Money, Process’s and Goals

How To Mass Promote Your New Blog Post

In this blog post, I am going to discuss how I am mass marketing a on going FAQ series for one of my business. I will answer one question a week over 18 weeks for this business. The Content The questions, I am using are coming from what customers have asked us, so now we [...]

3 Lessons Learned From Tim Ferris 4 Hour Workweek

It has been now 3.5 years since I first read Tim Ferris – 4 Hour WorkWeek in late 2007. Thanks Daniel Fierling for introducing me to it. 3 Lesson I have taken and change my life and business based on Tim lessons Systems In late 2007, the time I first read it, I had been [...]

5 Outsourcing Tip – How To Handle Your Employee’s

How to improve outsourcing with your employees better

8 Internet Marketing Lessons To Grow Your Business

I am just putting together the information foe the one on one coaching program that will be release soon. There are 8 lessons in running an online business that came up that I wanted to share while doing this program (there is a lot more) Lessons 1 – Only Learn From Those Who Have Achieved [...]

How I emailed 12,734 and made $5.54 (this is not a typo)

Internet Marketing has a lot of areas and you have to find area’s you are good at. One area I am not good at is email marketing, well on my older sites, on my new ones I have got better. So I emailed 12,734 yesterday as an affiliate and I mad $5.54 from that list. [...]

Money, Process’s and Goals

Posted by Mukul Verma on April 25th, 2011

Most of what I talk about on this blog is around Internet Marketing, marketing, marketing. However there are a few other steps I believe is important in the steps to being successful with Internet Marketing. This is more on business and life, I will talk on Money, Process’s and Goals.

Process

An IM friend of mine, Miguel, told me that this is my strong point and I did not know it. I have said it before, when Miguel suggest something, I will listen. He sat down and gave me a 5000 feet view of my business and what I do and made me realize he is right. I even had a process for the Toronto IM Meetups. I would spend 10 minutes outside the meeting (email list, post places, confirm restaurant etc… I wrote out the process). I got process’s for outsourcing, customer service, training, even now I got one for checking email.

Process’s are very important, I do use then each time I do anything. It makes tasks easier for you to give others to do. Also you can now do it without thinking (and make it more efficient).

Goals

I am sure you have heard me talk on this before. Goals are critical. If you do not know your goals, you will not reach anything. I like taking steps and find it work like Sam Walton (great biography), instead of expecting to make a million dollars overnight and one a business one step at a time and make it bigger and bigger.

With my recent site, the goal was 30 visitors a day, then 100 visitors and work its way up to 1,000 visitors.

Here is what I do for my goal getting. I write out 6 goals each month around different areas that are important to me. I normally reach 70% to 90% of my goals. If I reached 100%, then it would lack challenge and if I did 50% then are further fetch. Goals need to be reachable and help you teach bigger goals.

I found the higher I make my goals, I may not reach it, however I will land somewhere very nice and ahead of not having goals. I was suppose to retire at the age of 32 years old (that was my goal when I was 25 years old – I did not reach it, however still helped me a lot).

Last on goals; I often set goals on blocks I have. When I started my last business, I had a habbit of working on a business, hit a road block and stopping. I did this like 4-5 times last year wasting weeks at at time (keep in mind my income base is already set – so I would not suggest this as your first business to, do something more basic and structured). So my goal was, unless I cannot see this business be a 6 figure site, I cannot stop for 2 months. I broke through a reoccurring pattern of stopping ideas when I broke a pattern. Which paid off very well.

Another goal that I wanted to get into eating healthy, so in May one of my goals is to have a salad each day. This will help me build a routine of eating more healthy. If I dont do it most of the time, then I will make it a goal again in June.

So what is your goals?

Money

I was having a drink with a fellow IMer who once ran a successful business and now has nothing to show for it financially. So my first question is, didnt you save money while you were doing well? He said no. Talking to a few other people, I quickly learned that most people do not. I have been told this success may not be here and that is cool, I will keep working at it, but more importantly when you are doing well, save money each week or month.

I will be the first to admit, I am not guaranteed what I got today to last forever or even a long time, so when you are making access cash and business is good, save money. Save money is important – remember the business works for you, you do not work for the business, well that is my thinking. So always save some money each week when your business is doing well. This will let you travel more, buy property and have money for a rainy day, if business does go down. I cannot state how important this is.

There are 3 things that may not have to do with Internet Marketing, however a lot to succeed and live a solid life online.

Cheers,

Mukul

0 to 1000 Daily Visitors in 90 days – Internet Marketing Results

Posted by Mukul Verma on April 14th, 2011

Last few months I have been quiet in the Internet Marketing website, , besides the odd update on my blog here and there, well I have gone back to working on my online business (which I really enjoy). I have been working on a new website and within 90 days we went from no visitors to over 1,000 visitors a day.

How Did I do this? 0 to 1000 visitors a day in 90 days.

1. Trial and Error

The first 2 months, the team works hard and we had tried many methods. We have wasted many hours on methods that produced no results. In the end using the same concepts as always (discussed in Traffic Marketing Intensive) the outsource was very different. My top traffic sources were very different then any other website I own, however managed to get the traffic. The key here is, the results are in the method, not the traffic source

2. Tracking

We tracked everything we did. Once we found methods that worked, we did more of it. Once we have found methods that did not work, we let it go. I had a full time person doing classified ads for 3 weeks which results in maybe 5 visitors a day. Was it worth it? No, so we stopped. I had someone go on Facebook, no luck here either, I am still going to try other ways on Facebook. Track everything and keep going with what works.

3. Giving Up

There was point where I am like, i am working soo hard, others are working soo hard and we are seeing nothing, no results. NOTHING AT ALL!!!! I wanted to give up, I came close to giving up, then I realized and set it as a goal not too. It was simple, as the last few projects, I would start, get to this point and stop. I said I had to go on this one. After 90 days, it was well worth it and I am glad I did not give up.

4. Outsourcing

Once a process was in place, I had someone on my outsource team work on the day to day. This is important, last 2 months I have been more distracted on personal stuff, however my wonderful team has taken care of the day to day stuff. ONLY OUTSOURCE once you have the process laid down. If they are new on your team, dont keep tweaking after. In this case, I had a great person, who has worked for sometime, so we had them work on it and tweaked it at one point almost daily. More outsourcing – Outsource Guide

5. The Email List

Because it fit the business model, collected emails. At one point, aggressively. However some business’s, including this one, it was a critical part. Yesterday I went out a email to this list and it profited a couple hundred bucks.

6. Business Plan

Know your business plan? Know how you are going to be better in the marketing then anyone else. The ironic thing is that with the short success of 0 to over 1,000 daily visitors, we are not even launch what I had for my business plan yet. This is only the trial run, if this flopped we would not invest more. Now I got programmers involved to make the beast I want for this website (also using only the profits made from this website).

When I came up with this idea (which many others do the same), it would have taken me 3 months to program the website. I did not want to wait 3 months, so what we did was use wordpress to get the website up and running (no cash investment) and then in 3 months would decide if we should go on. In that 3 months, we are at daily profit and over 1,000 visitors, so we are now starting to the build the real website and when its ready, we have a email list, traffic and profits already, its proven.

Business model is very important.

7. Study Growth

We had about 13% growth for a while – why that #, I dont know. We did not go from 0 to 1,000 over night. I had one point where we were doing 20 visitors a day, then aiming to 100 visitors, then 300, 500, 800 and 1,000, now aiming towards $1000 a week from the website.

Is this website worth my time, maybe not. However if I grow it, it will be more then worth the time longer term. Moving one step at a time (even if you think your profitability of time is higher at start – Like I think mine is today) and work your day up.

Last, how I got the traffic. I explain this in detail in Traffic Marketing Intensive – Traffic Marketing Intensive, if you have not pick this up, I highly suggest you do if you are struggling online and had to pick up one training from me – this would be it. It is theory and methods – THEORY IMPORTANT IN THIS TRAINING.

The 1,000 visitors a day came from the concept of Traffic Marketing Intensive, not the methods of websites. I got sites that get 5000 views a day on You Tube, this one, it was a flop.

Cheers,

Mukul

Save N Keep

Posted by Mukul Verma on March 29th, 2011

Today i am testing doing a full blog post from my ipad 2.

I had someone book mark one of my websites on Save N Keep – http://www.savenkeep.com/ and notice some traffic in my Google Analytics, it took sometime as it was not in my top 20 referral sources.

No idea what this website is why or why its happening, but took 30 seconds and bookmarked all my websites and was well worth it.

I would spend more time writing this blog then to complete this traffic source.

iPad shooting and adding video failed

checkout Save N Keep – http://www.savenkeep.com/

Why I Will Not Make Over A Million Dollars This Year

Posted by Mukul Verma on March 22nd, 2011

So is money your only goal? Can you make a million dollars this year?

I will NOT make a million dollars this year and here is 3 reasons why? Would I like to make it, YES!!!! However I will explain why it would not happen.

1. Work is fun – I dont feel that I work hard, we have a good team and we enjoy it. My wife likes to say that its not work since I enjoy it too much. Yes you have your up and down days. However I dont have to see people face to face or chase sales. If I dont do work, it is giving up future income being stronger, not now. So if I am going make over a million dollars this year, but hate me work, why would I do it?

2. Me, Me, Me – We are able to travel, work on our personal goals, like this past month when we want. Travel, family and control our own time. I bet there are people who are reading this that have worked more in a day, then any given week I have in the past month. I dont say that too booast, I say that I can control my time to do what I want. I dont have to call me wife and say I am busy with business. If my parents come into down that I cannot meetup for anything. We do not have a family yet, so lets enjoy life.

3. Passive Income – This is where you make a on going income even if you are not working that day. In the last month, I have spent very little time working, as I have had personal stuff I am working on. This is harder to do, however I think makes a lot more sense long term. If I was to do the work to make a million dollar this year, I would not have that passive income on days I am not working. I prefer the passive over a sales commission job or a product launch – both which can help me make the million. I can do a product launch and likely make a good chunk of money or do consulting in the Internet Marketing niche.

Now the question is, well can I do all that and still make a million dollars. I am sure you can, however I think you gotta work in steps to get up there. So I will make a million dollars (oh oh this is the internet, it is here forever ), just one step at a time and work my way up without giving up me time, having fun and still a passive income on days I dont work. I also have a great time that helps alot.

Cheers,

Mukul

Google Analytics

Posted by Mukul Verma on March 13th, 2011

I am going to share with you a walk through on a recent Google Analytics analysis I did. When it comes to stats there is soo much that you can keep on top of and when starting a new venture, its important. I recently started a new venture which is less then 3 months old and reviewed my Google Analytics and here is a walk through. It is important to understand that the process will change as you will find some information, that will lead to other information. So this may have been my path, however you can go down your own and learn some cool data, I love the In Page Analytics.

Traffic Sources

I love traffic and believe its the bloodline a online business, so the first place I goto is here and see where are my top traffic sources. This website is generating way over 10,000 visitors a month less then 3 months (I am gonna leave it vague as it may be 10,001 or 100,000 or more since competitors can read this, but I want you to get as much info as possible here). If you want to learn how I get massive traffic fast and free, goto Traffic Marketing Intensive. This formula always works for me.

Question – Are there any traffic hidden gems? The traffic sources where someone posted my link or maybe a linkbuilder and it just has brought me traffic. Often I have never heard of the website before and I will explore if that is a good website to get traffic from.

Question – Is my traffic constant? If its not, why not? Did I do some kind of marketing or bookmarking or what is the reason for it not being constant. Example when I did this, I noticed that my feedburner traffic dropped 80% overnight, so it made me realize something was up. After exploring it, I found the issue and resolved it aiming to get traffic back up again.

Question – Is what you are spending time on working? For example I added resources to Facebook marketing (still have not seen strong signs it works, but I am always open to testing everything), but did not see a increase in traffic. So my choice is that stop Facebook Marketing or I tweak the Facebook Marketing process we do. This can tell me that I got my team spending time on a process that does not work and thats important information Google Analytics is sharing with me.

Now I am taking notes and know what to focus on and what did not work (which is just as important) so you can optimize your process.

The Graphs

I always take a quick look at my bounce rate (people who leave your website as soon as they get there hitting the back button), new visitors, average time, pageviews and how constant. As you get more traffic the bounce rate will increase, the pageview will decrease, however I have not seen any surprises here today.

This would vary depending on each website. Some websites you will have almost all new visitors, as you are just a solution to a problem. Other websites they may come back everyday, you are the drug dealer. Keep in mind what your goal and website is. If you have people come back each day, you want to keep a balance as you want to grow, however retain visitors.

Top Landing Pages

The pages that are having a lot of people enter on them, you want to take special care of these pages. You want to optimize to increase your desired results. I have learned often others pages on my website that I would not consider high interested, are high entrance pages. Now I can take special care of these pages.

In-Page Analytics

This is very important. You can see your webpage and where people are clicking on your website. I am not for long sales pages, so this would not work to that. However you may notice and I have that I am losing a large % of traffic to a page that will not make the sales, more on that in a moment.

Here is where you will access it in Google Analytics

When you click on the In-Page Analytics, you will see your webpage and #s over it. Here is an example. I have changed the range of dates, so you do not see my real data, however get the concept.

A few things to notice on ths In-Page Analysis

1. The % in the bubbles, tells you how many people click on that. So on another website for example, I had 0.4% going to an affiliate program at the top, it was gets 7,000 visitors a day, so that means 280 visitors each day wanted to get a better price and likely to be an affiliate to save some money. So I moved it to the bottom of the page, now I am not losing possible sales at a higher price or customers going off track from buying.

2. The orange bar and $ Click Below. Depending on your website, this may be good or bad. In this case, 34% below is perfectly fine as higher clicks are at the top, however it is common to click below the fold.

3. Notice the 34% on ‘Today’s Deals’. That does not mean they clicks that exact button. What it means is that they clicked from this page to that page, which is the same page (home page). So that may be misleading.

Now you will notice that for your website, you may find some information and go down a different path, some examples I have gone down differently.

- Large # of traffic from non-english countries and why?

- Content Pages and why some are getting traffic?

- Why lots of people are searching my websites name (which shows branding works)

- Finding hidden websites that bring me 2,000+ visitors a month for years (more on this in Traffic Marketing Intensive)

- On website search

Here is what I have done for Google Analytics, you have to find what works for you, take notes and get ideas on how you can increase your traffic and business.

Cheers,

Mukul

Why

Posted by Mukul Verma on March 6th, 2011

This making money online and starting a internet business is not hard, however does require a lot of work. Anyone who tells you that its easy and fast to make money online is either making money in telling you that or has never made a substantial amount online. Kick your @$$ into gear and make things happen.

I have made or stopped my self from making each of these why’s?

I wonder why?

Why do people work 10 hours a day working hard for someone else?

Why do people take raises or promotions which are little more pay (5K or 10K) and lots more work taking them away from there dream?

Why do people make themselves the center of there business. I saw Lady Gaga the other night in concert and she got sick and delayed the whole performance by 90 minutes and I heard she was not on her best game that night, still a very good show. Why does she make herself the center of her business?

Why do people not take steps to make there dreams happen and just talk about it?

Why Commute? Spending more then a hour a day travelling to and from work

Why do people spend hours studying others business and not growing there own?

Why buy expensive training courses and never use them?

Here are a few why nots which have helped me grow personally

Why not set goals each month?

Why not focus on what has proven to work?

Why not have others do the day to day and you work on the growth and projects. Why not outsource

Why not enjoy life with no downside? Meaning travel on saved money or start a website with no or little invested.

Why not track your personal and business financials each month? (networth, income/expenses)

Why not give to charity when you do well?

Why not live where you want, how you want? Not in the standard 9-5 or eat or live in a house above what you need even if you can afford a more expensive place.

Why not make your goals about more then just money?

Why not start a web business and just work at it daily and see what happens?

I hope that can help on some why and why nots.

Cheers,

Mukul

Daily Reports From Your Outsource Team

Posted by Mukul Verma on February 18th, 2011

I recently wrote a post on how my outsourcing team is expansion of myself and my business. Parts of my business were disorganized and that was filtering down to my outsource team.

Here is an update that I am adding to my Outsource Guide from my recent learnings. If you are outsourcing and want to learn more, I am sure you have the guide, if not you can get it by clicking here.

One of the keys to outsourcing and managing an outsource team is the daily report. This is a report your outsource employees send you each day to outline the work that they have completed each day and it also holds them accountable. Well after years of receiving and reading reports, I have now taken it up a level.

I have designed a new daily report structure with questions and feedback that are designed around my company’s goals and missions. I have learned things about my business, I would not have otherwise known without this new report format.

Here is how to formulate your own killer daily report structure to get the most potential out of your outsource team.

Step 1 – Determine your company’s mission or goals.

So when I recently implemented this new report structure, my goal was that I wanted new Internet marketing and customer service ideas. So I thought, why not have these ideas come from my outsource staff members who were actually doing those tasks.

My old processes, did not involve the input of my outsource staff, except for the odd time once in a while when I asked or gave instructions to do so. I also find have a lot happening in my business as it grows and I am no longer involved in the day-to-day operations since I now have 2 managers. I do not know everything that is happening, so I included this in.

With my old reporting process I would not know if my outsource staff members had a lot of work on their plate or not and would then give them more (so they found themselves swamped and overwhelmed) OR other time I thought they had enough work meanwhile they were not busy, and so I did not giving them any work. So I needed to solved this issue as well.

Lastly, when someone is new or doing new tasks, I always want to know what they are learning, so I can learn it as well (this alone was worth a lot).

Step 2 – Ask questions in the Report structure that help you achieve your goals.

Here are the questions that I came up with. Now they need to be customized to each outsource person and position, but they give you a good guideline of what questions your outsource team should be addressing in their daily reports.

List of Task Completed Today. Mandatory
List of Pending/Outstanding Tasks and Completion Dates (all tasks should be log on the Project Management System): Mandatory
Ask for suggestion on how to improve business process?
- (i.e. How can we service customers better
- how can we market or build better awareness of the business or
- how can we manage our team better)
Any Suggestions for Improving Business ABC
Is there anything I can help you with? Mandatory
What Did You Learn Today?
Any other Questions or comments? Mandatory
Weekly – Time Sheet Mandatory

Some of these are mandatory, spend 10 minutes and think of what would be the best questions to help your business. What do you wonder about with your outsource team.

Step 3 – Follow ups and Tweaking

Now that I have implemented this new daily report structure, I have noticed some vast improvement in work flow and have discovered some tweaks to make the business better. Customize and change the questions asked on each outsource staff’s report structure to better complement their position or the report will be a useless task for some of your outsource employees. This will take a little time to set up at the beginning, but the outcome is well worth the effort.

Other Tips

If you give feedback on the outsource staff’s daily reports, your team will appreciate that and will continue giving you valuable information. If you ignore their comments and input (good or bad) and do not interact with them, they will get bored and you will stop getting new information. More often then not I learn some valuable information from these reports that is like pure gold for my business. I love reading these reports now especially the learnings and suggestions as they are pure motivation for new idea’s that we implement into our business.

Outsource Only Expands You

Posted by Mukul Verma on February 2nd, 2011

Outsourcing is often looked at as a way to free yourself and live the life style of your dreams and never have to work again. Well that is far from the truth.

Outsourcing only expands what you are.

If you are disorganized, it will show in your team. If you have systems and are on top of things, your team will perform. If you waste money on your business, you will waste more. If you dont know anything, well unless you hire very expensive outsourcing, you may not make it too far.

This past week I have been very focused elsewhere (on personal stuff) and gave unclear instructions to my outsource team. Well guess what? It came back and asked me many questions back. Which created more work, disorganization and just made stuff very complicated.

The problem was not the outsource team, the problem was me.

I have said many times before, that outsourcing only expands what you are, well I saw the downside of it. Now its time to get back on track and build new process’s and systems in place in order to grow the business.

Whats Next?

I just picked up a training course on process’s and outsourcing. So I will now spend time on fixing my business and hoping to make it better and strong (and involve less of me).

Cheers,
Mukul

PS – To Learn more on my outsourcing experience, you will love my guide, if you dont like it, I will refund you. Its got some GREAT feedback from some experience people –

Get My Outsource Guide

How to Track What People Are Saying About You, Your Competitors and In Your Market

Posted by Mukul Verma on January 8th, 2011

Here is a video on a great tool to track what people are saying on almost anything you want. Google Alerts has some cool uses which I will share in this video.

In the comment section below, what are you tracking?

What Is Your Goal in 2011

Posted by Mukul Verma on January 5th, 2011

Just got back from New York late last night, spent the day on financials and goals, long day.

Goal setting is very important, I have been setting goals for the last 6 years and the more I read them, the more them come true. wow sounds like a foreign concept. Well 2010 I did not read my goals as much and guess what, it showed So time to send goals for 2011.

What is your goal in 2011?

A few of mine include getting into shape, donate more to charity and buy a house outside the city or Toronto (right now own a condo in a busy area uptown). Also to earn 4 figure plus each day.

Cheers,

Mukul