You quit your day job and are ready to delve into an simple work at home business. It is a piece of cake to work at home and not have to deal with corporate rules or office politics, right? While working from home does give you a newfound sense of freedom and relieves you of problems associated with working for someone else, it too can be tough. There are some pitfalls of owning your own business and working at home. 1. Poor budgeting skills. Budgeting for a home based business is hard because there is no guarantee for income. You can’t pay bills and spend money from your business account hoping that next week or next months will bring in better results. Another common problem with budgeting is spending too much or not enough money on advertising. You have to strike a balance to get word out about your business and get more sales without breaking the bank. 2. Expecting overnight success. Some people are under the misconception that the minute their business goes live on the Internet that they will be swamped with business and the money will start flowing in immediately. Unfortunately, this is rarely the case. Work at home businesses take time to develop and grow. Steer clear of anyone who promises a get rich quick scheme or overnight success. These are just tactics to get you excited to sign up with them and make them more money. 3. Not researching enough. Some things need to be done before you can start a work at home business. Learning your niche and finding out who your target audience is need top be researched. Knowing the demand for your product or services is also vital. Strengthen your business from the get go by doing research in advance. 4. Poor choice of product. Choosing a product that is hard to sell because there is no demand for it, a product that is of poor quality or one that makes very small profit can ruin a work at home business. The future of your business is dependant on your product and customer service. Your business will suffer if either of these is lacking. 5. Not having clearly set goals. Every business needs a game plot. You need a list of clear cut goals for your work at home business to map out your success. Winging it is not necessarily the best way to go as far as business practices. 6. Having distress separating work and home life. It’s late, you need to place dinner on the table, get the kids to bed and end the laundry. The only thing is you still have work to do. Finding balance between work and home life can be a challenge for work at home business owners. 7. Quitting your day job too soon. Quitting your day job before securing enough income from your home based business can prove to be a huge mistake, especially if you depend on your job for health insurance, stock options, retirement benefits or other company perks. The truth is that one third of small businesses fail within the first two years. You can avoid being a part of this statistic by being prepared and avoiding common pitfalls associated with work at home businesses.

If you conduct a poll on how successful a typical online business is, you will probably receive the response that at least 60% of them are scams. But, when you question the audience to give you a concrete reason why online business are “scams”, you will never receive a convincing explanation.

So let us clarify what most people cannot answer. What exactly causes an online business opportunity to fail? The answer is: Many things. One of the main reasons for failure is that by the time the entrepreneurs figure out which pitfalls to avoid, either their capital runs out or they feel that the learning curve is too steep and they give up prematurely!

The key is to have an unflinching commitment to your business in the beginning, to the point where you can place it on auto-pilot and reap the rewards of your hard work.

It follows that you can be exceptionally successful in your online endeavor if you faithfully follow some strict guidelines. If you already have an Online Business (or plot to have one soon), make SURE you follow these 5 pointers religiously:

1. NEVER choose to promote a useless product/service: Let’s say you carry out extensive research and make a fantastic website design for your website. If you do not have a fabulous product to promote, your website design is useless. Sure, some customers might buy your product once, but as soon as they figure out the product was not impressive, they will be sure never to buy from you again. Having a product which does not provide valuable benefits to your customer ensures that you will be un-successful in this business. Remember, you only make money if you provide a VALUABLE product to a HUNGRY crowd.

2. NEVER spend too much on advertising: You have to choose the maximum budget for advertising the website in the beginning. While I know that paying for advertising is one of the quickest ways to get subscribers and traffic, I personally feel that the steep cost you pay is rarely worth the distress. Do not fall in this trap! Try to generate FREE traffic for your website in the long run. You can do this by submitting your articles and website info into article and web directories. You can also try linking to other heavy traffic websites, which guarantees free traffic to your website.

3. NEVER reckon traffic is unimportant: Generating consistent traffic should be your first priority when starting out. Rule number 1 states: No traffic, no income! It is as simple as that! The majority of webmasters set up a website, attend to all aspects of it, but fail to generate enough traffic to earn any income. Generating traffic is honestly simple if given adequate time to work out. Do not reckon you will have 10,000 people knocking on your website’s door within the next 4 weeks. It is not realistic. Instead, your aim should be to increase your back-links (and therefore traffic) slowly and progressively. Way to increase traffic include linking to high-PR websites, using article submission services and submitting your website to the countless link directories out there.

4. NEVER have a complicated business website: If your website has too much text, your customers will likely lose focus and go on. Always make sure you have a simple website with simple navigation. Make sure you also provide a site-map on your website because doing so enables Google spiders as well as prospective customers to explore your website in an orderly fashion, increasing your website’s effectiveness.

5. NEVER forget to check your website for broken links: The grim reality is, broken links surface all the time. As soon as you modify your web pages, some links do not update dynamically and point to the previous target. While such an occurrence can be avoided if you are really careful, it is always excellent practice to take precautionary measures. A handy technique would be to provide customers with a feedback box where they can report any broken links on the website. This minor website tweak will improve your bottom line, because it will described you as a responsible individual, resulting in increased customer trust.

These 5 mistakes, when avoided, make sure you start your online business on a strong footing. While these pointers alone do not guarantee success, they decrease your learning curve and ultimately the time you require to firmly establish your online presence.

Allow me to introduce my friend Jordan Kasteler also known as Utah SEO Pro. His background is in organic search engine optimization, which has been doing professionally for 4 years now, and has stayed pretty focused on that and has’t delved much into paid search at all. But as of late, he told me he has been playing a lot lately in social media and there are quite a few things he has learned. He also told me that there were quite a few things historically done he wishes he could erase. He doesn’t want to look like an idiot, especially to the SMOs, but what he wants to do is save a few headaches for people getting into social media. Today I am going to take what Jordan has taught me and I’m going to focus primarily on Digg because, it seems to be the most complex social media site out there due to its sophisticated algorithm. I am going to write his exact words, of course with his permission. So everything below will be straight from Jordan, which is some fantastic insights on Social Marketing.

Mistake #1: Abusing self-promotion

For the past year and a half to two years I’ve had social media accounts but I never used them. If I did ever use them it was just to submit some of my own blog posts or my company’s blog posts too.

Let me note that self-promotion isn’t terrible all the time. If you’ve established an authoritative status in a community or are a power-user then you are more likely to get away with it if you do so sparingly. Nobody likes a self-promoter or person who is greedy. It is essential to contribute to other people and help them promote their tales. Karma comes full-circle when it comes to social networking.

Mistake #2: Not understanding the scope of the site or the community in its entirety

I’ve heard a lot of social media experts suggesting to take a look at the site and community before you register to know what it’s about. That advice is half the battle but before you can really know what it’s about you have to observe, participate, and test significantly. My mistake was not knowing that the one community perceives things differently than other communities.

For example, Digg.com despises SEOs. I learned this by my low response on SEO articles submitted. Excellent thing I was currently operating under the name “jordankasteler” instead of “UtahSEOpro”. This could have been terrible had I started participating with the name “UtahSEOpro” and then realized, after much wasted time and effort, that none of my stuff will ever get promoted because nobody likes me.

Another example happened lately on Mixx.com. I submitted one of my own articles to a group on Mixx that had a rule strictly against self-promotion. Needless to say that didn’t go over well.

Moral of the tale here is know the community, know the rules, know that goes hot and what doesn’t, know who’s hot and who’s not and imitate them.

Another tip is to seek out niche communities that aren’t as huge as say Reddit, Digg, Tasty, or StumbleUpon. There are niche sites like sphinn.com for Internet marketers, Sk-rt.com for woman, and Hugg.com for nature lovers. Relevant content in niche communities can drive more traffic and links than broader communities sometimes.

Mistake #3: Not having goals When I very first started using Digg used it nearly as a bookmarking service. At the time, I probably didn’t even know the difference between Digg and Tasty. When I found a site I liked, I submitted it to Digg not considering or caring if the community would like it or not or if it was news worthy. What a horrible waste, I now have 70+ submissions and only a small percentage of them are actual quality content that I’ve submitted with intentions of promoting news worthy or remarkable article, video, or image.

Start by making goals for every piece you submit. Your goals should be to promote everything you submit and do so with pride. If you submit low-quality content then you’re a low-quality contributor and the community will recognize it quickly. Don’t just submit and forget. Use a tool like Digg Alerter to watch your submitted content. If someone comments on a post then respond back to them whether the comment was positive or negative. The key here is to engage with the community and try to start a conversation. Comments are a excellent quality indicator of a post so this is an vital part detail. If you don’t have a excellent response for the comment at least vote it up or down depending on the quality of the comment.

Mistake #4: Choosing quantity over quality when it comes to friends

Initial thinking of a newbie would be the more friends the better, right? INCORRECT! I’m not sure if this is recent with Digg’s new algorithm change or what but what I’ve found out is that the more friend you have the higher the threshold is for a tale to go well loved. My mistake was adding too many friends and not monitoring if they were voting for my content or not. After decreasing my friend count on Digg from nearly 500 friends to about 65 friends I’ve seen the threshold drop dramatically. For most social media sites you want to keep your friends very relevant to your interests and make sure that they are active users. Having non-active users, people who don’t appreciate your submissions, and people who don’t help you promote your submitted content is useless. I’ll go back to Karma here, if you’re not being active and helping others yourself then don’t expect your friends to do the same.

A wise thing is to constantly monitor your friend activity and trim down friends who aren’t beneficial to your success or not. This isn’t to hurt anyone’s feelings but if they aren’t going to play they need to get off the field.

Mistake #5: Not using RSS

I despise RSS when it comes to reading my news so I’ve stayed clear from it but I learned that RSS is my best friend for social media. There are a couple reasons why. The first reason is if you’re contributing a lot of content, especially news worthy items, then timing is everything. It’s wise to subscribe to news sites like CNN.com or NYTimes.com so you can catch hot tales as soon as they are posted.

The second reason is that you can subscribe to what your friends are posting so you can help them promote their content without having to go to each profile and check up on them daily. It’s a huge timesaver and an simple way to keep tabs on your friend’s activity.

*BONUS Mistake* Not considering submission timing

There are certain times in each community where there are more eyes on the site or certain categories than others. Knowing those times and submitting during them is vital. Generally, most people surf social sites in the morning or around lunch time during their break at work. It’s a excellent time to submit around then to capture people’s attention. It can make the different of whether your tale goes well loved or not.

If you’re up at 3:00 a.m. and you see a hot tale pop up on your RSS reader from CNN then it’s probably not wise to save that until lunch-time the next day to submit because then you run the risk of someone else submitting it first. So be wise and use common sense.

Summary

Hopefully learning from my mistakes will help you avoid them in the future. I like to teach people the right way of doing things based on my experience and hopefully you can take what you’ve learned and do the same.

Last month I submitted an application to Google to be considered for their AdSense program. After confirming my e-mail address, nearly immediately I was invited to place ads on my website.
Within hours I started to accumulate some data on pageviews and click-throughs and could see what my month-to-date total was. I was impressed.

The JavaScript Code
When your website is approved, you’ll receive your own publisher number and the appropriate JavaScript code to paste onto your webpages.
When your page is showed, here’s the process that Google probably goes through in showing the ads:

1. A visitor’s web browser requests a page on your site.
2. This activates the JavaScript code on the page, sending the URL of the requested webpage to Google’s database.
3. Google looks up in its database the most prominent keywords or keyphrases for that webpage.
4. Then Google searches for the highest paying ads that match these keywords
5. Google places the appropriate ads on your webpage for your visitor to see — all in seconds. Pretty nifty.

How Much Does Google AdSense Pay?
As a publisher, you share in the revenue that Google receives from its PPC ads. Google, but, hasn’t announced a formula for sharing revenue with publishers in its Terms and Conditions document. Google’s audacity to question publishers to enter into a blind agreement is one measure of publishers’ hunger for advertising dollars — whatever dollars — and an indication of the trust Google experiences in today’s marketplace.

So what is the revenue split? We aren’t told, though the actual amounts are proportional to the market value of keywords that describe your content.

This gives me some thought of possible yucky revenue for my site. I am not at liberty to tell the average click-through rate and average PPC payment per click on my site, though that information is made available to me daily and cumulatively.

In talking to well-known marketers, I hear guesses of a publisher’s share ranging from 25% to 60%. For all we know Google could be striking different deals with different sites, especially those over 20 million pageviews per month that have greater clout in the marketplace. I would guess the publisher’s share to be as much as 50% of the yucky PPC revenue — though I could be way off. None of us has enough information to make an accurate judgment and Google isn’t talking.

What the Godfather gives, we bow and accept gratefully without any questions for dread he might place out a contract on our websites.
Here are the factors that contribute to the amount of money you can make on your site:

1. PPC value of the predominant keywords on your website. “Life insurance” for example, would be high. “Fish tank filters” would be low.
2. Amount of traffic you generate to your web pages.
3. Prominence of the Google ads
4. Click-through rate for the ads that appear.
5. The unknown revenue share that Google is paying.

Business-focused sites will do very well with Google AdSense, but information sites that don’t contain high-paying keywords won’t receive nearly as much.

Will They Accept My Site?
Google AdSense tells us that the following sites are not acceptable: sites with excessive profanity; despise, violence, racial intolerance, or advocate against any individual, group, or organization; hacking/cracking content; drugs and drug paraphernalia; pornography; gambling or casino-related; content; incentives of any kind for users to click on ads; excessive advertising; other content-targeted and/or text-based ads on the pages showing AdWords ads; pop-ups that interfere with site navigation or are for downloads; and ads that mimic AdWords ads or appear to be associated with AdWords ads on your site. Google says it will monitor sites that are showing their ads and suspend sites that don’t abide by their rules.

Does a person from Google look at a site before deciding to accept it into the program?
If it’s a new site with small traffic, a human surely views the site. Don’t submit a site that isn’t ready for prime time, has “under construction” signs, or looks tacky. It’s a lot simpler to get your site ready first, than try to convince Google to re-examine a rejected site. On the other hand, if your site has lots of incoming links and is generously spidered by Google already, you might receive approval within minutes after confirming your e-mail address.
Once you are approved, you can login and get HTML to paste into your webpages.

The Automatic Ad Agency
If you’ve ever worked with ad agencies or tried to solicit individual advertisers to place ads on your site, then Google AdSense will feel like a breath of fresh air. Google handles the entire relationship with advertisers. There are no run dates for publishers to schedule, no banners to install, no invoicing, no reporting. Just apply, paste in the JavaScript code, and Google’s “automatic advertising agency” works for you day and night finding willing advertisers, taking orders, and matching appropriate advertisers with your site.

Problems for Publishers
That doesn’t mean, but, that Google AdSense is problem-free. As I mentioned above, Google’s unwillingness to specify revenue share percentages doesn’t bode well. Sure, Google is just feeling its way in uncharted territory and has to stay profitable when the inevitable competition arises. I don’t reckon publishers should get too confident in Google’s current largesse. What Google gives, Google can take away — either as a result of economic squeezes or greed.

A more mundane problem is finding inappropriate ads appearing on your webpages. Fortunately, this is much simpler to fix. You can filter out any ads you find from competitors or that you find distasteful. (I had to exclude some ads for cheapo e-mail addresses to spam with.) Just list the advertiser’s domain name under Advanced Options | Site Filter List.

What do you do when the ad just doesn’t seem to correspond to the content on your webpage?
Adding the appropriate keywords or keyphrases to the title tag, Meta description tag, and headlines should help Google do a better job of matching ads with your content.

Problems for Advertisers
Advertisers who use Google AdWords have the choice of limiting their ad to show only on the Google search engine, but you can choose whether campaigns also appear on the network of search sites, the network of content sites, or both.

Google AdSense on content sites gives advertisers a new opportunity. Previously, their revenues were limited by the click-throughs that could be generated on Google’s search engine and search partner sites. Now the pool of appropriate content sites is greatly widened, offering greater traffic and more sales. But their is a price for this greatly increased ad coverage — potentially lower responsiveness for the same cost per click.

When people use a search engine, they are looking for answers or solutions to click on. But when they are reading the text of a content site, they aren’t in the same searching, clicking mode. They’ve already found what they were searching for and are now trying to absorb it. This will affect the click-through rate, but also the likelihood that these users will complete a transaction.

Publishers are rejoicing today. But what if three months from now advertisers come to the conclusion that content sites are less responsive and routinely exclude them from their advertising coverage? Or refuse to pay the same prices for content sites that they do for search engine exposure? It’s too soon to tell.

Implications of Google AdSense
One thing is certain: Google AdSense is changing the way websites are being monetized.
AdSense “rewards you for making sites rich in high-quality, focused content … the sort of sites that make the Net a better place.” Google is going to grab a whole lot of business away from those who try to ‘make crime pay’ — no need for nasty tricks, useless marketing gambits, in-your-face ads, etc.

Instead, Google is rewarding those who ‘make grime pay’” — that is, those willing to do the hard work to produce quality, focused content.

Thought for today:
Should you apply to place Google AdSense on your website? If your site seems appropriate, yes, by all means do so. Google AdSense represents a significant opportunity for content publishers to monetize their content. And so long as this partnership benefits both publishers and advertisers who pay the bills, this could be the start of a new and brighter future for both.

Every time people try to join a multi-level marketing or MLM, they have a set of questions in mind: What are the chances of earning really excellent money? Is MLM the best possible way to earn more money or does MLM reap more money from you more than what it can give you? How reliable is the company? Will the effort and achievement that you will give be paid off?

All of these things are considered in an MLM program. But, like any business, MLM programs do not guarantee sure success unless you work hard for it. That is why the triumphant MLM marketer knows how vital it is to incorporate the right blend of determination, hard work, a small luck, and the willingness to learn everything.

Basically, MLM is a new way of doing business that primarily entails the combination of franchising and direct marketing. With MLM, people have to work together in order to reap success. That is why most people also consider MLM as one way of network marketing.

For this reason, MLM marketers know how vital their downlines are. They know that by helping other people to succeed, they become successful as well.

Then again, not all MLM programs are made equal. Hence, there is always a possibility that a particular MLM program may not work best for you. The result: many marketers tend to fail on their MLM career.

Therefore, for those who want to know how to avoid failing in MLM, here are three common pitfalls that you have to watch out. Avoiding them and generating an alternative will make you succeed in MLM.

Pitfall #1: Very high expectations

The problem with most MLM marketer is that they are so enticed with the excellent things that their recruiters had been telling them that they end up expecting too much on the business. Just like the others, they expect that the business will certainly allow them reap more money at once.

It is the “get rich quick” syndrome that really brings most MLM marketers down. And because most people want to earn more money in the shortest possible time, they easily fall as prey.

What they fail to realize is that MLM is just the same as any venture that needs dogged determination, pure dedication, and untainted hard work.

The Solution

In order to succeed in MLM, people should keep in mind that it is not a “get rich quick” scheme. There should be lots of determination and hard work in order to succeed.

Moreover, try to shun away from MLM programs that has too-excellent-to-be-right features. The things is, they are what they are, really too-excellent-to-be-right program.

Pitfall #2: Lack of education

The problem with most people who fail in MLM is that they do not have enough education about the program that they tend to overlook the vital factors that need to be considered.

There are those who do not take the business seriously. They thought that it is just a trend and that as soon as their interests wane, the business will fail as well.

Also, the problem why people fail in MLM is that they want to earn money without having to exert too much effort. They do not take the initiative to learn the things that will help them in their MLM career.

Indeed, no knowing the vital aspects of the business will make you believe things in the most deceptive way.

The Solution

They should believe on the saying that it is better to earn while you learn. Try to hone your skills in such a way that you will be able to develop a excellent selling point in your career.

Educate yourself with all the possible information that you can use in dealing with the program. Try to learn new tactics and generate new selling methods.

Pitfall #3: Failure to empathize with the customers

Another reason why most people fail in MLM is the fact that most marketers fail to empathize with their customers. Most MLM marketers become so self-centered that all they reckon about are their selves and on how they can earn more money.

What happens next is that they push their products to their customers without taking time to analyze whether their customers really need the product or not.

The Solution

They should learn how to empathize with their customers. It would be better to place themselves in the shoes of their customers. In this way, they will realize that selling should not be made in such away that people are compelled to buy things that they do not need.

What every MLM marketer should do is to help other people’s lives so that they will boost their income.

All of these things are boiled down to the fact that MLM is, indeed, a serious business. People should learn that the effort the results they will reap are proportionate to their efforts. Hence, they should work harder in order to succeed in MLM.