Many Lightworkers today are still working under the tribal attitudes that probably carry over from past lives when we were shamans, healers and tribal medicine men. In those days and places we didn’t have to fool with ‘making a living’, we could just live and take care of the tribe and the tribe took care of us.
Now the world has evolved and there are new ways and new attitudes. We still need to take care of the tribe and the tribe is happy to take care of us, but all too often it’s we Lightworkers who aren’t making the shift into this new world and it’s actually causing problems for the tribe.
We’re seeing an interesting revival of the Old Ways now. Some of the modern religions have done a good job of providing a framework for laws and social norms and mores, not to mention fodder for countless wars and atrocities, but it seems that they’ve left a lot of people looking for spirituality rather than providing an easy path to help integrate the body, mind and spirit and many people are actively beginning to seek alternative paths.
These are our tribe; the seekers, the wanderers and those open-minded souls who intuitively feel that they should be looking inside themselves for the divinity that they can sense rather than looking outward to the invisible Gods that are forced upon them.
A Lightworker is always going to be in the position of straddling the boundaries between the various realities. We don’t believe in the Universal Powers and the Universal Laws, we know that they are real and that they work because we’ve felt and experienced them.
One of our missions is to help awaken others to those powers, and in many cases those others don’t believe that the powers actually exist because they have been taught that they have to be able to scientifically prove their concepts before they can be free to believe in them.
At the same time the people that we are supposed to be helping to awaken are indoctrinated from birth into mainstream religions that tell them to have faith in the religious version of the supernatural while teaching that all other versions of the supernatural are unreal and evil.
It’s no wonder that the tribe is confused and looking for relief and answers.
Another problem here is that many of the Lightworkers are still breaking free of the attitudes and teachings of the mainstream religions. It’s hard to grow up being taught that ‘money is the root of all evil’ and then being put into a position where one must learn to use money as a tool in order to help the tribe.
Many Lightworkers feel that to accept money for teaching or healing actually sullies the teaching and healing and lessens its worth. I’ve also met Lightworkers who have difficulties accepting money or even bartered goods that are offered in exchange for teaching and healing. The tribe, on the other hand, is being taught that ‘you get what you pay for’ because they are being indoctrinated into a consumer oriented society. When a Lightworker offers a service then the tribe expects to pay for that service just as they would pay a doctor or a plumber or a school teacher.
When a Lightworker has an inner conflict over accepting payment it actually interrupts the flow of energy that exists between the tribe and the Lightworkers! We can’t teach that ‘energy doesn’t flow through tight muscles’ and then create resistance to our energy flows.
In the times before the industrial revolution and the rise of the consumer oriented cultures Light workers only had to straddle 2 worlds. We had to keep one foot out in the Universe and the other foot here in the collective illusion that the tribe creates as it flows along its daily path to awakening.
Today we have to straddle 3 worlds. The Universe and the illusion are still there and we have to help bridge the gap between these for the tribe, but we also have to stay tapped into the financial world created by the consumerism of the modern times.
The problem for many of us is that we literally don’t have a leg to stand on when it comes to this new consumer society and no one has ever taught us how to integrate it into our teachings and practices in any useful way. In fact we’ve been taught that consumerism is bad and we’ve believed it even while espousing balance and harmony! We can just add this to the growing list of inner conflicts that are blocking our energy. I hope the tools and exercises in the book are helpful with balancing out some of those conflicts.
Consumerism and the modern world
Sometimes it can be hard to balance the realities of the worlds we straddle. We can directly attribute much of the rise of the New Age to the books and media distributed throughout our consumer society. In fact the tools and technologies of the Information Age have made it easier than ever before to develop a healing and teaching practice.
There has never been a time in the known history of the human race when the common people, the regular, ordinary working people, have had access to the writings and teachings of every great discipline that has survived the purges of the religions and ravages of time.
Today we can go to the bookstore, visit the library and read the websites and find vast amounts of information and guidance that previously would have been available only to the priests and royalty. Lightworkers have the ability to teach, heal and reach across vast distances to help the members of their tribe.
Today the members of our tribes are scattered and it’s up to each of us to find them and then help provide the healing, teaching and guidance that they might need. We may not always be able to meet them face to face or heal them directly as in the old days, but that simply means that the modern Lightworker has to be more versatile, persistent and tolerant than ever before.
In order to accomplish any goal you first must have a clear idea of what you want to accomplish. We’re going to approach this in 5 steps and if you use these 5 steps then you can create, manifest or develop anything that you want for the rest of your existence.
Step 1 – What do you want?
This sounds simple, but the fact is that most people are far too general when they talk about what they want. How many times have you said “I want to lose weight” or “I want more money” and then felt like you didn’t get the results you want.
When you express a desire the Universe will instantly begin to make that desire a reality, but if you have a vague desire you’ll get a vague result.
You say “I want more money” and then you find a penny in the parking lot. Then you say (I hope) thanks to the Universe for sending you more money and then you say “I’d like a LOT more money”, so next time maybe you find a dime (10 times as much!) or even a quarter (25 times as much!). Even though you may be grateful, you also have the thought in the back of your mind that this whole Law of Attraction thing doesn’t work when in fact you’ve gotten exactly what you asked for!
So Step 1 is to state EXACTLY what you want, such as “Thank you for helping me find $25,000”.
Step 2 – WHY do you want it?
Desire, in and of itself, is simply not enough. You’ll be more focused, have more drive and get better results if you have a good reason for the manifestation of your desire. This reason doesn’t have to mean anything or make sense to anyone other than yourself, but it does have to matter to you.
So maybe now you say “Thank you for helping me find $25,000 that I can use to create a reserve for 6 months mortgage and bills”.
Step 3 - WHEN do you want it?
“If you talk about it it’s a dream. If you envision it, it becomes possible and when you schedule it, it becomes a reality.” – Tony Robbins
The more clear you can be about what you want and why you want it the better, so add in a time frame. “Thank you for helping me find $25,000 over the next 6 months, that I can use to create a reserve for 6 months mortgage and bills”.
Lay out a reasonable time frame in which to achieve your goal. You could say “I want a million dollars by this afternoon” but most likely you won’t be able to get yourself into alignment with that goal in time for it to actually manifest, so dream big but keep it believable.
This leads us right into Step 4.
Step 4 – BELIEVE that you can have it.
You may have anything that you can think of as long as it’s believable for you. Now this is where the personal mastery concepts will start to make a difference.
As you grow and develop more self confidence then what you believe that you can accomplish will also grow. Tony Robbins KNOWS that if he offers a seminar literally thousands of people will show and pay in advance to attend. Tom Cruise KNOWS that if he signs a contract for a movie than that movie has a great chance of becoming a box office hit.
What do you know? What do you believe? Can you manifest a cup of coffee? How about 3 new clients this week, or a partner for some co-op advertising? How about a new car or a new office?
Ultimately we are all constrained at an individual level by what we believe that we can have or deserve.
Step 5 – Create small victories, Build on SUCCESS.
As your confidence expands then so will your ability to manifest at a larger level. Build your business on a foundation of success rather than failure. How often do you say “I’d like to have more clients but _____.” Everything after the ‘but’ is a foundation of failure!
Focus on what you’ve done that was successful, and this is relative only to you. It doesn’t matter what anyone else can do or accomplish at this point, focus simply on a success for you. There was a period after I broke my neck that I considered simply getting out of bed by myself a wild success!
This is a point where it’s completely ok to lower your expectations for awhile and simply focus on what you can do well at whatever level you can. If walking 10 steps is a victory for you then focus on that. If you have only given 1 massage or 1 Reiki treatment professionally then focus on the fact that you have been PAID to do it, rather than the lack of clients.
We’ll get out of our comfort zone later. Right now I want you to get INTO your comfort zone and take some comfort from it.
Robert Morgen experienced a near-death kundalini awakening in 1992.
Most people are taught to <a href=”http://spiritualentrepreneur.biz”>define success</A> by what you HAVE. You HAVE a great job, or a beautiful wife or a lot of money, etc. People who base success on the HAVE often find that they can lose their success just by losing the things by which they define their success.
What you HAVE can always be taken away, lost or stolen, so if you base your sense of success on the external HAVE then you are setting yourself up for a huge crash sooner or later. That’s why people commit suicide after a stock market crash and why most lottery winners fall back into the same economic niche when the money runs out.
We’ve also been indoctrinated to believe that what we DO is who we are. How many people in this culture define themselves by their job? I’m a cop, I’m a teacher, I’m a writer, etc. Once again this is an external reference and not who we really are, and once again all the externals can simply go away, leaving you feeling bereft and out of place.
I think it’s also amusing that we ask kids what they want to BE when they grow up and then reference it to what their choices are for the DO category. Then again, maybe it’s not so amusing at all.
When we talk about BEing successful, or BEing a good person or BEing intelligent then we are not referencing any external aspect of ourselves, but rather our internal core. When you learn to BE a successful person then it means that you have expanded your context and actually grown into that successful person. It’s not something that you get hired into or that you put on and take off like a jacket.
Learning to BE
I remember as a child, watching my parents trying to be involved in Amway and Raleigh and other MLM’s. Now these were what I would consider to be good companies with great products, but the problem was that my parents were trying to go from being farmers to being businesspeople without any way to expand their context and cover the steps in between. Like many people who try to buy into MLM’s and become instantly successful they failed and then blamed the system and said that MLM is a scam.
<B>Managing a business is like learning to ride a bike. No one ever learned to ride a bike by taking a class, and they never learned to ride a bike without falling off a few times.</B>
The Rules Are Different
One of the problems that we have is that people in Western Culture have been taught that ‘you get what you pay for’.
This is just one of the paradigms that you’ll find are different for business people. Business people make a POINT of not paying for things in the same way that the average person does, and some of these concepts (you get what you pay for) have been specifically fostered in our consumer society. It’s completely subconscious.
I discovered when I first started teaching meditation classes that people took it more seriously when I charged them for it, simply because they subconsciously placed more value on the class if they spent their money on it.
Shifting the Paradigms
To a businessperson it would be unthinkable to PAY for a product and then to try to resell it. Businesspeople set up a NET 30 or (preferably) a NET 90 account (they don’t have to pay for the products for 30 days, or 90 days) and then they sell the products first and then pay for them. This is just one of the ways that the business world is exactly opposite from the consumer world.
The ultimate goal is to BE the person who can DO the things that let you HAVE success.
“BE Successful” is an excerpt from Robert Morgen’s new book <a href=”http://www.amazon.com/Spiritual-Entrepreneur-Robert-Morgen/dp/0979040035″><b>The Spiritual Entrepreneur</B></A>, which can be downloaded as a FREE Ebook (for a limited time) at <a href=”http://spiritualentrepreneur.biz”>http://spiritualentrepreneur.biz</a>
Sometimes you might run into a situation where it feels like your energy is just stuck. You know what you are supposed to do and you want to do it, but for some reason you just can’t. It may be that you’ve just hit a subconscious boundary or an energy block that you need to clean out.
Sometimes we create these subconscious blocks in order to protect ourselves from perceived dangers or threats. Sometimes they are inflicted upon us through childhood trauma or other mental, emotional or physical trauma. I also firmly believe that we carry over subconscious blocks from past lives as well, blocks such as vows of poverty and celibacy that served us well in other lives but which may be holding us back in this one.
I’m not a psychologist or a psychotherapist, so I’m basing this exercise purely on my own personal practice and the guidance I’ve gotten from Spirit. This can be a very powerful exercise and I strongly recommend that you have a good grasp of the concepts of Faith and Keeping a Positive Attitude that I mentioned earlier in this book.
In your meditation position of choice go through the Breathing and Full Body Awareness meditations. If you haven’t read one of my books or don’t have the CD that has these exercises on it then you can download them as guided meditations for free at http://spiritualentrepreneur.biz/dd.html
If you have the CD that has The Secret Smile exercise then you can always do this exercise as a warm up also.
Keep your mind as clear and uncluttered as possible and focus on this one thought - “I now release any emotional, mental or physical blocks that have been subconsciously holding me back. I no longer need these blocks and I’m ready to release them and to face anything that comes in the sure knowledge and faith that my Divine Spirit has the power to help me succeed. I allow these blocks to evaporate and be replaced with Joy, Love and Light.”
As you go through this exercise and focus on this mantra you may notice unbidden images arising in your 3rd eye. They may be images of events, traumas or problems that you’ve experienced. DO NOT get caught up in thinking about these issues as they arise. Simply let them evaporate like a wisp of smoke as the energy and stress caused by these events flows out of your body.
It’s important that you don’t let yourself re-attach to these events after you’re done with your meditation. Everything that comes up in this exercise is going to be an energy block, muscle knot or stress knot that is trying to release itself out of your body and spirit. If you continue to think about them then you are actually sending energy into these stress knots and they will become stronger and tighter rather than releasing from your system.
This can be a powerful cleansing exercise and it’s entirely possible that you’ll experience some physical or emotional release in conjunction with this exercise. You may find that you need to laugh or cry. You may find yourself suddenly getting angry without understanding why. You may even experience some physical cleansing such as diarrhea or vomiting as the toxins that you are releasing purge from your system. It all depends on your ability to let go.
I strongly advise adding some physical activity into your practice if you haven’t done so by this point. Dance, play, practice yoga or pilates or just put on some music and relax and let your body move in any way that it feels guided.
You may also benefit from getting some external therapy such as acupuncture, Reiki or massage while you are working with this meditation.
If at any time the cleansing process feels too overpowering then back off and go back to the Breathing exercise and pull your energy back down to your dan tien (the area right behind and below your belly button.)
Take your time with this exercise and don’t feel like you have to purge your entire system at once. Work it into your meditation practice and do it a couple of times a week or as you may be guided by Spirit.
“Releasing Subconscious Blocks and Boundaries” is an excerpt from Robert Morgen’s book The Spiritual Entrepreneur, which is available as a FREE Ebook for a limited time.
About the Author
Robert Morgen experienced a near-death kundalini awakening in 1992.
Testing your website pages, especially landing pages, squeeze pages and sales pages is one of the most profitable things you can do to tweak your pages and gain higher conversions. On top of that, you can learn more about copywriting though split tests and other means of testing your web pages than any other way.
Back in the days of mail order marketing, testing sales letters and catalogs gathered more real information about new concepts and ideas than through most other methods of research at that time. In these days of the internet, the bell even rings louder.
You can test whole concepts of your pages to find out what emotional triggers and core desires your market truly respond to. Simply test two or three versions of your sales page that each focus on a separate theme or slant on the product or service. The page that pulls the most conversions will give you the answers you are looking for.
In this day of fierce online competition, testing is something you should, no MUST do to gain the highest conversions from your website and pages. If you’re not actively testing your pages, your competition will soon pass you by.
What Exactly Should You Be Testing?
The simple answer is: Everything! Everything on your pages and in your sales message is a contributing factor to your conversion rate. This includes your headline, opening paragraphs, body copy, your offer, post scripts, background color, font, font colors, images and every imaginable component of your page in between.
Volumes of information have been written about what to test and how to test your web pages. This work is extensive, so when you begin to test, I suggest you concentrate your first efforts on the three areas that have been shown to have the most impact on your sales page, the headline, the first three (or four) opening paragraphs, and your offer.
In this article, I will focus on Headlines as they are the critical element of your page.
Testing Headlines
Headline changes can have the most impact on your conversion rate and response of these three components. 75 - 80% of your visitors will never read past the headline. It doesn’t matter how wonderful you have written your sales page, if the headline doesn’t work correctly and do its job of getting people to read on, your page will be a failure.
In order for your headline to be effective, you have to discover the biggest core desires within your market to feed. The best headline test are based around the different core desires and motivating reasons why people would be interested in your product or service.
Testing different headlines around different concepts will tell you which one is more appealing to your market audience. Once you have the key concepts and desires tested and you have discovered which one works best, you then go to work tweaking your headline in more alluring and persuasive ways.
Split testing is generally used to test headlines. In the beginning, you will probably want to use simple A/B split testing but if you are dealing with high volume traffic and high price sales, you may want to consider speeding up the process with multi-variate testing. You can find out more about these tests by going to: What Is Split Testing?.
What Type of Headline Format Do You Test?
There are some classic headline formats that have been shown to be effective over time that you can begin with. There’s the “If/Then” headline, “Amazing Secrets of …” headline, the “Who Else Wants to …” headline, and of course the classic ” How to …” headline.
Test as many headlines as you can think up for your web page. In fact, you should never stop testing different headlines on your page. A simple 10% increase in your conversions could result in hundreds to tens of thousands of dollar or more. Testing your headlines could bring an increase of 50%, 100%, or even 200% or more in the response your web page brings.
The next time that you feel that your landing page, sales page or squeeze page should be converting better, think about testing the component of your page to increase the effectiveness and response that it should be eliciting.
Continue reading more about this fascinating arena of online marketing by going to: Testing Your Web Pages
About the Author
Jim Bruce is a SEO Web Consultant and writes frequently about search engine optimization techniques and search marketing. You can find out more about these topics by going to Ristvin Marketing.
I don’t know what you guys are paying for gasoline…. but here in California we are also paying higher, up to $3.50 per gallon. But my line of work is in petroleum for about 31 years now, so here are some tricks to get more of your money’s worth for every gallon..
Here at the Kinder Morgan Pipeline where I work in San Jose , CA we deliver about 4 million gallons in a 24-hour period thru the pipeline. One day is diesel the next day is jet fuel, and gasoline, regular and premium grades. We have 34-storage tanks here with a total capacity of 16,800,000 gallons.
Only buy or fill up your car or truck in the early morning when the ground temperature is still cold.
Remember that all service stations have their storage tanks buried below ground. The colder the ground the more dense the gasoline, when it gets warmer gasoline expands, so buying in the afternoon or in the evening….your gallon is not exactly a gallon.
In the petroleum business, the specific gravity and the temperature of the gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, ethanol and other petroleum products plays an important role.
A 1-degree rise in temperature is a big deal for this business. But the service stations do not have temperature compensation at the pumps.
When you’re filling up do not squeeze the trigger of the nozzle to a fast mode. If you look you will see that the trigger has three (3)stages: low, middle, and high. In slow mode you should be pumping
on low speed, thereby minimizing the vapors that are created while you are pumping. All hoses at the pump have a vapor return. If you are pumping on the fast rate, some other liquid that goes to your tank becomes vapor. Those vapors are being sucked up and back into the underground storage tank so you’re getting less worth for your money.
One of the most important tips is to fill up when your gas tank is HALF FULL or HALF EMPTY. The reason for this is, the more gas you have in your tank the less air occupying its empty space. Gasoline evaporates faster than you can imagine.
Gasoline storage tanks have an internal floating roof. This roof serves as zero clearance between the gas and the atmosphere, so it minimizes the evaporation. Unlike service stations, here where I work, every truck that we load is temperature compensated so that every gallon is actually the exact amount.
Another reminder, if there is a gasoline truck pumping into the storage tanks when you stop to buy gas, DO NOT fill up–most likely the gasoline is being stirred up as the gas is being delivered, and you might pick up some of the dirt that normally settles on the bottom.
Hope this will help you get the most value for your money.
DO SHARE THESE TIPS WITH OTHERS!
WHERE TO BUY USA GAS, THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT TO KNOW. READ ON
Gas rationing in the 80’s worked even though we grumbled about it. It might even be good for us! The Saudis are boycotting American goods. We should return the favor.
An interesting thought is to boycott their GAS.
Every time you fill up the car, you can avoid putting more money into the coffers of Saudi Arabia . Just buy from gas companies that don’t import their oil from the Saudis.
Nothing is more frustrating than the feeling that every time I fill-up the tank, I am sending my money to people who are trying to kill me, my family, and my friends.
I thought it might be interesting for you to know which oil companies are the best to buy gas from and which major companies import Middle Eastern oil.
These companies import Middle Eastern oil:
Shell……………………… 205,742,000 barrels
Chevron/Texaco……… 144,332,000 barrels
Exxon/Mobil…………… 130,082,000 barrels
Marathon/Speedway… 117,740,000 barrels
Amoco……………………….62,231,000 barrels
Citgo gas is from South America , from a Dictator who hates Americans. If you do the math at $30/barrel, these imports amount to over $18 BILLION! (oil is now $90 - $100 a barrel
Here are some large companies that do not import Middle Eastern oil:
Sunoco………………0 barrels
Conoco………………0 barrels
Sinclair………………0 barrels
BP/Phillips………….0 barrels
Hess………………….0 barrels
ARC0…………………0 barrels
All of this information is available from the Department of Energy and each is required to state where they get their oil and how much they are importing.
But to have an impact, we need to reach literally millions of gas buyers. It’s really simple to do.
Now, don’t wimp out at this point…. keep reading and I’ll explain how simple it is to reach millions of people!!
I’m sending this note to about thirty people. If each of you send it to at least ten more (30 x 10 = 300)…and those 300 send it to at least ten more (300 x 10 = 3,000) .. and so on, by the time the message reaches the sixth generation of people, we will have reached over THREE MILLION consumers !!!!!!! If those three million get excited and pass this on to ten friends each, then 30 million people will have been contacted!
If it goes one level further, you guessed it ….. THREE HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE!!!
Again, all you have to do is send this to 10 people. How long would all that take?
The Google AdSense program is like finding money in the street. Kids in High School are making thousands of dollars a month with Adsense… Housewives, Retiree’s, Mom and Pop’s who’ve never made a dime on the Internet have created full time incomes by simply placing AdSense Ads on their web site or blog. Then you have the “Super AdSense” earners. We have all heard of them… the Elite few who are on track to make half a million dollars a year or more promoting AdSense sites.
Do not be mistaken though… these people are not building like your Mom and Pop’s do. They have systems in place that create sites for them… people who build sites for them… they have outsourced and automated many of the tedious tasks such as posting to blogs and searching for keywords. While most people cannot emulate everything these Super AdSense earners do… many of them you can.
Here are 7 Required Steps you can implement today to copy their success.
1) Starting today… treat your AdSense business like it is a REAL business and track what you do. Begin tracking what you are doing that works… as well as what you are doing that does not work. This will keep you from making the same mistakes over and over, and you can repeat the steps that have worked in the past. As simple as this step seems… most people do not know the reason(s) to their success or failure.
2) Utilize the latest tools and software available. The Super AdSense earners are not any smarter than your average person. I know many people think they are… but for the most part, they are regular non techie people. They are smarter in one respect though… they use the latest tools available to them to automate most of the tasks involved with researching and creating sites. They use the latest keyword, site creation and search engine optimization tools available. The tools they use are their secret weapons.
3) Quit chasing the Mega Dollar keywords.
You cannot compete with the search engine experts who create sites for the $80 payout keywords. You may get lucky every now and then… but in the long run, you are better off building sites for the low to mid range payout keywords. The competition is less, and your chance of success is much higher over the long term.
4) Choose broad niches and break it down. Choose a broad subject as your main theme (lets use computers for an example). From there… break it down into as many sub niches as possible. Using Computers as the example… you could build sub niches/sites like laptop computers, computer hard drives, computer keyboards, etc, etc. You could literally build hundreds of sites around one major theme and stay totally focused. Once you have exhausted every possible sub niche of that major theme… choose another main theme and repeat the process.
5) KISS Keep your sites easy to navigate and forget the fancy graphics that distract your visitors attention.Unless you are just building AdSense sites for the fun of it and to impress your friends… the purpose of having the site is to have people click on one of the ads, right? Then keep the site layout simple… dump the scrolling banners, dancing chickens and colored scroll bars… they are distractions.
6) What is the purpose of your web site? Your web site cannot be everything to everybody. If you have a full fledged ecommerce site, with products for sale… links to other products, it is not a good site for AdSense. If the primary focus of the site is to sell products… let it do that. Do not distract or confuse your visitor with to many options or choices. The best AdSense sites are AdSense only content sites that sell nothing. They are sites that “Tell”… not “Sell.”
7) Be consistent. This is not one of those deals where you build one site and you are done. Refer back to Step #4. You must continuously build in order to be successful.
Think of it as planting a crop that you will harvest in a month or two, and the sites you build are seeds. Once the seeds have grown and matured… you will reap the harvest. The more seeds you plant… the larger the harvest. To sum it up… utilize the tools available to automate as much of the process of building sites - doing research and building keyword lists as you can. This alone will help keep you organized and on track. Be consistent in building… treat it like the business it is and you will reap the rewards of your harvest.
E-mail marketing is probably one of the most effective and inexpensive ways to stay in touch with your prospective students on a regular basis. There is a statistic in marketing, which states that it takes on average of at least seven contacts to convert a prospect into a client and most people stop at two.
The first step is to build your email database and the easiest and quickest way to do this is to get email addresses from everyone & anyone that you meet. It is important to tell people what you do and to let them know that you have a great educational and promotional yoga newsletter and that you would love send it via email to them.
Most people will be more than happy to give you their email address if you present it to them in this fashion. Be sure to get their business card immediately and to add their name to your database as soon as possible.
Make a goal to add a certain amount of emails to your database on a monthly basis. A good number to shoot for could be approximately 50-100 per month through manual collections. Don’t worry if they are potential yoga students or not, because on one hand you never know and on the other they could forward the email to others that could be interested.
Another great way to build your email database is by adding an email opt-in form to your website so you can capture email addresses when people visit your website. Many yoga teachers/studios already spend significant time, energy and money driving traffic to their websites and one of the very best ways to capitalize on that traffic is to capture their email addresses through an opt-in form. The nice thing about this process is that it is completely automated and you will be building your email list without doing a thing.
Instead of just offering your visitors the chance to sign up for your newsletter through your opt-in form, up the stakes and offer some type of free giveaway such as an e-book or discounts to classes in exchange for them giving you their email address. You should find that your sign up rate will increase significantly by offering a free-bee incentive. Most of the free offers can be tied through an auto-responder which will once again eliminate the need for your involvement in the process. In order to receive more information regarding email opt-in forms and auto responders, inquire with your web designer.
Once you initiate your email marketing campaign, you should begin to use your email newsletter and/or email marketing campaigns to drive traffic back to your website. Here are some ideas of how to take full advantage of your campaigns and to increase your website traffic in the process:
* Send out e-newsletters on a consistent basis. Many people will not open the newsletters and/or click onto your site until they see it numerous times.
* Spend some time in coming up with interesting subjects for your email newsletters that will encourage the reader to open the email. If they don’t open the email they will never have the chance to click onto the website. Be sure to check your open rates after you send an email blast. If you are below 5% you have a problem with the subject.
* Include in your e-newsletter; incentives, contests, coupons, discounts, specials and promotions and be sure to add links to the specific pages that contain these offers.
* Use student testimonials/success stories in your e-newsletters in order to build credibility. More people are apt to click onto your website if they trust you.
* Initiate an auto-responder drip campaign touching your prospects on a regular basis. Remember, it takes seven or more contacts to convert a prospective student into a paying student.
* Include at least one educational article in each e-newsletter. Add just a few sentences as well as the title to the article as a way of whetting their appetite and then add a link to your website for them to read the remainder of the article.
It all begins with a quality website and then everything builds from there. Mikel Bruce with WebFlexor Yoga Websites (www.websitesforyoga.com) recommends investing the time into your website since it is the first thing that many of your prospective yoga students will see. You should find that over time as you build your email database your business will spike with each send.
When you have your own business at home, getting into internet marketing can quickly raise the status of your business. One of the most important facets to having success with internet marketing is how you are generating traffic.
With out traffic coming to your site it is impossible to have success. Therefore you must evaluate how you are going to generate a high traffic volume.
Why is article marketing important?
To generate more traffic to your web site, you need to let people know its there. When you write articles and publish them, you will find that, as long as you make the article relevant and interesting, they will be picked up by sites like E-zine’s that need fresh content and you will have a new permanent back link to your site.
How Is this important?
Well the more back links you have the better your site will show in the search engines organic (free) results which will generate more traffic to your web site and you’ll make more money!
By using a research tool like GistWeb you’ll be able to spend a lot less time creating the articles.
You’ll feel like submitting articles more frequently and by using a submission service like http:// www.submityourarticle.com you will benefit from having your article submitted to hundreds of publishers, and by using a very easy to master piece of software you can make almost every article submitted unique.
The way this works is that when you make your submission, you are invited to add alternative titles,and sentences, which when making the submissions the system uses in different combinations to generate multiple unique articles. When you submit more articles you’ll generate more traffic!
Blogs and comments
Another way to create links back to your site is to write great blog entries that people will want to post onto their blogs, you can even publish your articles on your blog. In the world of blogging, people very often use another blog as content for their site,and give the author a link or trackback.
This allows you to have a viral marketing source and you won’t need to do anything to generate this traffic. The beauty of creating a network this way is that the more you are on other people’s blogs and commenting on their posts, the more traffic you will receive.
The thing to remember is that people love to have visitors on their site and they want to know who those people are. If you’re commenting on posts they have written, you can bet that they are going to appreciate that and check out your site as well.
Whatever methods of web site promotion and marketing you use, you will need to know how many visitors or clients are attracted by each of the methods and what is the quality of the traffic generated from each marketing source. The reports and statistics of ProTrackerPlus.Com will provide you with the most complete information, so that you can concentrate your efforts on the most effective methods of web site promotion and increase the effectiveness of other methods.
About the Author
By Graham Andrew Taylor, Join the readers of Tips4-u and receive a free copy of “the Ultimate SuperTip” and 25,000 free traffic credits. Http://tips4-u.com
I would assume you have noticed, if you have followed some of my other articles on Affiliate Marketing training, that quite often my primary message for your home based business is related to day to day operations and long term planning as opposed to instant profits or miracle cure alls. There is a reason for this.
Until I learned to get my feet on the ground and build my business, not try to buy my business, I was going NOWHERE! No amount of money could provide the skills that are necessary to be effective with my Affiliate Marketing online business … I just ended up with pretty packages and didn’t have a CLUE on what to do with the contents!
So, what to do? Here is a summary of a conversation that I recently had with Christina Munoz, AKA “TheQuoteDiva”. We were discussing a recent high profile affiliate marketing program launch and reviewing the marketing skills necessary to benefit from this particular program.
I thought that perhaps hearing my same old drivel echoed from another active, successful Internet Marketer just might ring your bell!
It’s very tough to stay focused when everyone is raving about the next giant product launch and offering thousands in bonuses just to buy through their link.
Lately there is a lot about a new program called “Mass Control”. After reviewing it … it is truly - genius marketing!
But, it assumes you already have a product, a list, and joint venture partners lined up. This is super-advanced stuff and for those who already have a full system in place it is pure Gold!
However, if you don’t have the basics nailed, no amount of “advanced” training is going to help.
In order to capitalize on a system like this, what ‘constitutes’ a Basic System?
Until you’ve got a system in place, there’s no reason to keep buying stuff. It’s not gonna help until YOU make a commitment to work the plan.
After all, why would you want to dish out another $1000 or $2000 when you won’t be able to fully use what ‘Mass Control’ and other similar products can offer you?
Well, as usual, Christina’s comments took this author back to the drawing board to once again evaluate the foundation and structural integrity of my own online business.
Lacking understanding of all 10 basic elements in no way suggests that one cannot make very good money focusing on just a few of the Basics. For example, just having a list, an understanding of productive advertising, and a quality affiliate product can certainly generate significant revenue.
However, acquiring the knowledge, understanding, and ability to implement all of the basics will allow you to take a product, any product, analyze its strengths and weaknesses, and plug its unique components into your system to maximize profits.
As your efforts continue to build the applications available in your affiliate marketing tool box, the closer you move towards reaching the epitome of your development … putting your system on autopilot.
Plug and Play is an often used phrase to suggest the simplicity of marketing a particular system or product. Well, that’s great, IF, you have something to plug into.
Here’s a great exercise to judge just how far along you are in developing your rock solid business plan.
Write down all 10 of the “Basic” components listed above. Now, honestly ask yourself if you could implement each particular component if you were planning a new campaign for a product or service.
If any of the areas are a resounding NO, you have just identified a specific target for research and development. Put that integral component on the top of your ‘To Do’ list, and get right on forming another piece of your puzzle. Do research, review past articles or reports describing the process, make a mental outline of where this component would fit into your campaign, then put your thoughts to paper and … take action!
There is no doubt that if you polled 10 veteran affiliate marketers, each of their lists of the 10 Basics would differ slightly from each other. However, what they would have in common is a structured flow from the campaign conception through the sales offer and follow up.
Once again, I encourage you to focus on the basics in order to put yourself in a position to be able to jump onboard and prosper from a system such as “Mass Control”. Once you have mastered those 10 essential components, you’re WELL on your way to building your successful affiliate marketing business.
About the Author
For your FREE report from Super Affiliate “Ewen Chia”, and many more affiliate marketing tips, free tools, and success strategies, visit “Newbie Heaven” at: http://now4u-website.com The author would like to thank Chrisina Munoz for her input … visit her very enjoyable site at http://TheQuoteDiva.com
