Sen Ze’s Business In Your Pajamas! Blog

When you’re a one-person Entrepreneur (which you would want to be, if you can, especially when you’re starting off), you would want to minimize your expenses and maximize your profits as much as you can.

I’ve managed in mega corporations with hundreds of people on its payroll working in huge business premises. And I’ve been on my own as a one-person Entrepreneur (where you basically take care of everything on your own).

There are advantages and disadvantages to both - but if you’re not planning on working for an organization any time soon, you really have only one choice.

As a one-person Entrepreneur, you’ll want a business model that doesn’t require a huge capital outlay, or any employees. You can outsource some parts of your work which can be on an ad-hoc basis (like doing up your accounts, for example), but by and large, you’re in charge of everything, and you’ll be doing all of them.

Internet Businesses appeal to individuals without a huge appetite for risks since a lot of leverage can be achieved with a computer, software and the Internet. Many of your tasks that you have to do to run your business can also be “delegated” or assigned to specialized software, like following up with your Prospects, for example.

Not only that, if done properly, Internet Businesses can also bring in HUGE returns which make the costs of running them quite laughable by comparison with other types of businesses.

Well and good - but what Internet Business should you start?

My recommendation is to sell products on the Internet, as a Merchant, not as an Affiliate for other Merchants.

Yes, even when you’re starting off, with absolutely no experience.

For it is only when you’re a Merchant that you can spot good Merchants that you can be an Affiliate for.

In other words, if you don’t know what’s involved in selling - how do you know the Merchant you’re an Affiliate for knows what he’s doing? You’ll want to maximize your efforts in referring Prospects to the Merchants so that you have the highest possible chances of success in earning your commissions.

The other reason is that once you’re a successful Merchant, other Merchants will be flocking to you to offer you their Affiliate or Joint Venture opportunity so you don’t really have to seek every single Merchant out to partake in their Affiliate Program (unless you wish to, of course).

Thus by becoming a Merchant, you’re really making yourself both a Merchant AND an Affiliate at the same time, with the Affiliate role being an automatic option.

Compare this to becoming an Affiliate first, where you seek out Merchants to refer Prospects to. You simply focus on referring, instead of building up your own range of in-demand products that are your ASSETS.

So the vast majority of Affiliates remain Affiliates, with just a fraction of them becoming Merchants themselves, because being a Merchant isn’t an automatic option for Affiliates, as Affiliates don’t learn the skills or acquire the knowledge on building up their own ASSETS that can generate a fortune for them for many years to come.

You may say that an Affiliate’s asset is the LIST of Prospects he builds up, on his way to referring them to the Merchants - and you would be right. However, a Merchant has to build up his own list too - so why not get 2 streams of income as both a Merchant and an Affiliate, instead of just becoming an Affiliate only?

Best of all - a Merchant can have Affiliates marketing FOR HIM too - whereas most Affiliates work for themselves only since most Affiliate Programs only pay on 1 level directly to the Affiliate where he can’t recruit other Affiliates to help him market for the Merchant.

Know what I mean?

To fit within the low-cost, high-profit boundaries you’re setting for yourself as a one-person Entrepreneur, I very highly recommend that you sell DIGITAL products as a Merchant.

Specifically, digital products that can be DOWNLOADED directly from your web site.

Downloadable digital products are automatically duplicated and delivered to your customers once they click on the link that leads to your digital product on your server, which also hosts your web pages selling your digital products.

This is different from selling digital products on CDs or DVDs where you’ll still have to deliver the physical CDs/DVDs to your customers through the mail. This means handling, packing and physical delivery at the post office - all of which will take up your time, and certainly add to your costs.

You can of course outsource the handling, packing and physical delivery to another outfit, with the costs being borne by your customers. But this will increase your customer’s cost of getting your product, and you’ll still have the usual customer support headaches associated with selling physical products. They could say that they “didn’t receive product, please send another one”, or the “product is damaged, please send another one”, or “one CD is missing from the set of 3 - please send it over”, etc.

With downloadable digital products, especially information products (which is what I suggest that you start with) - what’s your headache?

1. Customer couldn’t download product
Give him a direct link to your product in your e-mail to him. Or attach your product to your e-mail. End of story. Will take a minute or two. This happens only a fraction of the time.

2. Customer thinks your product is crappy. He wants a refund
Log into your PayPal account (assuming you use PayPal to accept payments online), and effect a refund. End of story. Will take you a minute or two. This happens only a fraction of the time, unless your product REALLY is crappy - in which case it’s time to make it better until you get very few refund requests. Refund requests will happen, whether your product is digital or otherwise, and no matter how good it really is. You can deal with it and move on quickly.

Is there anything else as far as customer support for downloadable digital product (information based) is concerned?

Right. There is NOTHING else.

Best of all, downloadable digital products can be taken delivery of by your customers even as you’re lazing around in your Pajamas at home, or you’re at the cinema watching the latest blockbuster in the middle of the day (when you’re escaping from the maddening crowd, and when most of your friends are at work in a conventional job) since a CLICK by your customer on the download link is all that is required to complete the sale.

Your web pages do the selling, your host server serves your web pages to anybody with a browser and an Internet connection and your domain name, your PayPal account accepts payment directly from your web site (via credit card or other PayPal accounts), and your host server automatically duplicates and delivers your downloadable product to your customers.

It’s the PERFECT business to do.

Lest you think selling digital products via a web site is for techies - relax!

I’ve figured out ways to make it possible for complete dummies who have only ever used e-mail up to now, to quickly create downloadable products of his own (sometimes this happens instantly!), quickly write a sales spiel for it, quickly set up this sales spiel and download page on his web site, quickly integrate his web site with an online payment system and finally quickly marketing his web site so that the selling can take place - all within A FEW DAYS!

Yes, it is NOW within the reach of MOST people with an interest to become a Merchant of downloadable digital products, FASTER THAN EVER BEFORE - whereas previously the majority of people can’t do it, no matter how much coaching they’ve received.

This isn’t a pipe dream. I’ve spent the last 4 or 5 years of my life trying to crack this code - and I’m proud to say I’ve finally done it.

Which is extremely good news for you, if you’ve always thought of making money online, but never got started, or never succeeded.

More in my next post!

Sen Ze

P.S. You can link to this post with the following URL:

http://SenZe.com/business-blog/digital-products/the-perfect-business.htm

Technorati Tags: internet business, internet marketing, digital products, affiliates, affiliate program, merchant, business strategy, e-commerce, make money online

There are 2 main ways to make money online.

You can be:

1. A Merchant
As a Merchant, you SELL PRODUCTS or SERVICES you’ve created, or have the right to sell. You earn from the selling price.

2. An Affiliate for a Merchant
As an Affiliate, you REFER interested parties to a Merchant in return for a reward (usually money). You earn your money in a few ways, depending on how the Merchant would like to reward you. You can earn for referring interested 3rd parties to a web site (your Prospects click on your Affiliate Link to land on the Merchant’s web site), a lead (your Prospects fill up a form at the Merchant’s web site to get on the Merchant’s list) or a sale (your Prospects make a purchase of the Merchant’s product at his web site).

What you DO to earn your money determines what you are - either a Merchant or an Affiliate.

You can set up a Blog and update it with regular content that your readers find valuable. In this case you’re a Publisher. However, a Publisher can be either a Merchant or an Affiliate or both, depending on what he does.

As a Publisher, you can make money with the SPACE on your web site or within your e-newsletter. You can SELL the space there to interested advertisers - in which case you’re a Merchant (selling your own “product” - space).

If you team up with Google via their AdSense program and insert Google advertisers’ Ads within your web site content, and get a share of the advertising dollars paid by Google’s client to Google for every display or click on those ads on your web site, you’re Google’s partner, or “Affiliate”. Google does the hard work of finding advertisers, and it rewards you for helping them place their clients’ ads on your web site.

Google’s clients can be either Merchants or Affiliates of Merchants.

As a Publisher, you can also SELL SUBSCRIPTIONS to your content, in which case your content is now your product, and you’re now back to being a Merchant - even as you’re simultaneously selling space there.

Publishing can at the same time help with getting the traffic since valuable and regular content are appreciated by their readers who can then refer their friends to read them, who then get exposed to the ads (which can be the Publisher’s own ads for his own products) or Affiliate links within that content.

Most Merchants and Affiliates aren’t full-time Publishers as it can be very difficult to publish regular and valuable content all the time. Publishing can be outsourced, however - and the Merchant or Affiliate who solves this issue would benefit from a steady stream of Prospects and Customers from both the Search Engines and their readers’ word-of-mouth recommendations to others to check out the content.

The above puts the Publishing activity into proper perspective - even though I do occasionally put “Publishing” into its own category of making money online (and thus making it “3 main ways to make money online”) since “Blogging”, which is a publishing activity, is the “in” thing right now.

The following is a brief summary of what the Merchant and Affiliate does.

The Merchant’s main focus is on creating products, selling them, dealing with customer support and getting traffic.

The Affiliate’s main focus is doing the things necessary to give the Merchant what he wants from 3rd parties - which is usually a display of his ad to them, or a display of his web site to them, or having them get on the Merchant’s list, or buy his product. The Affiliate also focuses on getting traffic since that’s where it all begins for him.

Because there’s no need to create products or deal with customer support issues, many beginning Internet Entrepreneurs start by being an Affiliate.

I’ve been both a Merchant and an Affiliate. And here’s the juice.

When you’re an Affiliate, you’ll be competing with thousands of other Affiliates in representing the Merchant. You don’t immediately stand out, and you’re basically on your own. Becoming a Super Affiliate (where you earn much more than other regular Affiliates) isn’t going to be easy.

When you’re a Merchant, and you succeed at it, you can easily become a Super Affiliate since your very customer base will be your best Prospects for other Merchants’ products that you’re an Affiliate for!

But of course, being a successful Merchant isn’t going to be easy either. But with both being a Merchant and an Affiliate requiring quite a bit of effort to do right - why not start as a Merchant from the get-go because you’ll eventually be both a Merchant and an Affiliate - and reap the benefits of both?

When people start off as an Affiliate, they don’t usually end up being Merchants. And by being in this position, they miss out on what being a Merchant can offer. It’s another stream of income - and it’s usually not even considered by most Affiliates.

Not that being a Merchant is extremely difficult to be - because it isn’t. I’ve been a Merchant for YEARS - and if I had known at the beginning what I knew later, it’s what I would want to be when I’m starting off.

Especially when you’re a Merchant of a certain type of products where most of the “disadvantages” of being a Merchant simply disappear, or become insignificant.

More on this in my next post!

Sen Ze

P.S. You can link to this post with the following URL:

http://SenZe.com/business-blog/internet-business/2-main-ways-to-make-money-online.htm

Technorati Tags: make money online, internet business, sell products, merchant, affiliate, affiliate marketing

Life Changing Party 2 starts in just a few days!

I’m excited. And those attending are too.

If you’ve never had the chance to experience the Law of Attraction working POSITIVELY in your favor, now’s the time to set it right.

The Life Changing Party does the following things:

1. It FORCES you to visualize your future you
You do this by arriving as who you want to be 5 years from now. You’ll be talking and behaving as that person throughout the entire night, as if it’s already 2013! If you forget and go back to 2008 - you’ll be “penalized”. Observe the penalty, because it’s for your own good!

Visualization is an essential component to evoke the Law of Attraction. Yet many people can’t do it properly, or do it wrongly. The Life Changing Party enables you to not only visualize your future, but also to EXPERIENCE it like you’ve never done before!

2. It provides a good NETWORKING opportunity for you
Everybody who attends are ambitious and like-minded individuals. They ALL want to improve themselves, even when they’re already successful. When you mix with them, you will gain a valuable network of pro-active, forward-looking people.

You may have always been in the company of negative individuals who all drag each other down, and you wonder why you still haven’t made it yet.

It’s time to CHANGE. When you change who you mix with on a daily basis, your fortunes will change, for better or for worse. At the Life Changing Party, it’ll be for the better.

3. It EDUCATES you on how to CREATE wealth
Watch with amazement as your fellow attendees come up with multiple ways to create money from NOTHING.

I was sitting at the Marketplace last year, and I can tell you I was absolutely BLOWN AWAY by how ingenious the attendees were in getting me to part with millions of dollars as I evaluated their business proposal or ideas. To say I was impressed would be an understatement.

You will get to experience the same thing.

4. It EDUCATES you on how to MULTIPLY your wealth that you’ve created
If you can create wealth from nothing, you should be able to multiply it in the blink of an eye!

This takes a different skill than creating wealth from nothing, but they provide a potent combination that will enable you to never go hungry again.

5. It EDUCATES you on how to PRESERVE your wealth
Preserving your wealth is another skill you MUST learn. It’s useless if you can create wealth at will if they don’t last very long.

Preserving it ensures that you don’t have to work as hard as you do now. It involves much more than just investing your money into assets. There are many aspects to it, and you’ll see some of them at the Life Changing Party in just a few days’ time!

6. It FORCES you to come up with your PLANS OF ACTION
Visualization is useless if you don’t plan out what you need to do to realize your vision. Yet this is the hardest part for most people.

However, at the Life Changing Party, this is the easiest thing to do! You’ll see why when you’re there!

So here’s a question for you.

Since when can attending a dinner party change your entire life and turn you into the person you want to be?

Right. Get your tickets now and I’ll see you there!

http://www.LifeChangingParty.com/tickets.shtml

Sen Ze

P.S. You can link to this post with the following URL:

http://SenZe.com/business-blog/life-changing-party/the-law-of-attraction-coming-your-way.htm

Technorati Tags: law of attraction, the secret, life changing party