moderndaypeasants.com

Daring You To Grow

Do you know the difference between successful and unsuccessful people?

Successful people aren’t scared to grow. They set goals in their lives and then they start on the road to obtain them. Once they have obtained those goals they set new ones and start the procedure all over again. They don’t worry if they fail along the way because they knew from the beginning there could be some challenges to get the end result. People like this are certain of their outcome and they remain sure.

Successful people have fears like any other human being except they dare themselves to grow on a daily basis. They encourage personal growth to everyone they come in contact with.

Unsuccessful people have goals too. The only difference is that they’re scared to grow. They allow the fear of failure and rejection to hold them back. Unsuccessful people make excuses to themselves and others as to why they haven’t achieved their goals.

An unsuccessful person will typically start on the path to personal growth and positive goals but become easily distracted by hurdles and challenges. They lose their sense of focus and become lazy and eventually give up.

Personal growth is a necessary component of success. Anybody can succeed at any life goal with determination, focus and a little elbow grease. Try to anticipate your obstacles and challenges in advance. If a few more pop up unexpectedly don’t give up. Get stronger and overcome them.

Grow!

Best Wishes

Inject a Bit of You Into Your Online Business

Things not going well? Business a little slower than you would like it to be? It could be that you just need to inject a little bit of you into your online business.

I know this is tough to do. I used to be kind of a private person myself. For many people it can be very difficult to put yourself out there and be subjected to scrutiny. Maybe we would do well to remember that our morals and ethics belong to us.  So let’s stand on them.

Consider letting your audience know the real you. Sure you may occasionally come across a few that disagree with you but that’s ok too. Every man or woman has the right to their own opinion. At least the majority will respect you for clearly stating who you are and what you’re all about.

I don’t believe the Internet is much different than the real world in that people still want to get to know other people they are associating themselves with. Most tend to do business and associate with others who share the same moral and ethical background.

Does your audience know who you are?

Best Wishes

Hurry Up! You’ll Miss This Opportunity

by: Dan Waggoner

Have you ever seen those words typed in a sales email written to you? I bet you’ve also seen it flashing on banner advertisement as well. It’s hard to get away from it. If you don’t sign up right now you are going to miss the opportunity of a lifetime!

This is one of the oldest and dearest tools for the average marketer. It’s called “creating a sense of urgency”. The advertiser’s objective is to get you to make an impulsive decision or purchase. A “gentle nudge” or so to speak.

This is really old hat stuff. I’m not much of a fan of this type of marketing. It reminds me of back in the early 90′s when I first started in the car business. I was selling cars for a Ford Dealer. We would have sales meetings on Saturday mornings and this was all the Sales Manager would ever talk about. “You must create a sense of urgency”….. he would yell across the room!

Some of us younger guys would laugh at him after the meeting was over and then we would go out and sell three or four cars that day and never use that technique on any of the buyers.

You don’t need to pressure anybody to buy anything! All you have to do is put it out there for sale and show the features and benefits of the product. If you have a good product they will buy. People buy features and benefits only. The majority of buyers aren’t even motivated by price.

If you have a great product to offer, whether online or at your brick and mortar location, just put it out there for a fair price. All your customer wants to know is what it does and how it will benefit them. If you’ve done a good enough job of explaining the features and benefits which offer value to your customer they will purchase it.

If you try to push them into buying it they will sense they are being sold. Nobody wants to be sold! Just think about when you went and bought your last television set. Did you buy it because somebody sold it to you or did you buy it because it had all the features and benefits you wanted?

I mean… I’m sure their were cheaper televisions available at that time. I bet some other models were even on sale. But you didn’t buy the one that was on sale did you? You bought the one that had 1080 dpi with all the bells and whistles.

I’m not saying to never use urgency. I am saying that it has it’s place. If you want to build some excitement for a new product launch or something of that nature then I can see it. I can even go along with lowering the price of a product and putting it on an expiration dated sale to move it out and make way for a new product.

However, If you find yourself using it for everything you try to sell you will quickly find out that you are chasing people away instead of inviting them in. If your product has value it will sell itself. All you need is the platform to demonstrate the value.

Best Wishes

Watch Out for Web 2.0

I’m guessing a lot of you have seen the term Web 2.0 here and there when you’re surfing the Internet. Keep your eyes open because I’ve got a crazy feeling this is going to be huge. I’ve been putting off learning much about it simply because I’m human. I sometimes get overwhelmed by all the information.

Wilkepedia describes the term Web 2.0 as being commonly associated with web applications which facilitate interactive information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design and collaboration on the World Wide Web.

Basically it’s social media. Web 2.0 allows the users to interact with other users or to change website content. The Internet has become so widely used by bloggers and other enthusiasts that surfers have really become massively interested in participating.

The bottom line is that surfers are really digging being able to interact with the site owner as well as the other members on the site! You want to talk about building a website for music fans? This is it if I’ve ever seen it! I could also see this as being awesome for somebody interested in starting their own social networking site such as Facebook and Twitter or something of that nature.

Guess who just recently saw this firestorm coming? No it wasn’t me…..bummer! It was Ken Envoy and his extremely ever popular visionary crew over at SiteBuildIt. I can not put into words how much I have learned from this company.

I know I talk about him a lot on this blog but that’s only because of the amount of experience and forethought this man and his people have. They never cease to amaze me!

I don’t currently own a SiteBuildIt site but that’s only because I am the type of person that has to finish one job before I start another. I feel like I have to devote all my time to this site until I am satisfied with what I have accomplished here. I know it may be silly but that’s just me. Anyway you can bet your rear end that when I do feel a complete sense of accomplishment with Modern Day Peasants that I will be building a new site with SiteBuildIt 2.0.

Ken is so on top of this kind of stuff. Even if you’re not ready for Web 2.0 yet you can still sample some of the SiteBuildIt modules here for free.

Best Wishes

Set Your Goals and Shut Up!

It is my personal belief that if you want to truly become successful in life you must learn to set your goals and shut up. If you share your goals with the world you are only opening them up for criticism. People will begin to tell you it’s not possible. You can’t do it. You’re crazy! After you hear enough of this kind of talk you may begin to believe it yourself. This will eventually cause you to give up.

Many are never taught the importance of goal setting. It could be that the act of setting goals simply wasn’t important in their family structure.

I personally came from humble beginnings. The only goal worthy of talking about was to get a job and keep it. It was more important for my father to have a regular job which enabled him to keep food on the table and a roof over our heads. That was the goal!

It wasn’t until I began my professional career in the automotive industry that I really learned the value of goal setting. Luckily, I had a great mentor who taught me the importance of setting a goal, keeping it to myself, achieving it and then moving on to bigger and better new goals.

You can accomplish darn near anything if you really want it bad enough. If you’ve already figured out what makes you happy in life, there’s not much more to do than set some reasonable goals and go after it. Write them down and possibly even frame them if it helps and then keep them to yourself unless the person you are telling shares the same goals with you.

Keep failure in it’s place. Know that failure is a part of the process. You may fail quite a few times before you actually succeed at your goals. If you never fail at anything how will you ever learn? A fear of failure will only serve as an excuse.

It has been said that Thomas Edison had over 10,000 failed experiments before he ever turned on his first light bulb. Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart, had quite a few stores fail before he finally introduced his mega discount store chain to the rest of the world.

Think of all the great actors and musicians that we see and hear on the radio and television. How many of them do you believe aced their first auditions? Not too many I bet. The difference is that they got back up on the horse and tried again. They knew what their goals were and nothing was going to stop them.

Set your goals. Keep them to yourself and then make it happen!

Best Wishes

The Imaginary Online “Auto-Pilot” Business

by: Dan Waggoner

How many ads have you read on the Internet promising you will soon be a millionaire and all you have to do is sign up for your new online auto-pilot business today? It’s only going to cost you $297.00 up front and $67.00 a month from then on. Start profiting immediately!

If you’re not already aware, let me be the first to tell you that there are no online businesses that run on auto-pilot. They simply do not exist. This is the problem with the world today. Everybody wants to make a million dollars without doing any of the work. The scammers out there know this and generally like to take full advantage of it.

Don’t get me wrong. There are some programs out there that people have designed to take some of the work out of the equation.  Most of them are generic sites that allow you to sell a product and to be able to accept payment. They will host the site for you and the product for sale will usually be earning someone else a ton more money than what you will earn.

Some of them may even be fantastic sites with a great product, however, they still won’t run on auto-pilot. You will have to advertise and drive traffic to the site.  In some cases you will also have to do the back end accounting and inventory as well. When discussing the world of online business, the term “auto-pilot” is only a figment of your imagination! Running a business whether online or offline requires hard work and dedication to make it successful.

There are people who write ad copy so well that it will make the program seem like the best and only choice for you. You won’t have to do anything other than sign up and watch the money start rolling in! They will guarantee that you will make millions hoping that you get so excited and pay before reading the earnings disclosure in fine light gray print at the bottom of the ad.

The point that I’m trying to get across here is if you see an advertisement for an auto-pilot business be weary from the start. I’m not saying they’re all bad. I am saying a good portion of them are junk. Do your research very well. Find out how long the company has been in business. Before you sign up and offer them any of your hard earned money make sure to ask for references and then follow up with those references. Read as many online reviews about the program as you can possibly find. Check them out with the BBB and so on.

Finally, if you’re tech-savvy enough to find this blog you can become tech-savvy enough to build your own online business. It will require hard work and many hours of your time. It may even take 6 months to a year before you see real profit. The difference is that it will be yours, you will have built it and it’s something you can be proud of. It definitely won’t run on auto-pilot but then again no business will.

Best Wishes

Help Major Search Engines Crawl Your Site

by: Dan Waggoner

If you haven’t already done so it would be a good idea to help the major search engines crawl your site. You can use a program called XML Sitemaps to do exactly that. They will index 500 pages for free. If you want to build a larger sitemap you can, however, they may charge you a small fee.

It is commonly known that the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN do not crawl all the areas of your website. For this reason, it may be wise to let them know which links are important and which are not. It could be that all of your links are important to you and the success of your site. I know mine are to this site.

As I previously stated, this particular site will allow you to create a sitemap of up to 500 pages for free. The coolest part about it, other than the freeness, is the simplicity of the program. All you do is enter your website address and it will start building the sitemap for you immediately. Once the sitemap is complete you’ll just need to upload it to the “public html”/ folder at your site and then go to your Google Webmaster Account and add your new sitemap URL.

Essentially what you are doing here is optimizing the search engine’s view of your site. Using this tool you can insure that they do not skip any valuable URL’s which they are highly known for doing. When URL’s are being skipped, you run the risk of losing money and your visitors miss out on the content you want them to see. It’s as simple as that.

Best Wishes

Adding A Privacy Policy To Your Website

The act of adding a privacy policy to your website will serve to solidify your site as a genuine online business. The privacy of your visitors should be as much sacred to you as it is to them. Nobody wants their email and private information sold on the open market.

When people come to your site and interact with your business they want to have clear written guidelines as far as what your intentions are with their email address and other private information. The Internet is a very large and scary place to some folks. Sometimes it is with good reason with all the scam artist that exist on the net. With that being said, the world gets more good use out of the Internet as opposed to bad.

Many people now days know of the scams that exist and are wise to it. All the more reason for you to make sure your site is in compliance with a good strong privacy policy. If you intend on using Google AdSense with your site you will need to make sure your policy complies with Google’s Privacy Policy Guidelines. Somewhere your policy must show the following statement, “Google, as a third party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on your site. Google’s use of the DART cookie enables it to serve ads to your users based on their visit to your sites and other sites on the Internet. Users may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google ad and content network privacy policy.”

You should also clearly state what your site will or will not do with the visitor’s information. You don’t need to have a huge drawn out privacy policy. It can be short and to the point but it must exist. You can get your own policy for free at FreePrivacyPolicy.com. It’s easy enough. You just give them your site address and some information as far as what you want your policy to say. Then you copy and paste the html to your site builder, upload it to your privacy policy page that you already have set up and then just label it “privacy policy” in your meta tag and description page.

If you’re selling actual product on your site and you have a check out cart where money is actually being sent and received by visitors then you may also want to seriously consider adding some trust badges. There is a very knowledgeable and trust worthy company that many of the ecommerce sites use for this. You may want to enlist their support to help gain your visitor’s trust.. It will cost you a little money for their badges but they will pay for themselves easily. These badges will assist in letting your customers know that somebody else is monitoring their purchases on your site to make sure everything happens in a safe and secure manor. That assurance to your customers will effectively increase your conversion rates. Visit their site, read what they do and make your own decision.

Ok…so that’s all I have for you today. Hopefully you are now beginning to see why adding a privacy policy to your website is so critical.

Best Wishes!