Well it’s officially the 1st December. Christmas (or Chanukah) is fast approaching.

I love this time of year (apart from the cold!) as it means pressies!!!

So I have a FABULOUS pressie for you…

If you sign up to a Platinum membership with yournetbiz before Midnight on Christmas Day I will ship over to you, where ever you are in the world a FREE LAPTOP!!!  Hurry, first come first served basis!

Below is an informative video on how to build a targeted list to get people to buy from your website.   I hope the useful ideas help you.

A short video about one of the many questions I receive from people wishing to sign up to Your Net Biz. Can I make money in time for Christmas?  Here are a couple of ideas to get you started…

When times are hard, your business will have to put in that extra effort to attract the loyal customer. You may have the best quality product, but your competitor may offer the best value – and that is why the customers are going there.

Value is not merely about ‘quality’, especially if that quality has too high a price tag. In fact value is a balanced combination of a number of things: price, features, how well-made is the product and the benefits to the purchaser. In summary value answers the questions: what is it worth to the customer and how well does it meet their needs?

For example, if the customer primarily wants transport for shopping at the local supermarket, they probably do not want a Rolls Royce.

So, while you may have the best-made product with the most features, do your customers think that they can afford it in a weak economy? It all depends on your marketing approach and how you represent ‘best’ and price.

Value is perceived

There are no fundamental values in your marketplace that cannot be influenced by good marketing. You need to understand your customers and provide a solution to their problems. If you do, you will be providing value to them.

If your solution provides much more than they expect, then that perceived value may increase, subject to cost. If you can provide products of exceptional quality but at a reduced cost, then you have a high-value offering. But quality relates to the ability to meet the customer’s needs and is subjective. In many instances this perception can be influenced to create greater demand.

A possible place to start

Information products can provide the basis for low-cost, high-quality offers that result in the perception of high value. These products can be developed with little time and money. Using the Internet they can be duplicated and delivered ad infinitum. Since the manufacturing costs are reasonably low, you can create bundles of these products as high-value packages without additional cost. Then instant delivery, via the Internet, will result in instant customer satisfaction.

Marketing over the Internet

You can market most things over the Internet. However, some market niches are more suited to this medium than others. To those providing high quality, low cost and quick delivery, the Internet can be a blessing in difficult economic times. You need to concentrate on products and services where you can influence the perception of value. This will help keep demand constant or even increase it during hard times. For the next few years at least, value will be the key factor in both online and offline marketing strategy.

I recently spoke to a guy who was seriously interested in joining YourNetBiz.  He asked me a few questions that I am asked time and time again by prospective team members, will I succeed?  Can you guarantee my success and that I’m going to make lots of money!  And if the opportunity is so good why isn’t everyone joining up?

This is actually a very important question and one which I will try and answer, but obviously this is my own personal perception – everyone has their own thoughts on this matter!

Yournetbiz is a business and we all know that not everyone succeeds in business regardless of what type of business that is, online or offline. This is a Fact.  No amount of training, resources, and money can guarantee that your business will succeed.

Let’s go back to the beginning.  Not everyone chooses to set up their own business.  Some people don’t like taking risks, others like the comfort blanket of a regular guaranteed income.  Some people like to be employed; they enjoy knowing what tasks they will be doing every day, where they are going etc.  Others don’t like taking orders and think that they could do a better job than their boss.

I could go on and on with the differences  but the point I’m trying to get at is that whilst I love running my own business as the pro’s far outweigh the negatives (in my mind) some people don’t want to run their own business for whatever reason.

So why go into business?  Do we suddenly wake up and say “there has to be another way”; are we forced into it through the present financial climate?  Is it a lifetime goal?  Personal circumstances change?

Regardless of how we get to setting up a business I think the key ingredient is having the right mindset.

Often we decide to start a business without really understanding what it actually involves.

So, let’s go back to the original question of whether you can succeed.  I could give you the usual comment that there are no guarantees and I don’t know if you will succeed etc. but give me your money anyway lol!

But I won’t for the simple reason that isn’t actually true.  I strongly believe that if you have the right mindset, are passionate about the product/services you are promoting, work hard (THERE ARE NO get rich quick schemes), are disciplined with your time and willing to learn then success can be achieved.

Is it really that easy?  Don’t you need certain business skills? Be able to sell?  Well people buy from those they like and trust.  If the product is good, shouldn’t it sell it self?

Time and again I am inundated with people wanting to sign up to Your Net Biz, they think it’s easy, they think they can earn money and lots of it immediately.  Why do they think that? Are they lead to believe it by the marketing and the hype?  Is it the fault of us as mentors that is making them think this?

There will always be some people who will succeed in business regardless of what it is.  I myself have run and sold a successful business and am now working with other opportunities like Your Net Biz.  Does that guarantee me success?

If you look at the top business men, most of them have some kind of failure in the past, I know some big names who have even gone bankrupt but have built themselves up again and are now multi-millionaires.

Is business success determined by how much money you earn? Or by how much time you have to spend with your family?

When I used to carry out my training I was often asked by people, why are you training them and giving away all your secrets, they will then become your competitors.  My answer was always simply that I believed that there was enough room in the market, that competition is healthy and more importantly, only a few will actually carry out what I have said to do.

The same principal applies with yournetbiz.  As your mentor I can’t guarantee that you will succeed but what I do strongly believe is that if you do carry out my suggestions together with having the right mindset you will succeed.

Is it really that simple?  Try it, I dare you to prove me wrong!

With the popularity soaring with Twitter everyone has come onto the band wagon and created 100’s of different applications to help you get the most out of Twitter.  Below are my favourite ones which I use and best of all they are all free!

The biggest problem with the standard Twitter web application is that you have to keep an eagle eye on your replies and Direct Messages as you only see the main Tweetstream on the screen. It is also limited in that it only displays about the last 20 tweets, so if you want to see older ones, you have to keep going back pages. So how can you make it more user friendly?

I recommend you  download Tweetdeck (which I use and is a godsend, especially if you have a large following!).

Tweetdeck is brilliant in that it displays the Tweetstream, your replies and your direct messages all on the one screen.  The message columns allow for 500 tweets as a default, so scrolling down allows you to go back a fair way or search for tweets you may want to refer back to.  You can also automatically send your tweets on Facebook and Myspace if choose too.

The screen has a continuous right hand scroll, so you can set up different groups and their tweets will appear in that column. You might have a group called best friends and another for gardeners for instance.  That way you don’t miss important tweets from people who are more important to you than others. At the time of writing, Tweetdeck is probably the most widely used application for Twitter and I would highly recommend it to you.

Twellow is another great way of finding people to interact with. People here are categorized into all different areas and you can search for those with similar interests to your own.

The main page shows you all the categories, which then have sub categories as well. You just click on a category and the list of people in that area are displayed. You don’t have to be registered with Twellow to be displayed, but at the time of writing there were nearly two million people showing on the site, so you will have plenty to choose from.  By all means though, register yourself and set up a profile so others can find you.

When you click on a category, Twellow displays a list of people in that category and they are ordered by the number of followers they have. If you are already logged into Twitter via the web, (not Tweetdeck) you will be able to follow people directly from the screens where the profiles are displayed.

I would also recommend taking the time to set up your Twitter background so that it doesn’t just look like the default Twitter page.  You need to distinguish yourself from the crowd and that attracts more followers, or at the very least impresses people with your professionalism.

If you’re a bit of a Photoshop whiz, then you can do your own background, full of bells and whistles and load it up to your Twitter profile. But if you’re not, or you just want to save time, then there are some sites out there that will do them for you automatically.  My personal favourite is Twitbacs where you can get some great backgrounds.

However, that said, if you want to do your own fiddling in Photoshop, you can get some great layouts in PSD format from Twitterbacks.

I hope the above tips help you, Twitter really is a great application that should be used as part of your marketing strategy and best of all, it’s FREE!

Hi everyone

Just a very quick update to welcome my latest team member, Donna Bond. Today Donna came over to my house for a one to one mentoring session. We had a lovely day together and I am confident that Donna is going to be a huge success with Your Net Biz.

Check out our video below!

I’ve just realised today is Thursday.  Ok, nothing shocking about that, but I just can’t believe where this week has gone – it’s flown by!

It got me thinking, we always seem to be moaning about there isn’t enough time in the day and I admit I’m one of them!

I’m always reading celebrity gossip (my guilty pleasure!) and I was reading an article about Cheryl Cole and how she has so much to do in one day that her day starts at 5:30am and doesn’t finish until past 12am.  Her day has to start so incredibly early as not only does she have to fit in “work” but also her hair and make up, gym etc.

So, would I sacrifice getting up at the crack of dawn in order to get everything done (even to look like her!) – would I heck!!!

We all seem to want the same thing, quality lifestyle, more time to spend with our family, less time working, commuting and the list can go on and on.

Do you ever look at business entrepreneurs like Sir Alan Sugar and Duncan Bannatyne and think how an earth do they do it all?  Well apart from them being able to pay people to do a lot for them, I’m sure they still have a lot to do themselves!

What I’m trying to get at is that we all have exactly the same amount of time.  Regardless of where we live, what we do, how much money we earn – we all have 24 hours in the day.  How do you use your time?

Are you someone who procrastinates or a doer and gets things completed off their lists?