Category Archives: How To

27 Sep

How to Uncover Your Billion Dollar Talent

How to Uncover Your Billion Dollar Talent

OK roll up your sleeves sit down because good ole Darren is about to take you to school! I have taught this for almost 20 years! You see I have for the most part always known my purpose and calling. People in high school can tell you that I was always interested in becoming an entrepreneur. Also people at my  school, past workplaces and even complete strangers have shared with me what they thought were my talents.

Now back to you. You should be having flashback memories about those times when strangers, people at school and work said the same thing to you. See I titled this article uncovering your billion dollar talent because you already KNOW what your talent. You just need some confirmation.

The first way your going to confirm your talent is…

Asking yourself what is it you do easier than anyone else? In other words what is difficult to others but easy to execute for you? Here is my own example. Many people seem to have a hard time building their social media networks where I could do this in my sleep from the ground up. In college I was vice president of a campus organization. I built up that organization to its highest membership levels in history. While at Universal which is the largest music group in the world I created the largest college networks for music in the Midwest.

In each case I had no major education or previous experience in doing those things. Only a natural talent for getting it done. In fact I have done it so well that I have trained thousands of others how to do the same. Which brings out another talent of mine. Teaching is a talent and a skill all its own. Millionaire Bob Proctor says that many can do but only few can teach. See it is one thing to have a talent at something but another to know how that talent works and how to teach others to develop their talents.

Uncovered your talents introduces an important question

Do you like HOW you are applying the talents you just uncovered? This is a MAJOR question to ask yourself and here why. If you don’t like what your doing but enjoy your talent at doing it then reapply your talents elsewhere.

Example I HATED real estate years ago. Didn’t like it but I have a natural talent for working with people. So I reapplied it to the web years before social media. Many of you are doing things you hate with the talents you love.

  1. Write down your talents the things strangers say you excel in.
  2. Write down what you easily do that others find difficult
  3. Then start applying your talent to things that you love. Remember my example I have a great talent for working with people yet I hated real estate but loved computers and the Internet. So what did I do? You guessed it started creating websites.

What is it that you LOVE to do that you have a talent in?

Answer that question uncover your talent and get started NOW!

Because your money is waiting on you

25 Jun

Online Business Ideas for Avoiding 5 Figure Mistakes

Online Business Ideas for Avoiding 5 Figure Mistakes

Notice how everyone in the world tries to tell you how “smart” they are when it comes to marketing online? Well only the REAL people are going to reveal how smart they are NOT. So enters good ole Darren (laughing). I am glad I can honestly laugh about this now. Many of you may have heard my long version of this story. The truth everyone is that successful people learn more from their mistakes than anyone else.

That’s simply because we FAIL the most. See successful people don’t succeed the most. They FAIL the most. And despite that failure they just kept going. Think about it like this. Babe Ruth failed the MOST. YES he hit over 700 home runs but also stuck out almost twice as much.

The idea is that in order to be successful you must discover what doesn’t work quickly and then move on. It is called Fail Fast Forward. You take massive action and then massive detailed assessment of your results. And if it didn’t work you move forward. But you NEVER give up!

OK I avoided my mistake long enough (laughing).

Short version is I built popular sites that showed little returns. Some of my sites had hundreds of thousands of visitors every month. Yet little sale conversions. So a few years back I started a little site and discovered by accident what I was doing wrong. As I say in my profits vs popularity article “the profitable stay small and don’t worry about being popular.”

Do’h

The little site was making more money with way less traffic. Why? because people wanted the items I was selling of course but it is much deeper than that.

Another  problem I had was I couldn’t figure out exactly “how” to repeat my little sites success. I more than understand that online it isn’t about doing 5000 things one time but doing 5 things 1000 times. In fact I coined that phrase. But I wasn’t sure exactly “what” to repeat 1000 times.

Oh and quick note as I explain in Why Niche Markets NEVER Show Their Sites I wont tell you what the little site was because it would increase added competition. I am still making money with from that site.

So one day a business partner and another blogger introduced me to Niche Profit Classroom. What Adam the creator at NPC confirmed for me was how to develop a method to repeat my first little sites accidental success.

So hear is what I learned from all of the money I lost in previous years. Not to mention the time and work.

Online Business Ideas for Avoiding 5 Figure Mistakes

  • To Hell with popular bring on the profits: Your readers are nice and great people. But in order to be in business you need customers.
  • KNOW if you you are going to make money BEFORE you set the site up: 98% of my sites make money and through research I knew they would. In niche marketing 70-80% involves research.
  • Shut up and Sell: as I say in 7 Reasons to Shut up and Sell you didn’t come this far to get your butt kicked did you?  Don’t worry about those non buying readers who say they “love” you for sharing FREE info for their benefit yet have the audacity to criticize you for offering premium things to sell. FOCUS on your customers.
  • Solve to Sell: I said it best ion another article. Solve a problem and I almost guarantee you it will lead to a customer.
  • FOCUS on people who “desperately” need problems solved: That makes the difference between a customer today and a customer a month from now or never.
  • Small is the NEW Big online (BELIEVE IT): STOP trying to kill yourself over traffic when it is not a question of traffic it is a question of targeted soon to be converted visitors.
  • Get a good foundational program: I already told you earlier what worked for me (NPC). that was a way for me to establish a base of thinking that changed the way my company did business.

WHY would I tell you about this if I am doing so well?

Simple: instead of giving you the cliche “I care about helping people” comment I thought I get RAW and REAL with you. Don’t get it wrong I do care about helping people but here are some equally real answers:

First of course is that all of the links to Niche Profit Classroom are affiliate links. Who better to offer it than me? after all I actually DO This.

But I am sure your wondering WHY I would promote NPC. Well I kept it to myself for 6-7 months actually LOL until I realized the following…

  1. 600,000 niches and sub niches is more than enough for everyone.
  2. Unfortunately even if I tell you and you follow through the odds are on my side. See many of you will signup to programs like NPC and a) do nothing or b) not followup with your initial actions. I explain this truth in detail in “How GURUs make money online. Very sad but true.
  3. In the next 2 years there will still be less than 10,000 out of millions that understand how to do this. Also even fewer will grasp  what this article really means and how to turn it into money. So the door is wide open for all who “get it”.

So there you have it real answers and online business ideas from a more than real person. I have a saying: “There are those who get it and those who don’t be the one that gets it and work with the ones that do.”

20 Apr

Can You Make Money Online Without a Website?

Can You Make Money Online Without a Website?

Sure and you can. And you can also drive a car with your right foot steering the wheel. But just because you can doesn’t necessarily make it a good idea.

The common digital sharecropper move these days is to let others setup your site. But the challenge here is that they (the people setting up your site thus controlling it)  could own you. Bad move. Many have learned from the incidents at Blogger, Blogspot, and recently Ning. All three taugh thousands of bloggers the power of ownership when they either started suspending blogs or charging (Ning).

Do you rent a house because it is difficult to own one? Do you realize that if you have a mortgage you don’t even really own a house? The bank or title company owns your house until you pay off the loan.

But with websites YOU own your property. You are just renting the server it is on but the content and all is yours to control. In the USA it is like paying taxes on the land where your house is located. But in this case you OWN the house.

So how DO you make Money with a Website?

The better question would be how do you make money online? Or how do I make money online the right way? I guarantee you that if you chase a dollar and a dream without love and talent then you will be really upset! The quickest way to bankruptcy is chasing money. You need to use your talents and loves to create a website that solves problems. This site hopefully solves your problems concerning the need for creative ideas to build and grow your blog.

What NOT to do

Don’t invest in those so called turnkey (I call them turkey) systems. The real money is in at least learning how to control your destiny. It is super easy to setup a blog I actually taught a 63 year old woman to do it in less than 48 hours. Don’t let others control you er ah doesn’t that sound like a JOB?

20 Jul

How to Create a HOT Gravatar to Use Around the World!

gravatarHey you psst come here. Why don’t you have a Gravatar on your blog?? Gravatars are FREE and are globally recognized avatars. They are FREE and an excellent way to personalize your brand. You ever been to a blog where some people have personalized pics? Yeah of course you have! Here is your chance to add your brand! No excuses!Funny side note wordpress needs to update their spell checker. Gravatars

Now you will need a image editor if not adobe photoshop you can try the same or similar instructions with Gimp which is open source (FREE) you can download here. Also you can find out more about Gimp (screenshots etc) by going to their main page. May take some extra work since the video below is for Photoshop but hey it’s FREE.

Show off your newly made Gravatar

gravitardotcom

22 Jan

Online Business Ideas for Locating Great Hosting

OK here are some online business ideas for locating great hosting. But this is by far not the most comprehensive on this subject. Since I launched (through my company) a web hosting site I felt obligated to share some information. Especially those who are trying to find a way to make money blogging. I am not going to point out my current nor past hosts because of course my option of each would be biased.

Top Ten Online Business Ideas for Finding Great Hosting

I don’t care what they offer. Low costs, a lot of bandwidth money back guarantee. If their servers are down more than 90 percent of the time then your business on the web is losing money. You only have a second to pull a customer in when trying to make money blogging. If your down your dead.

How do you check if their 99.9% up-time is true?

I have four great ways to check.

First find out if the hosting service in question has a forum because they tell all. Irate customers will definitely air out any issues they have with the hosting. I remember looking at a host and reading the-negative comments on their forum. This initially discouraged me but when I read how the host moderators answered I was really impressed. No matter how mad the clients were they were always professional and prompt in their response. Hosting companies that have forums and that are willing to address the issue’s professionally and publicly should be respected.

Second type negative statements in Google using the hosts name i.e. “I Hate Go Daddy” and read. This may lead you to a lot of personal opinions but the key links you are looking for are in forums across the web where the discussions will be hot and heavy. Then Google positive comments excluding the ones posted on the host you are investigating.

Third Google the words “hosting reviews” and see if you can find some forums. Unlike the forums on the hosting companies website, these are specific forums that webmasters visit to talk about great and not so great hosting companies. Search these forums to see if the hosting companies you are considering are mentioned. Here are a few suggested forums WebHostingTalk (aka WHT) and HostHideout, Hostingdiscussion.com, Resellerboard.com and SitepointForums.com. But there are tons of them. And if you know of any good forums please feel free to comment.

2. Got Support?

Imagine signing up for hosting only to discover that “rickyretardohosting.net” can find their a** from a hole in-the wall. As your laughing I am sure someone isn’t. Remember three tactics to expose this challenge.

Response time. Email them some questions initially and see how long it takes. If they are delaying to answers to  sales questions then you know what to expect as a customer. One of the worst online business ideas to me was to create a barrier between your prospects and yourself.

Quality of the response: Did they give you the answers you needed or again did you discover another relative of George Bush?

Personable (politeness): How personable were they?

3. Are their servers Linux or Windows based?

Though windows has the brand names. But if you want script heavy hardware then know that Linux rules! Youtube, Facebook and Google use Linux. I started out on windows but when I began developing more web intense apps and I noticed that most were made for Linux. Initially this may mean nothing to you but as you develop your website(s) you may want to look into Linux. If you want to make money blogging you will heed my advice and use the correct server.

4. How many clients are using each of their servers?

Yeah that 2500 gigs and 300 disk space for 10 dollars may seem like a deal but not if they have 300 people using one server on a shared hosting plan. Your site (s) will be slow and you dont always get what you pay for.

5. What are the Sales, Billing, and support hours?

Sale usually keeps business hours but some really smart companies have 24 hour sales available via chat. I love these options for all three billing, sales and it is a must for support. If a company is flaky with their chat support don’t use them.

6. How many people are on their staff?

24 hour chat support means nothing if you are always waiting 4 customers behind. That should never happen. Though it does. One of the poorest strategies is to shorten your staff. If you really like the company and this is their only issue then check to see if they have a support ticket system / forum and then follow suggestions from #1 and #2. Actual live chat with little or no wait is by far one of the most powerful business ideas for sales conversion and retention.

7. How much of a knowledge base do they provide?

Can you answer your own questions from their knowledge base? Is it detailed? comprehensive? Offer links?

8. What kind of operational panel do you use?

OK I been pretty good so far not to bad mouth any companies but I must say this. PLESK SUCKS!! Horrible panel and I have yet to find ONE developer that likes it (I have roughly about 3700 plus developers and programmers in my network). Of course plesk was on Windows servers making Linux definitely more attractive with their Cpanel model. As I write this I have been using them for a short time so far so great.

9. Are there any services that are not displayed on your site?

You will be amazed what you find NOT listed. Sales, extra packages, server brands not listed. Just ask and see what they say you may be surprised. Plus always ask what extra they can throw in. The worst they can say is no. Hey the only way you are going to make money blogging is bybeing bold. And I see no better time to start than with your hosting.

10. Are there any bonus scripts or training services you provide?

The smartest thing I think any company can do is educate their customers. the more they learn the better they respect and support you. Most people are looking for hosting are novices just trying to start a site. But any company that offers free beginner’s or intermediate training in MySQL, PHP, Open Source, HTML, basic SEO, web marketing, and retail services are worth their weight in gold. And again it certainly doesn’t hurt to ask.

Honorable Mentions

I had to mention these. you might think some should be on the top ten but I will explain why they are not.

How much Do They Cost? This is the first question and a given. Price is always a factor whether its a company or individual. Price must be balanced with the top ten factors.

What is the bandwidth? Again another given. the only thing to remember if your starting out you will probably use less than 100 gigs so don’t go over board. In fact the average blogger uses rougly less than 5 gigs if that much.

What are the storage capacities? Remember if your starting a website for the first time whether you want to make money blogging or not the capacity shouldn’t be more than 5 -10 gigs or less.

How many Domain’s do they Allow? Remember its not just one site that matters. Look at it like this, the web is the largest intellectual property in history! Did Donald Trump become a billionaire with one building or several? Keep your options open and see the future. A hosting company with unlimited sites could be the option for you. Most now offer that option.

What are your goals? As a website? How do you intend to grow whether you are a new upstart or a 5+ year company. Keeping abreast of the latest design and goals can save you time and money.