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You Have More Choices Than You Realize

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There are many people who feel as if there are no alternatives and that they are restricted. These people feel as if they are forced to do something and have no choice in the manner. However, we all have more choices than we realize.

It’s your choice to be happy or not. Don’t blame the people across the street or what has happened in the past. That’s all a memory now, and if it continues to infiltrate your mind, happiness will still come unnatural.

Your job is your choice. It is possible to go from a survival job to creating a million dollar business. Mark Cuban had more survival jobs than most people, and yet he’s a billionaire. He chose to become a billionaire even though the jobs he had (carpenter and waiter among others) did not support what he chose.

How you spend your time is your choice. You can either watch TV for 32 hours every week like the average American, or you can use those 32 hours to get more work in. TV is one of the most overrated things around.

What you write about is your choice. Then again, your decision on whether you want to write or not is also a choice.

There is no one way to do something. We have options. There are several choices we have with the ways we can spend our time just like how there are several choices we have for our careers. The next time you think you are running out of choices, realize that you have more choices than you think. By realizing you have more choices, your ideas will become more creative and ultimately serve people in a more effective manner.

 

The Map To Success

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Map Of The World

There is no map. You won’t know where you are going until you get there. Everyone likes to think they know exactly what is going to happen and how they are going to be successful. That’s not the case.

All you have is tools and knowledge, and most of what you will gain on your journey will be more tools and knowledge.

You only get the map to success after you become successful. That’s why experts are still able to talk about how they know about becoming successful.

Does that mean the entire situation is hopeless? Not at all. We all have unique maps, and it’s the desire to see what these maps look like that makes us want to become successful. Maybe you thought that consultation sessions would make you successful, and you end up becoming successful because you are able to write 1 book every month. Maybe you end up becoming successful because you land a high paying job and use some of your earnings to invest into something that turns into a multimillion dollar business.

We can go by what we think is our map. As we go by the steps that we believe will make us successful, there will be speed bumps and road blocks. However, too many people think that there will only be speed bumps and road blocks.

Although they do exist, there are also short cuts. Going from gaining 10 followers every day to gaining 50 followers every day is a short cut. You get to gain 5,000 followers in the same amount of time you gained 1,000 followers. Offering a free prize is also a short cut to getting more sales and subscribers. Being lucky enough to read certain blog post revolving around your niche on this blog and others as well with very valuable information also serves as a short cut. Speed bumps and road blocks slow down success, but short cuts allow you to skip past some of your speed bumps and road blocks. Is time your speed block. There are several ways to manage your time more effectively. In fact, waking up an hour earlier may be all you need to do to solve the problem.

The only part of the map that you get to see from the start is your level of happiness. Your happiness ultimately decides whether or not you are going to get your copy of the map. If you are happy with what you do, then you will have more motivation to do extraordinary work even when the situation looks bleak.

Your unique map to success in unattainable because it contains your future–something that you do not know anything about until it becomes your reality. You never know how close you are to accomplishing your dreams, but if you continue doing what you do, you will definitely get there. You don’t get given a map to success. You create your own map to success and learn along the way.

What are your thoughts about the map to success? Do you have any additional advice for having a good attitude as you discover your map to success? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

 

How To Make One Sale Every Day

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One Sale Every Day

One of the most discouraging moments for any author, entrepreneur, or business is when your products stay on a sales drought. Some of these sales droughts last for a few weeks while others last for a few months. It is during these sales droughts when people learn the hard way that they “don’t just come.” It takes a lot of work to get the customers to come, and it takes even more work to make six figures from your products. When I was in my sales droughts at the beginning of my career, I would feel very accomplished if I could get closer to making 1 sale every day. This thinking got me from making 1 sale every two weeks to making 1 sale every week. Thinking the same way allowed me to pass a major milestone: getting one sale every day. While some people are getting hundreds of sales every day, and companies like Apple get millions of sales every day, it feels incredible when you get daily sales for the first time in your career.

Although having the right mindset is very important, you also need to know the how-to aspect of getting more sales. Having a good attitude is not enough, but it is going to be the main motivation you have when you do the work that will allow you to get daily sales. If you don’t have the right mindset, I highly recommend reading this blog post to acquire the right mindset and then go back to this one.

There are four big things that you need to know about the typical customer in order to get more sales:

  1. Customers hunt for bargains. My training course used to be worth $47, and I offered a coupon for my blog subscribers that reduced the training course’s price to $20 (and I still do this). That was a $27 difference which accounted for a discount slightly over 50%. Then, I boosted the price of my training course to $100. I offered the same coupon on my blog that made the entire training course worth $20. However, this coupon had a stronger effect. Instead of making the training course a little over 50% off, the same coupon now made the same training course with the same videos 80% off. 80% looks a lot better than something that is “a little more than 50%.” When you give people a discount, make sure the discount either ends in a 5 or a 0 so it is easier for the average person to calculate the savings.
  2. Customers love leaders. The most successful people just so happen to be the leaders. It’s not a coincidence. Leaders also happen to be the ones with a lot of credibility. That’s not a coincidence either. In order to become a leader, you need to boost your credibility and do things differently from your competition. By standing out, you will become more popular, and customers love buying from leaders who also happen to be very popular.
  3. A higher priced product is associated with better quality. These products are associated with so much quality that they are worth multiple looks. As a member of HootSuite Pro, I decided to take a look at SocialOomph. It seemed interesting and cost more than four times as much as HootSuite Pro for the one year option. I went on SocialOomph five times before realizing that HootSuite Pro is the better of the two. In addition, the most expensive training courses happen to be the ones we hear the most about. More people talk about the training course worth $2,000 than they talk about the training course worth $500. It’s very easy to put both of these together. You can see a $2,000 training course and tell people that they can get a 75% discount by liking your Facebook Page. Customers would be very quick to click the like button and see the price get cut down to $500. Even if you planned on pricing your training course at $500 right from the start, originally pricing it at $2,000 suddenly makes the $500 look like a steal. In addition, $500 is still a high enough price to associate as a quality product created by a leader.
  4. Customers get influenced by testimonials. Some people call them testimonials and other people call them reviews. Testimonials have a big influence on customers. In order to get good testimonials for your product, your product needs to be valuable. Displaying some of the top testimonials on your blog may be the difference between getting multiple sales and not making a single sale. It is important to realize that customers have become smarter over the years. Creating fake testimonials became a popular way to get more sales for a new training course. In order to prove that your testimonials are real, you need to link to the person’s social network or blog if you want to include that person’s testimonial.

Those are the four things you need to know in order to get more sales, but you need to know what to do with this knowledge in order to get more sales. The first thing you need to do is distribute your product for free so more people can get access to it. Implementing this part of the strategy will make your product more popular and get some testimonials along the way. You need to be simultaneously growing your presence on the web and social networks so you have more credibility. The person with 10,000 followers has more credibility than the person with 1,000 followers…unless the person with more followers gets caught for buying fake ones. After you offer some of your free products, you need to make it look as if your customer is getting a steal. If you intended on pricing a 40 video training course for $500, bump it up to $1,500 or $2,000. Then, offer a discount that lowers the price down to $500 if someone likes your Facebook Page. Not only is it a steal for the customer, but you get to make the same amount of money you would have made anyway. As you get more customers, you will have more testimonials to include on your sales page, and the more testimonials people read about your product, the more likely that person is to buy it.

Whether you are selling a book, a training course, or another product, implementing this strategy will allow you to get more sales. Implementing this strategy over time will allow you to get one sale every day. What are your thoughts on this strategy? Do you have any additional tips? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

 

Why Self-Publishing Books Is A Legitimate Way To Make A Full-Time Income

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Self-Publishing Books

There are many people who are not sure about whether self-publishing their own books is a legitimate way to make a full-time income or not. While some people are making over $100,000 every year from their books, the vast majority struggles to make $500 every month from their self-published books. This statistic along with others as well is what makes many people doubt the power of self-publishing your own books.

However, there is hope in building a strong income by self-publishing your own books. In fact, it is more likely than you think to build a strong income around your self-published books. In fact, if you put in a lot of work, you will be able to see a quick increase in your earnings. Steve Scott was able to go from self-publishing his first book to making 6 figures every year in just two years. That’s a big transition in a short amount of time. The best part is that it is possible for you to undergo the same transition in a shorter amount of time.

The reason why most people are making under $500 a month from their self-published books is because these people do not know how to make a strong revenue from the system in place. Most people think that the system is to self-publish one book and keep on promoting that one book until everything works out. That is the mistake that prevents most self-published authors from making 6 figures every year from their books. In order to become successful, you need to be able to publish 1 quality book every month.

That may sound like more work than is necessary, but by publishing books at this rate for months and years to come will give your customers more options. In addition, publishing books at this rate will give more choices for your returning customers.

In order to fully understand why you need to publish more books faster, you need to think of your self-publishing career’s success similar to a blog’s success. There are many blogs that get thousands of daily visitors because the blog has over 1,000 blog posts that are all getting at least 1 daily visitor. More blog posts allows more people to find your blog based on the content they are looking for. Books work in the same way. The more you have, the more sales you are going to make. As you make more sales, you boost your own ranking and will eventually become a popular author. If one of your $2.99 books makes 1 sale every day, then you are only making $2.07 every day and $62.10 every month. However, 30 books that each make 1 sale every day results in $62.10 every day and $1,863 every month. That is still not a six figure income, but it’s a lot more than you were going to get compared to only having 1 self-published book up for sale.

Self-publishing your own books is an easy and powerful way to build your income. You may not see a dramatic change in your earnings for a while, but when you see the dramatic change in earnings, your earnings will keep on going up and exceed your expectations. Let’s go back to the example of having 30 $2.99 books for sale. If all of those books averaged 5 sales each every day, then you would make six figures every year. If you relied on one book, then that one book would have to get 133 paid sales every day in order to bring in six figures every year.

Right now, you may be wondering how exactly you can live up to the expectation of self-publishing one book every month. I wrote a book called How To Publish More Kindle eBooks Faster where I share all of the strategies I use to self-publish 1 book every month even with school, track, and homework. It’s a quick read that won’t even take 30 minutes to go through, but you will learn new tactics that will transform the way you write every day.

 

5 Ways That Having A Free Prize Can Help Your Business Grow

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business growth

If you do not have a free prize, your chances of being successful in your niche go down. Free prizes have become more important than ever because more people offer them. Free prizes are not as rare as they used to be. In fact, it seems as if free prizes are expected. The occasional two for one deal is expected. Getting a free product after entering your email address is expected. Free prizes are expected, and therefore, you need to fulfill the expectation. I went more in detail in a previous post about how you can go beyond expectations, but having a free prize is going to set you apart from the people who still do not offer a free prize.

You may be wondering at this point where you would offer your free prize and why you would do so. There are numerous places where offering a free prize would do you good. Here are the big five:

  1. Blog subscribers. This one seems to be the most obvious reason why someone would want to offer a free prize. More people than ever before are offering free prizes to the people who subscribe to their blogs. This is the area where a free prize is almost expected. Visitors aren’t just going to subscribe to your blog so they can get emailed by you every day. They can just visit your blog every day. If you want someone to subscribe to your blog, you need to offer them more than an email every time a new blog post comes out.
  2. Facebook likes. There are not as many free prizes on Facebook, but they do exist. If you get emails from Facebook each time someone likes your Facebook Page, you will be able to reward the people who like your Facebook Page. By telling everyone that they get a free prize when they like your Facebook Page, you will be able to make your Facebook Page look (and become) more popular. Then, you will eventually be able to get hundreds of likes every day. Better yet, you can also offer a free prize when someone likes or shares one of your Facebook posts.
  3. Twitter retweets. Free prizes are a little harder to announce on Twitter which means you will surprise people when you give them the free prize. When one of your followers retweets one of your tweets, send that person a DM with their free prize. If you want more people to know about the free prize, you can pin a tweet announcing the giveaway at the top of your feed. Since a free prize for retweeting a tweet is so rare, some people will retweet you just to get the free prize.
  4. Email newsletter. If your email newsletter promotes a particular product, give away a free prize similar to the product you are promoting. If the product you are promoting is a 50 video series about Twitter for $497, make your free prize a 7 video series about Pinterest. In this case, the free prize is similar to the product that you will be promoting to all of the people who gave you their email addresses.
  5. YouTube subscribers. Offering a free prize to your YouTube subscribers will entice more people to subscribe. In addition, those subscribers will give you the leverage you need to go viral. Most of the videos and channels that go viral on YouTube are also the ones with thousands of subscribers. Offering a free prize may allow you to get thousands of extra YouTube subscribers.

Those are the five places where free prizes will allow your business to grow. When you promote a free prize at these places, you need to make sure that each of these free prizes are unique. Offering the same free prize to everyone does not encourage someone already subscribed to your blog to like your Facebook Page. In addition, by creating multiple free prizes, your potential customers will love you for it.

 

How To Create The Best Free Prize Possible

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Giving away a free prize will encourage people to subscribe to your blog, like you on Facebook, and do other things as well. While the free prize encourages these actions to be performed, it is the best free prize possible that makes people take you seriously and buy your products. If you do a good job with the free prize, your potential customers will buy your products primarily because they believe that your products are much better than your free prizes.

Although it is important to create a free prize that would be worth something, many people only create a free prize just for the sake of saying that they have a free prize. These people create a bad free prize that does encourage more subscribers and Facebook likes, but the bad free prize does not encourage anything after that. Potential sales never happen, and some people go as far as unsubscribing or unliking if the free prize is really bad.

A free prize is just that. It is free, but it is also a prize worth winning. In order to make your free prize worth winning, you first need to decide what your free prize will be. If you want to provide a digital prize (so you don’t have to pay for shipping), you can offer an eBook, Power Point, video, or audio. Those are the options that most people use for their free products. For this blog, the free prize is a video about Pinterest.

Your free prize needs to be a lengthy one. The longer your free prize is, the longer you will be able to keep someone’s attention. A free eBook with 10 pages can be read in under 5 minutes while a free 50 page eBook takes 10 minutes to read. Free 30 minute videos get more attention than free 10 minute videos because the person can watch the    free 30 minute video for an additional 20 minutes. By keeping someone’s attention longer with a lengthier prize, that person will think more and more that they need to buy some of your products.

Offering a lengthier prize also shows people that you went the extra mile to provide more free content. People love it when others go the extra mile to help them. Some of the people who get your free prize will eventually return the favor by buying one of your products.

While length is a big factor towards how good your free prize is, the quality of the free prize also determines how much attention it gets. If the free prize is a 50 page eBook with low quality content, then most people will “x out” of the book without saving it or bothering to read it any further. In addition, a poorly performed 30 minute video will lose attention as the seconds go by.

Your free prize needs to be lengthy and contain quality content. It is the job of your free prize to answer all of the readers’ questions about a particular area in your niche. That is all you need to do to create a free prize that entices people to buy your products.

What are your thoughts on the free prize? Do you have any tips on creating a free prize? Please share your thoughts and advice below.