The Choices We Make

Every minute of every day we are faced with choices. Each decision we make leads us along a new path. The road to our future is determined by the choices we make now! Unconscious of the fact that we are making these choices we are led down the well trodden paths of decisions already made. The road we choose appears familiar because our habitual conditioning has led us this way before. Why is this? Because invariably we take the easy option over the better one. We settle for the comfort zone afraid to venture into realms unknown and the excitement of unchartered paths. The easy choice means we don't have to think or take action. If we did, we would have to take responsibility; a rare experience indeed.

The true purpose of Life is expansion and growth. When we take the easy option we are not being truthful to ourselves. We are settling for less than we are and our lives are forged by the dreams of others. What happens to us? We become 'set in our ways' and grow weaker through inactivity. When we don't think for ourselves our brains become dull. When we are physically inactive we become weak. When we eat the wrong things our energy is depleted and we fall victim to bad health. And all because we choose the easy option!!

We can't possibly move forward unless we choose the better option. We can only grow by overcoming challenges, experiencing setbacks and taking responsibility. This is achieved by taking on things bigger than we are, by extending ourselves to become better than we were. There is no doubt we will experience defeat but this is just an inevitable part of the process. Successful people aren't successful because they haven't experienced failure. On the contrary, they generally have experienced failure more often than most. Neither are they luckier than most. As one famous quote by Roy D Chapin Jr puts it "Luck is the time when preparation and opportunity meet." Opportunity is down the path we have never travelled not in the places we keep coming back to. Successful people are simply better prepared to make the most of any opportunity that comes their way. How are they better prepared? Because they chose a different way; when the going got tough they chose the better option.

How do we know what choices to make? When we know what our goals are the better option is immediately apparent. It is the option that leads us towards our goal in the quickest way possible. It is not some subtle distraction that takes our sight off the target or a well crafted excuse to procrastinate. It gets us from point A to point B via the shortest route even if that means leaving the comfort zone to do it. We forge new paths, experience new things and grow even stronger as a result. Do you see how we make our own luck? Treading the same path day after day is hardly the recipe for success!

Do yourself and everyone else in your life a favour. Go for your biggest dreams and make the world a better place. Choose the better option over the easy option everytime.

Can't Find Your One True Path?

So you're trying to figure out what you're going to be when you grow up. The problem is you're 38, have two grown children and a husband, not to mention two cats and a dog named Sirius Black Dixon. Oh, wait, sorry, I guess I got distracted and thought we were talking about me.

Back to you. You're physically "grown," but you haven't found your "one true path." You don’t know yet what you’re going to do with your life, and you’re feeling lost, confused, and worried.

Okay, let's start with the brutal truth here. If you have spent a lot of time, effort and creative energy looking for your one true path, I have bad news.

You probably don't have one.

You see, people who have one true paths know they do and they know what they are. This is not always true. Nothing is always true. But in general, people who “home in” on one career do it early and stick with it, or if they change careers, they do it in a reasoned, considered way.

People like us, who stumble and bumble and jumble from one thing to another to another to another, we don't have one true path. We have something. It’s just not one true path.

That's the good news. Because what we have, boy is it better.

We have multiple paths. They fit our multiple passions and our multiple talents and our multitasking personalities.

You and I? We can be whatever we want. For as long as we want. And then go do something else. We can be writers, and while we’re being writers, or when we’re done being writers, we can be teachers, or driving instructors. Now, admittedly, we’re not going to be astrophysicists or CEOs of major companies. But most of us don’t want that. What we can be is just about anything we want to be – and just about everything.

Don't you feel liberated???

Are You Your Own Worst Enemy Or Your Own Best Friend?

Are you the kind of person who is your own worst enemy? Do you live your life with doubt, always trying to live up to the standards others set for you? Life can be filled with disappointments if we live each day seeking the approval of others.

Remember that you are who you are because of you, not because of another’s perception of you. At the end of your life the only important question will be: "Did you live your life as you saw fit?"

In all honesty, I can be my own worse enemy. I let people get the better of me.

When you let someone get the best of you than you are really letting them win. In life we are faced with the joy of living life or the pain and disappointment of not living life to its fullest.

I have always gotten by the strength and courage that I learned from my mother. One thing that she taught me was that life is a battle and sometimes you have to fight or you will die having never tried.

I am in charge of my destiny, and it is up to me and only me to live my life. I know what’s important to me. I set goals for myself and I meet those goals. I know my friends, and I know my family, and most importantly, I know myself. I know who Rose DesRochers is.

Ask yourself, what is important to you? Do you know who you are? Are you happy with yourself as you are?

Never lose sight of who you are, and what you stand for. If someone wants to dismiss you because you don't meet up to their standards, that is their problem. Maybe they set their standards a little too high.

Don’t allow yourself to be your own worst enemy. Sometimes it’s just a matter of putting yourself first. If you can love someone else, why can you not love yourself? You are worthy of being loved.

Be true to yourself and your values. Don't be afraid to speak up for yourself even when it feels uncomfortable. Accept yourself as you are. Never let anyone dictate to you who you should be. A poor self-image will only make you feel worthless. Believe in yourself, because the one person you can trust and rely on is you.

What do you see when you look in the mirror? Can you see in yourself who you really are, or do you see yourself as others want you to be?

Building self confidence means learning to love yourself. Learn to believe in yourself. Learn to accept the things that cannot be changed. Learn to accept that you’re not perfect, nobody is. Learn to accept that you cannot change someone’s opinion of you. Quit wasting time dwelling on what is negative in your life and concentrate on what is positive. Stand up and be counted, because at the end of the day when you look in the mirror, you should see your best friend.

4 Must Have Tools for Affiliate Marketing Success

Do you know what does it takes to become a successful Affiliate Marketer? Could you tell me the essential ingredients of an affiliate marketing success story? Is there a shortcut to Affiliate Marketing glory? . All these of these questions play around in the minds of affiliate marketers who want to make it big in this business.

If you are anything like I was when I started out; excited and all set to make my fortune as an affiliate marketer and yet not knowing where to start you may have to say what I said, "I don't have a clue!" If you are new to affiliate marketing can I tell you something? There are some essentials that you must know or you will waste an incredible amount of time and money.

Although affiliate marketing is touted as one of the easiest and most effective ways to earn money online, it is not as easy as it sounds. The wise affiliate marketer plans every action and executes it the best way he can. He should also maximize the potential to earn by utilizing the right tools necessary for a successful Affiliate Marketing business. We have consulted some of the most successful affiliate marketers in the business and below are the top three necessary tools for a successful affiliate marketing business.

Important Tool #1: Your Own Website

The most important and indispensable tool in Affiliate Marketing is your own website. The first step in any successful affiliate marketing business is building a good, credible and professional looking website. Your website is the jump off point of all your marketing efforts. Thus, you must first build a user-friendly website, which will appeal to your prospects and encourage them to click on the links to the products and service you are promoting and make a purchase. Therefore, you must first concentrate your efforts in building a website that will cater to what your prospects need.

Important Tool #2: Quality Content

One of the most powerful tools for building quality content for your website is writing relevant and informative articles. Consider this, almost all web users go online to look for information, not necessarily to go and buy something. Above all else, make your website full of original, relevant and useful content. People will love articles that are appealing and helpful. Keep in mind that, on the Internet, content is still king and good quality content will not only build your credibility, it can also help you achieve a higher search engine ranking. By posting relevant and useful articles, you establish yourself as a credible expert in the field, making you a more-trustworthy endorser of the product or service you promote. Establishing a good reputation on the net is a good step in building loyal customers and articles help establish credibility.

Important Tool #3: Incentives

Competition is extremely tight in the Internet world. You must always be one-step ahead of your rivals to ensure that you capture a significant share of your target market. Therefore, you must use every possible means to encourage people not only to visit your site but also to click and proceed to the websites of the products and services you are promoting. Building an opt-in email list is one of the best ways to gather prospects. Offer a newsletter or an e-zine. Better yet, offer incentives to your prospects to encourage them to subscribe to your newsletters. You can present free software, access to exclusive services and other freebies that will be helpful to your prospects.

Important Tool #4: Link Popularity

The importance of driving highly targeted traffic to your website cannot be emphasized enough. The all-important web traffic is at the top of the list of the most important success vehicles in the affiliate marketing world. Attracting people to your site should be the first step you should carry out. Do what is necessary to achieve a high search engine ranking. Link Popularity is one of the factors that search engines use to determine search engine rankings. Therefore, to enhance your link popularity, you must have an aggressive link building campaign.

One of the best ways to do this - at no cost at all - is by submitting articles as mentioned above, with your website's link in the resource box. Submit to related e-zines and free article sites. You will not only gain exposure, you will also have the opportunity to advertise for free, just include a link back to your site. The more sites you submit your articles to, the better your link popularity is. Make your articles original, relevant and useful so that more websites will pick them up and post them.

These are but four of the many tools that an affiliate marketer can use to maximize earning potential. The possibilities are endless and are limited only by your imagination, creativity, resourcefulness and determination. You can always explore other ideas and adapt other strategies, which you think might help you become an affiliate marketing success.

The Value of Testing

One of the most important aspects of affiliate marketing is testing. This allows you to know what works best for your particular website and gives you the warning signs that you are possibly going down the wrong route. Testing gives you the ability to build the optimal website on which every space is filled in the most profitable way.

It is vital that you have access to Real Time stats if you want to be able to test out your ideas. Most affiliate networks offer this feature for free, and there are plenty software packages on the market which will track this for you. In this way, you will be able to see straight away if the change you have made has had any benefit to your online business. Sometimes the crucial make break changes, do not immediately track a huge turn around of your business, but often there will be some hint which gives you the hope that you are moving in the right direction.

What exactly is testing? It can be as small as moving a banner from the top right hand corner to the top left. It can be as huge as rethinking your whole model of how you will get traffic to your site. It could simply mean you need to replace the campaigns you are currently running. Whether your goal is to get visitors to your site, give your visitors a wonderful time or it is to make money from every visitor that enters your site, testing will give you the tools to spot what is working and what needs to be rethought.

Let us look at an example. Trevor is running a website on Disney World. He joins an affiliate network and picks 3 offers which he will run on his Disney World website. They include an email submit campaign, a zip code campaign and a shopping site where his visitors can purchase Disney goods. He also puts a bit of adsense on the top and left hand side of his website. The rest of the site is filled with content and pictures. At these early stages of the website, Trevor already needs to start testing.

The first and most important goal for Trevor is to get traffic to his site. Without traffic, this website is as good as your personal hand written diary. Traffic encourages an excitement about your website and will ultimately make you money. There are hundreds if not thousands of different ways to get traffic to your site. Each feature you add or remove from your site, could change your daily ratio from 10 to 1 visitor or just as easily, from 10 to 10000 visitors. The beauty about testing is it never ends.

Once Trevor has sufficient traffic visiting and revisiting his site, he needs to work a way that encourages the visitors to stay and browse. Through informative articles or interesting campaigns, Trevor is now able to test what works for his visitors and what does not work. As Trevor gains knowledge in the power of testing, he will look for the hidden, less obvious changes to test. A good example of this, is the difference it can make whether the name of the website is displayed at the top middle, top left or top right of the page. The importance of this decision can have a significant impact on the amount of type–in-traffic Trevor will receive to his site.

One of the most important parts of affiliate marketing is testing. This allows the affiliates to know the impact of each new idea and determine whether every change made will benefit or improve their site. Testing hints or spells out exactly what works and what needs to be rethought. Thus, if you are interested in affiliate marketing, make it a goal to be interested in testing.

Testing is not restricted to websites. It is just as effective if you want to improve your mailers or blogs as well. Don’t hold back on testing, it is one of the most powerful tools for success, and vital if you want to succeed. From the moment you decide to build a website, start a mailing list or write a blog, testing each step can only be of benefit to you and help you succeed.

Affiliates Should Offer Something Extra

For one type of product, there are literally hundreds (or even thousands) of affiliates that are actively promoting it. Affiliate marketing, after all, is a competitive business. But the result of having too many affiliates can present a challenging problem to each affiliate. One problematic result is that one customer may have already heard of the product being promoted by one affiliate. And this customer may have already encountered the promotional material for the product.

With so many affiliates offering the same product, how can one affiliate stand out from the rest so that the customer will choose him and not the other affiliates? What makes one affiliate different and better from the other affiliates? This is the present challenge of many affiliates, especially the new ones.

One creative solution suggested by many affiliate marketing experts is the use of extra specials. An extra special is something valuable that is given to a customer if this customer purchases the product from the merchant through the affiliate’s website. The affiliate must also mention that such extra special cannot be obtained from other websites. This will warn the visitor that if he purchases the product from another link, he will not have that extra special. And if that extra special is also needed by the visitor, he will most likely stay in the affiliate’s website and discontinue his browsing.

Now that the affiliate has decided to provide the extra special, the next question in mind is what extra special will be attractive to the customer. The answer to this will depend on the type of customer that happens to purchase the product. And the type of product will give a big clue on the personality of the customers.

For example, if the affiliate’s website is all about rock climbing and other extreme sports, offering information about how tattoos are placed will not appeal to the majority of rock climbers, even when some of them may be wearing tattoos already.

On the other hand, if the affiliate will be offering information on various rock climbing places found in the country, the rock climber will definitely be interested and he may have no doubts at all in clicking that link that will take him to the merchant’s website.

Other extra specials can be a free email or phone consultation, an e-book, or links and ads in the newsletter. What the affiliate has to remember is that the extra special should be relevant to the main product being sold.

How to Choose Your Affiliate Program Wisely

Affiliate marketing programs have sky-rocketed in popularity in the past few years. As one of the fastest and easiest ways to start an online home business people are jumping on this wave by the millions. Affiliate programs offer merchants the opportunity to employ vast armies of sales people who get paid for the results they achieve. 

The rewards for affiliates can be very good, and the skilled affiliate marketer can earn many thousands of dollars per month. This win-win situation has led to an explosion in the number of affiliate programs that are available to affiliate marketers. 

With this growth of affiliate opportunities have come many questions, such as: how do you go about choosing the right affiliate program for you? What qualities should you look for in a program and which gives you a good chance of making a sustainable income? Below are some tips that will help you to evaluate affiliate programs, and help you to avoid wasting time and money. 

What Commissions Does the Program Pay? 

It is very important that you know how much you can expect to earn from a sale. There is no point in spending time and money promoting a product that pays very small commissions. You could end up spending more on marketing than you make on sales. It is probably best to stick with marketing products with a high commission value, unless you have found a niche market where you can sell vast quantities of product, and make substantial commissions on your volume of sales. 

How Much Traffic is their Website Getting? 

Try to discover the amount of traffic the affiliate owner’s website is already receiving. Alexa.com is a very useful tool for doing this research. If the website is ranked in the top 100,000, the merchant is getting a good volume of traffic, so it's possible that there may already be too many affiliates. If it is ranked below 500,000 it may be no good, or it could be a golden opportunity to make some real money by becoming one of the first affiliates! 

Always research a merchant's product if their website has a low traffic ranking. It may be a good idea to buy the product yourself if you can afford it. Otherwise you could do a search to find out if there are any negative reviews about it on the internet. Be careful who you listen to though because many people are in the habit of bashing affiliate programs with nothing to really support their comments. If you find a large amount of negative reviews with little positive ones then it would probably be a good idea to stay away from that affiliate program. 

How Often Are Affiliate Commissions Paid? 

Some affiliate programs pay commissions every week; some once a month, others only pay every quarter. It is important that you know how often you can expect a pay check if you are going to have financial control over your business. Do you have the financial resources to continue to market a product if you have to wait a long time before you get paid? It would also be wise to find out the minimum commission that you have to earn before you get paid. 

Does The Affiliate Program Use Tracking Cookies? 

Many customers do not buy on their first visit to a merchant's website. It is important therefore that the merchant uses cookies for their affiliate program, so that you get credit if the customer returns and buys at a later date. Check out how long the cookies last. The longer the cookies lasts; the better the chances of you getting paid! 

Does the Affiliate Program Pay on Subsequent Sales? 

Some programs will only pay commission on sales that come through customers visiting their site via a direct link from your site. They pay you nothing for any subsequent purchases that the customer makes if they visit the merchants site directly. It is important that you get paid no matter what route the customer returns by if you are to build a sustainable affiliate business. 

What Marketing Resources Does the Affiliate Program Offer? 

Look at the type and quality of the marketing resources that they provide. Do they provide articles, advertisements, or other content that you can use to put on your site? Do they provide free guides, special offers, free viral e-books, or product samples that you can send to your list? If the marketing material they provide is good then it is likely that the business will provide good support for their affiliates. 

Finding the right affiliate program for you can be tough to do. The best advice is to do your own research, follow the advice above, and listen to your instincts. Use the above questions as an aid to finding an affiliate program that enables you to reach your financial goals. You never know... You might just strike affiliate marketing gold!

Affiliate Marketeing; What It Takes

Each of us has its own interest or has a hobby. Some love all kinds of books, music, and movies while others are into sports and traveling. There are also people who love to grow flowers and loves pets. These things help us to relax and forget our everyday problems and troubles and these things are common to people. But not everyone has a hobby that makes money for him/her except if you love your job.

Money making hobby could let you treat your family and friends with the extra cash or you can even quit your current job that you almost certainly hate. That is why many of us today go online to start a business; their reasons are either to supplement their income or to gradually replace their offline income from their job. Affiliate marketing is a great way to start in making money online.

Affiliate marketing is a revenue sharing partnership between a web merchant and one or more affiliates. The affiliate is paid a commission for referring clicks, leads or most often sales to the merchant. An affiliate’s advantage is that he can make money in a business where he doesn’t have the upfront costs of creating his own product, and he doesn’t have to worry about e-commerce, bookkeeping, or even customer support for it is the merchant’s responsibility.

Now, for sure you want to be an affiliate marketer with all that benefits an affiliate could get. But, do you have what it takes to be an affiliate marketer? Before you begin your venture into affiliate marketing, you need to decide first which area interest you. What products do you know the most and which products you could do the best job of selling? Once you discover your specialty, perseverance, patience, determination comes next. These are the qualities you should possessed to be a good affiliate marketer.

Too many online business prospectors lose out because they become impatient. You also have to know what your strengths are, the things in which you are good at and your capabilities and abilities related to your chosen streak. And the most important thing is you have to have a strong desire to succeed in affiliate marketing.

To be an affiliate marketer is not an easy task. You have to learn the techniques of marketing your product or service. You shouldn’t be looking at every chance because marketing is all about attracting you to look at this or that particular opportunity. To be a successful affiliate marketer, you should learn how to listen and to be taught because in life we need to learn skills to get by.

For an affiliate marketer, you should know how to market your site effectively, in will enable you to get thousands of visitors coming to your site which transforms into more sales. This only means that the faster you set up a website, the bigger your chances of making money online faster. You should avoid the same mistakes some affiliates make everyday, they are only building a short-term business where they just make a small sale. Make sure you do understand that you should be building a long-term affiliate business and not just something that makes you a few dollars on one sale.

It is also better to have knowledge on how to upsell your visitors for expensive services. This will in turn make you become recognized as an expert in your field and making money will be easier. There are some people thinks that just by having affiliate links on their website will bring them good profits. This can have some truth to it, but then most successful affiliates still believe that making use of strong marketing campaigns for their affiliate programs is still important. But affiliate marketers become much more successful when they treat their customers or online visitors as friends. Make a commitment to establish relationships with your customers and especially with visitors to your site. It is very important for an affiliate marketer to have a good business relationship with customers or visitors.