Naturally, everything follows a pattern. If you read about fractals, you will find that they appear on tree leaves, broccoli and so on.

As you can imagine, people’s behavior DOES follow a pattern too, and you can see this fact by analyzing a group of people… If you are a leader, you should know that usually the people you speak to tend to follow a kind of line, or at least most of them…

The thing become interesting when you find persons who stand out from the crowd! So then, by analyzing this kind of people – aka freaks – you can actually know more about what is happening in the environment and so then, improve it.

Have you seen bloggers changing their theme from time to time? may be the sidebar or the position of the links? Well, this is because they probably would be using heatmaps in order to study the behavior of the people who visit their blogs.

How a heatmap looks like?

A heatmap shows you where the visitors have been clicking on your website. With this awesome tool you can test the position of your ads, may be icon alternatives for subscribing to your blog etc etc… Use your imagination! This can be used when you need an input from your visitors, without letting them know.

One of the purposes I use heatmaps for is to analyze which landing page  “looks” – aka sells – better. Remember that your audience will probably think different than you, so don’t make any suppositions because you don’t know how they will react to certain graphic.

So as you can see, this is perfect for split tests among landing pages, which I will be talking about in future posts.

The Tool

To run heatmaps, I use the services of Crazy Egg. There should be lots of web services out there, but I like this one. So try it by yourself and tell me what do you think about it! It’s pretty easy to use, you just need to upload a script to your website and walah! – you will be catching every single click made on your website.

Input request - Are you using heatmaps? What for? Share what you know about this topic!

Many Internet Marketing gurus say it’s easy to succeed at this business, or at least they make us think it. I think everything is easy when you already learned how to do it, for example to walk. We learned to walk when we were childs, but for a just born baby it could be an impossible thing aka nightmare.

The other day I talk about The Secrets Behing Finding Niche Markets where I gave you details about finding niche markets. Today I’m going to give you some tips to help to take part in this business. Many people when join to affiliate networks think they could start promoting the first thing they see, or may be the hottest thing. Well, that’s not so easy because if it were, everybody should be sucessful and rich.

Recommendations for Choosing an Affiliate Product

Be familiar with the product: The reason why I’m giving you this advice at first instance is because this is the key to suceed. You should look for a product you are familiar with, a product which you know and will enjoy promoting it. This way, you won’t need to research before promoting it because you have the knowledge to talk about it.

Also, it’s not good to promote something you don’t believe in. This is like blogging, if you blog just because of the money you can earn, you will end failing. So to resume this first advice, pick a product you know and you think it worth.

Be interested in the product: You can be familiar with the product because everyday you hear about it, but if you are not interested in it you will lose your time. At the beginning you can do it fine, but then when you need to work hardly writing many articles about the product and submit it in article directories, it will be a pain in the ass!.

Almost every week I see people promoting Herbalife products in my community, but for any reason I would promote them.

Check its landing page: When you think you got a good product, check its landing page, email creative or whatever is supposed to convince people for buying the product. The landing page needs to be easy to navigate, and it should call to action.

When you see the html email or visit the landing page, think as you were a costumer near from buying the product. If YOU are persuaded, it means your costumers will too. In the other hand, if you don’t feel motivated or persuaded, probably you should look for another product with a better catching interface.

Check if it converts: Talk with your affiliate manager and ask him about the conversion rates of the product you want. In other words, the conversion rate tell you if the product makes sells or not, 3 or more sales per day is ok. Conversion rate is the ratio of visitors who convert casual content views or website visits into desired actions based on subtle or direct requests from marketers, advertisers, and content creators.

I talked with my manager of NeverblueAds and he told me some good conversion rates related with different offers:

• Email submit = about 25 – 35%
• Free trial offer = about 2% – 3%
• Dating offer (short for submit) = about 10%
• True sale offer = about 2 – 5%

Those numbers are relative, so talk with your manager to assure.

Stay with the winners: What I want to mean with this, is to promote those things that are working. Promote popular/hot products, promote that things you know other people are making money with. Why, won’t be harder because of the competition? If you try to promote those products that are not converting well, you will lose money and time promoting it.

What you need to do is to effort promoting it, that’s it. I will talk more about promoting your affiliate products in other article, as well as how to find keywords and how to find these products that are making the people richer, using Affiliate Espionage.

Money back guarantee: This is not always available but if so, it would be better for you. Money back guarantee programs inspire peace and trust, your consumers will feel safe of blackhat tricks or scammy programs.

As I said, this is a plus. The good thing is most of the U.S. and Canadian offers have this policy, but if you find a great product without it don’t worry!.

Which are your tactics?

The other day I read something that recommends the opposite of me about the popular products. I read it is better to get an unsaturated market, this way you could sell “better” than if you take a saturated one, such as making money online for example…

What do you think about it? What about the wasted money until you discover the trick of the product?

If you are promoting a product I would love to know how did you choose it, teach me!

I know you have something in mind, a great idea, a great business that will give you thousands of dollars a month. The problem starts when you have plenty of ideas – referred to the same project – and you don’t know what you should do first.

Well first of all, it’s fairly obvious that you should plan your project, but sometimes when the ideas are very big, it’s complicated to plan everything before start developing something, don’t you think? That’s why I’m writing this post, because developing a project can be a difficult task when it has many details, for example: an internet business…

The Rhythm of Working

Most of the times, when we think in something big, we look for partners to work with in order to divide the different tasks of the project. That’s a normal thing, many people does it, including entrepreneurs, bloggers and even companies… Working with other people have things that you have to deal with. Every person is different, you and your coworkers can have different rhythms of working and to succeed when you work in team, it’s essential to set a rhythm of working among other things…

I detached this “rhythms” in 5 types:

• 100/0 Rhythm: This is a good rhythm when the project is relative small, something that you can do by yourself. With this rhythm, you start developing the project once you have it 100% planned.
• 80/20 Rhythm: I have worked many times based on this rhythm, and sometimes it’s because I am a person who needs to see the progress of the things to stay motivated. With this rhythm you start developing the project when you have it 80% developed and 20% undeveloped. 80% is quite enough in order to start developing what you are planning, and the other 20% could be something non-relevant, something which your project do not depend of it.
• 50/50 Rhythm: I have also worked under this one . This is a little dangerous because when you don’t have everything planned and defined in a project, no matter how much you have done of it that you can get stuck and probably you could end dropping the idea. This rhythm works with a project 50% developed and other 50% undeveloped, classic of moments when you work under pressure.
• 20/80 Rhythm: You are very impulsive. How can you work with 80% of the project undeveloped? May be you have everything in your head and you don’t want to “waste” time planning and defining everything about your project but dude, I recommend you to take it easy and keep planning before taking actions.
• 0/100 Rhythm: Ok this is impossible, nothing good can emerge here. How can you make a real serious project without planning anything about it? If you really want to make something good, first of all you should thing at least a little about what you want!.

Remember that no matter what you want to develop, if it’s big or small, I highly recommend you to plan everything before getting your hands dirty. It’s good to work with a 80/20 rhythm but it’s even better to work with 100/0. Remember that once you have everything defined with details, anything can’t result wrong.

In order to learn more about project’s planning, I invite you to check my post Do You Plan Your Projects?.

With the passing of time, our businesses start growing and growing up, until a point that we need to identify us when we meet with people related to our businesses. What a best way to be a serious entrepreneur that having your own business cards?

Introducing UPrinting

For over 25 years, U-Printing has been a trusted leader in online printing, featuring its signature easy-to-use website and the famous Free Project Review, a complimentary proofing service which requires no upfront payment. Besides calendars, posters and a large list of products, U-Printing offers business cards printing customization so you can adjust the specs according to your needs.

They offer many pre-made designs which you can find here, but you can also create a full custom design with their awesome online tool.

Business Cards GiveAway

To take part in this contest, you need to meet the following steps:

1. Become a Fan of Business Cards by logging into Facebook.com and going to the page:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Business-Cards/40330644877

2. Leave a comment at the end of this blog post, giving your Facebook name/username and tell me what you would use the business cards for.

The Prize

There will be only one winner of 500 business cards, who can choose from any business card of their stocks, including the eco-friendly SFI certified cover stock (13 pt. Cover Uncoated – Recycled – This paper comes from sustainable forests grown for paper production so you know your paper is coming form a legal and responsible source.) or the the 14 pt. family in Matte, AQ, or UV at any custom size they offer such as square cards, odd sizes or the standard size.

Winners in the United States and Canada qualify for free shipping. Shipping fees will apply to winners outside these areas.

Deadline

The winner will be chosen on Saturday 20th, using the service provided by Random.org.

Good luck!

Hi readers, if you feel discouraged or you don’t have motivation to write something great, you need to check out the posts I’m going to give you in this series.

I don’t know why, but during the week I was collecting great posts in order to share them with you, as usually… My surprise was when I started writing this post because almost all the articles collected this week are perfect to find a huge wave of motivation – they encourage you in many ways!.

Let’s check them out and I hope you like them – I really loved them:

• 40 Ways to Deliver Killer Blog Content by Chris on ChrisBrogan.com.
• Shorter is Better by Jim on CopyBlogger.
• The Characteristics of a Successful Entrepreneur by Jon on JonathanVolk.com.
• Christmas Marketing Tips: 2 Ways You Can Use Segmentation To Increase Conversions by Justin on Aweber’s Blog.
• Your Job Sucks? Six Reasons to Be Your Own Boss Now! by Zac on ZacJohnson.com.
• The Art of Self-Motivation by Mason on Freelance Folder.

I recommend you to read the post of Freelance Folder and the one of Chris Brogan, they can give you hundreds of ideas to write about… I have a couple of things in mind which I will be posting during the next weeks…

Have a good weekend!

Branding is almost everything when you are running a company. No matter if you promote it offline or online, the important thing is to understand what is your objective as a company, and what should you do once you are established in the market.

But that thing of branding is not just for companies. Who else should be interesting on promoting a brand? Well not to go so far, let’s take as example the Bloggers. When you want to start a blog, you should think about something remarkable that people note and can remember easily. As bloggers, it’s very important to create a sense of loyalty between the readers and us, and that is only possible through a brand.

Also there are many people who can be interested on branding, people like entrepreneurs, web designers or may be book editors need to create a brand in order to have that magic thing capable of moving masses, imposing new behaviors to groups of people.

Once you are established, It’s possible to ruin your brand?

Absolutely yes. In this post I deal with some details that could look insignificant, but they cause great impact on the market, frighten away your followers. Of course, you won’t want to lose them! So the objective of this post is to teach you what NOT to do, in order to let grow and to conserve your brand identity.

1. Break your code of honor: What you do with your brand, is to spread away your philosophy. Because of that philosophy many people follow you, paying attention when you talk or when you launch a new product… That’s how people see those 2 hours-commercials of Apple! What a better way to ruin your Branding that breaking your code of honor? So if you start violating those things that you were promoting and spreading by years, have in mind that you will ruin all that hard work!.
2. Lie: Lying is a typical resource used by marketers in order to catch clients. What they don’t know is that they are losing clients instead catching them. Possibly, they can catch them the first time, but what do you think will happen when they feel scammed? Ohh yeah! They won’t buy anything else from that marketer or company. Instead, if you are sincere with the customers you will create a sense of loyalty, buying the first, second and the next products you launch.
   
3. Badly treat your competitors: Branding is all about market. In addition of you, there will be another people promoting the same stuff that you. Either better or worst, there will be many people offering the same product in different ways trying to catch the most of the people. Competition or potential partners? Think about the possible future partnerships between you and those competitors because sometimes is not a good idea to break relations with them, and even more if you insult them or give them a bad treat.
   
4. Lower the quality of your products/services: Have you thought why people are stuck to you? You can be 100% sure that they are with you because they like what you offer them, because they feel comfortable with it. Either a service, product or just another different stuff, if you start lowering the quality of what you offer, the people will start leaving you and start looking for another companies that offer the same thing. Personally, I think that if you are going to do something bad, it’s better not to do it.
5. Ignore what they want: Times change and people too. Sometimes the people want something because it’s a fashion thing, something like a boom or just because that thing improve their experience as customers. That’s something you need to know, studying the market – how it’s evolving – and learning what the people want. This last thing includes studying your competitors,  they can be offering something better than you to get more customers… So if you know that your clients are demanding something, for your good, you should give it to them.

As you could note, that 5 appointments are pretty important if you want to keep your customers. In this case, by following them, you and your brand will broke forever and ever! Well it’s not so dramatic, you could lower the quality of a service but if you note that and make something to compasate that problem, you will be fine.

I aimed this to companies, or people who sale products or services, but this is perfectly applicable to bloggers. Instead lowering the quality of a service, you could lower the quality of your posts, which will make you lose subscribers!… If you think about all of them, they are perfectly applicable in blogs, websites and even forums…

Conclusion

That 5 tips were good, but you can be sure that they are not the only things you can do to ruin your brand. There should be another tiny things, just be sure to make the right movements by following the philosophy and concepts of your brand. Only them can guarantee the success of your work!