Poor People Have Big TVs – Rich People Have Big Libraries is a post from: Breakthrough Marketing with Loren Woirhaye

Reading time: 2 – 2 minutes

(part 2 of 5)

“Poor People Have Big TVs. Rich People Have Big Libraries.”

The late Jim Rohn said that often.  It sounds like a glib statement to be sure.  and it might offend you if you enjoy your TV.  That’s not the point.  These days, many rich people do have big TVs of course.  The point is that successful people continually invest in developing their minds and creative pursuits, while unsuccessful people just seek instant self-gratification, which tends to default to doing stuff like watching junk television.

A secondary point is that when you buy a TV or any other toy or new car or even a house, it won’t make you more money – in fact it will usually either decrease in value (TVs, Ipods, computers) or it will cost you money to maintain (houses, boats).

Of course with real-estate your investment may be worth more in the future,  but if you buy more than you can afford, you’re investing in a liability that sucks up your monthly cash, not an asset.  Of course you need a ]]> Poor People Have Big TVs – Rich People Have Big Libraries is a post from: Breakthrough Marketing with Loren Woirhaye

Reading time: 2 – 2 minutes

(part 2 of 5)

“Poor People Have Big TVs. Rich People Have Big Libraries.”

The late Jim Rohn said that often.  It sounds like a glib statement to be sure.  and it might offend you if you enjoy your TV.  That’s not the point.  These days, many rich people do have big TVs of course.  The point is that successful people continually invest in developing their minds and creative pursuits, while unsuccessful people just seek instant self-gratification, which tends to default to doing stuff like watching junk television.

A secondary point is that when you buy a TV or any other toy or new car or even a house, it won’t make you more money – in fact it will usually either decrease in value (TVs, Ipods, computers) or it will cost you money to maintain (houses, boats).

Of course with real-estate your investment may be worth more in the future,  but if you buy more than you can afford, you’re investing in a liability that sucks up your monthly cash, not an asset.  Of course you need a place to live, and having more space than you need can be a pleasant luxury – but the truth is making money as an entrepreneur almost always involves using the money you have to get leverage.  If your money is tied-up (or spent) on luxuries, it’s not liquid and you cannot use it.

I don’t personally much care what you spend your money on, but I do care about being a rational business writer so here it is: the smart play is to invest your money  in assets that are likely to either increase in value and be sellable later or assets which you can use to create more income.

Making money isn’t the only thing in life and even disciplined asset-oriented entrepreneurs  have our little indulgences. That’s okay, but if you’re splurging most of your income on things that amuse you but which are going to lose value and become obsolete, you’re headed in the direction opposite to wealth.

The post author, Loren Woirhaye writes sales copy and creates marketing systems for business clients who want to slash customer acquisition costs and position their businesses For 20%-30% sales growth in the next 12-18 months. He writes regularly about marketing and life at his Entrepreneur Blog.

3 Easy Free Ways You Should Be Getting Traffic (From People With Money) To Your Blog is a post from: Breakthrough Marketing with Loren Woirhaye

Reading time: 4 – 6 minutes

In the next few minutes you’ll discover:

First some bad news: in today’s web marketplace just having a blog won’t get you any real traffic at all.  In fact, the market is savagely competitive and crowded, so if you aren’t super-focused you probably won’t get far in marketing your site.

The good news: people are super busy these days and what they need and want when they look for information online is clarity.  When you create focused information that is easy for people to understand and explore, you win.

Some of the best, most friendly traffic is free.  Friendly traffic is the kind of visitors who want information and come searching for it.  I call this traffic friendly because they are asking questions and want solutions to their problems.  They aren’t really expecting to be sold anything, so their guard ]]> 3 Easy Free Ways You Should Be Getting Traffic (From People With Money) To Your Blog is a post from: Breakthrough Marketing with Loren Woirhaye

Reading time: 4 – 6 minutes

In the next few minutes you’ll discover:

• 3 easy ways to start attracting the right kind of visitors to your blog
• How to start growing your email list immediately
• The secret ingredient (that skyrockets sales) you must deliver in all your content

First some bad news: in today’s web marketplace just having a blog won’t get you any real traffic at all.  In fact, the market is savagely competitive and crowded, so if you aren’t super-focused you probably won’t get far in marketing your site.

The good news: people are super busy these days and what they need and want when they look for information online is clarity.  When you create focused information that is easy for people to understand and explore, you win.

Some of the best, most friendly traffic is free.  Friendly traffic is the kind of visitors who want information and come searching for it.  I call this traffic friendly because they are asking questions and want solutions to their problems.  They aren’t really expecting to be sold anything, so their guard tends to be down.  The “friendly factor” is part of what makes blog traffic so high quality.

Of course some of your traffic will usually come from phrases people type into search engines.  You’ll get this sort of traffic naturally over time,  but getting lots of it is a technical process I won’t try to teach in a short article.

The cornerstone of the best free traffic is human engagement. That means giving information as from one person to another.  Imagine a person asked you a question and you knew the answer.  You would probably share the answer, right?

Sharing answers to questions is the easy way to get free traffic.  Of course sharing answers means putting words together.  There are many opportunities online to share answers to questions, but the easiest to learn to use are:

• forums
• article sites
• press releases

Online forums are easy to figure out.  You’ll want to explore whether the forum allows you to put a signature link at the bottom of your posts.  If it doesn’t allow links, it’s probably not a good forum for getting traffic.  There are hundreds of great forums where people ask questions.  One easy way to find forums is using Google Alerts, which is a service that emails you whenever somebody uses keywords, anywhere on the internet.  For example, if you had a blog about alternative energy, you could have Google Alerts email you whenever new content turned up with phases like “home solar power” turned up.

It can take awhile to build up forum traffic, because with most forums the more you post, the more people on the forum will trust you because they can see your “post count”.  People naturally assume the more you’ve posted, the better your advice.  Thus, a good strategy is to stake out a half-dozen or so forums and promote your expertise on them consistently.  This strategy takes awhile to generate a lot of traffic, but in time the traffic can get to be quite substantial.

Article sites  are another good way to get traffic. The most important thing is to learn how to title your articles so people will be curious to read them.  Arguably your title is more important than the content of the article in getting people to read the article.  Article marketing can be frustrating if you aren’t writing about subjects lots of people are desperate to learn more about.  A smart approach is to test different approaches until you figure out what kind of article topics and titles get you the most traffic, then write more of that type of article.

Press releases are like articles but you can get away with a lot of self-promotion in them.  Articles tend to do well when they are informative on their own.  Try to make your releases more newsy and tease the reader to go to your site to get the really hot information.  Not many marketers use press releases effectively, but the traffic is often substantial.

How to start growing your email list immediately (plus a secret)

All anybody online searching for information thinks about is “what’s in it for me?  What do I get and how do I get it?”. Web searchers are about as self-centered as 2-year olds.  The best way to build your email list is offer instant gratification in terms of bait.  Free reports or training videos are common subscriber baits because they work.  The secret missing ingredient you must offer in the bait, if you want a lot if subscribers, is the implication that if the person gets your free goodie, all their problems will go away effortlessly.  I cannot emphasize this enough – you have to write to the “Chimpanzee brain”, the 2-year old who wants only easy, instant gratification.  A nice box shot or graphical presentation of the free prize your subscriber will get can skyrocket your email list to.  That’s because people want what’s new.  Make your free prize “goodie” appear as new and exciting and effortless as possible and you’ll get much better results in building your list.

The post author, Loren Woirhaye writes sales copy and creates marketing systems for business clients who want to slash customer acquisition costs and position their businesses For 20%-30% sales growth in the next 12-18 months. He writes regularly about marketing and life at his Entrepreneur Blog.