If you have ever wondered about the power of really owning your niche, you will be convinced of its importance in this video.

John Nese is the proprietor of Galcos Soda Pop Stop in LA.  He stocks over 500 types of soda–everything from rose petal soda to cucumber soda to a cola cream soda.  He knows the difference between the bubbles, the ingredients, the types of glass that the bottles use–he can even quote health facts about why sugar is better than corn syrup.

This guy knows soda.

And if you want soda, you’d go to him.

Watch this fascinating video to see a true master at niche business.  He found a niche and he went deep instead of wide.

You want juice?  Go somewhere else.

You want Pepsi?  He’ll point you to the store down the road.

But if you want soda made from small breweries, he’s got it for you.

Niches work.

It’s important to remember to keep the human touch when you build your business.  Ustream can help you do that.

Building your business with the internet can mean that you gain your lead, build trust with them, complete a purchase with them and never interact personally.

Sometimes this works well for people.  They want to buy what they need and move on.

But when you business involves service (and even if it doesn’t), it is a good thing to remember peraonal, human interactions.

Ustream.tv, a website which allows you to stream live video to the internet in real time is a great solution.

With Ustream, you can interact with your customers, answer their questions and build your rapport with the;m.

I’ve made a short video on  how Ustream.tv can help your business.

When your customers have a question, need to see a demonstration, or just want to see who your are, Ustream is a great solution.

And if you’re feeling tech-challenged or don’t know how to apply Ustream to internet Attraction Marketing, I recommend Renegade Professional for your one stop shop for internet marketing training.

The best Wordpress themes are easy to find.  Themes are everywhere.

Different colors…different numbers of columns…fixed width or variable…

One of the fun things about Wordpress blogs is that they are so easily spiffed up.

How do you find the best Wordpress theme?

This video will get you started finding exactly what you need.

When you’re a beginner at Renegade Professional, it is so easy to be overwhelmed.  Dozens and dozens of videos on all types of subjects can distract you.

If you manage to make it through Renegade Professional, then there are all the other distractions on the webs–the newest launch from the latest internet guru, the latest changes from Amazon and Google, the emerging social media tools.  It’s a jungle to get lost in.

And if you manage to stay out of that, the final and most devasting distraction can hit–the voices in your own head.  The constant dialog telling you why you can’t do this, why you’re making mistakes, why it will never work, why you’re wasting your time.

The distractions are endless.

Stay Focused

Mike Klingler has great advice for Renegade Professional beginners.

Stay focused.

And if you need help, get a coach to help you.

It’s a big job handling everything it takes to get an internet business started.  The technical learning curve alone can be overwhelming, but the emotional battles can take you out.

Find a coach to help you wade through it all.

A chai wallah does one thing: he makes tea.

He makes tea day in and day out. Over and over.

I remember when I was in India how the chai wallahs would enter the trains at every stop and each had their own way of calling “chai”. They would squeeze up and down the aisles with their pots and glasses, at all hours of the day or night (you never got a quiet time). They would shout about their chai is such a way that the words ceased having meanings and became a song.

They were all experts at the same thing, making tea, but they each had their own way of doing it.  (For a wonderful website devoted to the chai experience in India, visit chai pilgrimage.)

Are You Willing to Become a Wallah?

To become a wallah, you must specialize.  Avoid distraction and do the same thing over and over until you become good at it.  And after you have repeated it over and over, your own unique mark will develop.

Focus on one thing and ignore the rest until you become good at it.

“When you go all in, it focuses your attention and effort, doesn’t it?”

—Seth Godin in his blog post Chai Wallah

If you focus your attention, practice until you’re crazy, you come up with your expert call.  You will become a internet business wallah.

Rosalind Gardner is an esteemed affiliate marketer and she’s always giving great tips in her blog NetProfitsToday.com.  Her post about “How To Get Expert Content for Free” is a wonderful how-to about scoring an interview with an “Expert”.

Rosalind has many great tips, but one I would like to stress is how human even an “Expert” is.  Rosalind has been in this business from the early days and her success is well known.  Still, she expresses pleasure at being asked to be interviewed.  She is helpful for the newbie interviewer.  And she reveals her own worries about not giving good interviews.

So the lesson for anyone looking for an interview is to not assume that someone is unapproachable.

I understand the intimidation.  Frankly I would never have had the guts to ask Rosalind for an interview.  But as I read this I asked myself “why not?”

If going to an Expert is just too intimidating, then I suggest starting with your peers.  Interview each other.  Find a friend who is also starting out and create content with each other.

An Easy First Interview Tip: Use a Script

I recommend writing a script which covers all the points you would like to make for your content.  The interviewer will introduce the “expert” as if starting a newscast.  She will give an outline of some of the expert’s achievements and how the expert could help the viewer.

The questions and answers should be planned ahead of time.  You should do dress rehearsals for practice.  When you do the interview, you should know what you want to cover, but it should remain a real interview–in other words, it must still be spontaneous and interesting.

Once you get a few interviews under your belt this way, you can begin to be a little more unplanned.  Practice interviewing a friend when you don’t have a pre-planned script.  Gradually you will feel accomplished enough to take on a real “expert”.

Tips for Unscripted Interviews

In the interviews I have done, there are a couple of key points to make it flow:

• You must listen but also guide the conversation.  It takes a knack to learn how to allow the expert to answer in their own words, but also keep the pace and flow of the interview going.
• You must add your own comments but not take over.  It is nice to hear the personality of the interviewer.  Oprah is a master at this.  But too much and it’s all about the interviewer and not about the expert.
• You must learn to ask questions which lead to interesting answers.  Limit the yes or no questions.  And practice questions which will gently guide to an answer that flows with the rest of the interview.
• Be ready to be off the cuff.  In an interview, you never know where the answers will take you.  Be ready to improvise when your expert reveals an interesting tidbit.  Follow up on it and you may get an unexpected surprise.
• Learn how to use audio or video editing software so if things go really awry, you can edit the video and it will look great.  Sneeze in the middle of a question?  Restate the question and later you can take the sneeze out.

Rosalind Gardner gives great tips on getting an interview with an expert.  With her advice, you don’t need to feel intimidated asking for an interview.

Study Rosalind’s Affiliate Writing Style

There is one final thing you can learn from Rosalind Gardner’s excellent post.

If you want to do affiliate marketing, then observe the beautiful skill Rosalind used to write this article.  She gives great advice; she tells a personal story; she builds trust in what she has to say and then at the end–she gracefully ties it to a product which may help you if you would like to do interviews.

Her writing style is honest, clear and elegant.

The flow of the article is superb.

If you want to recommend affiliate products in your blog, study this post.  In fact, you should hand write it.  By hand writing exactly what Rosalind wrote, you will learn the structure and see how she sells.  Rosalind is an expert affiliate marketer and you can’t learn from anyone better than her.

Envelope stuffing, daycare, making candles…  What is the best home business for Mom?

The best home business for mom is an internet business.  With the internet, you can reach people world wide who want exactly what you have to offer.

Are you selling all natural make-up?  Use the internet to find the women who want just that.

Do you know the best way to arrange flowers for wedding centerpieces?  Use the internet to teach what you know and sell supplies to brides.

Gone are the days psyching yourself up to face rejection about the products you know are good.

While there are many businesses for a work at home mom, all of them could benefit from an internet presence.  By using the internet either as your sole marketing tool, or as an addition to what you already have, the best home businesses use the internet.

What if I have an MLM?

Many wahm moms already have a network marketing or multi-level marketing business.  Some of these companies have a marketing plan built into their structure–a party plan, or training in using the “3 foot rule”, expos or cold calling.

For some, this marketing really works.  I have met women who build a thriving MLM using these techniques.

But for many moms, this type of marketing fails.  The party plan means that Mom must be out of the house and away from her family during the nights and weekends.  The 3 foot rule means that Mom must be comfortable pushing her products on anyone near her.  Expos are exhausting and expensive.  Cold calling is relentless.

The beauty of an internet home business for Mom is that Mom can attract the customers who want her.  When you build a well-constructed website, full of good, valuable information, the women wanting the information will be attracted to your site.  Most of your work is already done.  And you do the site building when you want to–you can be home kissing you kids good night.

So even if you business is already thriving, an internet business is an excellent addition to your marketing plan.  Build a blog or website showcasing your niche, and you will have even more customers coming to you.  Use online social networks to compliment your offline networks.  Use the power of the internet to build your lead list.

I have done many home businesses and know the pros and cons of all of them.  By far, the best home business for mom, the most flexible and substantial is an internet business.

Social media training–what is it and why should you care?

Social media sites are great places to get free traffic that already has a relationship with you.  You interact with your customers, gain your reader’s trust and then you can direct them back to your site.

Social media sites are social.  Blogs, comments, forums, wikis–all of these are ways for people to interact online.  When you use these tools in your business, you interact with your viewer.  Once they blog with you, they already feel like they know you.

Leads that come from social media sites are fantastic leads that want what you offer–in fact, they followed you from the social media site to your site.  They have already made a commitment to you.

And leads like this mean that you can grow your business easily.  Your leads will request your help.

The best training for social media, bar none, is found at Renegade Professional.

Qualities of Good Social Media Training?

• Social media is a broad array of sites–any site where people interact and add their own content.  YouTube, Squidoo, HubPages are just a few examples.  All of these sites allow people to post comments and respond to each other.  Other types of social media include blogs and forums.  The best social media training addresses all of these sites.
• Good training in social media teaches how to use all these sites.  How do you set up a YouTube channel?  What settings are best for a Squidoo lens?  When you teach yourself, each site poses a huge learning curve.
• The very best social media training teaches not only how to use the social media sites, but also how these sites fit in with your entire sales funnel.  Once you make a YouTube video, what do you do with it?  What are Facebook pages and how can you use them for your business?  How do you turn an online discussion into buying customers?

Renegade Professional is unique in that it gives not only the basic click by click details of using social media marketing, but also it gives a broad perspective of building a business plan.  This training gives you the tools and the understanding of when and how to use them.

Social Media is the hot new thing on the internet.  New social media sites are emerging all the time.  But what is the social media definition?

What is the Social Media Definition?

Social media are sites where individuals can interact online.  They publish content in little chunks and make it available for everyone to see.  This means that the definition of social media includes a broad array of sites–from YouTube, EzineArticles.com, and flickr to HubPages, and Squidoo.  Comments, blogs, and forums are all social media sites.  Even wiki sites fall under this heading.  Anything where individuals are interacting.  Their interactions become content for the host site.

What is the Significance of Social Media?

Social media sites allow everyone to put their two cents into the pot of collective knowledge.  Want to write about “Top 5 Reasons to Enjoy a Long Drive to Work“?  elisabethkcmo at HubPages already did.  Maybe you have a new angle on that topic that you want to add–make a comment on her HubPage and join in the discussion.

With social media, every person has a voice.  Every person can make their own YouTube video and show the world their own unique vision.  Every person can write an expert article about their own unique hobby.  And then the online community reacts when they make comments and link to the content.

And with all that self expression, little tiny microscopic niche interests emerge.  Every person who likes videos of ant hills will find each other on YouTube.  You may have been the only person in town who collect clown noses before, but now you find there’s a world wide community of clown nose collectors.

Social media sites are changing the way we view knowledge, democratizing it and changing the idea of what an “expert” is.  On the internet, everyone is an expert and every one can weigh in on the issues.

The definition of social media sites would seem to be just what it says–social.  But what’s interesting is that social media is changing the way we do business as well.

How do Social Media Sites Benefit Businesses?

There are a number of ways social media sites can benefit businesses.

• They are a free, and easy way to publish content online which builds your credibility as an expert.
• The social media sites have a lot of traffic and this gives your media exposure.
• Publishing on social media sites can build links back to your website, increasing its worthiness to the search engine spiders.
• Social media sites are great ways to build relationships with your customers because they are so social.  Get your customers commenting on how to use your latest product and when you answer their questions online, you’ve built their trust that the product is for them.
• And best of all, social media sites give you one more way to attract customers and build your list.

In the new business world, a business must have a strong relationship with its customers.  Anonymous ads on a billboard do not build customer loyalty.  To counteract the anonymity of the internet, businesses must interact and communicate with their customers.  Social media sites provide the means for that communication.

Your email is full of emails from marketing gurus.  All of them teach many techniques, from PPC to building a blog, from emailing to properly constructing a website.  How do you know where to put your money?

You need to learn complete marketing strategies, not just marketing techniques.

To learn how to build your business, you need to think like a marketer.

A marketer understands that a business and its message are not separate.  The way you do business, the platform you use, the business model all reflect your marketing strategies.

REI has well informed sales people and printed sheets comparing the features of all their products.  When you buy a kayak from them, you feel like you made an informed decision.  REI is its marketing strategy.

A local kayak store, Rutabaga has a beautiful handmade wooden kayak hanging from its ceiling.  They talk to you about the beauty of kayaking as well as the features of their products.  Their motto is “We don’t sell boats, we sell time on the water.”  They have a lot of advertising about being locally owned for more than 25 years.  They sell the experience of kayaking.

Both stores are very similar, but both appeal to different crowds.  If I want a techie, informational experience, I go to REI.  If I want to feel good about buying locally, if I want to chat about the best places to kayak locally, I would go to Rutabaga.

Each store embodies their marketing.

So how can you learn marketing strategies?

Step One:  Download Attraction Marketer’s Manifesto

The free Attraction Marketer’s Manifesto gives the fundamental concepts of attraction marketing–giving valuable information to attract customers to you.  This type of marketing means that customers come to you, they request your help.  You don’t chase people down; you don’t badger them to buy.  Just like REI and Rutabaga, you provide your customers with the information they seek and the experience they desire.

The Attraction Marketer’s Manifesto is a course book on marketing strategies that make you proud.  You can sleep at night knowing that you are valuable to your customers.  And the most of the strategies are free or nearly free, and very doable even for beginners.