How Much Are You Worth?
Today, I was listening to a DVD by one of my favorite personal development gurus, Jim Rohn talking about value. He asked the question, “How much are YOU worth?’
Why do some people get paid $8 an hour, while others are given millions to perform their job? It has everything to do with value.
The amount of money you make is directly related to your
VALUE IN THE MARKETPLACE
People make minimum wage at a job because they don’t have much value to the market. I’m talking economic value only here. A person may be extremely valuable to society in other ways, as a parent, a son or daughter, or a church member, for example. But when talking about value to the marketplace, I am specifically talking about the skills you bring to the table.
On the other hand, a CEO who is bringing in BILLIONS of dollars to his company is paid MILLIONS per year.
Why? because of his value to the company.
That’s why I have always been adamant about EDUCATION AND TRAINING. There’s not better way I know of to increase your value to the marketplace.
Take the example of Network Marketing.
You have just started your Network Marketing business, having never done anything like it beforehand. Flash forward 3-6 months down the road, and you still haven’t made any money.
You haven’t made any money because your value to the marketplace is still very low.
Let me ask you this.
During those 3-6 months, what have you learned? What training have you received?
Here is what my wife and I did in our first 3 months after we started our Network Marketing home business.
We signed up for specialized training in Pay Per Click advertising. Then we signed up for specialized training in Social Marketing. We bought and read as many books as we could get our hands on. We purchased CDs and listened to them in our car on the way to work. We purchased DVDs and watched them over and over instead of watching TV.
In other words, we improved our knowledge 100 fold, and in the process we increased our value to the marketplace.
When we first sponsored someone in our business (and there were very few at first), we didn’t know much and had little more to offer our new members other than the training the company offered.
But now, months later and several training courses later, we can COACH our team with a high degree of certainty that we can help them make money in their business FASTER than we made money with ours.
Why? Because we know more.
And because we know more, we have attracted more new members to our team. Along with this has come a corresponding spike in our income. It’s been very obvious to us what has happened.
WE INCREASED OUR VALUE TO THE MARKETPLACE
And now? Now we have people calling us to join our team.
How has our life changed? Not much, because we are still on a mission to INCREASE our value to the marketplace.
We recently signed up for one on one training with some of the very top leaders in our industry, to learn the hidden secrets that only the most successful network marketers know.
Why would we do this if we are already making some serious money online?
Because we know that as our knowledge and value to the marketplace increases, so will our income.
To your success!
This is the business and the automated marketing system that I chose above all others
Starting a Home Based Internet Business — How Will I Get Paid?
This is the 3rd in a 3 part blog series about Starting a Home Based Internet Business.
The first part focused on “What Products Will I Sell?. The second post discussed the topic of “How Will I Market My Products,” and explained the value of using an automated marketing system to reduce the number of skills you must master to become a successful Internet marketer.
The third and final part of this series concerns the topic,
“How Will I Get Paid?”
When evaluating any home business opportunity, the compensation plan is critically important, because it is within these paramaters that you will derive your income.
What should you look for in a Comp Plan?
- Commission Percentage — what percentage of the products retail sale do you receive as a commission. Typically, commissions for home based businesses are around 20-30%, although a few are a high as 50%. Look for one with a high commission base — THE HIGHER THE BETTER.
- Residual Component — not only do you want to be paid through your own efforts, but also by the efforts of your team. Make sure that there are no sales quotas that must be met each month in order to receive these residual commissions. Again, the higher the residual commission base, the better — but look for some companies that offer residuals at 25% or greater.
- Multiple Streams of Income — look for multiple ways in which you can get paid each month. These could include straight commissions, residual commissions, funded proposals and affiliate commissions. Ideally, a home business opportunity should have all of the above income sources in place to maximize your income each month.
There you have it — the 3 characteristics to look for in a great compensation plan. Do your homework here, guys.
There are definitely opportunities out there that offer the best of all worlds — high commission base, a residual component, and multiple streams of income all under one roof.
Don’t settle for anything else.
To your success!
Curious which home business Dr. Clarke chose to work with?
Starting a Home Based Internet Business — How Will I Do My Marketing?
There are 3 keys to finding a home based Internet business that’s right for you. The first, covered here previously, is to find the right products to sell. There’s no easy way to find this out except to do your market research.
The second key to finding a home based Internet business is finding a company that includes a marketing system that is automated to a great extent, is duplicatable, and supplies enough training to allow you to learn different marketing methods in a reasonable time.
Here are 3 must have features for any marketing system:
The Marketing System Must Include Automation
Most people just getting into Internet marketing greatly underestimate just how many new skills they will need in order to become successful on the Internet.
This non-inclusive list includes:
- how to market online and offline
- how to develop a website so that your leads will have some place to go to hear about your offer
- how to write a compelling story so that your leads are compelled to buy (this skill is called copy writing)
- how to talk to people who are interested
- how to close your sale
- how to develop a way to keep in touch with people who are undecided (usually through autoresponder emails)
And many, many more. Now you see why I said its important to find a company to work with that has as many of these skills automated and done for you. These systems are generally called Automated Marketing Systems, and there are a few out there that are quite good. Google it and seek them out when looking for an online opportunity.
The Marketing System Must Be Duplicatable
If you can’t copy what others are doing and get success fairly quickly, you’ll be out of money and out of business before you know what hit you. You have to seek out business opportunities where people can PLUG IN to the marketing system and duplicate their success.
In the opportunity I have chosen, we have marketing system averages for sales and profits. As long as you continue to drive leads to the marketing funnel (via your marketing), you are almost guaranteed to hit these company averages, resulting in sales AND profits.
That’s because the system is EASY TO DUPLICATE, a must have feature when considering any new home business opportunity.
The Marketing System Must Include ADEQUATE TRAINING
This is a big one, and non-negotiable. If there is not enough training, there will be no way for you to learn how to market to take advantage of the automated system. And I’m not talking about the rah-rah, have a bigger why kind of training. I’m talking meat and potatoes here guys, the kind of training that tells you how to market and shows you how to get it done.
Anything else is unacceptable. Be sure to ask about a company’s training before signing up. Ask how many training calls there are each week, and what the topics of these calls are. Ask if individualized training is possible at no cost (it should be). Don’t neglect this one — it will come back to haunt you BIG TIME.
Next time we’ll talk about the 3rd key to finding the right home based Internet business for you: Compensation.
I wish you all success and prosperity,
Dr. Clarke’s primary business opportunity
Starting a Home Based Internet Business — Home Business Scam or Negative Advertising?
This is Part II in a series called Starting a Home Based Internet Business.
This installment will talk about how to evaluate a business opportunity and more specifically, how to tell the difference between a supposed “scam” and simply negative advertising of a competitor.
When doing research before joining a home business opportunity, the easiest place to start is Google. Simply type in the name of the business opportunity you are thinking of joining, followed by the work “scam”.
For example, type in the name of my primary business opportunity, Carbon Copy PRO Scam.
Let’s take a look at the top 5 organic listings for this search.
1. A press release purportedly providing an independent review on the validity of Carbon Copy. While the author makes some valid points regarding price points, the bottom line is that he is providing an alternative to Carbon Copy PRO —> his OWN opportunity!
2. A blog from one of the top earners in Carbon Copy PRO, making several points as to how this business is NOT a scam.
3. A video from a gentleman who “checked out” the CC PRO opportunity. A nice review, with a few mention of the good points of the business followed by several aspects of the business that he has decided are “limitations”, followed by….. you guessed it… a link to HIS business opportuntity, which is “much better” than Carbon Copy PRO.
4. An article on GoArticles.com entitled, “Carbon Copy Pro Scam? Don’t Pay $49 To Find Out – Read This First”. Nicely written, great word usage, but factually incorrect, and all leading to….. surprise! His business opportunity link.
5. Another article entitled “Is Carbon Copy PRO a Scam?”. More of the same, I’m afraid.
The point to all this?
You NEED to be able to distinguish between Negative Advertising and evidence of a real scam.
If you see a scathing review of the opportunity you are thinking of joining, but it is followed by a pitch for another biz opp, you can pretty much disregard it. It’s negative advertising.
And by the way, if after reading one of these supposed “reviews” where they point out everything bad about the company you are researching, you are considering checking out HIS opportunity, consider this…
If this person has to promote his business by demeaning others, what does that say about HIS opportunity? Not much, I’m afraid.
When you see negative advertising, discount it. If you come across evidence of people who were actually IN the business you are researching and are telling horror stories… and ARE NOT PITCHING ANOTHER BUSINESS… now you’ve found something to sink your teeth into and you need to proceed with caution.
To your success!
Bob Clarke
Check out Dr. Clarke’s primary business opportunity
Starting a Home Based Internet Business — Which Products Should I Market?
Congratulations! You’ve decided to make starting a home based internet business a priority in your life. It may be one of the best decisions you’ll ever make in your life.
Or it could be one of the worst. It depends on how well you do your homework.
Over the next week, I will be outlining and discussing the most important questions to ask BEFORE taking the internet marketing plunge. Because if you don’t get it right in the beginning, you could be in for a bucket load of frustration and misery.
Worse, the experience may cause you to think that ALL internet marketing businesses are the same.
Believe me, they’re not.
The first questions to ask yourself regards WHAT you want to market?
FIRST QUESTION: Do you want to market your OWN products or get paid to market someone else’s?
Answer: Unless you are prepared for the financial outlay involved with creating, testing, producing, and keeping an inventory of your own product, I STRONGLY advise you to market other people’s products.
How does this work? Typically, you advertise and market someone else’s products and get a percentage of the purchase price when someone buys from you. This is a typical MLM model, but can also be found in direct sales and informational marketing. Sometimes this is called Affiliate Marketing.
It’s a great deal, done right. I mean, no inventory, no stocking, no merchant accounts, no worrying about guarantees. All this is typically done by the company that owns the products. You sole responsibility is to market the products.
NEXT QUESTION: What products should you market?
There are a couple of factors to take into consideration. First and foremost, the products you sell should be products that resonate with you, products that you believe in, and preferably products that you use on a routine basis. Your customers will smell it from mile away if you are not 100% sold on your own products, and you’ll repel people like rotten fish on a hot summer day.
What else should you consider? Consider the product saturation in the marketplace. Are you looking to sell products where the market is so saturated that it will be near impossible for you to get your foot in the door. One example is vitamins. There are literally hundreds if not thousands of companies that market vitamins, nutritional supplements, lotions and potions. I should know, I used to market them.
There were 2 problems with it. First, it was hard to convince potential customers that your vitamins or supplements were that much better than your competitors, so we ended up selling the vitamins at deep discounts to gain customers. The result was NEGATIVE CASH FLOW, a huge problem with low cost, saturated products.
The other problem is the low cost of most of these types of products. Low cost equals low commissions (which typically only run as high as 20% of retail. It’s hard to make alot of money when you are only making $10-25 dollars per sale, especially when trying to compete again hundreds selling the same thing.
I typically only get involved in opportunities that offer high end direct sales, where commissions start at $1000 and go as high as $7500 PER SALE. It’s the only way to make money quickly in an internet business, and when you’re just starting out, CASH flow is a major concern for most people.
Next time I will continue to discuss the very important questions you MUST ask yourself before you consider starting a home based internet business.
To your success!
See which direct sales opportunity Dr. Clarke chose above all others
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