Interesting heads up for you guys.

You know I like experimenting with making money online and so on.

Well, last week I bought some traffic.

This is the cardinal sin for all bloggers across the globe. Do this, and you will rot in Hell, or something like that.

I did it for one clear reason though. I wanted to see what it was like.

Seth Godin says you should always test everything out before you ditch it, and I believe that. So I bought traffic, even though I know two things that should have put me off.

First of all, any bought traffic is untargetted. This means anyone who is pushed to your site by traffic merchants does not have the foggiest idea as regards who you are or what you do. It’s like taking  a wrong turn on the road. Means nothing.

Secondly, I knew it was potentially unethical. You are disrupting someone’s life when you shove them to an unwanted website.

But I wanted to try it. And you know what? It stinks.

You waste your money, and on top of that, you waste any chance of connecting with any of those people who come your way.

So, as a cautionary tale, as another lesson from The Smart Home Worker, don’t buy traffic.

Suppose that means I just saved you some money…

Until next time, work smart.

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Okay, here’s the deal.

A few months ago, after spending a very long time trying to find the answers to all of my questions regarding making money online, I found this book.

‘How I sell Thousands of Products Using the Net’ is that rare thing, an eBook that actually delivers.

Everyone I know who is making money on the Internet has got this book, mostly because I’ve sent them a copy.

And now I want to give you a copy too.

It’s well written, by a guy who used to be a copywriter (you can tell).

It’s honest too. The book is about making money over time with hard work. Which is exactly how the Internet works.

Best of all, the book’s advice works.

I suddenly started making real money after reading it. Not millions, but real income. Dependable income.

No other book has come close, and no other book has delivered like this one.

I’ve never given anything away on The Smart Home Worker. Mainly because most stuff is a waste of time. And it usually costs.

This opportunity came up, and when I realised I could give it away, well…

But hey, I’ll let the book do the talking. Grab it now, for free, and within a few hours you will be sowing  the seeds of something big.

Trust me on this one.

Until next time, work smart.

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If Twitter is a great big party, then following is choosing who to hang out with.

You turn up, you find people with similar interests to yours. And then you follow them, in the expectation – or hope – that they will follow you back.

Like any social situation, the more followers – people who find you interesting or valuable – you have, the more attractive you will seem to other people. They will then in turn think about following you.

There’s a guy out there who runs a company and he has over 100,000 followers on Twitter. But some of these don’t run companies. Some are unemployed. Some are what could be referred to as ‘slackers’ even. But they follow this guy who they have nothing in common with.

Why? Because he has over 100,000 followers.

How did he do this? Well, there’s the paradox.

(Of course, it isn’t really a paradox; I kind of just labelled it that because it makes no real sense to me.)

It is a problem though, one that stumps most people. How do you get people to follow you? And more importantly, how do you get 100,000 people to follow you? A million?

Well, you don’t. You don’t get anyone to do anything. Like any form of micro blogging, interest is the thing.

Mingle

The only cast iron method that you (as a normal person and not a movie star) can deploy to boost your number of followers involves following.

That’s it. Of course, you can buy followers but that is something that large corporations do because they think in binary.

As a small business and, let’s be honest, a really nice person, you follow people that you find interesting. People who have the same life as you, or at least the same interests and business dealings.

And you do it every day or at least every two days.

Follow 50-100 people every day and I absolutely guarantee that you will become someone who gathers followers.

About 30-40% of people you follow will not follow back. That’s cool. You’re not God. Or Ashton Kutcher. So deal with that and manage your followers. Follow 50-100 a day and every now and then pare off the people who have chosen not to follow.

Why get followers?

Seth Godin will tell you that you can’t get to know more than a 1000 people. Other, lesser mortals will say that they just cannot manage thousands of relationships.

Whatever you think, there is only one reason to continuously grab followers with the method above. You will get contacts, and you will build a network of people that you are connected to.

Advice, help, business deals and even friendships will then abound.

Trust me. It works. Just don’t try and get followers any other way, even when you’re starting out.

Oh, and the answer to the question in the title? That’s easy. Find approximately one and a half million people (remember the third or so that won’t follow) with your interests and follow all of them. Should take you about a week if you don’t eat or sleep. Got that?

Good.

Until next time, work smarter.

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I’m going to be your guinea pig.

I’m going to try out an MLM opportunity and see where it takes me. I have avoided MLM for a long time but someone I trust told me recently that it is worth trying if you want to make money online. I always want to make money online. So I’m going for it.

The company is SFI. I’m going to register in a few minutes. I’ll keep you posted on how I do.

Until next time, work smart.

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Twitter for business, what not to tweet

In the last post we looked at the basics of Twitter. We also looked at some fundamentals of how it can be used to turn your small business into a successful small business.

Using it to find out what people are saying about your company, for example, is effective. Using it to spam those same people to death is not.

The first post showed how you can spread news, seek help, and generally share ideas on Twitter.

But we don’t always have news, and we don’t always need help. This leads to the hopeless Tweeters first mistake.

Many new Tweeters feel they have to tweet, simple as that. Every few hours. Every other minute.

This leads to pointless tweeting, or boring tweeting. Worse still, it leads to tweets about baking cookies.

Baking cookies

You can tweet about baking cookies if you like, but you will have more chance of being read if you’re famous and you’re baking cookies.

If Madonna baked cookies and tweeted about it, she’d get retweets and comments. Her baking method may well be analysed. It would be cool, funny. She may even get a book deal out of it.

But you? No one cares about your cookies.

No one cares about your day, how you get to work, your favourite music.

But they care if you are interesting.

So find stuff that you know your audience would be interested in, that they would find useful.

This means staying away from coookies. And quotes too.

The nightmare that is quotes

I personally hate quotes. I have had tons of advice from people about using quotes on Twitter. The general messaqge is simple. If you use quotes, people will read your stuff.

This, in my humble opinion, is nonsense.

I think I have used a quote once in the time I have been on Twitter. This has done me no harm. Much better to give your followers stuff that you have thought about, or items of news and industry specific pieces that you know that they will like.

So forget the quotes. They don’t work. Not for me anyway. I read them and I might think ‘that’s nice’. But I never think I want to get to know the Tweeter more. That never happens.

I want to know Tweeters more if they say somethig that is useful, funny, or thought provoking.

So, to sum up…

Tweet:

• industry specific stuff
• funny stuff that you have come up with (as in your own take on news etc.)
• good advice that you have found or you have come up with

That is more than enough to be getting on with. In fact, if you just Tweeted the above, you’d start getting followers soon enough.

Remember, no cookies, or quotes.

And definitely no quotes about cookies.

Until next time, work smart.

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