The Power of Positive thought

Consider this scenario:

You’re preparing for an important presentation. It’s not going very well and you start to think you’re going to mess it up completely. Every small mistake you make reinforces this idea, up to the point where it’s all you can think about.

What this example demonstrates is the power – and danger – of negative thinking.

Research into negative thoughts has shown how they lead us to dissociate from the outside world and turn our focus to one thing only: the thing that is making us feel angry, scared or bad about ourselves. As a result, we stagnate.

Positive thoughts have the opposite effect,

By opening our minds to see a whole range of possibilities and therefore welcoming new ideas and perceptions. Barbara Fredrickson, a professor at the University of North Carolina and researcher of positive emotions, believes thinking positively can even have long-term benefits. In her ‘broaden and build’ theory she describes how the broadening of our sense of what is possible generated by positive thoughts can lead us to develop new skills and so progress in life.

For some of us, looking at things from the bright side is something that comes easily; others find it harder. That doesn’t mean all hope is lost, though: thinking positively is something that you can train yourself to do. 

First of all, you’ll need to start making a conscious effort to not give in to negative thoughts. Recognise when you start dwelling on the bleaker side of things and put a stop to it by asking yourself what you could do to make the situation better. Then start setting actionable goals for yourself – reaching them will empower you.

The next step is to foster positive thoughts.

Easier said than done? Not necessarily. While positive thinking creates positive emotions, this process also works the other way around. This means that doing things you love, that bring you joy, can help you to think more positively. Think, for example. of a time where you engaged with something you are passionate about: perhaps you went to a concert or saw a film you really loved. Did you feel inspired afterwards? Perhaps it even led you to actively pursue a goal related to that passion?

Or you can try something new.

Meditation has been proven to help cultivate positive thoughts, while a study published in the Journal of Research in Personality showed that writing about positive experiences can have the same effect.

Thinking positively means getting out of your head and looking for solutions.

It’s something you may have to practice to get better at, but ultimately it can open doors that you may otherwise have walked right past.

More Inspirational thoughts

I hope the previous article had you thinking more about the things that have inspired you. I remember being at High School and learning about Marco Polo and his trips to China and the Romanticism of the Silk Route from China to Europe. So far I have lived in Chengdu, Almaty and Baku, all cities on the ancient route. My Education inspired me to become a Physicist and work in Nuclear Research before becoming a Physics teacher.

People who are inspired have some common traits.

For one thing, they are more open to new experiences. That almost always comes before the inspiration hits, indicating a certain willingness to be open to inspiration as a precedent to experiencing it.

It’s important to note that inspired people were neither more nor less conscientious than any others. Meaning that inspiration wasn’t something that they could command or “will” to happen.

The other thing inspired people have in common is a strong desire to master what they do.

However, they are also not competitive. Remember that inspiration is transcendent, and competition is a survival instinct. That indicates that trying to beat out or one-up someone is not conducive to inspiration.

There are other critical factors in people who are often inspired.

A confidence in their abilities.

Even though they may not be experts in everything, they are comfortable with their specialties.

Self-esteem.

Inspired people have the confidence not to doubt themselves, indicating that they are able not to sabotage themselves.

Optimism.

It’s difficult to be inspired if you’re stuck in a negative state. People with optimism are more open and more prone to inspiration.

Inspiration is not just a flash of vision; it’s a motivation that births creativity and motivation. People who get inspired are usually the ones more eager to jump into a project.

Why We Need Inspiration in Our Lives

Most of us are going through tough times.

Job losses, furlough, travel restrictions, not seeing family, stuck in the wrong country, salary cuts – well most of that has hit me. From Christmas until September I was in Morocco, facing difficulty travelling back to UK due to flight restrictions and Covid testing regime. Then I moved to a new job in Azerbaijan just as a war began with neighbouring Armenia. SO we have had a 9pm curfew for the last 6 weeks. Fortunately, the war is over; now we just have Corona virus to deal with…

Keeping positive and maintaining this blog has been difficult. I bought a franchise for an online site way back in January, called daysoutinleeds.com , a site for advertising bars, pubs, restaurants, hotels and places of entertainment, the exact places that have been shut down! It was meant to be a passive income stream. I know it will eventually take off and make money, though for now it is just ticking over.

I did a little research about INSPIRATION as we all need some just now. A couple of articles should help.

Inspiration cannot be measured or quantified. You cannot report to your boss that you had this much inspiration today and therefore have accomplished so much.

In today’s world, people often consider that which can be measured is more important or more valuable.

But without inspiration, there’s nothing to measure because we produce nothing.

Inspiration is what creates, and all that is measured springs from this nebulous concept.

There are three parts to inspiration, according to psychologists Todd Thrash and Andrew Elliot.

Evocation.

Inspiration is created spontaneously and without intent. The word inspiration means “divine breath.” Inspiration is not a part of our baser, more primal brains; it serves no purpose for basic survival.

Transcendence.  

This part comes in moments of clarity and with the awareness of new possibilities. Inspiration is indeed the mark of higher consciousness in us. Inspiration comes from a place of beauty and clarity.

Approach Motivation.

It’s a fancy way of saying that the person with the inspiration seeks to communicate that vision. Either by talking about it, creating the vision in real life or letting others share in the vision.

I haven’t tried this yet…

SO I am still sharing things I find while trawling the internet. I found this article and would be interested for any feedback.

Search Engine Submission Service

You can make money by setting up your own search engine submission and page optimization service. You can purchase this code for pennies at script purchasing areas on scriptlance.com or hotscripts.com. Search engine submission scripts simply take user input and submit them to search engine services. You can also charge BIG fees for page optimization. Some people pay as much as $1000 to have their webpages optimized for search engine submission. Most fees for search engine submission are small, but page customizations for submission fees are often large. These services are complementary and should be bundled for maximum financial impact. Here are some tips for starting this service:

  1. Overture.com offers free tools for optimizing pages
  2. Search engine submissions can offer a lot of repeat business creating a list of customers and offering incentives that can easily stimulate income
  3. Some of these scripts are FREE, search for them diligently

This business can net you about $1000 per optimized project and $10-$70 per search engines submission. The profit potential here is extremely high.

Search engine optimization (SEO) can be as simple adding the overture suggestion words to the keyword contents section of a webpage. Some great websites to visit are listed below to help you with this service:

This business offers a lot of repeat business potential. Keywords change in their relevance over time. So once you do an optimization for a customer, you can call them up in 3-6 months and ask to “reoptimize” their pages. If pages are doing well in their category and customers are earning well, they will be glad to pay your fee again for your service.

An example

Google Affiliate Program Advertising

A Google program fluctuates wildly in its revenue. It is not a good primary business but an excellent secondary income stream. Google should be piggy-backed on a strong traffic reseller and form-based affiliate business. User clicks are too random to be a reliable income stream. Google is an excellent “gravy” program because it feeds directly from the traffic your website already generates. Google clicks can be a “by-product” of an already operating business and it costs you nothing to try. We have all heard rumors of people making $15,000 per day from Google clicks. Google income is a “random walk”. It moves in a random pattern if graphed on a chart. This is not good as a primary source of income. Google also pays only if your performance meets certain requirements. This is another limitation that has to be overcome. But we have engineered a methodology to blend all of the characteristics of Google with the strengths of other programs. Google can supply you with yet another check in the mail for a single business. Google ads require no additional maintenance, so once they are embedded in your website, you need not bother them again. If you blend Google, Information Marketing, Affiliate Marketing and Traffic reselling into one business. It would look like the diagram below. The coolest part of this theory is that it really is all the same business. We would suggest an income pyramid like the following:

Now let’s recap how all this works together. You can build and test market your information products and sell them immediately on E-bay. This is one new income pathway. Products that sell well on E-bay could be moved to their own website and again (same product) sold as another information product. As an independent product it could sell for more than 10 times what it sold for on E-bay. Information products have the ability to bring in amounts as high as $1000 per item. Information products and E-bay form the base of the pyramid because their income potential could easily replace your job, and sales can be regular and dependable. These two items are not traffic dependent as much as they are “interest” dependent. Their sales will rely on your reputation on E-bay and on other forms of communication.

Affiliate sales and being a traffic reseller can be a very high revenue business but it is dependent of internet traffic which is random. At $100 per completed form this is dynamite, but the random element of internet traffic makes it a better secondary income stream than a primary one. You can strategically place your website; you can optimize it for Google and Yahoo, and have moderate success. Your expectations should be linked to your traffic optimization capability and site mapping. You need to also be conscious of the fact that each affiliate program pays differently. Some sales you make this month may not be available for 30-40 days later.

Finally, you should consider your Google AdSense business. Google revenue can vary wildly.  It is an excellent “gravy” business. Now let’s review this pyramid in action and take a look at its results. The data below is actual financial data from an information products marketer.

Marketer X (Month of November)

Information Products: $9900

Commission Junction Revenue: $1700

E-Bay: $1100

Google AdSense: $900

This marketer spends about 5-10 hours working his business per week! He is truly making money when he goes to bed at night. The information products are the base of his pyramid. They sell on average at a price of $75-$200 per item. He holds down a regular job like most other people, and keeps his job for the insurance purposes of his family. The same products sold on his websites are sold on E-bay, no difference except E-bay requires a cheaper price. He has a store that links the products to his website, encouraging yet more sales. You can see how all this works together, the business forms a fully optimized cocoon that makes money at each level. His total income of $13,600 is a hefty haul for setting up his businesses. The coolest thing of course is that he does minimal actions between collecting his checks. He is selling the same products in two different environments. He is selling space on his websites to the affiliate programs. He is selling clicks off his website to Google. He is selling traffic to and from his website through traffic reselling. All of these items are things he already has!

Another way to make money online _ Affiliate Programs

Continuing with my research. I am currently working through a third party to develop an Amazon Affiliate site. I will give you details when it is up an running! Meanwhile I found this:

Affiliate Programmes

We will use the term affiliate programs to refer to all affiliate programs other than Google. Some affiliate programs are packaged like those at commission junction. If you have not heard of cj.com, it is the web address of commission junction. Commission junction is an affiliate “Mecca”. There you can find credit card programs, real estate, loans, etc. These people specialize in selling products on-line for other companies. Some of the highest paying affiliate lead programs are listed below:

  • Countrywide
  • LowerMyBills.com
  • Foreign Credit Card Companies
  • Chase Manhattan Bank

These programs pay for leads. Leads are simply web surfers that fill out forms for their website. You post the form on your website, and when forms are completed, you get a check in the mail.  Affiliate programs are very hot right now. Getting users to fill out forms can be very challenging, and of course there are some nifty tricks you need to know.

Often the pay per lead can be quite high, for instance some programs can pay $32.00 per completed form, and credit card companies can pay $150 per approved credit card application. Getting clients to fill out credit card applications can be extremely lucrative! Here are some commonly used tactics to get clients to fill out forms:

  1. Offer a free gift (this is the same tactic used in malls)
  2. Stack your applications for a “nice” gift (this can sometimes net as much as $500 per person with good credit)
  3. Use a mailing list of trusted resources to get forms filled out
  4. Place the forms in community websites where visitors feel comfortable in filling out forms
  5. Create “free stuff” websites where visitors come looking to do a little work get something for free
  6. Target market your products by offering free CDs to music lovers, etc
  7. Spread your commissions across websites targeting high and low commission item basing your advertising on customer interest versus your need for money

The richest affiliate programs require customers to become leads for major companies.

Other programs simply require users to click on a link on the website. By far the biggest of these programs is Google’s pay-per-click program. Yahoo has also started a similar program, but it is not as mature as Google. Many, many smaller programs exist claiming they pay more per click than Google but you need to watch out for several big stumbling blocks. Many marketers think that if they get to the top of a search engine in a category they will get rich. It simply does not work that way. Often traffic to a website only converts at a rate of 1-3% to AdSense clicks. This trend is true with other pay-per-click programs as well. Nothing can be more valuable than relevant ads streaming to your affiliate website. Web position is crucial, but ad relevancy is the second, critical piece. What good does it do to be the second website on Yahoo, in South Carolina business which gets an average of 6,000 hits per month when, all your Google ads are about banking? Your links will never get clicked. The same is true with other pay-per-click programs.

Information Product Marketing

Information products are powerful tools.

E-bay is the “CD” of your business portfolio, then information products are the stocks. They are either hot or they are cold. Information products are powerful tools that simply “create” money. You put together a system that sets you up as the expert. From there, you sell kits, tapes, books, etc about the topic of your business. You do need some good marketing strategy to sell these items though.

Here are some critical points about selling information products on-line:

  1. The average person sees a product 28 times before buying it on-line.
  2. The basis of any advertising program is repetition. One-shot deals don’t work. This is often why flyers and short-term newspaper ads yield bad results.
  3. You need to divide the random observers or visitors from qualified and interested buyers. You need to start a mailing list, and send out newsletters. This informs your qualified buyers that you are there and keeps them interested in your program.
  4. Open the door to your public. Ask them to give input and discuss the product at length with them. Make your sellers feel that you care about them and that your product IS worthwhile.
  5. Make your newsletters personable, don’t give your subscribers the hard sell, sell softly and talk about yourself and your life with your potential clients.
  6. Work WITH your clients. You should talk to dissatisfied customers and get their view of your product.

Below is a list of profitable on-line products for information sales:

  1. Home Businesses
  2. Medical Products
  3. Sex Products
  4. Testing Products
  5. Legal Products
  6. Cooking/Food Products
  7. Gambling Products
  8. Gaming Products

Information marketing is a business that has very clear objectives and steps when it comes to selling.

The most important point to remember is how to move people from one part of the pyramid to the next and ultimately to the buyer’s area. The mailing list and communication is the method of facilitation for this business. When potential buyers respond to ads, you HAVE to be there to talk to them. Using services like answering services or “virtual offices” simply disguise who you are. You are selling your business, so talk to your customers and sell your product yourself. Most people know it is a small operation. Stop hiding behind your website or advertisement, only large retailers and corporations can do that.

   I will list below the most common mistakes information sellers make on the internet:

  1. Selling information products you are not an expert on
  2. Refusal to talk to or face customers one-on-one
  3. Improper website design
  4. Creating a façade to hide behind with 1-800 numbers, and dead phone lines
  5. Failure to engage the customer directly and follow-up on leads

You can’t sell information you are not an expert on. It comes across in the information product. Your customers will ask for refunds. Your speech and e-mails will not be convincing. This is a nightmare. Don’t try this!

Refusing to talk to potential customers is a death nail. You are doing this because you are providing a garbage product. A strong product has a good history, low or now returns and you can talk to customers afterwards. If your product is shoddy or you are unsure, give it away first and test the waters. Poor customer feedback will destroy your reputation. It is better to test the market with any market before selling it. This is a critical point you simply must understand.

Improper website design is also a common mistake. Please note customers do not like to make a lot of clicks on websites. This means your newsletter must gather information in what Google calls the “hot zone” of the screen. Users should be able to input their e-mail address without additional clicks. Users should be able to input their addresses, purchase and perform any or other critical business activities with a minimum of additional clicks. Small business owners need to wake up. People will spend 10 minutes on Ford.com figuring this stuff out. They will not do it on simpletesting.com. Let them purchase, sign-up for newsletters and anything almost immediately after visiting your website. You will be more successful, I promise.

Let’s recap these items:

  1. Put your mailing list sign-up in the Goggle “hot zone”  of the screen
  2. Put your purchase link in the Google “hot zone” of the screen
  3. Always create a mailing list sign-up

Creating a façade to hide behind creates confusion and “space” between yourself and your customers. For instance, customers respond by calling your 800 number with live operators but you e-mail them from a yahoo address! That’s ridiculous. Facades need to be complete in order to work, and they seldom inspired trust. Trust is exactly what you are trying to build. You should simply not do this. Talk to your customers one-on-one and watch the sales come in.

Following up leads and creating a customized response for inquiries is key for sales. Call your people and let them call you. This seems contrary to the big sales mentality. Trust is the cornerstone for internet sales. Open the door to inquiries and you open the door to sales. It is that simple. Once you build this trust, you will be able to send out one e-mail to you list at 7pm, and in the morning when you wake up, you will have $1000 in your PayPal account. It is that simple.

Let’s take a hard look at E-bay:

E-bay Business Planning

Product Development Timeframe: N/A

Product Lifecycle: 30-120 days

Website Expenses: 2-6% of every purchase

Marketing Techniques:  Marketing techniques for external websites can be difficult. Links to your website are not open and obvious. E-bay bans sellers that market external sites without buying a store.

Average purchase: 0.01 – $30.00

Client List Building: Client list building on E-bay is non-Existent. Customers are not truly associated with the seller, and if you put them on a list without authorization you are spamming your customers.

Test Marketing Techniques: The Andale E-bay toolset (http://www.andale.com) is very nice, and fully functional.

Product Cloning: It is very easy to find, and clone a successful product on E-bay with the research product. Product cloning is a smart and easy way to make money fast. With the Andale tool, you can find, isolate and copy a product faster than you can sneeze.

Law of Business Diversity: Always combine businesses, so that during periods of financial stress, some business will still produce, like stocks in a portfolio. E-bay is a nice business to have because it generates steady income without much time involvement.

Cash flow Planning: You MUST plan next month’s revenue today. Your business demands you get a calendar and plant financial seeds for next month further out.

E-bay is definitely a business you can make money on while you sleep. All you have to do is create (not buy and resell) 20-40 products and sell them on E-bay. These need to be products you produce yourself that CANNOT be bought in a regular store. These products should be very cheap to produce, cheap to ship, and listed as cheaply as possible. After your initial sales you need to send out second offers. The second offers will bring additional revenue. Some examples of profitable items for sale on E-bay are:

  • Information Products (Paper)
  • Special Sauces and Mixes (Mostly water)
  • Printing/Writing Services (Service)
  • Autos (Fix broken-down cars)
  • Custom Services

These are all items you can get as cheaply as possible, add a substantial markup and then resell. E-bay can be a critical part of your portfolio, but its major limitation is that E-bay products tend to sell cheap, and if your goal is to start a full-time business you have to sell 50-120 E-bay items per week to make a living at it. This is not a pleasant prospect. Your day job may be much easier than this. Now, let’s look again at the list, this time with a little “better” view:

  • Information Products (Paper)
  • Special Sauces and Mixes (Mostly water)
  • Printing/Writing Services (Service)
  • Autos (Fix broken-down cars)
  • Custom Services

Bag any E-bay business that involves a supply-chain if you want to make money while you sleep. Supply-chain management is tough. When your digital binoculars sell on E-bay on Tuesday, you don’t want them sitting on a dock across the United States. Focus on services you can provide from home on a Saturday with just your local resources. E-bay global is a book written just on this particular subject. Purchasing abroad, paying duty, and dealing with people in other countries who may shaft you is not pleasant. Stick to what you know and make the system simple. KISS, “Keep It Simple” is a common phrase.

E-bay is a wonderful business that could have you living at the post office, spending hours wrapping and putting packages together or it could be a simple $1000 per month business like mine that takes 2 hours per week. It is your choice. Now let’s recap how to optimize E-bay:

  1. Create your own products.
  2. Manage your cash flow through advanced planning.
  3. Use the Andale tools (http://www.andale.com) to clone successful products and turn them to your advantage
  4. Focus on products that are in the $20 – $40 range, cheaper products require a lot of time and energy. You want your business to be worth your time.
  5. E-bay makes money for you 24 hours per day, with little effort if we want to optimize it.

In conclusion, E-bay is a very powerful tool if used in an optimized format, and it can be a strong contender in the business portfolio.