Michaela Cernescu’s Blog

It is probably the right moment to chat about the power of  challenges.

A lot of people like challenges for different reasons.

Some consider them like sports events, some just want to see where they are vs.  the competition, some like to learn something new, and so on.

In general the personality of a person will motivate the reasons of entering in a challenge.

Internet Marketing challenges can be trigger by the same reasons as  life challenges but also can inherit some specifics from On-line work.  We all know and witness how Internet changes our way of shopping, learning, communicating, and YES, thinking.

I participated in a couple of challenges, I am in middle of one right now, and I try to be honest and give you the reason why I love them.

For me a challenge:

• Discipline myself to have consistency at work, follow rules, be within a system
• In general take out the best of me
• Motivate me and capitalize on the competition spirit of my nature
• Like to have dead lines, a structure to follow, yes, I am opinionated but not a rebel by any stretch of imagination, I like organized work
• Love to learn new things and keep abreast with technology and trends
• Like to get out of my comfort zone and fight for ideas I believe in
• It is a measurement of my abilities
• It is for sure a method to brand myself and my work
• An on-line challenge is a powerful way to advertise, build trust, create relationship with a list
• Powerful way to gain extra money

With a challenge, do you need to be a winner all the time? It is great to be a winner but based on the nature of the challenge, the rules, the competition,  is hard to emerge always as a winner.

But I argue that sometimes just the participation on a challenge has a lot of merits and benefits. It will put your work on prospective, you will learn from mistakes, and you will be better prepared for future challenges.

Coming back to the challenge I am working on right now. It is not a new “sliced bread” invention, it is in the middle of a a very high competitive niche, but I have my unique approach. I want to create a model to monetize blogs for beginners. All the gurus pretend that they want to teach beginners, but as soon as they gain a ton of money they really forget what being a beginner means.

If you get in front of a beginner and flood the room with hype, you don’t help, you confuse the beginner.

If you just say I made a million last year, and you show the checks, but you never tell people how much expenses you have: out sourcing, employees, office and business expenses, software and memberships you participate, how much you pay for traffic, and so on – you misled pure and simple.  How many gurus you know who attache expenses in a sale letter? All of them are talking only about how much they make.

I was a couple of years ago in a seminar, in the class had 2/3  beginners  and a well know Internet marketer said that he had the perfect method if we invested $20,000  in PPC campaigns, we got a return of $40,000.

First of all it is not guaranty that the return will be $40,000, what if it is only $5,000?  The return is based of the niche, campaign skills you have and more.

Second, the double the investment is glamorous but how somebody can imagine that a beginner has an extra income of $20,000 to invest in any method.  That one was the last seminar I participated.

So in this very competitive niche in which exists a lot of demand but also a lot of offers, I consider that it is a need of a real model for beginners.

My challenge will take 3 months, I am in the week 3 now and I just posted a plan of my model which I will start to implement and test from now one.

http://squidooeventlog.com/building-blocks-of-monetizing-blog/

So I am not losing time being obsess with winning or falling, I just stick with my plan and if you are curious, read each week my weekly report.

Until next time be well

Popularity: 27% [?]

Related posts

• 14 Mistakes To Avoid On Blogging (4)
• Internet Marketer New Year Resolutions (4)
• How To Profit From Giveaway Downloads (3)
• How Blogging Can Be Profitable (6)

This is the time of year when we look back at 2008 and we make New Year’s Resolutions. This is also my last 2008 post.

For me 2008 have been a year with ups and downs. I am proud of my accomplishments but I have a list of things that are unfinished.
Why?

• I worked at too many projects at a time, I promised to discipline myself, but never happened.  I think this was my weakest point
• Spend too much time with Social Bookmarking and Social Networking. It is Ok because I learn a lot, but I have to take some decisions in 2009 about separating the weeds
• My planning must be more realistic

I am determined to learn from my 2008 mistakes and accomplish more in 2009.
I put in writing my business vision, my goals, and my actions.

I think this must me the start doesn’t matter what you do:

• Take the time to think about what you want to accomplish
• Putting in writing
• Follow up because things that are tracked and measured tend to improve
• For Internet marketers – constantly test and track to improve conversion rates
• Setting up attainable dead lines for your actions, this will make you feel a sense of accomplishment that might be enough to encourage you to stick with the plan until you achieve your goals

This is the general wisdom but let’s get back to my resolutions:

• In 2009 I’ll work on one project at a time, it’s a promise I have to stick with it
• Try to isolate myself from any distractions
• I learn a lot about Social Marketing and Networking, I can separate now what is working vs. what is not, and I’ll concentrate only in what is working
• Must finish an eBook I started in 2008, and plan for the next Digital Product
• I will work minimum one hour per day for a Squidoo Challenge I committed in Dec 2008 see  http://www.squidoo.com/SquidIncomeGoal
• I will set up a membership site
• I’ll work more with affiliate programs
• Cut off on coffee drinking…

I wish you all a Happy 09, let’s strive to make the best of it!
Michaela

Popularity: 3% [?]

Related posts

• How To Profit From Giveaway Downloads (3)
• Why Resell Rights for Digital Products (0)
• What Do You Want To Learn About Affiliate Marketing? (0)
• The Power of a Challenge (0)
• Last Week On Internet Marketing (4)

Just want to let you know why somebody may be interested in giveaways:

• To increase the opt-in list – the money is in the list, we already know this, it is not a cliché, it is the soul of Internet Marketing, you want to be successful you need a list
• To download more Digital products they can use to market and/or to learn more. The truth of the matter is that “being a Guru” is a misconception, some people knows more then others, but nobody knows everything, and the learning process never stops because the internet is growing so rapidly, if you stop learning you are out of the loop in 6-10 month
• To make money. This is the purpose of this post, I’ll show you how.

Well, not all giveaways are born equal, but it is enough to look at the conditions of participation and you will find out which are good giveaways.

This is the right path of participating to Giveaways:

• You have to have a Digital Product to offer for Free, this can be an eBook, a Report, a Video, an interview, webinar, and my favorites are an e-course or a Report
• You participate to a giveaway in which you offer your free Digital Product, you download all the goodies from the giveaway and store them in a folder. Using my experience, 60% of the gifts have a real value, help me to learn more but also I can use them as free gifts in other giveaway which will come along, 30% have a medium value, 10% I am not interested in (just to be polite)!  From that 60% I select carefully around 10 very good products with Master Resell Rights, and I keep them, I can use them as free gifts or as OTO or I can sell them
• When you create your giveaway gift, you will add an OTO (One Time Offer).  You chose a product with real value, related with your gift, but more informative then yout gift. Only this way a person that was interested in your initial offer will be interested in your OTO. The OTO will have a decent price on it and, sure, some people will take it, some will pass it but if you have a big list you will make a profit
• If you don’t add an OTO to your gift, you are leaving money on the table, but you increase your list and in future you can send other offers.

In previous post I gave you an example of a good giveaway, if you didn’t decided to be a contributor, at list try to be a member and download all the goodies:
http://www.mc-ebay-resources.com/recommends/5JVMem

If you are a beginner, the part which is missing is probably the OTO, how to create one, how to use it properly, how to increase the chance your OTO to be picked up.

I’ll help you with OTO learning curve, offering a free lifetime membership from where you can pick up a lot of knowledge about how to create an OTO:
http://www.mc-ebay-resources.com/recommends/OTOfree

And I’ll let you know when other good giveaway will surface.

Until the next time, all the best
Michaela

Popularity: 3% [?]

Related posts

• Why Resell Rights for Digital Products (0)
• Internet Marketer New Year Resolutions (4)
• A special JV Event will put Money on your Pocket for Holidays (2)
• What Do You Want To Learn About Affiliate Marketing? (0)
• The Power of a Challenge (0)