The Royal Road To Success

Persistence is the royal road to success.

If you have this one quality, you will succeed in anything.

Lack it, and you will be a failure in life.

Persistence is to success what carbon is to steel, an essential ingredient.

In any endeavor, you will meet adversity after adversity, within and without, and unless you persist through them all, you will not be able to refine your raw understanding of something into the sophisticated knowledge that you need to succeed.

We learn from our mistakes.

They are a feedback loop, a necessary evolutionary process.

It’s always exciting to start a new project-build a business, shape a better body, embark on a fascinating relationship-but sooner or later, you will come up against something that you don’t know how to handle, something beyond your current range of knowledge, something outside your skill level.

Most people at this point, quit.

Yet this virgin country is exactly what needs to be conquered.

At the very beginning, you have to make a commitment to persist and to see your adventure through to completion.

And sometimes you will fail completely, and you can’t persist on a certain project; but, you have to get up, wipe the dust off your clothes, and try another project. And if that fails try another one, and if that fails try another one.

This is how people become millionaires, famous scholars, brilliant scientists, fabulous artists, and great leaders. They fail their way to success.

Life is difficult. It is not easy for anyone. Yet some people appear to have a life of tremendous success and achievement, doing and having things that others can only dream of. These are the people who have passed the persistence test.

Evolution itself is the evidence of persistence.

Even if your whole life has been a miserable failure, begin now anew.

Choose something that you really want to do. Make a commitment to see it to completion. Then begin, and don’t stop until you get it.

Saleem Rana is a psychotherapist in Denver, Colorado. If you’re up to the challenge and want to create the kind of freedom and lifestyle you truly deserve – starting now – then get his free book from

http://theempoweredsoul.com/enter.html

How To Grab Your Readers Attention With Your Subject

The race for supremacy in the internet based businesses has been really heating up and many sites have been put up to help others to get ahead for a small fee. But there are also ways in which you don’t have to pay so much to make yourself a good list of loyal followers. Having a satisfied web traffic and visitors allows you to put up a foundation wherein you can build an opt-in list and make it grow from there.

An opt-in list allows you to provide newsletters to your subscribers with their consent. When people sign up, they know that they will be receiving updates and news from your site and the industry your represent via an e-mail. But that doesn’t mean that all of those who subscribe read them at all. Many lists have been built due to an attachment with free software or for a promotional discount and such. Some are not really interested in receiving e-mails from companies and just treat them as waste of cyberspace and delete or trash them without so mush as opening the e-mail and scanning them.

You can change all that. While forwarding an email message is relatively after producing your newsletter. Getting people to open them is not as easy. You don’t want to waste all the time and effort used in making the newsletters, you want people to read them and have their interests piqued. Interested enough to go to your website and look around and most especially purchased and acquire your products or services.

One of the numerous ways you can tempt or persuade your subscriber is by providing a well thought out and well written subject. The subject of an email is what is often referred to when a person or a recipient of an email decides whether he or she wants to open or read an e-mail. The subject could easily be regarded as one of the most important aspect of your promotional e-mail.

Your subject must be short and concise. They should provide a summary for the content of the e-mail so that the recipient will have basic knowledge of the content. This is really vital in grabbing the attention of your readers and subscribers. You want your subject to instantly grab the attention of your subscriber and get them to be intrigued to open up your mail. Remember, it is not necessarily true that a subscriber opens up subscribed mails.

A good subject must always be tickling the curiosity of your recipient. It must literally force the recipient to open the mail. A certain emotion must be ignited and get them to open the mail. It is essential to use specific words to get the reaction you need. Keep in mind that the recipient or subscribers spends only a few seconds looking over each subject of the e-mails he receives. You must grab your reader’s attention right away.

There are many forms you can use for your subject. You can provide a subject that says your e-mail contains content that teaches them tips and methods on certain topics. An example of this is using keywords and keyword phrases such as, “How to” , “tips”, “Guides to”, Methods in and others like that.

You can also put your subject in a question form. These may include questions like, “Are you sick and tired of your job?” Or “Is your boss always on your case?” Try to stay on the topic that pertains to your site so that you’ll know that your subscribers have signed up because they are interested in that topic. This form of subject is very effective because they reach out to your recipients emotions. When they have read the question on your subject, their mind starts answering the question already.

You can also use a subject that commands your reader. Statements such as “Act now and get this once in a lifetime opportunity”, or “Double, triple and even quadruple what you are earning in one year”. This type of subject deals with the benefits your company provides with your product and services.

You may also use breaking news as your subject to intrigue your subscriber. For example, if you deal with car engine parts you can write in your subject, “Announcing the new engine that uses no gasoline, It runs on water”. This creates curiosity with the reader and will lead them to open the mail and read on.

Dwayne Garrett is the author of several eBooks and popular software applications, he also offers a FREE Internet Blog that will help you to make sense of doing business on the Internet over at http://www.dwaynegarrett.com

Home Business Copywriting Ideas

When you do any online research about home based businesses, you will likely find thousands of results that tell you that the most successful and easiest business to start from your home is a copywriting business. You can make a great living without ever having to get dressed or leave the privacy of your own home.

Out of all the home businesses that give you the option of solely working from home, such as marketing programs and designing companies, copywriting is still touted to be the best of its kind.

The biggest reason that copywriting has been dubbed the perfect at home business is due to the extremely low startup costs. You really don’t have to have any special talent, just be able to write in good English and grammar, mix in a little creativity, and you are raring to go.

If you have had any previous writing experience at all, you simply just boot up your computer, and go to work. For those who have little to no experience, but are still interested in starting a copywriting business from home, they should check out one of the many online classes available that teach you the writing basics you will need to know in order to get started.

Another benefit of an at home copywriting business is that you have the option of working your day job, and running the business on the side, or just simply depending on your copywriting business for your sole full-time source of income.

Few people are able to just up and quit their job to try and work from home, as they don’t have the capital needed to make ends meet while waiting on the profits to start rolling in. Home copywriting is also taking off with stay at home moms who are interested in contributing to the household income while still staying at home to care for their children, they can work when their schedule allows, and care for the family as needed.

The best of both worlds all in one tidy package, especially since the money made by these moms is extra income, there is no risk involved, and their family won’t starve if it doesn’t work out.

You can start this business no matter how old you are, what gender you are, or what type of physical condition that you are in. If you can write, and are physically able to sit at the computer and type, then you can do this work.

The success of your home copywriting business is not affected by changes in the economy. There will still be work for you, even if unemployment rates rise, and the cost of living and interest rates go up. The better the economy, the more work you will probably get, but no matter how bad it is, you will still have work to keep your business afloat, unlike some other home based businesses out there.

If you want to earn some extra money, for whatever the reason, then you should consider beginning your own at home copywriting business. If you do good work, and become highly sought after, you may be able to produce enough income to be able to stay at home and work fulltime for yourself. Wouldn’t it be nice to tell your boss goodbye, and know that you would still be financially secure?

Vincent Murphy can help you to find the best home based business ideas and money making opportunities so you can work at home/Home Business Copywriting Ideas:Visit http://www.HomeGrail.com

Online Copywriting. Copy and Content: Any Difference?

People generally consider content and copy as two different entities. Well, it is true: they do have two different purposes. The purpose of content is to provide information of some subject. Content can be encyclopedia articles, long descriptive text, tutorials or even pictures and media (as non-textual content). The purpose of copy, however, is more incentive in nature. Although in some cases copy can resemble content; its primary objective is engaging people to take action. Making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, following a link or adding a page to bookmarks – whatever you want your visitor to do. So, while content informs, copy motivates.

But if you take a look at content and copy in terms of conversion, the differences start fading away. No matter what you are going to create – a sales letter or a long article, all the words must contribute to the persuasive process. That is, in the eyes of a visitor all content is a copy and all copy is content.

In case your aim is making a visitor simply click an AdSense or an affiliate link – an incentive copy is enough. But if you are serious about selling your own product or service, or even more important, making further sales to the same person (creating a repeated customer) – you have to find a proper balance between short motivating copy and informative content.

Consider an example of an online mortgage application service. When first arriving to the site your prospect customer is in the search for answers to the key questions in his mind: ‘Am I in the right place? What should I do?’ Here the frontpage copy has to do its job by engaging the visitor to go deeper. And the conditions of eligibility, which are the informative content, have to be at least equally incentive in order to capture the visitor’s attention and eventually motivate him to submit an application. Therefore, even such content as loan eligibility has to be written observing the core rules of copywriting which concern the usability, performance and motivation.

Copy and content must complement each other. There is no much use in a brilliant copy if it is accompanied by poor content which disappoints visitors. Same is right the other way around – a juicy, magical content will not do its job half as well if it is presented by a meaningless and vague copy.

Thus, so far there have been historical and organizational differences between the creation of copy and content. But these differences simply reflect the flaws in the persuasive and conversion processes. It is high time that you should break the barriers for the sake of the improved user experience and the success of your online business.

References:

Eisenberg, B., Eisenberg, J., Davis, L.T. ‘Persuasive Online Copywriting: How to Take Your Words to the Bank’. Wizard Academy Press, 2005, Austin, TX.

Oleg Ishenko, MCSE, MCDBA, BSc.
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Never Trust a ‘Silent’ Customer

Imagine you run a pizza parlour. You have all these neighbourhood families that pop in at least once a week for some pizza, garlic bread and Coke. On an average, one customer spends about $30 per week. But let’s assume they spend just $20. Imagine you did something that bugged this customer, but he or she never told you about it. What would you stand to lose if they left?

Its simple math: You lose $20 x 50 weeks. That’s equivalent to $1000 a year.

If you lost just 10 such customers per month, you’d lose about 100 clients a year.

That’s $100,000 that could be in your back pocket if you were a little complaint-conscious.

That Doesn’t Happen in Our Business: The Denial Syndrome

Overtly it won’t. In a Bain & Company survey of major corporations, they found that on average, U.S. Corporations lose half their customers in five years. Notice, it wasn’t ‘one year’ or ‘suddenly’. Clients have a tipping point. They get unhappy bit by bit and then its camel-back-breaking time. So, if you think that all your customers are happy with you-they aren’t. It’s a basic fact of life.

What’s really weird is that you can’t measure how much business you’re really losing. A study was done on a bank, they found they had as many accounts as they had a year ago. What they failed to measure was how most of the people had ‘silently’ transferred the money out into other banks and the closure of the account was a last measure, somewhere down the line.

The same thing applies to your customer. Like a patient Buddha, they will seemingly appear to put up with everything, till suddenly you find they don’t use you anymore. This is a classic flight of business. You hear nothing of it, till it’s almost gone and it takes a mammoth effort just to hold on to the business.

If you look at it from another perspective, you might even be getting equal to or slightly less business from your customer. Naturally this doesn’t ring any alarm bells. However, if you’ve been watching carefully, your customer has probably grown bigger and richer in the past few months or years. If your business with them has not grown exponentially, you are actually LOSING OUT.

No matter how successful your business, you will always have scope for improvement. Best of all, you will always have complaining customers. Don’t deny the fact. Accept it and then do something about it.

The Real Reason Why You Lose Customers

Last month we went to KFC to pick up some chicken and chips for dinner. On the way home we discovered that the chicken and the chips were soggy and tasted terrible.

How would most customers react? It would depend on their history with the product, but most people would grumble and simply not go back. We complained. We picked up the phone and called the toll free line at KFC. They asked us to place our order. We said we didn’t want to place an order, we just wanted to complain. They said, “We don’t take complaints on this line. You’ll have to call the manager at the branch where you bought it and talk to him.”

Now Why Would I Bother To Go Through All That Trouble?

It’s easier to never go back. All that money that KFC spends trying to get new customers is going down the drain and out the back door because they don’t have a complaint line.

Most companies act precisely in the same manner. For one, they have no real complaint department. If clients are unhappy, they feel embarrassed to complain and because no route has been cleared to vent their feelings, they avoid it completely.

Then they leave.

Obviously, you can’t wait for something to go wrong. Your job is to find ways to get the client to complain. If they complain, you are getting feedback that is extremely valuable and is probably relevant for all your other clients as well. Best of all, empowered with a complaint channel, a well-trained client will complain at every juncture giving you the opportunity to fix the problem and regain their trust.

How Companies React to Complaints

Virgin Airlines CEO, Richard Branson, sometimes makes an appearance at the gates when a flight is late, apologising profusely to all passengers as they check out. How mad would you continue to be if you ran into a situation like this?

Yet most companies detest complaints. Living in their ivory towers, they refuse to believe that any of their clients would leave. So they never ask for feedback. On the rare occasion that clients get mad enough to put it in words, it’s too late. Even then, a complaint is treated with nuisance value.

The first step a company takes when dealing with complaints is that they fix it.

Yeah, Right!

Because of their crummy service, the plane took off without you, you missed your meeting and lost more than just your temper. Do you think, just replacing something is going to erase all that trouble? It’s going to take much, much more.A simple replacement is never the answer. It has to be a heck lot more than just a numb ‘sorry’ . You’ve got to woo the customer back like you would with the girl that you had your eye on. Going down on your knees and begging for forgiveness is a start. Then you’ve got to lay it on thick and the thicker the better.

The Problem With Zero Defect

Lots of companies ran themselves into the ground trying to achieve zero defect. In an unpredictable world like ours, that goal is unreal. Even the best of intentions aren’t much use if you run into a flash flood. Clients recognise that. However, it’s up to you to have a disaster recovery plan in place.

When I say that, I don’t mean a grandiose ‘in case of a nuclear attack’ plan.

At Nordstrom stores across the U.S., salespeople are empowered to do ‘whatever it takes’ to fix a problem, even if it means going to the store across the street and buying the product at a higher price. It’s called the art of immediate recovery, and it assumes that something will go wrong and you will have a Plan B to fix it. The more you prepare yourself for this inevitable event, the less chance the client has to complain.

More often than not, a complaining client is complaining about everything but the product. Ever see people complaining about the food at a restaurant? The principal purpose of the restaurant is food, yet people leave because of loud music, bad service and everything else. Your job is to assume you’re a restaurant and find out what your ‘everything else’ is.

Getting Complaints is Like Winning Lotto!

1) What you need to do to ensure a regular stream of complaints. Dump the feedback form and go out and ask your customer’s face to face. Do it regularly and have them know whom they can complain to, if anything goes wrong. There is no such thing as a silent customer.

2) Complaining customers are always very precise. They eliminate the vagueness of feedback forms. Listen to them, act on their complaints. It’s not that they want to leave. They want to be wooed back. Fix the problem and then let them know how you fixed it.

3) They’re giving you free feedback that would cost a fortune at a research company, so reward them. They’ve been inconvenienced on top of getting a bad product or service. That inconvenience factor deserves payment in the form of a reward over and above just fixing the problem. Customers who are bought back from the brink are extremely loyal and extremely ‘noisy.’ Treat them like the asset they are.

4) Remember, it costs eight times as much to get a new customer, than it takes to keep an existing one. Keep them at all costs. Atone for your sins.

5) Rule #1:The complaining customer is always right. Rule #2:When in doubt, refer to Rule #1

Ever wonder why one business wildly succeeds, while another business struggles to get ahead? As a business owner are you totally overwhelmed with constant technology changes? Is it really possible to take age-old psychology and create more customers, more profits and yes…more time?

The most powerful small business ideas, systems and strategies have existed for thousands of years. They’ve been tried and tested. And you’ll find them here at http://www.5000bc.com — explained to you in an easy to understand language, that you can implement right away.