As I strive to make my online business a success, I find that the tools you use will help determine that success. Many people online use a variety of services for their business and as I come across successful websites, I take the time to see what tools and services they use so that I can eventually duplicate their success.
Below you will find essential tools that I use to create products for my online business. You may use some of the same tools or you may have something else that works better. I am always open to new suggestions so your comments will be appreciated.
If you are anything like me, then during your trek to earn money online you have no doubt amassed a collection of private label rights or master resell rights products on your hard drive. The question I have for you is, “Did you buy them to resell or did you buy them to use?”
For me it was to resell but just like many of you, I never got around to selling much of anything let alone even using the products I purchased. As I finally take a serious look at my online business and how I am running it, I have realized that I have a massive amount of wealth on my hard drive.
As we go through this coaching with Alex Jeffreys, I can’t help but wonder how in the world am I going so fast through this process. I am completely grateful to Alex for his coaching and motivation to help me succeed in all of the places where I failed before.
Alex has asked his students to make a YouTube video telling people what they have learned and to make it interesting he is offering an incentive to make the video. So I downloaded the free trial of Camtasia 6 which I am going to purchase anyways, and captured myself doing a PowerPoint presentation.
I have noticed that when I focus on writing content for my blog, that is all i end up with. What good is the content if there are no visitors to read them and comment on them. Isn’t that why we started a blog for anyways?
I have also seen a sharp drop in visits to my blog when I stop visiting and commenting on other peoples blogs. So I have decided that I need to do two very important things in order to make my own blog effective and social.
As I try to generate more traffic to my blog, I find that there are really a ton of different ways to do this. On this very day as I was trying to install some necessary widgets on my sidebar, I had an idea. What if there was a way to have my blog posts in a widget that someone could then put on their website?
As I searched in Google, I came across Widgetbox.com. In about half an hour I came up with this little widget that shows my most recent posts and has links directly to the post embedded in the widget. Also I have a logo at the top that links to my blog.
Alex Jeffreys challenged us to see who could come up with the most traffic from December 17th until January 3rd. Obviously I did not do as well as other students have done but I am going to post my results anyways. After adding Google Analytics to my blog I was able to see each and every day how much traffic comes to my blog and here is what I’ve got.
My Traffic Results From Dec 17th 08 to Jan 03rd 09
Hey, Michael Ottman here with another graphics lesson for you. I was surfing Alex’s students blogs and came across yet another awesome site. Bill Vannot has a simple design and his blog is easy on the eyes. I definitely do not need to help him with his graphic for his free report.
In fact it is pretty awesome. There is however just one mistake that is all too common when it comes to putting graphics on blogs and websites. To the left is his awesome report cover. The dimensions are 238 x 300.
As I sort through the blogs of Alex Jeffreys students, I consistently come across graphics of ebooks, reports and others that are simply “non professional” looking. I see such great looking blogs with fabulous content but the graphics to some of these great blogs scream either “amature” or “cheap”.
I do not intend on being rude but rather intend to do my part to help others who have neither the resources, money or both to produce the kind of graphics that make people want to buy or click a link. For those of you who don’t know, I’ve started offering my services free to get Alex’s students a little boost for their blogs and to get my name out there.
Hey it’s new years eve and I want to let everyone know that I am ready to kick off 2009 with a bang! Being a student of Alex Jeffreys has really helped me to focus on treating my business like a business. No more surfing and email reading all day for me.
Again, I must say that I hope you all have written your goals down for the new year and organized them by priority. For my first 90 day plan, I hope to get at least 2 paid products created and at least 4 free products. I have a plan for my business to get the free content out there and make it viral.
I am posting this in a new section I have called Graphics Creation. I am going to do my part in helping my fellow students of Alex Jeffreys by giving of my small services.
I know a little about graphic design and I want to give some of Alex’s students resources to help their businesses to grow and at the same time, get my name out there.
I recently visited Chelsea Filan’s website and noticed that I could give her a better graphic for her newsletter. It took me about 20 minutes to duplicate her graphics but I think I came out with something better than what she’s got. Her old one is on the left.
