Gambling V Paid Advertising, Are They One And The Same Thing?

Not sure if you read my last Blog Post about the joys of being away from home or not, but just had an interesting twist to the fact that I am not at home, and thought I would visit the local hotel for a couple of quiet afternoon beers.   Whilst there, I met a couple of nice blokes who wanted to share their thoughts on the current NZ v Australia cricket test that was being played live on TV, tell me what they did for a living, and generally being friendly to the holiday-maker in their home town.

I also noticed they all seemed to be having the odd wager on the horse and greyhound racing that was also being broadcast live, so being someone who likes the odd dabble on the races, decided to have a go myself.   Now I don’t follow the horses or greyhounds in any shape of fashion, I just had a couple of bets on whatever the commentators thought would be a good bet, and has some success, but more losses than wins!!

When I got back to my caravan I thought to myself, ‘what is the difference between taking a punt on the horses and taking a punt on advertising my internet marketing web sites’?  Both are ‘risk and reward’, generally we are spending money on the blind,  and of course hope for a favourable result.  But whose favour are the odds weighed in?

At the end of the day, gambling is gambling, and there are so many factors to take into consideration before placing a wager, many of which are far out of our control.  But advertising and promoting our online interests is a little different.  Sure, it is a gamble whether anyone will read our adverts, or even click on a link, let alone purchase something from that link.  But as Internet or Affiliate Marketers, we can stack the odds in our favour

We can research our markets, study trends, follow proven sales or marketing methods, and invest our money accordingly.  We are in far more control than a trainer and a jockey who decide when they want to win and when they don’t.  Think about that for a moment!   The racing industry is known to be full of tactics, some good and some not so good.  For example, have you ever heard that greyhound trainers sometimes fill their dogs up with so much water and food before a race ‘they don’t want to win’, the poor dog never stands a chance. Why do they do that?   Because the next time they race the odds increase due to their poor last performance, but this time they are ready.  They don’t feed their dogs up next time, and this makes the dogs want to catch the ‘bunny’ so much more, because they are hungry.

Get the picture?  The odds in any form of racing are stacked against you, due to all the ‘outside’ influences that you don’t see or know about.  But the Internet Marketing arena is a totally different ball game.  You can research your markets, learn (admittedly over time) which are the best paid advertisers to use, document your success (and failures), and learn from those results.  This puts the odds firmly back in your favour, you can invest your money a lot more confidently, and I am sure you will receive a much more higher return on investment (ROI).

So the gist of my post today?  I should have stayed in the caravan and invested my money promoting my web sites, than wasting it on a few horses and greyhounds that I had absolutely no information about!!

But hey, I am on a short holiday break, so why not!!  On a luckier day, I might have one big!!

Which is what we all hope for with our internet and affiliate marketing efforts.

Take care.  Until my next post….

Brian Rooney,

Succeed With Brian

http://www.onlineprofitswithbrianrooney.com

http://www.diamondsfi.com

http://www.succeedwithbrian.weebly.com

Therapeutic and Earning At The Same Time!!

I know I spend far too much time at my desk at home messing around with all my internet marketing businesses, but obviously time spent is money in the bank, so I certainly don’t mind the effort.   But at the moment my office is totally different, I am lucky enough to be out of town for a few days and enjoying relaxing in my caravan, something I should do much more often.  The funny thing is though, my laptop is never far away and never turned off, the lure of another customer is never far from my mind!!

But the difference is the therapeutic nature of sitting outside in the sun, listening to the birds chirping, watching ducks waddle by my caravan, hearing children playing and adults chatting.   Compared to my office at home, this is bliss.   Why don’t I do this more often, I hear myself say?   I am still doing my internet stuff, some money is still trickling in just the same as if I was at home, and I am still getting through the same workload as if I was sitting at my desk.

But the real joy of it all, is that at the end of each day, once I have processed all my data, done some advertising, written a blog post, and checked on my sales from the previous day, is that I don’t actually feel like I have even been working.   This has to be the answer to working at home, but not even being there.  This is so relaxing.  I want to do this permanently, but alas the sales aren’t quite where they should be for me to afford to do that yet unfortunately!!

But who cares, at least I have the enjoyment of being able to get out of the rat race and find some peace and solitude away from the masses, and still get to do what I absolutely love – Internet Marketing.   I was thinking last night as I lay in bed listening to all the various wildlife at play outside, about how far I have come with my online presence in the past 5 years, and more so how far I have leapt in the last 10-12 months.

Like all newbie internet or affiliate marketers, when I first started I struggled to understand what I was really supposed to be doing, or even know where to start.  Luckily though I am not a quitter, and now with all the scams and fake get-rich-quick schemes safely behind me, I am really getting my feet under the table.   And loving it!!   I guess with all failures comes success, if you are persistent enough, and I have been through all the rough times and wasted a lot of money getting to the stage I am at right now.  With experience comes wisdom, and one certainly learns how to recognise all the scams and pitfalls around the internet marketing arena, especially after a few years of trial and error.

I am lucky enough to have persevered and come out the other side.  I have found the programs that will pay me like clockwork every month, I have also filtered through the many advertising sites and found the ones that work for me.  I have even written an e-Book about one of the programs I am an affiliate of (Strong Future International), and am in a position of experience within that program.  As a Team Leader I coach and mentor those in my downline (nearly 2000 odd), much of it for free.  This is so rewarding, not only in the monetary sense, but in the feeling of helping others who are struggling the same as me when I first started.

Tomorrow I will release to them an amazing new advertising platform I came across and joined a few days back, and already has earned me well over $100, all for about a total of 10 minutes work!!  This is the stuff I love, finding something new that works and then passing it onto my team, so they succeed also.   Yes of course there are commissions for me when I give them the link, but hey, I am an internet marketer after all, that is how I get paid.   But so will they, as soon as they see the benefits of what I introduce them to (and I always test these programs before I off-load), they will send to their downlines and recoup their original outlay almost immediately.

But getting back to my main reason for this post, I am doing all of this from the comfort of a camping chair, outside my caravan, in the sun, and very soon also with a beer in my hand!!  Tough gig, I know….

So if you need to escape the humdrum of sitting in your office or being wall-bound wherever you may be, I thoroughly recommend trying something like I am experiencing right now, even if it is in a tent or a motel with a view, anything that is different.   You will be amazed at how your mind thought process changes, you will feel so relaxed, and if you are like me, you will still have put in a full days work without even realising it!!

So don’t procrastinate, just do it.   I am going home soon, but I am planning my next ‘therapeutic getaway’ already.   We owe it to ourselves!!

Take care, until next time.  Cheers!!

Brian Rooney,

Succeed with Brian

http://www.onlineprofitswithbrianrooney.com

http://www.diamondSFI.com

http://www.succeedwithbrian.weebly.com

Attitude versus Team Work

I remember a couple of years ago when I was in a training session for a new job I had just started at the time, which was for a large company with over 700 employees, and the words that the trainer offered in his opening speech.   We had a week of training ahead of us, all of which he said he was more than capable of delivering and to the required level, but the one thing he couldn’t train was attitude.   In other words, if you had come into the training room with the wrong attitude then there wasn’t much he could do, and therefore the job probably wasn’t the right one to be undertaking as you simply wouldn’t be a good fit for the team he was empowered to put together.

I have given this much thought, especially since becoming a member of SFI (Strong Future International), and his words are so true when you apply them to what we are all trying to achieve with this program, ie Team Work.   It is very easy in SFI to build large numbers in our down-line, you can simply buy them if you wish, but it is the quality of those affiliates and the team work within that is actually what makes it work.   If we acquire affiliates, by whatever means, who simply don’t have the right attitude (and thus commitment), then we are setting ourselves up to fail, which obviously none of us want to do.   So how do we gauge attitude, and are we able to change that attitude to gear new affiliates to the SFI way of thinking?

Gauging it is very easy, simply check the VP Ledger of each affiliate in your down-line (or your Genealogy Report) and see how often they are signing into the SFI web site, and how many VersaPoints they are earning.  The committed affiliates, ie those with the right attitude, will be signing in nearly every single day and will be amassing many VersaPoints for the various tasks they have completed.   They are the ones that will go on to build good down-lines (which will obviously increase your earnings also), these are the go-getters, the ones who have committed themselves, those that want to make SFI their business, and therefore have the right attitude.   Conversely, those that have only logged on a couple of times, if at all, and have little or no VersaPoints, will be the ones with the wrong attitude, probably not geared to being part of a team, these are the affiliates that will require some work.

So can we change that attitude, can we convince these new affiliates that just visiting the site once or twice a month simply isn’t enough to make their involvement in SFI a viable proposition (for them or for their Sponsor or Co-Sponsors)?    The answer is probably not, but as Team Leaders it is our role to at least try.   I always greet my new affiliates when they join and offer them words of encouragement,  together with a few tips to getting started.   I then send another email after a few weeks trying to encourage them more, especially if I notice they aren’t progressing as good as they should be, but after that, in my opinion they are probably a lost cause.  Why, because if they have read all the masses of information provided to them in the first 30 days (via LaunchPad emails, etc), if they have received and read my initial emails of encouragement, if they have still not realised the potential of this powerful affiliate platform, then they probably never will.  Now I understand that because SFI is free to join there will always be a huge number of ‘tyre-kickers’, those that have simply joined to see what it is all about, but then decide it is either not for them or can’t be bothered.  I have a large number of affiliates in my down-line whom I am sure fit under one of those categories, and that must be expected with a free site, but I still at least try to encourage them in the hope they realise what is actually on offer, they deserve that level of commitment and encouragement simply because they took the time to enrol, for whatever reason.   I offer them help through generic emails, through my personal web site (Succeed with Brian) and also my SFI-based Facebook Page, and for me, I think that is about all I can do.  If they haven’t picked up on the potential of SFI amongst all these forms of advice and encouragement, then I know I am simply wasting my time (which is money) pursuing any further.

I am sure all of us involved in SFI realise that the whole system revolves around team work, we must all build our teams and encourage and mentor those within our teams to perform, otherwise SFI simply won’t work as effectively as it should.   And if we are lucky enough to have those within our teams with the right attitude, whether they had that attitude from the start or were persuaded by our actions, then we are certainly on the road to success.

So with the equation, Attitude versus Team Work, in my opinion they go hand-in-hand, but it has to be the Right Attitude.

I would love to receive your thoughts on this subject…..

Brian Rooney,

Succeed with Brian

http://www.succeedwithbrian.weebly.com