Welcome to Rob Bell's Blog. I discuss (often with humour) better living through the Internet, working online, small business and freelancing topics, cloud computing (web apps), iPhones and iPads, New Tech and Gadgets, and other stuff as it comes to mind!
Funny short clip of my good friend Dave, who’s 71, creating some hot electro beats via my iPhone.
I hope it brightens your day as much as it did mine
I taught him how to build and maintain his own website, which now has hundreds of pages, and gets thousands of visits each month – proving you can learn to use computers and the Internet at any age.
The Sunday Times called him ‘the greatest Surrealist since Salvador Dali’, so make sure you check out his artwork in the Grand Gallery.
This post is a direct copy of a page I just uploaded to my personal website, Rob-Bell.com – so the bit about ‘coming soon’ applies to that site, not this I thought the page worth sharing with you, my dear blog readers, so here it is, in all its’ glory including what I now consider to be quite an embarrassing video from a couple of years ago!
Beware the Newbie Trap – Watch That Wallet!
After 4 years of being disabled, I no longer had any savings and found myself living hand to mouth on incapacity and disability benefit, unable to afford to do much, rotting away quietly at home. Some days I couldn’t even afford to eat – but once I caught the internet marketing bug, I found myself forgoing meals to invest in courses I’d been recommended… as a Newbie (Complete Beginner) I didn’t know what was good or not, and I bought quite a few courses that were no use other than taking up space on my hard drive. I’m lucky that I have a degree in Business Management and Marketing, so already knew the rules, many tricks of the trade, and had a good eye for spotting what can only described as BS! I bet you’re just like me – you want to fill that knowledge gap, but you’re just not buying the right stuff…
If you’re new to making money online, it’s really easy to get sucked into spending lots of money on courses far too complex for the new or faint-hearted, which leave you frustrated, skint and feeling overwhelmed – resulting in an early exit before your new activities come to fruition.
The gurus all tell you to spend all your money on their course – which is always the best and fastest way for you to get millions, a massive house, a brand-new shiny Ferrari in your garage, and your own private jet to fly to your own private Island!
You and me both know that the only things that can really give you the lifestyle you dream of are free – Determination, Focus, and Effort.
If you’re just getting started and you’ve never done any marketing before, what you need is a way of learning the principles so you can build a long-term business that provides for you and your family for years to come. The best way of doing this generally is not to buy a thousand dollar web-based program and then convince others to buy the same program to make some money.
Some people are good at this, but most are not which is why network marketing and internet marketing have such high failure rates – I read it’s something like 97% of people who fail in these markets, probably because they find out the truth, which is:-
Even though you were told you would get rich quickly and easily by simply buying these programs, the truth is they will not make you rich on their own. Unless you are good at promotion, sales, and forming relationships with potential buyers, chances are you will struggle until you begin to understand better ways of marketing and promoting your cause. Your first sale is perhaps the hardest, especially if you don’t know how. I have a degree in marketing, but I still struggled at first, so I know and feel your pain, believe me!
[mlb /]
You would be far better off to join a low cost, even free, programme where you’re given the right training to get you started properly – where a community of your peers and experts come together to help each other learn the right techniques to generate a full-time income online. I joined Affiliate Funnel for those reasons, and 2 years on I’m still a member – and always recommend the program to friends and business contacts who want to learn about Internet Marketing, without spending their hard-earned money.
You can join and use Affiliate Funnel for free, or there’s a paid option which I have that costs me £4 ($6) each month -it’s easily worth every penny, although I don’t pay myself anymore – the program more than pays for itself every month.
Things don’t have to be complicated – anyone can generate income online, at whatever age. Several highly successful online business people are in their teens, and many are way past retirement age – the Internet shows no favours to any age. People of all skill levels and abilities just like you are able to find a system that’s right for them, and launch their new online career. No matter what you are doing now, you can start to earn money online – a lot of people I know never studied a day’s marketing in their lives before they took up internet marketing, and started applying it to their businesses and personal money-making ventures.
I’m teaching my Mum, who’s in her late 60s how to achieve stuff online, and have already taught a 71 year old who now writes and publishes a website with hundreds of, maybe even a thousand, pages about ancient history, numerology, and ancient wisdoms. It also features a selection of his artwork – the Sunday Times called him the ‘greatest Surrealist since Salvador Dali’.
Affiliate Funnel Will Get You Started, Quickly and Easily
My personal recommendation for this first stage of your online business career is Affiliate Funnel. It’s easy to get started, and the regular training will provide you with the essential information you need during this first stage. Affiliate Funnel helps you develop your online brand and begin to generate money from the Internet, and you don’t need to have sold or marketed or been a business whiz before.
You can ask questions of experts at the weekly saturday and monday night (and often other nights too) seminars, and they often give away industry secrets that will help you increase your income.
Give Affiliate Funnel a try-out today – it doesn’t cost you anything to join, and it could make you a lot of money.
Traffic Exchanges – The Easiest Way for You to Get People to View Your Offers
Traffic Exchanges are one of the easiest ways for newbie Internet Marketers to start to generate visitors to their websites, product pages and affiliate offers. They work on a simple basis – you earn credits by viewing other marketers pages, which you then use to get your own pages seen. So all you have to be able to do is look at a screen and click on a mouse – simples!
I still use Traffic Exchanges as one of the best sources of signups to my email lists, by providing quality materials in return for a name and email address – this is called permission-based marketing, and makes sure you’re never accused of spam, because every person on your list requested to be there, then confirmed this desire by clicking the confirmation link your autoresponder sends them when they sign up.
The reason I still use Traffic Exchanges two years later? Easy – most of my subscribers come from them.
You get laser targeted access to Internet Marketers – everyone there is one, so you know who you’re talking to, and what motivates them. They are also the simplest promotion method online – once you have a page to promote, you just click other sites to get people to view yours. Don’t tell anyone, but I often surf traffic exchanges while I’m watching TV or listening to a Webinar or watching an online video… the hours can fly by and you find yourself with thousands of credits to spend!
I use Traffic Splash, Dragon Surf, I Love Hits and SWAT as my main traffic exchanges, although I sometimes use others. SWAT in particular is good because they also provide private weekly training where big hitters teach you the things that enabled them to become big hitters in the first place.
Here’s a video I did a couple of years ago showing you how to use a traffic exchange, the link doesn’t work anymore (don’t try going to jointrafficsplash.info, it doesn’t work anymore – I didn’t keep the domain name!) To visit Traffic Splash <—- simply click on this name.
Coming Soon
I’ll be building up this section of the site over the next few months, when I get time between client jobs. I aim to provide information and resources to help individuals and businesses build successful brands and revenues online. Ironically, because I can only do it between client jobs, the more successful I become the longer this will take to build, so you really should be hoping for my failure… Although if I were to fail, why would you want to learn from me?!?!? Aaaah blessed irony!
If you want to receive my daily email series, 35 Free Websites, Applications and Tools to Help You Make Money Online, sign up here now – I’ll throw in a free copy of a book that can help you get started online when you confirm the confirmation email you’ll receive when you sign up. If it doesn’t arrive in under 2 minutes, check your spam folder – sometimes Gmail and Yahoo are overzealous in their filtering – heck the other day my Mum sent me an email and they spam foldered that!
Today’s been a bit of a rubbish day – my back has been really painful all day, so I’ve been mostly laid up – it’s 4am here and it’s the first time I been on this today! I’m concious I haven’t posted since my database disaster, so wanted to give you an update.
My book’s about half ready – tomorrow (Thursday) is when it’s supposed to be ready for but I think It’ll be closer to Saturday providing I can sit at this chair tomorrow…
I’ve been experimenting quite a bit more on Squidoo, trying out different modules and developing a few pages… of the 6 that I’ve started this week, only one is published – as they’ve had to take a back seat to my book completion, but you can see that at http://www.Squidoo.com/freshbooks – leave a comment there and let me know what you think. Remember to leave your comment in my debate and vote in the poll.
Do you already know and use Squidoo? Leave a comment with your lens address, and I’ll go look at them and give you stars.
Through my research I’ve come into contact with lots of web applications with fantastic benefits for the users – some will grow to be very useful, but others are already there… They’ll all be in my book – even the ones that are still in beta if they’re next-gen functional and useful for building your business and increasing your subscribers. I’ve been privileged to help test some really excellent stuff, and I’ll tell you all about it.
I didn’t win the TV in the Phase 1 Video Contest for my DotComSecrets challenge, but the winner and his family were very deserving of the award as their video was mint! I’m just really pleased to have been in the top 10, I hate being on film -but the people who voted for me obviously don’t hate me on video, and that feels good.
After running my ASK campaign for almost 2 weeks so far, I’ve got a reasonable selection of questions. I also set up google alerts, and upped my use of a lot of internet marketing forums, observing which questions were asked the most.
From this data, I now have the outline for my product – and a name!
Presenting “Take Over the World for Free” – taa daaa (if you were thinking of stealing the .com before I bought it, it’s too late!)
I’m not prepared to give too many details out about it on a public blog yet, but it’s basically a guide to building a business online using only free resources! It’s targeted at Offline Business Owners, the Self-Employed, Internet Marketers – in fact, anyone who wants to enhance their business through the global wealth builder known as the Internet.
Whether you own a car plant or a car yard, a window company or a window cleaners, a stately home or a hovel in a state – this guide is for you.
It’s important for me that this product be useful to people who’ve never done any marketing online as much as it is for people who have, or are struggling. I want local business owners to be able to take the guide and establish their own profiles and communities online, I want societies to be able to spread their messages to wider communities, and I want individuals to empower themselves using some great, free tools and resources.
My Sales Funnel looks like this right now -
1. Summary Book covering general themes and promoting actual book(free)
2. Take Over the World for Free (large manual)
3. Take Over the World Members Programme (membership site, affiliate features, profiles, forums, access to online training of tools in book)
4. DVD/Home Study Course
5. Take Over the World Megalomaniac System (Membership site from where system is easily deployed – regularly updated as a web application)
So that’s 4 paid product levels and a 5th Free intro to the materials. I’m not sure how I’m going to get the Megalomaniac System built yet – but I’ll find a way!
I’ve bought the domain ‘robbelllinks.com’ which I’m going to use as a resources page so people can get to the tools and sites I’m using in the guide without having to keep typing them in themselves.
I’m really happy with the way things are going at the moment – research went well, I’m upbeat about the subjects – I know where to find the experts I need to ensure this is stellar content, and I’m about to start reaching out to them. I’ve obviously hesitant that I can do it all in time – it’s been so long since I last wrote a book I have newbie jitters all over again.
10 day countdown begins today – Beta v1 ready by 30th Oct
I’m feeling the pressure a little with Russell’s deadline, I haven’t worked to any really tight timescales for a little while. Just means I’m going to have to sort this falling asleep/waking up thing out – psh, like I can sort that lifelong problem out this week – I’ve got all-nighters to pull!
On a lighter note, I’m WELL CHUFFED to currently be number 6 in the Phase 1 Video Contest!!! That TV would look mighty fine in front of my eyes, compared to the one I have now that a friend gave me when he was going to throw it out! The only High Def in my house is the PC Monitor! The only thing that makes me a little hesitant is the question of whether it’s PAL compatible – or solely an NTSC box – why we can’t just have the same television standard these days I do not know.
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