There’s a famous saying, “Failure to plan, is planning to fail”. It’s a near certainty that if you don’t have clearly defined goals for your business, and a clear plan to achieve them that you won’t succeed. However, many people start an online business without clearly defined goals, and then wonder why they never see the success they desire.

I’m lucky that I was introduced to the concept of goal setting from my time in Network Marketing. I was encouraged to set big goals by my mentor and at the end of my first year in that business I decided to set a goal of £100,000 (approx $200,000 USD) in sales in my second year. Even though I was only running that business on a part time basis, I achieved that goal and more, and I’m positive that without a clearly defined goal, and a well thought out plan to keep me on track, I wouldn’t have come close. I now use the same principles to set goals, and plan for everything I do.

People start online businesses for many reasons. They may already have a business and want to expand into the online realm, it may be a way of earning some extra money in the evenings and weekends around a job, it could be a hobby or past-time which slowly develops into a business, or in some cases, people start a business with the intention of building a long-term residual income.

The problem however, is that more often than not, online businesses are started without a long term goal in mind. And without something solid to focus on, it’s all too easy to lose focus and interest, especially in the early phases of an online business when the income may not be enough to keep motivation up by itself.

Attitude + Skills + Effort = Success

This is true, except that it leaves out one vital component - vision. A person with a great attitude, lots of skills, and who puts in lots of effort can still be knocked off track, lose focus and fail if they don’t have the vision to see a project through to fruition. On the other hand, someone with a massive goal, clearly defined, and the belief that they can accomplish it, will find a way even if they are lacking in skills!

Start with a goal

A goal is a ‘dream with a deadline’ and needs to be large enough to get you through the highs and lows of any business. At the same time, a goal needs to be achievable (remember Napoleon Hill’s words, “What man can conceive, and believe, he can achieve”).

Be specific

“A big house” or “A fast car” are not goals. If you’re a car enthusiast, and driving a big fast car is one of your primary goals then you need to be specific about it. You need to know the model, the colour, what it looks like, and feels like. Our unconscious brain works through vision and feelings, so if you want that big car goal to drive you to success you need to make it real. Many people suggest getting a picture of your goal, and hanging it on the wall where you’ll see it every day. I say that’s not enough - you need to ‘feel it’ not just look at it. Call the dealership and book a test drive, feel the steering wheel in your grip, listen to the engine, smell the leather seats - those are what make it real and will help to program your brain that you can achieve this!

Timely

If you have no deadline on a goal then you have no sense of urgency. Only a goal which has a clearly defined deadline will be of any use to you. I am getting married next year. We have planned the wedding for June, as we have a goal to mountain bike from Banff in Canada, down through the Rocky Mountains to the Mexican border and to catch the weather window we need to leave in August. That’s a pretty big goal as it means taking 3 months off work, and we have a very specific time frame. This should mean that the snows will have melted in the high passes before we reach Colorado, but if we were to leave much later we’d be likely to hit New Mexico in monsoon season. This makes it a perfect goal… We are both passionate about the trip and will do whatever is necessary to make it happen, and due to the timeframe we have a strict deadline to adhere to. Working from that goal backwards, we know how much we need to earn from our businesses before then, and that the business must be automated enough by then that we can safely take 3 months out. (Note: This is a photo of our route map, on the wall of our living room where it acts as a constant reminder of our goal every day!)

Stepping stones

A major long term goal is great, but you need smaller ’stepping stone’ goals along the way. Our trip to the Rockies next year is actually a ’stepping stone’ goal, while our major long term goal is to move to France and buy a chateâu. We also have smaller monthly goals to help keep us on track.

Stepping stone goals

Without these smaller ‘reward’ goals, it’s too easy to lose motivation. By achieving the smaller goals you get a sense of achievement which in turn helps your belief in reaching your main goals. These stepping stones should follow the same basic rules as your bigger goals, in that they need to be something you are passionate about and will drive you, they need to be clearly and specifically defined, and they need to have a clear deadline. The only difference is that they are shorter term and easier to achieve.

Take time to set goals

Spend some time to define your goals properly. Ask yourself why you are building a business online, what are you trying to achieve? What is is that you want out of life? Where do you want to live? What car do you want to drive? Do you want to travel?

The beauty of an online business is that, if planned and executed well, it can give you whatever you want and the flexibility to enjoy it. Don’t be tempted to skip this exercise, it will pay you massive dividends.

If you’re looking for more information on Goal setting then read Jim Rohn’s Seven Strategies for Wealth and Happiness.

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Thinking of entering a new niche? Before investing time and effort to create products or content for a niche, you really need to spend some time on market research. You need to know whether enough other people are interested in the subject that the market is big enough, and you need to know that the competition isn’t so fierce that you’ll never get the exposure you need to be profitable.

My top 3 free tools for market research are Amazon.com, Clickbank.com and Google.com - let’s take a look at each in turn.

Using Amazon for market research

Amazon is a great tool for market research. Go to the magazines section and have a browse around. At time of writing, there are over 93,000 titles so there are plenty to choose from. Start with a more generic topic, such as golf, or computing, then look for narrower sub-niche publications. If publishers are producing a magazine about a topic then you know that at the very least there are a few thousand people out there willing to spend a few dollars on the price of a magazine for their hobby or interest!

There are over 93,000 magazine titles on Amazon

If you find topics that you think might interest you, it’s worth getting hold of a copy of the magazine and taking a look at the type of content, what products are being advertised in it, how technical the content is, and anything else you can glean. If possible, look at several consecutive issues. If a certain product or service is advertised again and again, you can be sure that people are buying!

While you’re at Amazon, another great thing to browse is the ‘For Dummies’ books. Again, you know that if there is a ‘For Dummies’ book, there has to be a market… they don’t make these books if nobody is buying them!

Clickbank as a market research tool

You probably know about Clickbank, and selling affiliate products from their marketplace, but did you realise it’s a great tool for researching your niche?

Clickbank - thousands of products you can promote, and great to research the market!

Here’s what to do. Go to Clickbank.com and click on the marketplace link at the top right of the screen. You’ll see a search form which allows you to filter and search through all the products available through Clickbank. The reason this is so cool, is that these are all information products, like ebooks, downloadable audio or video etc. That means, if there is a product (or even better, several products) in the niche you’re interested in listed here, you know that there are people buying products in this niche on the Internet… and they might well buy your product too! It also means that you have potential affiliate products to promote in that niche.

Google for niche research

So you found a potential niche, using Amazon or Clickbank, but there’s one more piece of the puzzle. Ideally, you want to find a niche where other people are spending money (cold hard cash!) to reach their target audience. If you found any suitable magazines on Amazon and bought one you can tell instantly – are there lots of adverts in the magazine, offering products to this market?

Well if you didn’t find a magazine, or you want more proof, then Google comes to the rescue. When you do a search on Google, you’ve probably noticed that there are a group of listings that show up on the right hand side of the screen (and sometimes at the top) separate from the main listings. These are what Google calls sponsored links, or paid listings. Essentially, someone has paid Google for those links to show there whenever someone searches on specific phrases. For example, do a search for mountain bike on Google and you’ll see a results page something like this:

Google results page showing sponsored links on the right

Again, if you see a fair few adverts here when you search for keywords related to your niche, you know that people are paying to attract customers. Take a moment to click on each link and see what they are selling, but the important thing is are there adverts here. You know that since these adverts cost money, people must be buying products in this niche, otherwise companies wouldn’t be advertising!

The right niche

The right niche will depend on many factors. Are you planning on creating your own products, or just promoting affiliate products? Is it a topic you have a specific interest and passion for, or are you going purely on what the market dictates?

Trying to enter the wrong market is a sure fire recipe for failure. The more time spent at this stage, making sure you’re choosing a suitable niche will pay massive dividends in the future. My best advise is, to consider profitability and passion. To be successful you’re going to be spending a lot of time researching, writing and creating content around your niche as well as networking with other people within that niche. If you choose a topic purely because you think it will be profitable, but you have no interest in, you’re unlikely to keep your motivation up - ask yourself if you could write articles and blog posts about this topic, day after day? On the flip side, choose a subject purely based on your passions without checking out the market first and you could end up dominating a niche where there are no profits to be made… Take your time, choose wisely and always be willing to learn!

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OK I had something else planned for today but I just watched this and had to post it. I’ve created and published a few ‘How to’ tutorials over the past few days, but I’ll let the master talk about the ‘Why’. I’ve been a massive fan of Tony Robbins for a long time and it’s great content like this which reminds me why I keep buying his books!

You can ge more videos like this at TED.com

Now, if you’re wondering why I would post this video on a blog about buildng an online business, you maybe need to go back to the drawing board and re-asses WHY you’re doing this. The technical side of this business is really quite easy to learn, the psychology of copy writing and marketing can be taught, but if you don’t have a clear goal, a ‘definite major purpose’ your chances of success are nil!

Hope you like the video, and see you tomorrow!

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OK, part five of this series on creating content and this is a tutorial on creating video content in the form of screencasts. Unless you’ve been living on Mars for the past 2 years, you can’t help but have noticed that video has become massively popular on the Internet.

Until fairly recently, using video online required specialist and expensive tools and hosting, but with the techniques I’ll show you today, you can create and host your videos free of charge, and use them as a marketing tool to drive more traffic to your site!

Here’s the video, and below you’ll find the rest of this blog post if you’d rather read along than watch. (Plus you’ll also find all the links mentioned in the video below!)

Links

Download Camstudio: Camstudio (Windows only)

Download Copernicus: Copernicus (Mac)

Camstudio Tutorial - Recording and publishing video content

You already know how powerful video is. The problem is that many people are put off, with the misconception that producing video is difficult or requires skills they don’t have. Not true!

Download the Camstudio software above, and by the end of this tutorial you’ll be able to create awesome video tutorials, reviews and vlog (video blog) posts.

When you install and open Camstudio, the first thing you’ll notice is that the application is very small and quite simple. In fact, it’s so simple that if you click on the File menu you’ll notice that there isn’t even an Open or Save function! Don’t worry though, it’s not a limited demo version, when you record a new video you’ll be prompted to save automatically.

Setting up the software

Although it’s very simple software, we still need to set a few things up before we start. First go to the Region menu and you’ll notice that you can record full screen, or a region of the screen. If you’re producing video for the web (Youtube, blogs etc.) then I would suggest you don’t use full screen. The reason is that once your video is reduced down to the size you’ll publish at, it will look too small and squashed. I would suggest recoding a region of 640 by 480 pixels which is large enough for most applications, and is exactly twice the height and width of a YouTube video so your final video won’t look squashed.

The next thing to set is your audio input. Just like with Audacity yesterday, you need to select which input your microphone is plugged into and you do that from Options > Audio Options > Audio Options For Microphone. And finally it’s a good idea to set some keyboard shortcuts for Record and Stop in Options > Keyboard Shortcuts.

OK so we’re finally ready to click the record button. When you do (or hit your keyboard shortcut) you’ll see a bounding box at the size you specified earlier. Drag it to the correct position on the screen and click to start recording. When you’re done, click Stop or press the key you set as your shortcut and you’ll be prompted to save.

Branding your videos

Since Camstudio is so simple and doesn’t have any editing capabilities, here’s what I suggest you do in order to get the most from it. First of all, plan your recording before you start. Since you’re recording an area of the screen, rather than a single application, you can start your video with a splash screen. Using GIMP or OpenOffice create a screen with some title text, and your branding (i.e. the name of your site, business or product and the URL of your site). Now position that on screen so that it will show at the beginning of your video.

Branding showing below the application you’re demonstrating

If you create your splash carefully, and you have enough screen real estate in the video, you can have your branding showing all the way through your video.

Publishing and Promoting

Now here’s the key to getting the most benefit from your videos, while getting free hosting thrown in! Head over to YouTube and sign up for a free account. You can then upload your video and go to the video page. On the right side of the screen you’ll see an EMBED box with some HTML text beneath it. Copy and paste that into your blog, or web page, and you get your video on your own site while Youtube handles the hosting for you!

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OK, part four of this series on creating content and this is a tutorial on creating audio content using Audacity. Audio is, in my opinion, by far the quickest, easiest, and most useful way of creating content. It has a relatively high perceived value (compared to ebooks for example), it’s very quick to create (I bet I can talk faster than you can type!), it’s easily digestible (think iPods!) and is perfect for re-purposing existing content, whether your own or PLR.

Here’s the video, and below you’ll find the rest of this blog post if you’d rather read along than watch. (Plus you’ll also find all the links mentioned in the video below!)

Links

Download Audacity: Audacity

Download LAME MP3 encoder: LAME

Audacity Tutorial - Recording and editing audio content

Audacity is actually a very simple tool to use. First of all you’ll need a microphone, and I suggest a headset. The reasons being that they tend not to pick up as much background noise, like mouse clicks and key presses, as a desk mounted mic, and they give you more freedom to move your head without affecting the volume.

Once you have your mic plugged in, fire up Audacity and you should see a screen like this:

The main, grey, area of the screen is where the audio tracks will be, and at the top of the screen are the transport controls, meters and editing icons. Before we can start recording we need to adjust the settings so go Edit > Preferences and then click on Audio I/O in the preferences dialog. Select the recording device (whichever input you have plugged your microphone into) and select 1 (mono) channel since we are only recording with a single mic. Then select the File Formats tab and make sure that Make a copy of the file before editing is selected. That will prevent any accidents when working on imported files being unrecoverable.

Now we’re ready to record. Click the big red RECORD button on the transport bar and start talking. You should see the red bar on the microphone meter move, and a waveform start to appear on a new track. After a few seconds, click stop and you should see a new track like this:

The larger the waveform, the louder the recording so you can see in this example that there is a short period of near silence before I started talking, and it tapers off towards the end. This is quite typical and you can remove the silence by highlighting the section with the mouse, and hitting delete.

Fades in and out are quick and easy, again select a section with the mouse and then go to the Effect menu, selecting Fade In or Fade Out accordingly. When you’re ready to save, go File > Export As MP3. Choose a location and filename, and at this point you will be asked for the location of the LAME encoder (if this is the first time using the software).

Congratulations, you just created some audio content!

Tips for creating quality recordings

If you’re not used to speaking into a microphone, you’ll probably stutter and slip up a little. You’ll be tempted to stop and start again but try to fight the urge. As Russell Brunson says, Ready, Fire, Aim! You can easily edit out the mistakes, the coughs, and the dog barking when you’re done recording.

To make the mistakes easy to find, just click stop, then record again from where you left off. Audacity will put this new recording on a new track so you know every time you see a new track, the mistake is just before that on the previous track. Simply listen to hear exactly when the mistake appears, select with the mouse and hit delete. You can then copy and paste to fill in any gaps.

You can also use the same technique of using multiple tracks to add music and intros/outros to your recordings. Simply drag your new audio into the project and Audacity will automatically put it on a new track. Adjust the levels, fade in/out as necessary and export as MP3 when you’re happy.

Noise reduction

You’ll probably find that your recording has quite a lot of hiss and background noise, especially if you’re using a cheap microphone and the soundcard that came with your computer. Don’t worry, we can clean that up. Just make sure that you have a couple of seconds of recording where you aren’t speaking.

Select this section of ’silence’ with the mouse and go Effect > Noise Removal and then click on the Get Noise Profile button. Then select the entire track you want to clean up and go Effect > Noise Removal and this time click Remove Noise. You may want to experiment with where to position the slider for optimum performance, but the result should be a much ‘cleaner’ audio track.

Noise removal helps to get rid of unwanted hisses and buzzes

See - I told you creating audio was easy! In my next audio tutorial we’ll look at another method of creating audio products really easily over the phone, and in the next tutorial in this series I’ll show you how to create video content, just like the the video in these tutorials!

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I found an amazing report recently that I just had to share with you. Joe Lavery is one of my favorite marketers, and a while ago he interviewed a man who needs no introduction - Mike Filsaime (The guy behind Butterfly Marketing etc.)

Joe Lavery and Mike are both expert marketers, and have created some awesome products, many of which I’ve personally used to add to my own bottom line.

I’ll keep this post short… if you want a report based on the interview you can purchase it for a measly $9.97!! Now I’m guessing Joe is selling the report at such a ridiculously low price to ‘hook’ you in and show you how great his material is, in the hope you’ll buy more of his stuff in the future, but if you want to take advantage of this amazing offer you can read more here.

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