.

After 100+ POSITIVE comments (having a “good site” rating) in less than 24 hours and still only a few negative comments by those original few people, the site is still marked as spam/scam.

How does that make any sense?!

Quickly, comments were disabled by site administrators and no more customers were allowed to comment despite many trying.

Seems fishy to me.

How can 100+ positive comments not out weigh a few negative regular users? Possibly there is some sort of power user like digg that cause your submissions to way unfairly weigh actual people.

What do you think of this blog?

I’d like to try another experiment and see how many positive comments I can get on WOT for my site. I’d love for you to go over and leave a positive comment about my website.

If after 50 positive comments, the ratings have not changed, we’ll know for sure something is up and further action will be taken.

Gaming WOT?

While I would NEVER condone gaming a website system, you have to be amazed at how easy it is. No accountability, no verification, no anything. Despite multiple requests for information on policy for falsely labeled sites, I got nothing. I don’t think there is a policy even.

Again, I would never do this but if you wanted to take out a competitor couldn’t you simply get 5 friends to mark their site for no reason? What action can they take… Apparently there is no action.

For starters it would block all their facebook links (ads too maybe? Gotta try still…)

They try to get their customers to post positive reviews and they get disabled from posting positive comments. They try to have it reversed by contacting the company and offering proof and no proof is taken into consideration.

How can a website be called Web Of Trust if there is literally no recourse for bad user reviews?

Take it how you will, I am set on seeing some policy changes. This is very wrong. Very. No accountability, no policy, no trust… Web of trust? Sounds more Web of User Opinion Without Accountability to me. WOUOWA (Has a nice ring to it eh?)

© JonathanVolk.com - A Blog about Making Money Online, 2011.

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It’s been a while since I have posted something non-interview and week-in-review related so I wanted to post a little update.

As some of you may know, a while ago, I decided to branch out from affiliate marketing as my main source of revenue. While I still am an affiliate, I also now have a growing ecommerce network.

To be honest, I LOVE ecommerce. It’s been so great to be able to force myself to learn a ton of new things. The only downside is that ecommerce is so much more than affiliate so it takes a lot more time. For a while, Jacob and I were doing the work of three people – working long hours.

More recently, we added another full time staff member to help manage and run our ecommerce network and things have been going great!

Revenue continues to climb, profit continues to climb.

One of the ways that I have increased profit is by decreasing cost (duh). You’ll see the photo above is the cargo container we got direct from China. While that was a huge stretch and learning experience, it has turned out great! The extra profit allowed for more advertising budget and will hopefully allow us to expand to even more volume (still working on that).

But yea… that’s really been my main focus recently. Now that my team is expanded, I will be back to blogging more regularly again.

In the upcoming weeks, I am going to be posting a couple of great tips that have helped our conversions tremendously.

© JonathanVolk.com - A Blog about Making Money Online, 2011.

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Tell us a little background info about yourself. Where are you from? How long have you been in marketing?
My name is Karen Waksman and I have been in sales and marketing for over 17 years. And the truth is that I have been obsessed with product sales for as long as I can remember! I have always been fascinated with how people got their products on the shelves of retailers…always intrigued me how people got buyers to buy!

This fascination with products led me to eventually become a Manufacturers Rep (someone who sells products to Chain Stores). And today, I teach entrepreneurs, creative types and anyone with a cool product idea how to actually generate money with their products. Basically, I teach people with no sales experience or buyer relationships how to get their products into online and offline retailers.

How did you become successful? Why did you choose this career?
I wasn’t always a Manufacturer’s Rep. In fact, when I graduated from college; I started in High Tech Sales. But I had a dream of learning how to sell products to retailers. Again, it was a crazy obsession that I had. So after the dot com bust in San Francisco, I moved to New York. My dream was to work for a manufacturer who would teach me the ropes of selling to retailers. It took a while, but eventually one accessory manufacturer gave me a shot.

The first year was a total nightmare. I couldn’t get any buyers to pay attention to me and/or buy. At one point I almost gave up. But I kept trying every strategy I could think of. And eventually one of my strategies worked. I ended up selling millions of units to retailers all over the world! So the real way I became successful was through trial and error. I tried everything I could think of and I wouldn’t give up!

When did you first “hit the big time?”
My first huge success was when I sold a fashion product to the retailer Banana Republic. Now I had sold millions of units to all of the big retailers up to that point, but the Banana Republic deal was different. At the time, selling a fashion product to this company was close to impossible—something that all fashion companies dreamed of. But my simple strategies got me an appointment with the buyer and ultimately got them to buy. Eventually, this product made it on billboards all over the country. It was a huge best seller. And truly a dream come true for me.

What do you think it takes to be successful?
You have to love what you do and you have to be willing to commit to sticking things out through all of the good times AND all of the bad times. I know everyone says that (total business cliché), but I swear it’s true! I truly loved the concept of selling to retailers. This helped me push my way through all of the times that I struggled. And trust me I struggled!

The truth is, I’ve started a few businesses over the years that didn’t work out. And I completely understand now that the reasons they didn’t work out was because I wasn’t passionate about what I was doing—I was following the money! Now there is no issue with following the money (trust me I’m a sales person- I can smell money a mile away ) but truly, it wasn’t enough to keep me going when times got tough. And that is what business is all about—good times and bad times.

What have been your biggest failures and frustrations?
Where do I begin?? So many business failures and frustrations! In selling to chain stores, most of the time you are dealing with manufacturers overseas. This is a headache in itself ie shipping, etc. It’s a never ending battle. So I’ve lost deals to big chain store buyers because of these types of frustrations and challenges. It’s part of being in business.

What is the single toughest problem you’ve had to face, and how did you get through it?
The biggest problem I’ve had to face was wanting to sell products to retailers, but not having the knowledge or know-how to make it happen. When I got the job at the manufacturer, I had hoped that they would teach me how to get products into retailers. But they didn’t! I had to learn it all on my own. And there was no information online or anywhere that I could purchase to help me learn what to do. So again, trial and error saved the day. It was such a tough time but I’m grateful that I didn’t give up!

What have you been up to recently? What projects are you working on?
After years of selling products to chain stores, I decided to write a step-by-step guide outlining exactly how I’ve sold millions of units to retailers. This is my new project and my new obsession!!

And the reason I wrote this step-by-step guide was simple–I watched Entrepreneurs struggle for years because they couldn’t find simple information on how to sell to retailers. No one in my industry would share information on how the buying process works at chain stores and what makes buyers more inclined to buy. Additionally, no one would share their exact steps on how they made money with products!

At first, the book was just a side-project. But soonafter I realized I was really helping entrepreneurs. And that’s when things started to take off! Now I teach my classes all over the country at places like Stanford University, the Consumer Electronics Association, National Hardware Show and more! Who knew I that I would love public speaking and information products?! Life is too funny!!

What problems have you had with those new projects?
Where do I begin?! I have always just considered myself as a sales rep, not an author/writer/speaker. Now all of a sudden I’m like a mad scientist with a million ideas for new products and marketing strategies! It’s overwhelming! So my biggest challenge has been time and which project to take on next.

What are your greatest strengths?
At my core, I am a sales person. So I am really good at figuring out where the money is. In other words, my strength is helping companies generate revenue. Additionally, I’ve realized I’m pretty good at public speaking…it inspires me! Finally, I’ve learned that I have the ability to take complex business information and simplify it in such a way that people just get it.

What are your greatest weaknesses?
I work on 100 different projects at the same time which can be overwhelming and exhausting. I haven’t figured out the art of balance when it comes to business. I come up with ideas and I jump on them. Not always the most efficient way to be.

What motivates you?
The biggest motivation for me is to empower and inspire people to improve their lives. And for me, it’s always related to helping people make money! Hey…it’s something

What is the best advice you’ve been given and try to apply to your life?
The best way to succeed in life is to get clear about what you want and take action. Action is everything!

Who has impacted you most in your career, and how?
The person who impacted my career the most was the manufacturer who gave me my first job selling to retailers. He was a total nightmare to work for but he gave me a shot when no one else would. And he made my life so difficult at first that I had to work hard for my successes. Ultimately this is why I was able to write my book and how I succeeded all of these years!

If money was no object, what would you be doing?
If money was no object I would honestly continue to do what I’m doing today, just on a much larger scale. I love to write and speak, so just being able to create endless business/ entrepreneur/ sales information would be a dream come true!

If you could go back to being 18, what different career choices would you make?
It’s funny; I created and sold an information product when I was around 18 years old. It was the biggest thrill of my life and helped me get through college. But when I graduated, I forgot all about information and got a ‘real’ job instead. If I was to go back, I would continue to pursue my passion of writing and informational products. But who knows, maybe I’d have nothing to write about…so I guess I wouldn’t change a thing!

Do you have a Twitter account or Facebook page?
Yes. I have both!
Facebook
Twitter

© JonathanVolk.com - A Blog about Making Money Online, 2011.

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The word “failure” has terrible connotations. It gets a bad reputation, but failing can actually be a positive thing. Henry Ford said that “Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.” Indeed, if viewed with the right attitude, failure can be a learning experience that helps your business succeed the next time around.

Check out the following real-life cases that show us that failure can lead to success:

1. Abraham Lincoln
Our 16th President experienced business failures in 1831 and 1834. He was defeated politically in 1832, 1838, 1843, 1846, 1848, 1855, 1856, and 1858—eight times! It was only in 1860 that he was elected the President of the United States.

2. Jacuzzi Brand
Everyone has heard of Jacuzzi in this day and age. But did you know that in the 1950s the Jacuzzi brothers invented a bath for treating arthritis? Of course you don’t—it was a huge failure. Only when they remarketed the bath as a luxury item for younger, upscale buyers did it meet with success.

3. Microsoft Brand
Yes, that big corporation has had its fair share of failures. Among its failures (which turned into successes) are the following:
• Wasted years working on a database called Omega that ultimately failed…and then led to the development of Microsoft Access.
• Operating system Windows NT was born out of a discontinued joint operating system project with IBM.
• The development of Microsoft Excel came out of a failed Multiplan spreadsheet.

So how can you learn from your business failures? The key to learning from your business failures is analysis and plan implementation.

1. Analyze your mistakes
Don’t let your emotions get the best of you before you’ve had the chance to really analyze your mistakes. Take some time to sit down and think through the failure that you’re facing. Why did you decide to go about things the way you did? Is there anything you could have done along the way to prevent failure? Where, exactly, did things go wrong? Was it as early as in the planning stages, or did things turn south after certain ideas were implemented? The only way that you can learn from your mistakes is to face them through analysis.

2. What to do with what you’ve discovered
After your thorough analysis, you’ll have some ideas as to where things when wrong with your business. Was it because of bad timing or inefficient implementation? Whatever you came up with after your analysis, you’ll know what you need to improve upon the next time around.

The important thing is to realize that just because you’ve encountered this failure doesn’t mean that you’re doomed to a lifetime of failures. History is riddled with people and companies that faced many obstacles and mistakes in their journey to success—you can be one of those people, too!

Katrina Robinson is a freelance writer who specializes in marketing, finances, and credit cards.

© JonathanVolk.com - A Blog about Making Money Online, 2011.

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Is there any guaranteed formula to follow (as the headline suggests?) Of course not. A quick look at the people who have become successful entrepreneurs shows the path they took as unique as they are.

But—and it’s a HUGE but—while their behavior is idiosyncratic, the thinking these successful people followed is not.
A study of serial entrepreneurs, that is those who have successfully started one or more companies, shows that they all follow the same approach. And if it has worked for them, it may very well work for you.

That approach?

1. They REALLY wanted to do what they set out to do.
If you don’t have desire, you won’t give anything your best efforts.

2. They take a small step toward their goal.
Starting anything new is risky. You don’t want to move too far too fast. Everything you have probably read about entrepreneurs says they love risk. Nothing can be further from the truth.

3. After taking that small step, they stop to see what they have learned.
Maybe they learn their initial goal is still a good one. Maybe they market is telling them they need to go in another direction. Maybe they learn that they don’t have the desire any more. Maybe, after considering what they have learned after taking that first small step they realize there is something else they would rather do more. The point is they come to a complete stop and consider everything

4. Once they understand what they learned, they take another small step and go through the cycle once again.
In other words the formula for success (if there is one) is: Act. Learn. Repeat.

What This Means

Implicit in this formula is that your initial idea is going to morph over time. Initially, Howard Shultz had Italian opera playing as background music at Starbucks. Michael Dell began his company by doing nothing more than assembling IBM personal computer knockoffs. The best entrepreneurs don’t wait to see if their product or service is perfect, because they start searching to see if there is going to be market acceptance.

They take that small step toward their goal. (“I am going to offer the best coffee I can possibly can, within a retail environment that replicates as close as possible what someone would experience if they went out for coffee in Italy.”)

They stop and pause to see what they have learned from taking that small step. (“People love the idea of an upscale coffee shop, but they hate the opera soundtrack. Let’s drop that, and maybe add some oversized comfortable chairs.”)

And then they repeat. (“Okay, the chairs were a success; what else can we add, what should we take away.”)

Act. Learn. Repeat. It’s how just about every successful company we know about was built.

To learn more about how to act like an entrepreneur, as well as to find out more about how to use a new entrepreneurial formula called CreAction to work for your goals, please go to www.actiontrumpseverything.com for a free copy of the Action Trumps Everything book.

© JonathanVolk.com - A Blog about Making Money Online, 2011.

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1. I love texas hold’em.
2. Captive audience with other successful internet d00dz (and gals).

If you also love these things… you should come! It’s seriously a great time.

The first time I played, I placed 14th. The second time, it was like 46th I think. We unofficially played at blog world and I did ok there too. Next time, I’m hoping for a top 10 spot but we’ll see how the cards go.

This next one is going to be during Pubcon on November 9th. Check the video DK and Jenny made about it!

Go check it out / register now.

© JonathanVolk.com - A Blog about Making Money Online, 2010.

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Pizza Money… sounds crazy, right? Well don’t worry, this isn’t actually about pizza, really. It’s actually about a crazy blonde lady who makes a ton of money by using this really ingenious offline marketing system.

Don’t worry, this isn’t a sales pitch; it’s more about the story of an AWESOME idea.

What Is Pizza Money?

When the creator of Pizza money hit me up to tell me about her pizza money system, I was pretty intrigued just because of the sheer uniqueness of the so-called system.

I was fairly sure that this was going to be some lame system that was going to teach you how to make pizza and sell it to your friends or something stupid like that. You wouldn’t believe what some people cram into an ebook and try to sell! haha. Fortunately for me, this was not one of those!

When I started to research the pizza money page, I became increasingly impressed with the entire concept. Wow, it’s actually a pretty great idea for an offline business.

So… what is Pizza Money?

Check out the videos and I’m sure you’ll begin to understand what’s going on.

So basically, the idea is to sell advertising to local businesses and use pizza boxes as the display inventory. You buy your “inventory” on revenue share with the pizza joint. You become your own offline advertising company. Pretty freakin’ awesome idea if you ask me.

That’s really just the very basic explanation. Rather than try to rehash and explain it all, you should just go check out the video.

Of all ideas that I have heard recently, this is one of the better ones for those looking to start a credible, sustainable, marketing company that can actually bring in some pretty good money. I’m thinking of getting a copy of this to my brother in law… hehe.

If you have any desire to work with local marketing clients, this is a MUST have. Partner this with your local online marketing and I think it could be a really awesome business.

What do you think?

© JonathanVolk.com - A Blog about Making Money Online, 2010.

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Everybody makes mistakes; the world is built that way. Some mistakes are repeated again and again. Here are the 9 mistakes that entrepreneurs often make.

1. The big client syndrome

This basically means that the company is dependent on one or two big clients. More than half of the business is received from 1-2 clients. This carries a huge risk. What will happen if one day they decide to switch to another service provider? That day will eventually come, nothing is forever.

Bowing down to one big client  will make you give in too much, do too much hand holding and not invest enough time and resources to building the rest of your business.

2. You think that you have a super idea

You come up with a great idea. Your team roars “hooray!”. You will start with lots of enthusiasm, but after some time you will have to admit that no one is interested in your product. It was an idea for which there was no demand or it did not solve any real problems.

Before executing the idea do proper research. Ask yourself these questions:

• Will it solve any real problems?
• How many people / companies do you know that have that problem? Talk to them.
• Will it really be better than the existing solutions out there?

The greatest way to test a product or a service is to sell it. The product does not really have to exist before you sell it. Try to find 10 strangers who would be willing to buy the product and really give you their money. Don’t make big investments before you have made your first sale.

3. Low price

You think you are smart and start offering your product/service with a much lower price than your competition. How much money do you have? You cannot go far with a narrow margin. You will lack money for investment, be barely covering costs and nothing will be saved for the darker days. If you do not have deep pockets, then forget about cheap and instead offer a product that is worth a premium price.

With a cheap price you will count on large volumes. The reality is that finding new clients is really, really hard and not much easier than with a higher price.

Just look at the biggest and most successful internet companies. None of them are so called “savings operator”. The same applies for almost all product categories: Wal-Mart has a huge wallet and they can afford it. You probably cannot.

4. Money is not handled with care

The number 1 reason why companies die is that they run out of money. Logical, right? How do they get there? Too much optimism. Of course you are an optimist, you are an entrepreneur. If you were a realist you wouldn’t have become an entrepreneur in the first place.

Before spending, base your budget on conservative sales prognosis.  Be a realist as much as possible. Set realistic goals. Keep your expenses to a minimum. Buy functionality, not design.

5. Lack of focus

Many entrepreneurs start chasing every mildly interesting opportunity – the extra money seems tempting. As a result you will divide yourself between too many things and be mediocre at everything. Mediocrity is a fast track to irrelevance.

Concentrate on your strength, on your main money tree. Your focus must be on the most profitable products/services. It is better to be world class in a small niche than to be average at everything

6. Single sale

The hardest thing in entrepreneurship is to make someone take out their wallet and give you money. The first sale is the hardest thing ever. The worst business model is when you have to sell to every person only once. Why would you do that?

You should sell many things many times to one person. Create additional supporting products to sell to the client. Think of cross-selling and up-selling, monthly subscription products and bundling.

7. Chasing perfection

You are waiting until your product is perfect before you release it to the market. It is a long way to perfection. If Microsoft would have waited until Windows was perfect, they would never have started up. Think of the 80/20 principle: 80% is good enough for selling and with the rest of the 20% you can work with in the process. As venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki says, “good enough is good enough”.

8. Lack of return on investment

Times are tough. When people are about to buy something, they want to be sure they get a return on their investment. If you don’t make the prospect understand your products’ value clearly and won’t make it obvious how it will help him achieve his goals, then you’re in trouble.

Today we need to explain and prove the value of our products more than ever.

9. My product sells itself

Very few things happen by themselves in this world. If you are counting on luck and that your company’s offering will spread on its own by word of mouth, then you are up for a disappointment. The competition is very stiff in every field, especially for attention. Invest in marketing and sales knowledge. Work hard, do everything you can to market your company and your success will grow in multiples.

What mistakes have you seen entrepreneurs make over and over?

Image credit: music2work2

Peep Laja is running information marketing platfom Traindom, the easiest way to set up infoproducts and membership sites. You can follow him on Twitter at @peeplaja.

© JonathanVolk.com - A Blog about Making Money Online, 2010.

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