Recent Articles
Persistence Is The Key, Remember your “Why”
Two to three weeks is what it takes to make or break a habit, they say. What happens when the excitement dies down. It’s so easy to get caught in the excitement of a new business. As an entrepreneur, I have to stay in my zone and not let the excitement of the business die down. As anything that we put our minds to do gets old, so will owning a business. Many business owners will get discouraged, at first, when they don’t see the profits coming in.
One thing that is key for many entrepreneurs is write down your "Why" when making the decision to start your own business. Could it be financial security? Could it be to have more free time? Whatever your reason for seeking out entrepreneurship, take out the time to write down your why. Having your why is essential because it is so encouraging to go back and look at your reason for starting your business venture.
It is important to remain encouraged and be persistent. One of my favorite saying is consistency creates results. It take more than two or three weeks of doing something to see results. I would relate owning your own business to making a decision to have a child. When you have a child you have to take so much into consideration. You have to ask yourself, am I ready? Am I at a place in my life where I can devote a lot of time and attention to this business? Am I ready to make financial investments into this business?
If you have to follow-up on your customer base or prospect be diligent and following up with them consistently. Have a set plan every day of what you will be doing and how long you will be doing it. Although, in network marketing for instance, many things happen spontaneously. You will get calls from your prospects or your customers and sometimes you have to stop and take the call. It’s important to keep in mind to have a set plan for your time. Being organized and managing your time well will cut down on much of the stress of business operation.
Many entrepreneurs will realize the responsibility of owning a business only once they get well into the business and will become overwhelmed. I am here to encourage you to be persistent. 
Keep your why in a place where you can easily access it. After looking over your why you will be reminded of why you made the decision to start your business venture. Do not allow your efforts to get laxed. Make a conscious decision to work diligently in every area and avenue of your business and keep in mind the goal that you are trying to achieve. By keeping a good mind set and staying positive you will see much progress and then will you achieve your ultimate goal.
To your success,
Jarrod Clark
Why Should You Host Your Blog?
I have had a couple scares with my blog and I know the horrible feeling of loosing all of the blogs. Fortunately for me, the point at where I lost my blogs, I was within only the first month of starting my blog, so I didn’t loose much but the feeling was nonetheless very uneasy. The fault was none other than my own, due to an attempt to upgrade my blog site. I apparently tampered with some of the configurations in the control panel of my blog hosting site. In other words I’ve done something that I shouldn’t have done.
This blog is a spin off from a previous blog post of mine, "The Benefit of Backing Up Your Blog." In the risk of sounding redundant, I will skip the whole reprimand about how you should save a back-up copy of all your blog posts. Although it’s a good idea, I will not elaborate on that idea. I will allow you to take a look at that blog post to get an understanding on why you should back-up your blog and the benefit of doing so.
It was from this mistake that I learned to seek guidance next time I make an attempt to upgrade my blog. I realize that the learning process of developing a blog is in experimenting and trying things out. All of the changes that are done to my blog are done by me, I don’t have a webmaster.
That said, WordPress is a very safe and convenient resource for blogging. And hosting your WordPress blog is the best thing that you can do. If I can use an analogy to describe the importance of hosting your blog site, I would say that the difference between hosting your blog and using a non-hosted blog is the difference between owning an insured restaurant verses owning an un-insured restaurant.
If your restaurant burns down overnight the insurance will pay to have it rebuilt, however if you own an un-insured restaurant, which most restaurant owners are too smart not to have insurance, the cost of the rebuilding will be your out of pocket expense, thats if you decide to rebuild.
There are many people who own free, non-hosted, blog sites and there are some very successful non-hosted blogs with very worthwhile content on them. Blogger.com is free to sign up, however Blogger.com is an example of a non-hosted site. It doesn’t allow outside hosting capabilities. There are many stories of people who have had there content taken down by the Blogger.com due to unknown reasons. This is where the benefit of hosting your blog comes in hand.
WordPress is free to use as well and it allows you to sign up for free. However, the great thing about WordPress is that it allows external hosting capabilities. By personally hosting your blog through an external hosting site, you have total control over your blog. Where as with blogger for instance, the company has the option of removing your blogs at their discretion. When you host your own WordPress blog, you have total control of your blogs, WordPress can’t remove content from an external hosted blog.
I will say this in Blogger’s defense, there have been many successful blogs that have come about through Blogger. Many blogs have been in existence for many years now through Blogger. Blogger won’t remove your blog for no reason, they have terms and conditions that they have to abide by. If you breach the terms and conditions they will remove your blog site. If you own a blog through Blogger, make sure you read the terms and conditions and make sure you are abiding by them.
I would encourage you that if you are into serious blogging, it is a good idea to host your blog site. It gives you the assurance and total control of the existence of your blogs. I personally use Hostgator to host my blog and I pay about $7.98 per month and it is well worth it. I simply view it as as added insurance for my blog. To find a list of web hosting sites go to webhostingfever.com.
To Your Success,
Jarrod Clark
Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization
Written by: Jarrod Clark
There are many search engine optimization techniques that one can use in website optimization. The best seo advise I can give to developing webmasters is to focus on offpage search engine optimization techniques such as incoming links.
Focusing on getting incoming links to a website from other authority sites such as PR 6 and 7 sites that contain relative content is the best search engine optimization, or best seo otimization technique that any webmaster can practice. Most businesses, when starting up a website look into spending money for search engine optimization services so that they can get recognized by the major search engines such as Google, MSN or Yahoo.
There are other factors that a webmaster can take into consideration when performing website optimization and that is search engine advertising. Paid Per Click advertising is more of an indirect form of search engine optimization marketing and is one of the quickest ways to get traffic to your site.
Another great tool in search engine optimization is onpage website optimization such as placing your keyword in the title tags of your site and evenly distributing it throughout the body of the content of your site. Another tool is adding images to your site and titling them around the main keyword in which your are optimizing your site for.
The above techniques are professional search engine optimization techniques and are very useful when attempting to get yoursite ranked for your keyword.
Click here for your free copy of SEO Made Easy by Brad Callen!
To your success,
Jarrod
411 on personality types
I have come across many helpful tools that have helped me in business building. One of the many tools that have changed my life is when I came across Mentoring For Free. Mentoring For Free, or MFF, is an organization founded by Michael Dlouhy, that helps entrepreneurs to be successful. In MFF we teach people how to think not what to think and that they are perfect just as they are, they do not have to change who they are to be successful. I have learned a lot about myself and dealing with other people from this program. One of the things that I have learned is that everyone fits in 1 of 4 category personality types. In M.F.F we have a color system that we use to easily identify these personality types. If you are familiar with the 4 personality types, you may recognize them as Phlegmatic, Sanguine, Melancholy and Choleric. In MFF, we use a system of colors to relate to the 4 personality types. Our system is as follows:
- Phlegmatic = Yellow
- Sanguine = Blue
- Melancholy = Green
- Choleric = Red
Every person is described as being either open and indirect (yellow), open and direct (blue), self-contained and indirect (green), or self-contained and direct (red).
Yellows
Open and indirect means that you are open with discussing your feelings with others but you don’t find it easy telling others exactly what you want from them. When you ask a yellow a question they will answer it openly and indirectly. For instance, if you ask a yellow how was your day? A yellow might enthusiastically say something simple like, “My day was pretty good!” Their answers are usually short and they answer the question straight and to the point. They usually do not disclose more information than what is needed. We describe this type personality as the yellow or phlegmatic type personality and they make up 35% of the population. The yellows are the nurturers in our society. They are usually the teachers, nurses and counselors. They are giving and caring. They give more time for others then they do themselves. They are the best listeners and the best friends. When dealing with a yellow as a client, ask them about their family. They will love it if you tell them how your child played soccer from the age he was 5 all the way until they were in college.You may want to mention such things as team work and team building with a yellow, they love to discuss topics about working together as a team. Don’t talk to them about money, not at first, because a yellow doesn’t want to be sold, instead just focus on building a great relationship with the yellow.
Blues
Open and direct means that you are comfortable discussing your feelings with others and you have no problem telling other people exactly what you want from them. A blue displays these character traits.When a question is asked to a blue, “How was your day?” a blue might say something like, “Oh yeah, it was great! I went shopping and I took my children out to the play ground. Oh and by the way my nephew is getting married next month …” and on and on and on. A blue answers the question openly and keeps going on and on, divulging more information than what was asked, henceforth they are very direct. With a blue you usually have to stop them to ask another question. The blues make up 15% of the population. They are the salesman, they love to sale. They love to have fun. If it’s not fun, then the blue is not there. They are the risk takers.They are the bun gee jumpers, the race car drivers and they are always on the go. When talking to a blue about your business talk about how much fun it would be to make money with you. Describe how fun your product is. Anything that is fun grabs the blues attention. Don’t discuss too much money with a blue, rather stick with such topics of fun and excitement as it relates to your business. If you do discuss money with a blue, give a brief synopsis of your compensation plan but keep it simple. When talking to a blue talk fast and loud. Talk faster than they are talking, they will love it!
Greens
Self-Contained and indirect means that you have a hard time expressing your feelings with others and you don’t usually tell others what you want from them. These characteristics are that of a green type personality. When a green is asked the same question as the yellow and the blue, the may say something in a somewhat mellow, blunt manner tone such as: “It was cool, didn’t do nothing much.” Meanwhile they will sit there and analyze in their mind why are you asking them how their day was. They may wonder what are you really getting at. Greens are analytical, they are very organized and they love data, data, data….and then some more data. They are perfectionists and they think they are smart in a sense of they think they know the answer to every question. The greens are our professors, our arithmeticians and our scientist. They make up 35% of the population. When talking to a green lower your voice tone and talk slower. If you come to a green talking fast and loud as if they were a blue, the green will shut you out and immediately think that you are trying to sell them something. Greens do not like to be sold, they like to analyze the data and figure it out for themselves. When talking to a green it would be good to send them a few web sites as overview. Tell them that this is preliminary data for what they need to know to be in business with you. Discuss the entire compensation plan with the green. Talk money, money, and more money until the green is blue in the face. They love numbers and data.
Reds
Self-Contained and direct means that you don’t usually express your feelings and you have no problems telling others what you want. The reds exemplify these character traits. When asking a red the same question above, the red will not tell you at all how their day went. If they do tell you it will be a short, to the point answer and immediately the red will, in return, take control of the conversation. The red will have the guts to ask you “Why do you need to know how my day went, that has nothing to do with what we are discussing.” The red will want to get right down to the business. They do not like chit chat. The reds make up 15% of the population. The reds are our leaders, our attorneys and our managers. They do the hiring and the firing. They are demanding and they love to be in control. When doing business with a red do not think that you are going to advise them of anything. The red’s motto is, It’s My Way or The Highway. When talking to a red let them do the business their way. Talk about money with the red just as you would with the green except, only talk big amounts of money with the red and keep it simple. When talking to a red do not give them more information then they need to know, they don’t like it.
It is possible to determine what type personality the person has within just a few seconds of talking to them. The key is to listen to the person when they are talking. Knowing the information contained in this blog helps us to effectively determine what the person needs and wants. It’s important to note that red is the only one of the 4 colors that actually likes to be sold. Statistics show that 92% of the population does not like to be sold. So when talking to your prospects keep in mind what you’re listening for when conversing with them. You want to determine if they are open or self-contained. Once you determine that, you will then want to determine whether they are direct or indirect. For more in depth information on the colors go to JarrodClark.SuccessIn10Steps.com and download the free Ebook, “Success In 10 Steps.”
God bless,
Jarrod
MySpace Entrepreneurs Growing Their Friends List
As an entrepreneur, I see the value in marketing on MySpace. MySpace is a great resource for networking with others and building relationships. I use MySpace to do a great deal of marketing and I used to use the old traditional way of adding friends by going and individually clicking on individual profiles and placing my add requests. As you well know, this can take an extremely long time especially when you’re trying to reach the masses and grow your friends list to an outstanding number.
I have come across a great software program called FriendBlasterPro. Personally I was fascinated when it was demonstrated to me. It is free to download. The way it works is that you log onto MySpace, through the FriendBlaster Pro software, and once you’re on you can immediately begin adding friends by clicking on browse, just as you would the traditional way. Once you get to the browse screen you can edit and change your criteria to match the type of profiles you want to add, location, gender etc, and click send. FriendBlasterPro will then automatically begin gathering the IDs of all of the profiles in the browse window of MySpace. You can click start and it will automatically add all of the gathered IDs.This is an amazing software program as it will save you time and allow you to add more friends to your friends lists.
You can also set it to automatically send everyone in your friends list a comment and it will do that automatically as well. The only thing I dislike and this is more of a MySpace security policy, is many profiles have the captcha code that MySpace requires. However, you have the option of modifying the settings to skip the profiles that have the captcha code required setting. I really like this software and it has really worked for me. I was able to boost my profile friends list from zero to about 500-600 within just a few days of creating my profile on MySpace which I found to be impressive. This is a helpful tool for many entrepreneurs who are using MySpace as a means to market themselves and their business.
FriendBlasterPro has an unregistered demo which will allow you to download and use it for free. The only thing about the unregistered demo is that you can only add 50 people a day. I wound up upgrading from the unregistered demo, which was free to use, to the registered version which I made a one time purchase of $29.95. This version will allow you to add up to 400 profiles per day with only 1 account, or you can get the unlimited version which is $59.95. This version will allow you to add as many account as you would like and add 400 profiles per day, per account, which is very helpful for those serious entrepreneurs who would like the added benefit of adding 400 profiles per day for multiple accounts.
To learn more about FriendBlasterPro Click on on the banner below.
10 Must Have Web Sites for Online Marketing
Provided here is a compilation of useful sites that I refer to often within my daily online business ventures. By sharing these sites it is my sincere hope and desire to shed some light for entrepreneurs in the areas of online marketing, web site optimization and site advertising. Here are a list of a few websites:
1) Freekeywords.wordtracker.com/
This is a great site for searching keyword phrases that are highly searched. This site is great because it highlights the most used keyword phrases in connection with a single keyword. I go here often when I’m keyword brainstorming and searching for a host of particular keyword phrases.
![Tel Aviv Traffic [Incoming]](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3100/2325123820_421321c015_m.jpg "Entrepreneur Ideas Image")
2) Alexa.com
This is an extraordinary site that will give you a ranking based on the incoming traffic that your site receives. This is a great site to refer to when building your traffic and attempting to achieve a higher ranking to your site.
3) Directorysubmitter.imwishlist.com/
Directory Submitter is a great software program. It is free to download and easy to use. With Directorysubmitter you can input your information such as your name, website name, title of your site, description of your site and a few other variables only one time and DirectorySubmitter will provide hundreds of free sites where you can submit your website for free. DirectorySubmitter makes it much easier for you by automatically submitting your information into these sites and all you have to do is click send. Go here and take a look at the video and it will give you a short tutorial on how to use Directory Submitter and how it can benefit you in getting free one way links to your site.
4) Articlesubmitter.imwishlist.com/
Article Submitter works in the same way Directory Submitter does except you’re submitting your articles to online article directories. Like Directory Submitter it’s a great tool to attract viewers to view your content and to your website. With Article Submitter, you only have to input your site and article information once and Article Submitter will provide you with hundreds of Article Directories for you to choose from. All you have to do is pick which sites you want to submit your article to and Article Directory will automatically submit your information then you’ll just hit send. Just that easy. Go here to download and view a short tutorial video on how to use Article Submitter and how it can also benefit you in gaining exposure to your articles.
This site gives you a free downloadable google toolbar that can be placed at the top of your internet browser. It’s very helpful because it gives you the google page rank of every page you visit. It has a google search bar there so you don’t have to go to google’s home page to search for a term you can just key it into the toolbar and it will take you strait to the SERP listings. I use it and I have found it to be a very good resource.
Link Popularity is the total number of websites that link to your site. LinkPopularity.com is a great tool for finding what sites are linking to your website or your competitors websites. Go here and scroll down to the bottom and key in the website you want to analyze backlinks.
7) "SEO Made Easy" free ebook
Through out many of my blogs I’ve mentioned Brad Callen’s free ebook "SEO Made Easy." It’s a wonderful tool for webmasters or bloggers who are optimizing your pages. The link to download the free ebook "SEO Made Easy" is http://www.homebiz-direct.com/SEO-made-easy.html.
8 WordPress.org Blog sites are one of the many ways to voice your thoughts on certain ideas or topics. Many bloggers will blog to gain an audience in an attempt to expose their personal life, politics, business, or an effort to market their business online. WordPress.org is a free site that gives you access to a more secure blog site which gives you more tools and freedom than some of the many well known blog sites such as blogger.com and others. WordPress also offers many plugins that you can download for free at: Wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ However with WordPress you will need to host your blog.
9) Hostgator.com Hostgator.com is a hosting site that supports WordPress. It offers a hosting plan for about $4.95/month which in my opinion is well worth it due to the security that you get that some of the free blogging sites don’t offer. Just as an FYI, for $7.95/month you can host an unlimited number of sites through hostgator.com.
10)online-income-101.com/series/becomea/blogger.html
For those of you who have tried Wordpress.org or are in the process of setting up your blog, the above link features outstanding hands-on tutorial videos that take you step by step on how to set up your blog. I know for me, in the process of setting up my blog the tutorial videos just mentioned were very helpful. I have found all of these sites to be conducive in my daily online business ventures. I was fascinated by how useful these sites were and thought I’d put them on here and provide awareness for many entrepreneurs. Many of these sites are are well known but for someone who is just starting these tools could be a lifesaver. And indeed… that is what my ultimate reason for starting this blog is to provide awareness and help smooth out some of the rough edges in this long but well worth it journey of online marketing.
To your success,
Jarrod Clark
