Coreta OdjeSharing with the world: Self Improvement, Internet Marketing and more www.coretaodje.com

Having a plan and executing that plan are two different things.

Planning is good but it won’t get you anywhere.
Execution is good but without a plan, you won’t get to where you want to be.

I find that many online business owners tend to lean toward one and not the other. Which category do you fall into?

While most people tend toward one or the other, it’s the successful combination of planning and executing that will actually make a business successful. Help yourself by planning and executing brilliantly. Here’s how to create a simple but effective action plan:

1. First, get a blank piece of paper and a pen.

2. Decide where you are. Pick an area that you want to focus on (for example, monthly income or number of clicks to get one sale). Be sure to identify a specific area of your business and then identify a specific number you want to work on. For example, if your current monthly income is $3000, write that at the top of your page.

3. Decide where you want to be. Using the same area of business and the same measurement (dollars or clicks or whatever you chose in step 1), write out where you want to be. If you want your monthly income in six months to be $6000 per month, write that at the bottom of the page.

4. Now connect the dots! On the space on your page between where you are and where you want to be, create steps with real, practical ideas that help move you toward your dream. If it’s a simple matter of only two or three steps, that’s all you need. However, more than likely, you need to fill your page with ideas to help you move from “now” to “soon.” Some ideas for the example we’ve been looking at might include: increase prices by 10%, try upselling customers into a higher priced product, do half an hour of cold calling each morning, etc. These items should be specific action steps that you need to take, not general ideas you have. Be sure to assign due dates for each one so you have a timeframe to work in.

5. Now, take those action items, and implement them into your weekly
planner.

6. Then simply execute! Do one step at a time, each day, every day, until you’ve reached your time limit listed at the bottom of the page. Did you achieve your goal? Did you miss the mark? If so, how close did you come?

Once you get into the habit of doing these regularly, you’ll find that you’ll do them more and more often for a variety of business and personal goals.

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Major television networks have been in control of what you watch, when you watch it and how often you watch the programs that interest you. With the social boom caused by web 2.0 including social networks and online movies and video, major television networks can no longer confine your mind to their broadcasts for entertainment.

Chris Anderson (author of The Long Tail) hit the nail right on the head… In his book, he predicted that television’s viewing audience will spend more time on the Internet than watching TV. This former viewing audience will entertain themselves by going to websites they are interested in (to do whatever is more interesting to them than watching TV). Chris predicted that people will spend their time more involved in their personal “long tail” interests.

This trend is bad news for the television networks!

The Internet offers television’s former viewing audience better entertainment because they can do, see and hear what they want and when they want. The big television networks no longer have a monopoly on the public’s entertainment and mind share.

To make matters worse… with the advent of DVR (digital video recorders) less and less people are watching television commercials (the lifeblood of the major TV networks). The average person with Internet access is spending 4 times longer online than watching TV. The effectiveness of television advertising is dwindling exponentially and to make matters worse, 90% of DVR owners are fast forwarding through television commercials!

The truth is, people hate commercials. We all know that sigh when you’re intensely involved in your favourite TV show just to be distracted by 2 minutes of commercials. Most people have learned to ignore commercials, even if they are watching them!

All the big brand advertisers that you see on television are well aware of the fact that their advertising dollars are not as well invested in television ads as they once were. These major brands, including the BIG 8 in advertising, have been looking to the Internet as an alternate form of advertising for quite some time now.

For the first time in history thousands of people are going to share in revenue that was formerly paid to major television networks. Millions of dollars are going to be paid on a residual basis to a “core group” of marketing partners… No hype intended or implied!
PPP is a way for advertisers (Like Harley Davidson or Taco Bell) to serve a 5 second audio advertisement to website visitors. It is a way for advertisers to target their 5 second audio ad to specific interests, demographics and geographic locations.

Big TV’s ad revenue is dwindling because PPP offers advertisers a more cost effective advertising solution that has been providing positive Return on Investment (ROI) for over 2 years. PPP offers advertisers a way to reach their target audience and is the only form of media whose impressions and ad placements are verified by an independent 3rd party.
PPP is not new, it has been running for 2 years, has over 66,000 advertisers and over 550,000 websites that serve PPP ads to their visitors.

The 550,000+ websites that currently serve these ads are responsible for 43 million streams (impressions) of advertisers’ 5 second audio ads on a monthly basis.

Internet home business beginners are usually undecisive over what products to start selling when they start a web business. Here are some information that might be of help.

There are basically three broad categories of product types:

1) Own product
Many successful Internet marketers have at least one product they call their own. This is one of the fastest way to get your name out on the web. Having your own product gives you full control over pricing, design, joint venture deals and bonus materials.

If you do decide on creating and selling your own product, your next step would be to choose between portable electronic version or physical version. Most marketers woud prefer the former because there’s no inventory costs. But the most important element is, electronic products like ebooks or MP3s allow for immediate delivery. And this appeals to buyers because they get access to the products instantaneously, satisfying their desire for instant gratification.

One advantage of having your own product means recuiting others (affiliates) to sell for you. You pay them commission only when sales are made. You get tons of targeted visitors but don’t spend a cent on advertising.

However, to recruit good affiliates, even super affiliates, you need to have a set of promotional materials ready for them to use. Don’t invite them to sign up your affiliate program and leave them to fend for themselves.

Of course the product itself must be of high quality or you’ll see refund requests faster than you can sell. Your reputation gets ruined, your affiliates dump you and it’s going to be difficult to regain customers’ trust.
2) Affiliate Products
Like I mentioned above, an affiliate promotes someone else’s products and get paid commission when sales are made. Many Internet marketing beginners will start with this type of selling as it is low costs and some of the pay outs are pretty generous.

But how do you choose which merchant’s products to sell? Many people will look at the rate of commission payout by the merchants to decide WHICH products to sell, but be careful, it may just backfire.

First, always think from the customer’s point of view. Take a good look at the merchant company’s website, does it make you want to buy if you were the customer? Does it have compelling copy to make you click on that “order” button? If the mechant does a lousy job convincing potential buyers, then it won’t matter even if they pay out 90% commission to you. Remember, you have done the work and send visitors to the merchants, all your effort and time are wasted if they fail to convert.

So look for merchants who are helpful and have great sales materials you can use like banners and sales messages. Successful affiliates are usually those who are promoting good merchant products, even with low commission rates.

Please note that this is a brief introduction to affiliate marketing, to learn more, visit Wealth Affiliate.com or Affiliate Classroom. Both offer excellent in-depth coaching and training programs to beginners.

3) Resale Products
There are some products where you can resell after you have purchase it yourself. These products come with what is called Resell Rights. There are “Master Resell Rights” and “Resell Rights”.

Master Resell Rights give you the full right to either sell or give the product away. You can even pass along the resell rights to your customers.
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Resell Rights on the other hand, just gives you the right to sell the product, you may or may not give it away and you cannot transfer the rights to your customers. Meaning your customers cannot sell the product like you can.

While this article is not exhaustive, it is hopeful that the information above can help you make a decision on what to sell as a start and then move on from there. Usually Internet marketing beginners will start with affiliate marketing because it costs the least and you have no inventory or customer service to worrry about.

Personally I would suggest you do the same: start with affiliate marketing and get into a coaching program like the Affiliate Classroom. Learn from those who are successful and take action.
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Click on the links below

• The season: autumn 2009 (telegraph.co.uk)
• Autumn comes early because of drought (telegraph.co.uk)
• Fall foliage. . .with bourbon in Kentucky (gadling.com)
• Caroline: a dark poem for a darkling season (californiawinehikes.com)
• Autumn views - wild berries ripening (themanfrommoselriver.wordpress.com)

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• Dan Solin: Is Your Broker Smarter Than….Cerberus? (huffingtonpost.com)

Cerberus Capital Management, L.P. is one of the largest private equity investment firms in the United States. The firm is based in New York City, and run by 49-year-old financier Steve Feinberg. Former U.S. Vice President Dan Quayle has been a prominent Cerberus spokesperson and runs one of its international units.

Founded in 1992, Cerberus is named for the mythological three-headed dog that guarded the gates of Hades. Feinberg has stated to his employees that while the Cerberus name seemed like a good idea at the time, he later regretted naming the company after the mythological dog.^[1]

The company has been a very active acquirer of businesses over the past several years and now has sizable investments in automotive, sportswear, paper products, military services, real estate, energy, retail, glassmaking, transportation, and building products.

So you’re having trouble finding stock cheaply enough to sell it for a
good profit? Well, you’ve come to the right place.

Garage sales. The chances are you’ve gone most of your life seeing ads for these and ignoring them. Start going to as many as you can. You won’t find good things at every one, but when you find one person with good stuff, make them an offer for the lot - they’ll be so happy about it that you can get a real bargain.

Markets. If your area has a market, then go there and look around for anything good. You could buy it there if it’s cheap enough, or try to make friends with the market traders and find out who their suppliers are.

Pawn shops. Pawn shops don’t usually know what to do with the junk they accumulate (unless it’s jewellery, of course). Generally, they put their stock out on the shelves haphazardly, hoping that someday someone with a little money will just happen to come in, search around and buy wildly obscure things. Get them to offer you a discount for bulk.

Real auctions. Go to a real auction, as the chances are that you can resell things for more than they will sell them. After all, they only have a few hundred people in that room - you have a few million to sell to!

Local newspapers. Place an ad in the local paper that reads “I pay cash for [your item type]“, with your phone number. If you can afford it, make it a big display ad, so it’ll be noticed.

Ad boards. Get one of those little ads in the grocery store.

Friends. Ask your friends if they have anything they’d like to sell you, and ask them to spread the word to their friends.

Become known. Give out business cards, mention to people what you do. The chances are that you’ll come across someone who’ll say “Oh, really? I’ve got a load of [item] I don’t want”.

Shops. This might be a little surprising, but some real shops even sell things more cheaply than they sell on eBay. Take a look around your local deep discounter, and pay special attention to any shop that takes trade-ins from customers. The chances are they take a loss on trade-ins as a promotion, and are dying to get rid of that stock.????

And finally: eBay! When you’re looking at the completed items view, you’ll notice the massive range of prices that items can sell for on eBay. Try taking the highest-priced item and searching for it on its own, then sort by lowest price first: I can almost guarantee that you’ll see an auction for the same item where it sold for almost nothing. The trick is to find these flawed auctions before they close, win them using a bid sniping service, and then turn around and resell the item.

After all that trouble, though, when do sell the item you might find that a buyer leaves you a feedback rating you just don’t think is fair. The next email will show you what to do about it.

“stay free from petty jealousies, live by no man’s code, and hold your judgment for yourself lest you wind up on this road”. …

Jealousy is an emotion and typically refers to the negative thoughts and feelings of insecurity, fear, and anxiety over an anticipated loss of something that the person values, such as a relationship, friendship, or love. Jealousy often consists of a combination of emotions such as anger, sadness, and disgust. Jealousy differs from envy in that jealousy is about something one has and is afraid of losing, while envy refers to something one does not have and either wants to acquire or to prevent another from acquiring.

Jealousy is a familiar experience in human relationships. It has been observed in infants five months old and older. Some claim that jealousy is seen in every culture,? however others claim jealousy is a culture-specific phenomenon.

Jealousy as an emotion or the impact of jealousy has been a theme of many novels, songs, poems, films and other artistic works. It has also been a topic of interest for scientists, artists, and theologians. Psychologists have proposed several models of the processes underlying jealousy and have identified factors that result in jealousy. Sociologists have demonstrated that cultural beliefs and values play an important role in determining what triggers jealousy and what constitutes socially acceptable expressions of jealousy. Biologists have identified factors that may unconsciously influence the expression of jealousy. Artists have explored the theme of jealousy in photographs, paintings, movies, songs, plays, poems, and books. Theologians have offered religious views of jealousy based on the scriptures of their respective faiths.

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“In civilized life it has at last become possible for large numbers of people to pass from the cradle to the grave without ever having had a pang of genuine fear. Many of us need an attack of mental disease to teach us the meaning of the word.” William James.

We have all heard the seemingly discriminating remarks that fear is normal and abnormal, and that normal fear is to be regarded as a friend, while abnormal fear should be destroyed as an enemy.

The fact is that no so called normal fear can be named which has not been clearly absent in some people who have had every cause therefor. If you will run over human history in your mind, or look about yea in the present life, you will find here and there persons who, in situations or before objects which ought, as any fearful soul will insist, to inspire the feeling of at least normal self-protecting fear, are nevertheless wholly without the feeling. They possess every feeling and thought demanded except fear. The idea of self-preservation is as strongly present as with the most abjectly timid or terrified, but fear they do not know. This fearless awareness of fear suggesting conditions may be due to several causes. It may result from constitutional make-up, or from long continued training or habituation, or from religious ecstasy, or from a perfectly calm sense of spiritual selfhood which is unhurtable, or from the action of very exalted reason. Whatever the explanation, the fact remains: the very causes which excite fear in most of us, merely appeal, with such people, if at all. to the instinct of self-preservation and to reason, the thought-element of the soul which makes for personal peace and wholeness.

Banish all fear.

It is on such considerations that I have come to hold that all real fear-feeling should and may be banished from our life, and that what we call “normal fear” should be substituted in our language by “instinct” or by “reason,” the element of fear being dropped altogether.

“Everyone can testify that the psychical state called fear consists of mental representations of certain painful results” (James). The mental representations may be very faint as such, but the idea of hurt to self is surely present. If, then, it can be profoundly believed that the real self cannot be hurt; if the reason can be brought to consider vividly and believingly all quieting considerations; if the self can be held consciously in the assurance that the White Life surrounds the true self, and is surely within that self, and will suffer “no evil to come nigh,” while all the instincts of self preservation may be perfectly active, fear itself must be removed “as far as the east is from the west.”

These are the ways, then, in which any occasion for fear may be divided:

As a warning and as a maker of panic. But let us say that the warning should be understood as given to reason, that fear need not appear at all, and that the panic is perfectly useless pain. With these discriminations in mind, we may now go on to a preliminary study of fear.

preliminary study of fear.

Fear is (a) an impulse, (b) a habit, (c) a disease.

Fear, as it exists in man, is a make-believe of sanity, a creature of the imagination, a state of insanity.

Furthermore, fear is, now of the nerves, now of the mind, now of the moral consciousness.

The division depends upon the point of view. What is commonly called normal fear should give place to reason, using the word to cover instinct as well as thought. From the correct point of view all fear is an evil so long as entertained.

Whatever its manifestations, wherever its apparent location, fear is a psychic state, of course, reacting upon the individual in several ways: as, in the nerves, in mental moods, in a single impulse, in a chronic habit, in a totally unbalanced condition. The reaction has always a good intention, meaning, in each case, “Take care! Danger!” You will see that this is so if you will look for a moment at three comprehensive kinds of fear fear of self, fear for self, fear for others. Fear of self is indirectly fear for self danger. Fear for others signifies foresensed or fore pictured distress to self because of anticipated misfortune to others. I often wonder whether, when we fear for others, it is distress to self or hurt to them that is most emphatically in our thought.

Fear, then, is usually regarded as the soul’s danger signal. But the true signal is instinctive and thoughtful reason.

Even instinct and reason, acting as warning, may perform their duty abnormally, or assume abnormal proportions. And then we have the feeling of fear. The normal warning is induced by actual danger apprehended by mind in a state of balance and self-control. Normal mind is always capable of such warning. There are but two ways in which so-called normal fear, acting in the guise of reason, may be annihilated: by the substitution of reason for fear, and by the assurance of the white life.

Let it be understood, now, that by normal fear is here meant normal reason real fear being denied place and function altogether. Then we may say that such action of reason is a benefactor to man. It is, with pain and weariness, the philanthropy of the nature of things within us.

One person said: “Tired? No such word in my house!” Now this cannot be a sound and healthy attitude. Weariness, at a certain stage of effort, is a signal to stop work. When one becomes so absorbed in labor as to lose consciousness of the feeling of weariness, he has issued a “hurry call” on death. I do not deny that the soul may cultivate a sublime sense of buoyancy and power; rather do I urge you to seek that beautiful condition; but I hold that when a belief or a hallucination refuses to permit you to hear the warning of nerves and muscles, Nature will work disaster inevitably. Let us stand for the larger liberty which is joyously free to take advantage of everything Nature may offer for true well-being. There is a partial liberty which tries to realize itself by denying various realities as real; there is a higher liberty which really realizes itself by conceding such realities as real and by using or disusing them as occasion may require in the interest of the self at its best. I hold this to be true wisdom: to take advantage of everything which evidently promises good to the self, without regard to this or that theory, and freely to use all things, material or immaterial, reasonable or spiritual. I embrace your science or your method; but I beg to ignore your bondage to philosophy or to consistency. So I say that to normal health the weary-sense is a rational command to replenish exhausted nerves and muscles.

It is not liberty, it is not healthful, to declare, “There is no pain!” Pain does exist, whatever you affirm, and your affirmation that it does not is proof that it does exist, for why (and how) declare the non-existence of that which actually is non-existent? But if you say, “As a matter of fact I have pain, but I am earnestly striving to ignore it, and to cultivate thought-health so that the cause of pain may be removed,” that is sane and beautiful. This is the commendable attitude of the Bible character who cried: “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.” To undertake swamping pain with a cloud of psychological fog that is to turn anarchist against the good government of Nature. By pain Nature informs the individual that he is somewhere out of order. This warning is normal. The feeling becomes abnormal in the mind when imagination twangs the nerves with reiterated irritation, and Will, confused by the discord and the psychic chaos, cowers and shivers with fear.

I do not say there is no such thing as fear. Fear does exist. But it exists in your life by your permission only, not because it is needful as a warning against “evil.”

Fear is induced by unduly magnifying actual danger, or by conjuring up fictitious dangers through excessive and misdirected psychical reactions. This also may be taken as a signal of danger, but it is a falsely-intentioned witness, for it is not needed, is hostile to the individual because it threatens self-control and it absorbs life’s forces in useless and destructive work when they ought to be engaged in creating values.

Self Improvement and Marketing are related, in some ways…

“No man is an island; No man stands alone.” This is a part of a saying
that aptly reflects the importance of opening the mind to receive help
in order to succeed.
Very few have made it to the top alone. Only few successful people
made it to the top, on their own, without getting help from others.
So, whom can we turn to when we need help? Do not fret; there

How smiling can help you?

I found this fascinating quote today:

With all this smiling, you vibrate positivity and you get more of what you are vibrating. It’s like hitting one note on a piano in a piano store. You will hear that the snare of the same note will start to vibrate in the pianos around itIlaria/Swimturtle, That Little Smile, Mar 2009

You should read the whole article.