Oh What a Tangled Web...

“Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive”--Sir Walter Scott

 

“Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive” is a quote from Scottish Novelist, poet, Sir Walter Scott is as pertinent today as it was when it was written as does the children's poem written in 1829 by Mary Howitt, titled "The Spider and the Fly"

 

Both warn of the deceptions which permeate our everyday lives all the way from childhood to the adulthood, Nothing is sacred, not our religion our boardrooms and surely not our politics. Tangled webs of deception are everywhere the most glaring is that of the Internet home based business industry.

 

Recent studies have shown that each week 155,000 people enter the online home based business market and 151,000 fail. A staggering 97% failure rate partly because of the lack of business education, failure to properly plan, unrealistic expectations and all of those greedy spiders trying to lure you in.

 

As in Mary Howitt's poem, The Spider and the Fly - The spider spins her web of deception to bring the fly closer and closer with various enticements so do many of these Internet programs and their operators. How man times have you seen a website or read an advertisement offering you $10,000 dollars a week *IF* you will just send me $49.95.

 

The variations are many in an attempt for the mind to believe. "It's so easy a 5 year old could do this!" and with that promise of easy money you buy in only to find that $49.95 was just the camel's nose under the tent so to speak. Next comes the countless hours of trying to recruit other salesmen, known as distributors and disguised yet to others as customers.

 

It isn't as easy as you thought recruiting. It is even worse when they don't make any money and they leave. You are forced to recruit again and again, trying to fill the gaping hole in your organization and your wallet.

 

Next you buy leads and that hole in your wallet gets bigger.

 

Some of these opportunities end up being nothing more than cyber sweatshops requiring you to work for the team where only the elite get fed.

 

The U.S. Department of Labor and Industry reports that on average the small home business owner earns $60,000 per year, that my friends is a long way off from $10,000 per week.

 

Know who you do business with is a caveat by which we should all pay homage.

 

For more information on how I earn my living on the Internet Google my name.

 

I remain as always,

At your service

 

RH Sterling

570.972.1245

Skype - rhsterling

 

Home Business and Residual Income

A recent market study of online retail sales conducted by Machrotech showed a 28 percent increase in sales, penetrating 71 percent of the US population between 2005-2006. In keeping those results in mind, one would be inclined to believe that creating a home business with a healthy residual income stream would be easy. Internet marketing failure rates paint a darker side to this story claiming dismal failure rates so high that it would appear nearly impossible to make any sort of regular income let alone a residual income with a home business.

 

That being said, making an income online is not only possible but probable if you follow the directions. The problem with following directions is that there are so many people giving them that following them is near impossible. Imagine how difficult it would be if you were driving down a busy street and thousands of people were shouting directions. Turn right, turn left, go faster, stop here! The thought alone is overwhelming, the frustration is exasperating.

 

Based on that scenario, I doubt if you would get very far either in your car or in your home business let alone make any money today or long lasting income for the tomorrows ahead. That is just one reason why experts claim that only about 3% of everyone who starts an online business will succeed.

 

The odds seem to weigh heavily against you however before you throw up your arms in despair and dash your dreams of owning your own home business into a million pieces I want you to think of something else. Have you ever been in a casino? If you are like many other people, I am sure that you have. Maybe you have played cards, rolled dice, spun a wheel or pulled the handle of a slot machine. I'll bet you have even won a time or three three and had great fun i the process.

 

You may be wondering at this point why I would bring up casino games in the middle of a home business, residual income article so I will get to the point. Casinos rake in billions of dollars each year. There is no denying that fact but did you also know that the Casinos play with a  very slight edge by design their games may carry only one percentage point in their favor and that is their draw, you have in some cases high chance of winning except more often than that you walk away with less money than you had before you started playing.

 

Casinos have the knowledge to use small percentages to earn them piles of long term residual income just as you need the knowledge of the home business market to achieve similar results.

 

Educate yourself before jumping feet first into the deep end of the marketing pool. Don't grab the first business you see based on how flashy their ad or fall prey to their claims of huge financial gains in 30 days or less. Be realistic with your expectations, if you have been living in the same house for the last 15 years and driving the same 10 year old compact car why would you think that you would be moving to a mansion by the sea with a new red Ferrari by the end of the month?

 

I have news for you..... Wake up, you won't!

 

 Like most other things making money from the Internet takes time and persistence and in the case of affiliate marketing it also takes one other thing - a good program..

 

The type of program that I like best is called a cooperative business model because it offers more bang for the buck than many other programs. Working with a cooperative is full of features and benefits like low startup costs, low advertising costs, easy consumer acquisition at an affordable price from an established customer base without wasting your time or money on purchasing leads. No doubt about it. real paying customers mean real income.

 

If you are serious about creating a solid home business that will pay you today and provide a residual income for your days ahead, I highly recommend investigating the power of joining a business cooperative. It is sound business principles that make a good business capable of fulfilling your dreams.

 

RH Sterling – Case Statement Copywriter

570.972.1245

Skype: rhsterling

 

Its Good Business: http://itsgoodbusiness.net

PRESS RELEASE - Sharon Johnson-Smith Joins Over 10 Million Female Business Owners

 

For_Immediate_Release:

Phoenix, Arizona (Press Release) August 12, 2008 --

 

Its Good Business.net recently announced Sharon Johnson-Smith, Phoenix. AZ., as their newest female small business owner.

 

Sharon has been involved with network marketing since 1982 and Internet marketing since 1995. When asked to describe herself she says, "I'm a Christian, wife, stepmom, daughter, sister, and friend."

 

Sharon has spent the past twelve years working on the Internet with varying degrees of success before coming to an Its Good Business webinar. When asked why she chose to become involved with Its Good Business Sharon said that the Its Good Business program made perfect sense to her.

 

The Its Good Business team approach of caring professionals coupled with a unique cooperative marketing plan puts an end to the need to buy leads or recruit distributors and gives direct access to a stong customer. Having access to a large base makes the difference between success rather than failure.

 

Its Good Business, is the brainchildTom Prendergast, CEO Veretekk  and is associated with a 9 year old debt free leader in the health and wellness industry. The Its Good Business model focuses on building solid businesses for each of its members while traing teams of strategic marketing professionals to promote the business.

 

Although Its Good Business has produced more Directors and 4 Star Business Affiliates than anyother in the 9 year history Prendergast is adamant that this is a "get rich slow" program to create long term wealth.

 

Sharon Johnson-Smith knew what she needed to increase her success on the Internet and that is why she chose Its Good Business.

 

Persons interested in creating a home business on the Internet are welcomed to contact Sharon directly or by attending an Its Good Business webinar held every Saturday at 1pm pst and Wednesday evenings at 7pm pst. Visit http://itsgoodbusiness.net and see how you can become the next person on the move, gaining Internet success.

 

RH Sterling

Case Statement Copywriter

Certified Veretekk Trainer

TriVita Business Owner 13040262

 

Office: 570.972.1245

Private: 570.655.0522

Skype: rhsterling

 

- "Strive not to be a success but rather to be of value" Albert Einstein -

 

Make Money with a legitimate work at home business

According to the U.S. Department of Labor and industry the work from home business marketplace was over 2.5 trillion dollars in 2005 and was growing at an astounding 17.4% annual rate. The projected market for 2008 is 4.4 trillion dollars of which 80% begin with a Google search. Your work from home online business can provide you with an opportunity to cash in on a piece of the action, if you understand a few simple rules.

 

What do you want, lowest price point or maximum profit?

 

Most people want to spend the least and earn the most and that is just good business sense however the most important question to ask is not how much does it cost to buy into that opportunity but how much does it cost you to operate that particular work from home business?

 

Consider these parameters. The work from home business you have chosen is a traditional MLM type. You attended a work from home business webinar and they showed you how easy it was to make $10,000 per month. You were told that you could be in business for $50.00 if you signed up now.

 

That's not a difficult decision, I mean who wouldn't part with $50 to work from home and enjoy all of the benefits of owning a home-based business and cash a $10,000 check each month? It's not rocket science - sign me up!

 

After you sign up you run home excitedly and call everyone of your friends and family to share the wealth and let them know first hand just how easy it is to become a work from home mom or dad or grandma or grandpa. They get as excited as you about becoming the next group of work from home millionaires and then what? Who do you sign up next? Where do your next set of victims come from and even more importantly what happens to all of those who you signed up and aren't making money?

 

Let's talk about your chosen work from home business. It really is a work from home distributorship. This means that everyone under you are distributors. Distributors is an upscale term for salesman, sales person, re-seller's etc. What this means is that you have no real customers - no real consumers. Your distributorship has a very limited growth potential.

 

Just how limited? Industry statistics tell us several things about a distributor based work from home business opportunities.

 

a) A distributor based work from home business is more like a work from home job than it is a business because it is  comprised of sales people, not real customers.
b) Distributors remain in your organization only a short time if they cannot recruit effectively. If they can't recruit well then  they can't make any money. They average life span of a new distributor is about 6-8 weeks.

 

Now calculate the amount of time it will take you to recruit new people to fill the holes in your organization times your hourly rate. If your hourly rate is $100.00 per hour and you need an 90 minutes to present and close each new distributor then your cost to add a new distributor into your work from home business is $150.00.

 

However...

 

That is kind of the cart before the horse because we have not discussed how you are going to bring the prospects to look at your business.

 

Exactly how are you going to find people interested in your work from home business?

 

Well you do have a company generated web site that they gave you for free or maybe you pay a monthly fee for them to host it. Yeah a flashy company replicated web site that works, right? Not exactly.... A study of replicated company web sites are rarely properly configured for search engine optimization (SEO). Few of them have proper keywords or meta tags which means that most of these web sites will never be seen by the search engines or your targeted traffic.

 

How do you get traffic to your work from home company's replicated web site?

 

There are SEO work around to bring in the traffic but they are not cheap. A basic 1 page search engine optimized page to drive traffic to your site will cost upwards of $1,000 - $5,000. I don't exactly thing you had that kind of expense in mind when you fell in love with that $50 work from home business so let's talk about less expensive ways to bring your web site some visitors.

 

You can start with banner ads for as little as $1 per day coupled with PPC (Pay Per Click) links that cost a minimum of $3.00 per click for a good keyword means that your $30 per month advertising budget can balloon into more than $1000 per month with only a little over 30 clicks per day.

 

If that isn't bad enough did you know that some of your competitors hire click teams in foreign countries to purposely blow your work from home opportunity advertising budget right out of the water.  Is this how you want to spend your money?

 

What about purchasing leads?

 

You can find top quality leads for your work at home business opportunity by searching on Google. You will find companies claiming to have hot, real-time exclusive leads for your business anywhere from $2-$15 dollars each. Most people buy 100 leads at a time so at the minimum expend to spend $200 per month. A realistic rate of return on these leads is 2%-3%. This means that out of every $100 spent you have the opportunity to talk to 2-3 prospects about why they should join your work at home business. The cost to have these conversations is roughly calculated as Cost of leads divided by the number of prospects received multiplied by your hourly rate. Using the parameters above this cost would equal over $200 per prospect and we haven't even made a sale. Even if you close all 3 you are still in the hole. (3 prospects x $200 =$600 minus total sales = negative $450)

 

The end result is that you have ticked off your friends and family - they all quit. You become frustrated but you can't quit because you have invested a year's worth of your money and time that grew from wealth at $50 to heartache at $3,000.

 

You are angry and say working from home is a scam.

 

No so, according to another study by the US Department of Labor and Industry in 2005 over 20,000 work from home entrepreneurs grossed over $1 million dollars a year with the average work at home bread winner either supplementing or replacing their primary income by $63,000 per year. Remember those results were from a 2005 report and the work from home business industry had been growing at 17.4 percent.

 

How much money have you missed out on?

 

Like anything else working successfully on the Internet requires an education. In most cases getting that education isn't cheap however getting a quality education into the proper way to create and market an online work from home business does not have to be expensive.

 

There is only one business I have ever found on the Internet that I have ever made any real money with and that is It's Good Business dot net. The opportunity costs $1750.00 but it is less and that $50 business that caught you eye and here is why.

 

At first you may be a bit frightened by the price however when I paid the $1750 that was all I needed to spend because with the initial price point I received 25 real customers. These are people who are already buying my product. These are not distributors or re sellers. My customers are consumers. They re-order products not because they have to but rather because they want, enjoy and receive benefits from my products.

 

I don't advertise. The parent company spends their money on advertising and marketing to my customers.

 

Aside from sending a short e-mail welcoming my customers to my business or thanking them for their recent order, I don't send them anything. I don't even call them. They just re-order.

 

I don't buy leads or spend my time trying to get them interested in reselling my products or work from home opportunity.

 

If I want a larger business I spend $50 and buy another customer (I can buy 5 real customers for about the same money it costs for you to talk to 1 prospect). When I do that I am buying the customer for the life of my business. I don't need every customer to re-order every month either. I can earn $10,000 per month if only 15% of my customers order. (Right now I am experiencing a 22% re-order rate)

 

Added bonus is that I didn't have to annoy friend or family - they still like me.

 

It is a fact you are either going to spend a couple of thousand dollars to get started on the head end and have a real business or you are going to spend a couple of thousand dollars realizing that $50 price point was no bargain. The question is on which end do you want to pay?

 

If you are serious about working from home in a real business with flexible hours then I highly recommend that you attend one of the free itsgoodbusiness.net webinars  If you prefer to flush your hard earned dollar down the drain then don't. After all it is your choice.

 

Any questions?

 

RH Sterling - Case Statement Copywriter

570.972.1245

570.655.0522

Skype: rhsterling

On the web:  http://itsgoodbusiness.net

 

 

- "Strive not to be a success but rather to be of value" Albert Einstein -

 

Are you starting a home-based business?

Are you thinking about starting a home-based business? Before you part with your hard-earned money, keep in mind that home based business schemes have been around for years so do some investigating before you sign your home-based business affiliate agreement.

 

The popularity of many home-based business opportunities on the Internet is due largely to low startup costs and the lure of easy money.

 

Before you sign on the dotted line ask these few basic questions  before you commit to any home based business opportunity,

 

What are the Startup Costs?
How much are the start up costs for the home based business opportunity you're considering? Are there ongoing costs? If so, what will they entail and how much are they? One of the major causes of home-based business failue is due to not projecting the costs and expenses of operating a home-based business.

 

This is especially important if you are tyring to start on a shoestring.  Start up costs can be deceiving and often a home-based business can cost more to start than it may appear. The attraction of the initial low startup cost may vanish into thin air once you find out just how much is not included in your home-based business package.

 

Is there any Traning and Support Available?
The training and support offered by a company can make a huge difference in your success. Is it live training or is it Memorex? What I mean is can you attend live training sessions and have your questions personally answered by a qualified instructor or are you handed a bunch of books and CD's before being left alone to figure it out by yourself? What about your  up line, Do they good ethics and leadership skills? Are they dedicated to helping you succeed? Many times a quick search on Google will reveal quite a bit about the people and company included in your business plans.

 

What are the Rules for Advertising and Promotion?
Many home business opportunities have rules regarding how and where you can advertise. In some cases you may have strict limitations, and in others you may be able to do more or less whatever you want. In any case, it is very important to know and understand what you can and cannot do. For example, the company names are often copyrighted and/or trademarked and therefore you are not free to use them in your advertising without permission.

 

What is the Realistic Income Potential?
Read your income potential disclaimers. While a company may tell you hat is possible they won't make any income guarantees. They will however give examples of the best case scenario which is usually the exception to the rule. What is your product or service? Is it based on a need or is it predicated on a "wish list" want? Before you invest your time and money into any home-based business opportunity, you should understand how much you could realistically expect to make.

 

How Long Have They Been in Business?
One rule of thumb when evaluating a possible home-based business opportunity is longevity. A company who has been in business has an established track record. Good or bad there is a paper trail you can follow. By using Google to perform a little due dilligence you can quickly find both the positives and negatives about both the business and it's key players. Stay away from Pre-Launch and "Revolutionary" startup home-based business opportunities. Very few of thise ever make anyone other than the founders any money. Don't lose sight of your objective, which is to build a business that will provide you with an income over the years and not just a quick fix.

 

What Products or Services are Involved?
High quality goods and services that fill needs will attract an audience over a greater length of time thansome flash in the pan fad. Do you remember the pet rock?

 

If the product is a consumable, what is the reorder rate? Consumable products offer the home-based business owner a greater profit potential because people will reorder and buy more. Non-consumable products are sold less often and have a very limited re-order potential so you need to constantly go out and find more customers.

 

Is your home-based business opportunity customer based or distributor based?
If you are considering an MLM home based business then you are most likely looking at a distributor based business. A distributor based business really means that there are no real customers. Think about it for a minute. A distributor based business has no real customers - only distributors. Like you, they are only interested in making money. If your product doesn't make them any money they drop you like a hot rock and move on to another flavor or the week. Distributors have no loyalty!

 

A business based on a sollid foundation of customers is more stable. Customers are consumers of your products. They like, want and need your products. Fill their needs with a high quality product at an affordable price coupled with great customer service and you will build a steady income stream for the life of your home-based business.

 

Are There Quotas or Minimum Inventory Requirements?
Often times the real money for the companies involved comes from your required auto-ship. If you are required by the company to buy a large quantity of products on a regular basis to qualify for certain commission levels then it can be difficult to maintain the business.

 

Are the Products or Services Affordable?
The majority of the population must be able to afford the products or services you are offering. Before you begin your home-based business journey check the prices of your competetion. Know who is offering similar product and know what their prices are. Do some market research.

 

Creating a home-based business provided many benefits and opportunities however along with those opportunities come certain challenges. Be informed before you buy.