Is a Thief Inside Your Head Stealing Your Money?

I have another niche market I participate in and hope to sell products in. This niche market involves a sizable learning curve. I see people come and go in it all the time.

And from my own experiences and those I observe, there is ONE THING that keeps people from making progress. And that thing is self doubt.

1. You may doubt you have the ability to succeed in this business

You know, we all have self doubts. In learning the new skills I’m tell you about, I know I personally have had self doubt.“Is this something I can do? Is this a skill I can master? Am I TOO OLD?”

Yet,the conclusion I come back to over and over is that success in ANY endeavor is the result of behaviors. Change the behaviors and get the result.

Wherever you are, I’ve been there. I know what it is to doubt yourself or your ability. To not be sure if you have what it takes. To try and have your successes far outweighed by things that didn’t work.

It’s easy to get discouraged. To stop. To quit. To think thatthis is the end of the road for you. In this new arena and skill set area I’m working in, I’ve experienced all those feelings and emotions and more.

2. You may doubt your progress

It’s so easy to look at a few successes against more failures and think,“I’m not making progress.” I think this is the hardest thing. You have to tie a knot on your mental rope and hang on. Because the truth is, things almost always don’t work before they DO work.

You have to really tune up your focus on any successes you DO have. And notice the small successes. So maybe you don’t have a ton of sales yet. But you DO have people subscribing. Or you DO have some sales coming in regularly. Or you DO have your blog up and you ARE getting visitors now from Google.

You have to exaggerate mentally the successes you DO have because those are what show you that you ARE making progress and ARE on the right track.

3. Others will rain on your parade

So you finally get to the point where things ARE starting to work. All of a sudden in a forum or someplace, someone RAINS on your parade.They criticize your model, your idea or your efforts.

Maybe they tell you you are pipe dreaming. Or chasing rainbows. And you let it get to you mentally, spiritually or psychically.

I don’t know why this happens. Some people just aren’t very tuned in. You have to believe in yourself and what you’re doing more than anyone else. I don’t know why it’s that way. But it is.

4. You may have a set back

Man, this one is a challenge. You’re going along. You’re making progress. You’ve got some traffic. You’re getting subscribers. Sales are coming in.

Then you have a set back. Something happens in your life, your family, or some area that holds you back or slows you down.

For me last year it was a quadruple hernia. Not exactly what I had in mind for my year. But you move forward. That’s all you can do.

5. You may think or feel that finally you’ve reached a point where “it isn’t working.”

Anytime you’re acquiring a complex set of skills, that can happen. It’s a signal to do some things different. To up your Game. To tweak what you’re doing and how.

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Solutions for You

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Designing a website may not seem like the easiest of tasks, but with the help of some new web building conveniences that have entered the market in the past few years it is possible to create a professional website for your business with only a small investment of your time and money. In fact, with the advent of greater choice in web design such as ready-made website templates, logos and other corporate necessities, you can build a website So easy these compared to when I started online.

Step One: Plan Ahead

Before you delve into the world of web design and start looking for a suitable template, it’s important to plan ahead. You need to clearly define your company’s objectives beforehand so that the design selection process goes more quickly and you choose the right template.

For instance, who is your target audience? You must know your customer inside and out in order to choose the best site design for bringing in business. For instance, if most of your business comes from corporations and professionals you will need to choose a template that caters to that group of people – one that gives the right first impression and shows you are a serious business that can handle top-notch clients. In this case, a simple, efficient design will be your top preference. If, however, you are building an ecommerce website selling a range of goods, a template that can be customized for online shopping will probably be your design of choice. Perhaps you require a more “flashy” website? Flash templates are also an option and suit many different types of websites that rely on more than just text and a logo to make money.

Ensure that the template you eventually purchase is easy to customize and update. That’s the whole point of buying a template in the first place – to make both the building of the website and its maintenance stress-free, affordable and fast. You will need to add your own content to the template and work with the overall theme once it is downloaded. Also, most businesses will want to add fresh content, site updates, links etc. as time goes by so keep this in mind when searching for that perfect template. If you plan to incorporate interactive features into your site, such as forms and chat areas, the template you choose should be able to handle this as well.

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Welcome to the 4th essential part of creating a successful online business and I gotta be up front here. There is to little time spent on Web design. The design you choose to use is extremely important I guess on of the best ways to explain this is to you is to have you think a bit about the sites that you go to that you really like. There are very specific reasons that you like those particular sites and chances the other who go to those same site feel the way that you about it.

Let me explain it from this angle. Over the past few years I have read a number of studies but probably the most in depth study was done by Brad Fallen and Andy Jenkins of Stompernet. My apologies I have tried to find that case study and I simply but the gist of the study is this. In order to maintain the prospects attention your site has to have a well organized flow to it and it is for the most part essential that you don’t load your site up with a bunch of flash.

Remember that the average Joe is there first for information! They need to find what they are looking almost instantly or you take a chance of loosing them quickly. That is what I love so much about blogs as they give the opportunity to offer different layouts. And in today’s market place there are blog models even for online ecommerce stores. Do your homework with this aspect of your business. Spend time and research other sites and look at different layouts and how they can be improved.

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I really don’t understand why folks would go through all the motions of building a site and then not at the very same time make it search engine friendly and optimized. It is far simpler to go that route than to go back in a rework it later. When you have search engines on a non stop stop search for focused content it only makes sense.

Keyword optimization should be part of everything thing you do, from creating websites to creating pages inside of your site to article marketing to blogging, what ever it may be. That is what the search engines are looking for so lets give it to them. It is far easier to give them what they want than to not. Read the rest of this entry

Your Web-site defines who you are and gives a first impression that is either going to have your prospect clicking his or her way around your site or clicking off the site in a hurry. The biggest mistake you could make on your home page is create confusion. Be clear and make it extremely easy to navigate.

One of the single biggest no-no’s for a home page, is to have your prospect arrive at splash page. You know, the one that has to load before they go anywhere else on your site. these pages really serve no purpose at all. Try not to make it to busy, as this in itself creates a lot of confusion for someone visiting. Take the top 2 or 3 items that you have in your industry and put them on the front page with very focused content.

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