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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.

Ever dreamed of working from home?  Managing your own schedule and having the flexibility to care for the kids while still earning money?

Starting an internet business can seem daunting.

Besides the mysterious techie stuff, how do you know what to do?  What are the options?

The best way to start a profitable internet business is with a good guide.

I have just completed a Squidoo lens (a type of article) which gives a broad overview of the process of building an internet business.   This would be a great place to start your investigation of the possibilities.

If you want more information, there are many sources I can recommend.  But it is always easiest to give a recommendation, if I know specifically your needs and goals.  Contact me through the comment form, and we can schedule a free 30 minute consultation about what your business goals are, and how best to go about meeting them.

In our consultation, we will discuss:

• What your income goals are
• How much time you have available for your business
• What your interests are
• What your skill level is
• What parts of internet business would you enjoy the most

By the end of the call, I will help you formulate a plan to begin your internet business–a plan that is tailored to you.  If you love writing, maybe you need to blog.  If you love chatting on the phone, maybe your business model will involve a lot of customer consultations.  Do you spend a lot of time online clicking around?  Maybe you’re good for social media.  Got money but no time?  Try PPC.

There are many,  many business models online and they are not one size fits all.  But when you begin, you don’t know where to start.

In my free 30 minute consultation, I will help you make a plan which points you in the direction that fits you best.

The best way to start a profitable internet business is to not do it alone.

Your Two Step Plan to Start an Internet Business:

1. Read How To Start an Internet Business Profitably
2. Contact me to schedule your free 30 minute consultation.

Finding an online copywriting course is not hard.  Everywhere you look, some new internet guru tells you the best way to write, what to say and how to say it.

But the best copywriting course is not just a lesson in writing, it’s a complete package showing you when, where and how to use the writing in your complete business model.

For example, let’s look at lead capture pages.

Every online business should have lead capture pages.  These are the pages that people enter their email address and give you permission to send them emails.  Usually people give their email in exchange for something, a free report, a video, or some piece of information.

Lead capture pages are some of the trickiest copywriting because you don’t yet have a relationship with your reader.  This is the stage when you have just met them and want to ask them on a date.  Is a simple afternoon coffee the best, or do you go to dinner?  Too pushy and you loose them and to weak and you’ve never caught their interest.

Any online copywriting course will tell you how to write the lead capture page, but what do you do with it then?  How do you drive traffic to it?  What do you do after you have the emails? If you got a “yes” to your date, then what do you do?

The most complete online copywriting course I know is a complete online business course–Renegade Professional.  This membership site includes information from niche research all the way to customer retention.  You get the information through dozens of tutorials which give click by click instruction on how to build an online business.


Watch this free sample of the first video in “Creating your Own Lead Capture Pages” (this is the first of 4 videos in this series).  This 50 minute tutorial on “Creating Lead Capture Pages” covers introducing what lead capture pages are, the elements of the page, options on setting them up (free and paid) and finally, creating the free give always that accompany the pages.

This video is just one small example of what you will find in Renegade Professional.

Are there online copywriting courses which are more specific to just copywriting than Renegade Professional?  Of course.  But if you need to build your copywriting skills in the context of your whole business, I highly recommend Renegade Professional as the place to start.

Are you prepared for the coming depression?

Robert Kiyosaki’s new book “Rich Dad’s Conspiracy of the Rich: The 8 New Rules of Money” will be released in September.  In this interview, he asks us whether you are prepared for both types of depressions.

What?  Two types of depressions?

If you listen or view the news, I’m sure you are as overwhelmed with the news about the economy as I am.  Every day I hear more friends loosing their jobs or getting their hours reduced.  Every day I hear of businesses going under and loved ones having their homes foreclosed.

The economic forecasts are confusing and daunting.

How can we protect ourselves from the ever shifting economy?

Robert Kiyosaki has always recommended being a business owner or investor as a way to control your financial future.  When I started out with “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” many years ago, I completely agreed.

But when I started my business, I soon found out that it was much harder than I thought.  I had great products.  I had lots of enthusiasm.  I even said all the affirmations.

But I had no sales.

My education in business has been long and slow but I have finally found the mentors who help me get on track.

Renegade Professional is the most thorough, the most complete system of step-by-step training I have found.  There are dozens and dozens of click-by-click tutorials of how to use the internet to build your business (and more added every week).

Before I joined Renegade Professional, I had been fooling around, tying to get traffic to my websites and get that traffic to convert to sales for years.  Renegade Professional is a one stop shop which showed me how to put it all together.

For example, through Renegade Professional, I learned how to twitter.  Now twittering is not that hard, but how do you use it to drive traffic to your business?  And once you get new people to your site, what do you do with them?  What are the twitter rules of etiquette?  How can you get like-minded twitterers in one “room” to tweet together?

All of this became clear when I joined Renegade Professional and had one aha moment after another.

Before I knew it, I had traffic to all my websites from twitter.

Renegade Professional pulled it all together for me.  Years of study about internet business had taught me many techniques and skills, but forming them into a cohesive business plan had eluded me.  With Renegade Professional, I not only learned new skills, but learned how to use them to make money.

Join Renegade Professional to get your internet business flying.

How successful is your writing?

If you have trouble getting your readers to take action, you need advanced business writing skills.

Too often, business writing is writer-centric.  You write about what matters to you about your product.  You write about what you want your customers to do.  You write to show how much you know so that you look good to your customers.

How’s it working for you?

Let’s take a moment to think about the real world.  Have you had experiences talking to someone who can only talk about themselves?  They may have interesting things to say, and you may enjoy talking with them for a while, but when you leave the conversation, you realize that they never once asked about you.

Imagine this person even more.  If you do manage to mention something going on in your own life, they change the subject to something similar that happened to them.  And then, they give advice that they could have used, but often it is completely unhelpful to you.

Those people can not imagine what you need.  They may have the perfect advice for you, but you’ll never know it because they don’t listen long enough to you to know what you need.

These people need advanced conversation skills.

Advanced business writing involves learning to write so that the other person feels heard.  You write as if you are talking to a real person with real, exact needs.  You write about solving the problems they have–not giving the solutions you want to give.

This seems easy.  It seems fundamental.

But advanced business writing is tricky because we have so many conversations going on with ourselves that we can’t hear the other person.

When I began building a website to sell essential oils a few years ago, I wrote what I wanted to hear.

For me essential oils are medicinal.  They are natural.  They are powerful.  And they are more convenient that other herbal remedies I have used.

I didn’t have any major health concerns, so I was enamored with the idea of these natural, powerful, medicinal oils.

But my readers didn’t care about that.  They thought natural was good, sure, but getting rid of allergy symptoms was most important.  If you could do it naturally that was an extra bonus.

My readers did care about convenience but they assumed that all medicines should be convenient.  They were used to taking a very convenient pill and saying that essential oils were more convenient than making an infusion had no meaning.  They would never use infusions.  Convenience was not a selling point.

I didn’t know my readers and while I wrote great things about the essential oils, I never got my readers into action.  They just didn’t care what I had to say.

Advanced business writing, really getting into the heart and mind of your clients is a necessary skill for building your business.  It will attract clients to you and build loyalty to you.  This attraction marketing, like good conversation, will make the reader feel important, understood and appreciated.

If your content could use some advanced business writing skills, I urge you to listen to this interview with David Garfinkel.  David teaches copywriting (writing which call the reader to action) in a simple to understand and implement way.