This post is in some ways a reply to a fantastic post that was on Gary Simpson´s blog.  His Friend Linda Carroll made an amazing mp3 recording after she had heard that one of our fellow students had decided to leave the coaching course to pursue a different a different path. The one thing above all else that this coaching course with Alex Jeffrey`s has taught me is the ability to focus my attention on the job in hand.

For too long I had wandered from one idea to next, never realizing at the time that I was breaking the cardinal rule of starting an online business, or come to that any form of business, and that was to remain focused.  The rest of this post is basically an overview of what I think are the most important factors of maintaining a strong presence on the web.

YOUR EXPECTATIONS

We are all prone to believe everything we read about huge successes and all the talk of huge amounts of money being made online.  It’s only natural that we should want to do the same.

Unfortunately, we are not all going to have the same level of success in our online businesses.  Some are going to make it big, others are not.

I believe though, that a substantial amount of people will be able to earn themselves a very good income from an online business – but not overnight!

Just a quicky post to steer you in the direction of Gary Simpson´s blog.  He has a poll running at the moment for anyone who want´s to cast their vote, to show wether you are a ¨Happy Pappy¨ or a ¨Hater Tater¨ . I gather the poll was brought about because Gary holds the positions 1 and two on the first page Google for the phrase ¨Alex Jeffreys Brainstorming¨.

The really stupid thing is that another phrase ¨Alex Jeffreys scams¨ sends Gary most of the traffic as, go figure that one !?!

Anyway to cut a long story short, all you Alex lovers go to Gary´s site and show a bit of love to our Alex. Gary has even given us an incentive to cast our votes by turning                       ¨no follow¨ off for all comments made. All you have to do is link to the post with the words ¨Alex Jeffreys¨.

If you have seen Gary´s blog morphing over the last few days then you better believe it´s a good idea to get a little link love from Gary, because his site will soon be taking off like a rocket, I for one am going to go  for the ride, holding on real tight !

The last two days have been pretty intense on the work front. We had our second marathon webcast on Friday evening in which Alex discussed in great detail the various methods of driving traffic to our respective sites.

The one thing Alex did refer to quite pointedly was, when trying to drive traffic to you own site by posting comments on other sites ´´DO NOT PIMP YOURSELF´´ This statement was brought to light by a comment that was placed on another students blog. The commentor was again a fellow student who felt quite strongly that including your own sites url underneath your comment was tantamount to spamming.

I have to admit that I have up until last night been guilty of this heinous act. Thinking about it logically there is no reason to include a second url because if you format your url in the comment bio box using the http format your name will be clickable anyway. Obviously if people read your comment and it is of interest to them, they will have the opportunity to click on your name and then go to your site.

The comment in question was left on was on Gary Simpson´s blog, go across and find it. Gary has a great blog so stick around for a while.

Wow, I´ve just come off from the fifth webcast with Alex Jeffreys and tonight he had a guest speaker.

The lady in question was non other than Maria Andros aka The video Marketing Queen. She had me spellbound as she spoke of her meteoric rise in the video marketing niche.

In the space of 10 months she went from zero the well  over $100k ! just by harnessing the power of video.  She spoke with utter passion about her career, in fact I would say that her passion even rivals that of our very own Alex.

I cannot believe the amount of information she delivered tonight,quite incredible. The main platform that Maria uses for her own video promotion is YouTube, and she imparted  to us some very useful tips for producing  our own videos.

For example being authentic and don´t try and  bluff your viewers. I think for a lot of people this is common sense, but I can understand perfectly what she means. The time I have seen sales pitches that are so cheesy and so obviously a hard sell even though the presenter is trying not to come over as selling to you, yea right. You know the type of sales pitch that you normally see on the late night. shopping channel

The one main truism that I heard tonight is that as consumers we are not stupid. The days of the hard sell are well and truly dead.