Working From Home Getting A Tan!

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This week, Londoners have enjoyed basking in brilliant sunshine and, as if overnight, my garden has become a jungle, requiring a skilfully wielded machèté to traverse it to the far end!

In the time it takes to blink, the lawn (using the term in its broadest sense) is knee-high, and new foliage is sprouting all around. Blossoms are readying themselves to burst, and I’m especially thrilled that my Magnolia is smothered in buds, as it didn’t flower last Summer.

A smattering of bluebells sprung up this year, but they’re now shrugging off their bright petals to reveal seed pods, which will soon drop, ensuring a more abundant display next Spring.

New life is profoundly inspiring, and a comforting reminder that every living entity renews itself, and that everything has its time.

Yesterday afternoon, I enjoyed a thorough physical workout, attempting to tame the backyard jungle, and today my arms, shoulders, back and legs all attest to how much I am in need of ‘away from the computer’ activities!

I’d just started to cut the grass, when it occurred to me to take a photo - my apologies for the quality.

[Click image to view enlargement.]

Below is a shot of the garden last Summer, after I’d started to knock it into shape.

[Click image to view enlargement.]

There was a spell yesterday when I took a break from hacking down the grass and pulling up weeds, and I sat in the dappled sunlight, listening to the melodic birdsong, and contemplating whatever came into my mind.

Then I realised how privileged I was to be seated in the sun, smelling the fresh cut grass and glimpsing the tiny frogs leaping about their newly-disturbed world.

I’m privileged to be working from home building my own online business. Internet marketing offers many options for making money online, however, my recent experience with blogging has taught me that many people start a blog thinking that they’ll be making money (a full-time living) by blogging alone — this is rare. Making money online with one blog alone is very rare.

Diversify. Your blog can be used as an internet marketing tool to help grow a mailing list, by offering a subscription to a newsletter, updates, or special offers. But don’t immediately start promoting products to your list, first you must gain people’s trust and respect — you have to convince your readers that they can rely on your opinion and recommendation.

They say that an internet marketer, actively promoting to his or her list, earns a minimum of $1 per month for each name on it. That’s why the internet marketing gurus with multiple lists of 50,000 plus are millionaires!

When you have established a reputation, you can email the occasional promotion — your own product, or as an affiliate marketer you could promote other people’s. But be careful. This is an area that’s been highly abused, and I don’t hold with daily mailings, promoting each and every ‘latest and greatest’.

Internet marketers practising this type of email vomit-a-thon in my Inbox don’t retain my name on their list for long. A surprising number do send too many mailings, which makes me wonder if they are making good sales, because people succumb to the pressure. I’d prefer not be making an income by annoying the contacts on my list, and I’d rather retain some dignity, too.

Recommend products that you have purchased, and genuinely consider to be quality and worth the bucks. Once again, I soon unsubscribe when I’m frequently sent recommendations for products from the marketer’s ‘good friend’ who has just launched some new something that he thinks I shouldn’t be without. Phoney, baloney.

Diversify. Develop your own product to promote or, as an affiliate marketer, you can save yourself a whole heap of effort, and earn generous commission, promoting other people’s products.

So many internet marketing strategies can be managed via auto-responders and, once set up, they require the minimum of maintenance. You could be making more money online by doing the same amount of work!

Step back from your blog, view the bigger picture, and apply leverage.

Reward Rebel

Popularity: 44% [?]

Don’t Throw In The Towel!

As I often emphasise, blogging isn’t my ‘thing’, it’s part of my internet marketing ‘thing’ – a requirement of the modern online business.

During the past few weeks, I’ve been heavily involved in developing new projects, and haven’t been as active with Entrecard as I had previously been. However, during the past few days I have tried to allocate some time again to networking with the Entrecard community, as it’s been a good friend to this site.

To shake things up a little, I decided to open my Inbox and drop my card on blogs which had visited me way, way back when, but I was in for a surprise.

Within just a couple of days I have found myself time and again landing on a blog that hasn’t posted for anytime between several weeks and a few months.

When I first started building an online business, including blogs, I read about the high proportion of drop-outs after the initial 3-6 months. This is the first ‘wave’ of quitters I’ve personally witnessed, and it’s disappointing.

Did they just run out of things to say? Were they expecting to earn bucketsful of cash overnight? Have you tried making money online in the past and given up?

I’ve felt fed-up with it all sometimes, particularly the endless series of new technologies to get to grips with. I don’t have the residual funds to outsource, so when something needs doing, it’s me doing it, or it doesn’t get done!

I had to teach myself everything, and I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished so far, both in new skills and abilities, and the progress of my online business.

If you find yourself feeling like giving up, try to remember how you felt about making money online – whether via blogging or broader internet marketing techniques — back when you first became interested.

Remember your initial enthusiasm, and the plans you had for your life, which you felt an online business could bring to fruition.

Pick yourself up, dust yourself down, and start all over again. Keeping on, keeping on is the only way you’re going to succeed!

Reward Rebel

Popularity: 33% [?]

4 Day Build-A-Biz Challenge ~ Don’t Miss A Valuable Opportunity

I want to remind you not to miss Derek Gehl’s 4 Day Build-a-Biz Challenge - the first video is released on Monday, 21st April, to qualify for free access, sign-up in advance at 4 Day Build-a-Biz Challenge.

Click the image to link to opt-in form

Derek Gehl, CEO of the highly successful Internet Marketing Center is going to build a fully functioning internet business ~ from scratch ~ in only 4 days, and he’s filming it ‘live’!

I don’t earn anything from you signing-up — I simply believe that if you’re involved in internet marketing, this is a valuable opportunity.

Reward Rebel

Popularity: 25% [?]

Job Crusher

Job Crusher was launched in the autumn of 2007 by Eric Louviere and Mike Filsaime. It is an online internet marketing mentoring program, and back then it had a great deal of promise, but not enough to hold my interest beyond a couple of months.

This week I received an invitation to resubscribe and, for $67 a month, I figured ‘why not’?

Now I’m working from home and gradually making money online, the thing I need to learn is to avoid the mistakes, replicate the successes, and ensure a consistent income for the future. I believe Job Crusher will help me succeed.

I’ve just logged-in for the (second) first time and am very excited about the array of videos and audio training modules, plus forums and skills-sharing. There’s a lot of content and I’m looking forward to exploring it all!

I’ll let you know how it goes, and I hope to share with you some of my new-found knowledge.

Reward Rebel

Popularity: 18% [?]

Spring Surprise

Thought it was a bit nippy this morning, and got a BIG surprise when I peeked out of the window.

Click picture to ENLARGE.

Spring, my arse! But ain’t it pretty? This is something I love about internet marketing and working from home, the fact you can take a break and go have a snowball fight if you feel like it!

Reward Rebel

Popularity: 22% [?]

How To Add A Favicon

These are the steps I took to create a favicon (pronounced fav-eye-con) and install it on my blog and web pages.

1. You’ll need an image (jpeg, gif, bmp – the usual graphic formats) that will be converted into icon format. It doesn’t need to be a particular size, but it does need to be square. Favicons are usually sized 16 x 16 pixels or 32 x 32 pixels.

2. As the favicon covers a very small area, the image must be clearly defined, detail will not translate well to the finished icon.

3. To convert the image to icon format, I went to the first site I fancied from the results of a Google search on keywords ‘favicon, free’ – named unsurprisingly Free Favicon.

If you don’t already have an image file you wish to use, you’re sure to find something suitable at this or a similar website.

4. Follow Free Favicon’s simple instructions – as you can see below, it’s all very straightforward. Click Browse, select the image file you want to convert and, hey presto, it’s ready to download. (There is also the option of creating a favicon that includes scrolling text.)

5. The downloaded folder is zipped and contains several files, but you just need to extract the one called favicon.ico and upload it to the root folder of the website you wish to display it on.

6. Open your blog’s mainindex.php (or if working with html, the appropriate web page) and insert the code underlined in red after <head> and before </head> (as illustrated below). Enter the URL of the favicon.ico you uploaded to the root directory (highlighted in yellow).

7. Save the amended file and open the appropriate web page to view its new accessory! The favicon should be visible in the browser tab and address window. If it’s not visible, refresh the page.

IMPORTANT TIP: Before you start altering code on your mainindex.php I’d strongly recommend backing up. A simple typo in the code can cause a serious headache.

Just copy and paste it into a Notepad file and SAVE IT.

There you go, that’s all there is to it. I’m no technical whizzkid, and I found it straightforward — once I’d figured out what I was supposed to do and where I was supposed to do it!

Now I have to refine my skills with Photoshop, and create my own minor masterpiece of a favicon!

Reward Rebel

Popularity: 21% [?]

Online Business Advertising On Entrecard

Making money online isn’t easy if you don’t have complete control over all the elements that comprise your online business.

Entrecard provides an excellent free service, which can really kick-start a new blog, and revitalise one that’s a bit wilted. Also, they listen to what their customers want from them and, for the most part, provide it. Entrecard has embarked upon an ongoing program of upgrades to the service and the website, and understandably is developing into a very successful online business… a real success story.

I haven’t advertised Reward Rebel on other websites, other than via Entrecard, but does anyone else find organising their Entrecard advertising as difficult as I do?

I try, really I do, but because of the way advertising scheduling is set up on Entrecard, I quite frequently find that I have too many ads being displayed one day, and not enough on another. Hopefully, every blog featured enjoys satisfactory returns from their advertisement, but some will be more satisfied than others.

Of course, I’d prefer not to dissuade prospective advertisers from promoting their website on Reward Rebel, so for absolute honesty, here’s a screenshot of the most recent incoming Entrecard dropping activity on Reward Rebel.

And a shot of Reward Rebel’s Alexa ranking statistics graph showing its rise in traffic over the past few months — currently, it ranks at 89,142, although the past week has averaged at 54,688, which is very encouraging.

I’m not so naive that I expect this level of traffic to continue, should I cease my activities on Entrecard, however, I am happy to have accumulated additional readers, as well as friends, whilst exploring Entrecard’s community.

Recently, a website with a very high profile on Entrecard placed an ad on Reward Rebel at a cost around 300 credits. When it had completed its scheduled run, the owner contacted me to express his delight at the 193 click thrus his site had received, and submitted a second ad at a cost of over 300 credits.

Can you guess what happened? Of course, you can. Yep, the second, more expensive, ad generated an ROI of only 30 hits! Why the huge disparity between the ROI on Ad 1 and Ad 2? Erratic scheduling of Reward Rebel’s own advertising, and too many disappointing returns.

When we submit an ad for approval, Entrecard provides a guide to how long it should be before it’s displayed. However, it’s rather a vague guide, because it doesn’t take into account how long it may be before the request is approved, or how many requests there may be awaiting approval.

How can Entrecard and its clients develop a system of scheduling advertisements that allows the advertiser to deploy them accurately?

I’m no whizz at figuring out this kind of logistical exercise, and so I don’t have a solution to offer, but I’m interested to hear your own experiences and ideas for improvement.

On the other hand, if I’m the only Entrecarder experiencing this advertising stats roller-coaster, perhaps you could let me know and I’ll shut up!

I’m in the process of contacting site owners who have recently advertised with me, to try to ascertain the true value of advertising on Reward Rebel. I’m considering adding a number of independent advertisement spots to the site, and need to gauge how much to charge.

Making money online wasn’t an original objective of this blog, however, it’s now enjoying enough traffic to warrant its inclusion as an earner in my online business empire-in-the-making!

When I have collected the data regarding Reward Rebel’s ROI, I’ll most likely be posting a follow-up on Entrecard Advertising.

In the meantime, how do you organise yours?

Reward Rebel

Popularity: 27% [?]