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MLM Woman Online This free monthly newsletter is made possible by our advertisers and customers. We thank them for their support! From the Desk of the Editor Welcome to the last issue of MLM Woman in the 20th century. I just had to say that . . . (Grin)! As we are poised on the brink of a new century, it is very exciting to think about all the changes that are in store for us in the new millennium. We definitely have lots of opportunities and challenges ahead. But one thing is certain, we are all in for a really cool ride! Playing the Thank You Game . . . To celebrate the spirit of the holidays, I invite all of you to join me in playing the "Thank You" game during the month of December. The object of the game is to thank or acknowledge those people in your life that often get overlooked. For example, you can bring a box of cookies for the postal workers who staff the windows at your local post office (Boy will they be surprised!) Get a cup of coffee and a donut for a Salvation Army bell ringer. Give an extra tip to your favorite waiter or waitress. Invite someone to your holiday dinner who is far from home. Send a thank you note to someone. You get the idea. The main thing is to be creative and have fun. Send me an e-mail at regent@west.net and let me know how you "played" the game this month. Happy Holidays to All! Linda Locke, Editor MLM Woman P.S. Don't forget to get your Free copy of my new MLM Digest eBook -- Click Here to download it. Growing Your People Farm By Wanda Loskot Have you ever grown tomatoes? Or flowers? Even if you haven't, I'm sure that you have some idea what gardening is all about. Take tomatoes. You wouldn't expect to plant one day then harvest a perfectly ripe tomato the next morning. Or even in two weeks. Chances are you are perfectly aware that you would need to spend more time to cultivate your tomatoes. You know because you read about it or you watched your parents grow tomatoes, or your friends talked about it. Or maybe you even saw it on the Discovery Channel. In any case, knowing what to expect - you would plan in advance. Starting with a decision as to what variety of tomatoes you'd like to grow. The large and juicy ones, or the small berry types. Or any other type in between. Then you would go to your local gardening center to buy seedlings. Or maybe you would order them from a catalog. Later you would plant your tomatoes in a carefully chosen, sunny part of the garden and water generously. Two weeks would pass and you'd see no tomatoes. Would you quit? I don't think so - you would know that it takes time. How would you know? Because you would follow in the steps of those who have grown tomatoes successfully. You would water, weed out, and fertilize. You would support the fragile plants with stakes, or special tomato cages. You would be quite patient for two, three, maybe even four months before planning to harvest your crop. All of this applies to growing your relationships as well. I call it growing your people farm. Here are a few tips that will help you become successful in the people growing business: - Take inventory. You cannot grow a garden successfully if you don't even know what is there. Create a database of your contacts and keep it current. - Weed-out. Let's face it. Not everyone in your address book is a contact worth cultivation. Learn to recognize the beautiful flower that will bloom in the future and the weed. - Allocate funds. Just keeping in touch with people will cost you - money, stamps, notes, long distance phone calls, even small gifts. Building business through referrals is definitely less expensive than advertising, but it still requires some investments. Remember: even tomatoes need fertilizer. - Develop a plan of action. Just like a good farmer plans in advance when to plant, when to cultivate and when to finally expect a harvest - you should develop your own plan (I call it People Farm Almanac). It will prevent you from giving up too easily. The bottom line: don't expect your relationships with people to mature faster and with less effort than tomatoes! About the Author: SUCCESS CONNECTION - Professional coaching by Wanda Loskot. Want more happiness, fun and money in your business? Ready to make more than "just a living" and get paid what you are really worth while doing what you LOVE? - experience http://loska.com. Are you tired of prospecting, cold calling, handling objections? Read "Referrals Unlimited" newsletter@loska.com Targeted Traffic For Pennies By Jim Daniels What follows is a proven, step by step formula for driving highly targeted traffic to any website; for pennies. Recently, I've been sampling new promotions methods to drive fresh traffic to my website. I had been reading quite a bit about goto.com and how other webmasters had been getting great results with it, so I decided to give it a try. In a nutshell, goto.com is a "pay for rank" search engine. It allows website owners to bid on keywords related to their site. When users search on any term at goto.com they are presented with a list of sites, with the highest bidders appearing closest to the top. Based on my own experience, this site not only offers a great way to find things on the web, it offers a very inexpensive way to generate targeted traffic to any site. By following the details of my own goto advertising campaign, you should be able to emulate the excellent results I've had. Just a few weeks into my campaign, I am now generating between 85 and 100 visitors each day from goto.com. My costs are averaging about 4 bucks a day. As I continue to tweak my advertising (I'll teach you how) I expect my numbers to double and possibly triple. But I'll get to that in a minute. Let's take things a step at a time... Step 1: Open your own GoTo account. The first step is to visit www.goto.com and open an account. There is a minimum investment of $25 to become a goto advertiser. The way it works is simple... As an advertiser at goto.com, you bid on search terms relevant to your site. You have complete control over how much you pay on a per-click basis on each of those search terms. The higher your "bid," on each search term, the higher in the search results your site will appear. As GoTo proudly states, "It's targeted, cost-per-click advertising and you set the cost per click!" Step 2: Decide how much a visitor is worth to you. You can do this by checking your current website stats. Add up your average number of monthly visitors and determine what percentage of them actually go on to become a customer. This can be tricky but it is an important step. Depending upon the average cost of your products or services, you should be able to come up with a ballpark figure as to what each visitor is worth. Example: If I'm converting one sale from every 100 visitors and my average sale is $100, then each visitor is worth about a buck. (Keep in mind, this does not take into account the lifetime value of a site visitor or customer.) Once you have an idea of how much each visitor is worth to you, write it down. You will use this number as a "cap" on your bids. More on this later. Step 3: Start a file on your computer with keywords pertaining to your site. Using any word processor, start typing anything and everything you can think of that pertains to your site. If you are selling pet supplies your list would look something like this... dog cat kitten dog bone collar dog food pet pet supply (Don't worry about pluralizing all your words. GoTo's Search Pluralization feature analyzes your keywords and does this for you automatically.) Now before you tackle this step, I must inform you that this can be the most time-consuming part of your goto campaign. Why? Well, in order to really get the most from your campaign you'll be making a list of at least 1000 keywords, or search terms. That's right, I said one thousand. You don't "need" that many to get started with goto, but I tried bidding on a limited number of keywords and the results were nowhere near the cost- effectiveness of using a large list. A large list allows you to bid as low as a penny on 90% of your keywords. Even if 10% of them get a single click each day, you're generating 100 visitors right there. Goto offers a "suggested search terms tool" to help you:   http://inventory.go2.com/inventory/searchInventory.mp When you type in a word there, you get a list of related search terms that were searched on last month at goto.com. I found their suggestion tool helpful, although it can still take quite a bit of time to compile a large list with it. Actually, I must admit I cheated on generating my own keyword list... As a registered member of The Challenge, I have access to a keyword generation script that generated literally 1200 terms for me in a few minutes. This tool saved me days of thinking and typing and quite frankly is worth the price of admission to the private site. (Especially if you are planning a goto campaign.) Step 4: Write a title and description to go along with your keywords. When you place your bids at goto.com you will also be asked for the title of the URL you are submitting and a short description. It is important to write something brief, yet eye-catching. Remember, the main objective is to get people to click. Use of the words "free" and "you" can be very useful here. Stick to the tried and true classified advertising axioms but make an effort to stand out from the crowd. A good idea is to write something YOU would click on. You may want to write two or three of these titles and descriptions, especially if you plan to bid on keywords that cannot be directed to the exact same URL at your site. Ex: One of my bids was on the keywords "free downloads" so I wrote a separate title and description for the software area of my site, http://bizweb2000.com/software.htm and submitted that specific URL. You can save time if you can write a description that covers your entire site and then link all your bids to your main URL. Although your traffic may not be as targeted when you do this, it is less time consuming than trying to break your site into specific areas. It all depends on your individual site and how much time you have to spend. (Remember, you can always adjust links once your account is online and drawing traffic.) Step 5: Place your bids. Okay, you have a nice long list of keywords, along with titles and descriptions. Now it's time to get your bids in! You do this at goto's DirecTraffic Center. This is their account management tool, where you can add, modify, or delete your search listings, 24 hours/day, 7 days/week. You can also check your account balance, add money to your GoTo account, change your bids in real-time and view your activity reports. Once you've opened an account you just click https://secure.goto.com/s/dtc/center/ to log in. As far as actually placing your bids, there are basically two methods to utilize --manually (by hand) or by using the Excel spreadsheet they offer. This is a no-brainer. Go for the faster and more accurate spreadsheet option. It allows you to complete one form and email it to chgorder@goto.com for their review. Microsoft's Excel is part of the Office Suite and many PC users have it, even though they may never use it. Although I had never opened Microsoft's Excel program before, I was able to learn enough in about a half hour to get me through. Basic skills like repeating text and drag and drop of my keyword list were simple enough to figure out. Within an hour of downloading the spreadsheet they offer, I had a completed form ready with over 1200 keyword bids. An important topic to touch on here is the pricing of your bids. I suggest you price all your bids a one cent. (0.01) Since you will undoubtedly be submitting some keywords that are not currently being bid on at goto, why pay more per click than you have to. A penny bid will put you at the top on these keywords! Once your spreadsheet has been accepted and put online, you can then start adjusting for more traffic. (More on this in the next step.) Note: Make sure your spreadsheet does not contain off-topic keywords. Submissions are spot-checked and routinely refused if they contain keywords unrelated to your site. Step 6: Adjust your bids. This is where knowing what a click is worth to you comes into play. At Goto.com's DirecTraffic Center you can now adjust your bids in real-time. This area shows you your current ranking on each of the terms you've bid on and also tells you how much you need to bid to get to the #1 spot. What a tool! While I don't recommend you go for number one with every bid I do recommend you try for a top 50 spot. As of the writing of this, each page returned on goto searches returns 40 sites. Getting your keywords on the first page or even the very top of the second can generate traffic. What has been working for me is this: As I go through my bids I adjust only the ones that I feel are highly likely to get searched on. If I can squeeze into the top ten on any of these by adding a few cents to the bid, I do it. Then, I make sure that the real common and super-busy keywords appear at least in the top 50. Example: The word "business" was very popular and my penny bid had me at #153. I had received zero hits from that low position. So I bid just enough to move it up to the top 50 spot and bingo - six hits the next day. While you may be thinking that six hits is nothing, remember that I'm bidding on 1200 keywords. I've had time to adjust about 35% of them so far and I'm up to 100 visitors a day from goto.com. That's over 3000 visitors a month and I'm far from done. As I mentioned, knowing what a click is worth to you comes in handy here. If each visitor to your site is worth say, .65, then set that as your limit, or cap. Bid up to that amount on any keyword, but not over it. This will ensure that your campaign remains profitable. As you make adjustments to your bids, you should visit the "view stats" area of the DirecTraffic Center frequently. Checking your stats at least once each week will allow you to keep on top of your adjustments and maximize your traffic. That's it! An effective new traffic source for your site! In closing... While I'm not much for spending money on advertising, this new method is cheap and effective. Anytime you can get targeted traffic to your site for pennies, you need to take action. I've managed to get some excellent results with goto.com, even with the huge amount of competition in my industry. For other webmasters who are focused on less crowded niches, goto.com could be a goldmine of targeted business. Take this lesson plan and Goto it! Article by Jim Daniels of JDD Publishing. Jim's site has helped 1000's of regular folks profit online. Check out their FREE "how-to" cybermarketing assistance, free software, business opportunities, manuals, web services and more! Real money is being made on the net -- get in on it at: http://bizweb2000.com - Subscribe to their FREE, weekly BizWeb E-Gazette: freegazette@bizweb2000.com Are You Looking for the MLM Fairy Godmother? By Frances Anna Smith, Australia When I was a little girl, I loved Fairy stories. The notion that one day a Fairy Godmother could come along and solve all my problems then transport me to the fairy castle to live happily ever after with Prince Charming held great appeal! Then I grew up. I realised that Fairy Godmothers don't really exist. However, looking around the internet, it seems that the approach taken by many enetrepreneurs when trying to recruit you into their "business" is to fool you that Fairy Godmothers do exist. You know the kind of thing: "I will build your downline for you!! Solve the problem of how to find your people...etc. etc.." Now come on... The Old-Fashioned scams tried to sell you the Sydney Harbour Bridge! :) The modern scam tries to sell you the dream of Financial Freedom with no work, no money and no time. They assume several things: 1. You are basically lazy. In reality we all have a lower self. This is what these rip-offs appeal to. But in the cold hard light of day we know in our hearts that the only way to reach our goals is to work for them - online and offline. Building a downline is the pivotal point of your business. This is where you build the rock-solid foundation of relationships and long-term loyalty. And let's face it.............. Why would you want a downline of people who don't want to make an effort? The fact is that these "downline clubs" don't work long-term. Why?? Because they attract the person who wants to put in no effort. What does this mean to your business? Take a look at successful people out there. You'll find they have been disciplined, motivated and hard working. Things like ethics, morals, values and honesty count. It is not the lower self or the lazy person who wants to expend no effort that achieves these things. Nor is it the Fairy Godmother. 2. They appeal to the "Lottery" mentality. Sure, it would be great to win a million dollars. Who wouldn't like that to happen? Interesting thing to note here though - of those people who win a lottery, 99% of them are either flat broke or worse off within 4 years. Why?? Because they didn't earn their money. They have not developed the attitudes and personal growth crucial to lasting success. This is the true payoff in any journey to Wealth and success . Get Rich Quick schemes DO work !!! - for the people who devise them and exploit the dreams and desires of the un-educated and unwary. The serious business builder is wary of the seductive appeal to the child in all of us who still hopes that Fairy Godmothers exist!! So next time you open your email and see: "I will build your downline for you - Set up a web-page just like this one and wait for the cheques to roll in"........ take a deep breath, remember that you are intelligent, caring and rational, press DELETE !!!! Then go on to success with a fair, ethical and sensible company. The good news is that they are out there too ;-). About the Author: Frances Anna Smith is a dedicated professional networker who has achieved Diamond Status in her chosen company. She is committed to providing help to mlmers from all companies and is a redistributor of MLMTruth, written by 15 year veteran Michael Klimek. You can subscribe free at MLMTruthFrances-subscribe@listbot.com or contact her direct at francesannasmith@bigpond.com.au   Who Are You?   By Kevin Nunley Most of us are really several different people. For example, if you were to fly to Paris for a few days next week, you would have quite a story to tell when you returned home. No doubt you would tell your best friend a different version of your story than you would tell your elderly mother. Your child might hear an even different version of your story. It's not that you're being dishonest, you simply emphasize different parts of your experience when you talk with different people. Your marketing can do the same thing. Tailor your story of who you are and what you sell to fit the different kinds of audiences you market to. As promotion expert Raleigh Pinskey says, if Joseph had a coat of many colors, so can you. In the course of an evening, watch the different ways car manufacturers position the same automobile. One commercial will show the car as the at-home Mom's best friend. Another will depict the car as a classy drive to work. A third commercial can interest younger buyers in how fun it is to drive the car. Want to know the most powerful e-zine promotion strategy available? See http://DrNunley.com/. Click the picture of a stack of dollars. (And we'll bet your competitors aren't using this!) Go back to the top of the page Back to the MLMWoman Newsletter Index We want your feedback! Send e-mail comments to Linda at: regent@west.net Copyright 1999, Regent Press http://www.mlmwoman.com