How to invest now for future profits
From: John Dilbeck
NORTH CAROLINA USA
I've owned several businesses over the last 30 years, and I've
learned what it takes to build a business that earns a profit. So, I
understand that I have to invest work, time, and money now in order to
get a future, larger return. It doesn't always work, but I've been
successful more often than not.
That said, I think it is unrealistic to expect someone with no
knowledge of marketing, advertising, and building a business to "get"
the SFI opportunity quickly. A great resource for these new business
owners (or experienced business owners, for that matter) is
Cashflow Quadrant, by Robert Kiyosaki. It helped me.
When I read it a couple of years ago, I started understanding
the huge differences between the left side of Kiyosaki's quadrant
(employee and self-employed) and the right side of the quadrant
(business owner and investor).
Employees and self-employed people trade time for money on a
more or less static ratio that only changes if they get a raise, charge
more per hour or per project, or find a way to reduce expenses. If you
work, you earn a certain amount, generally several dollars per hour.
On the other hand, business owners and investors learn how to
concentrate their efforts and money up front, receiving a larger return
in the future as their investments are leveraged and compounded.
For example, as the owner of a marketing business run almost
entirely online, I'm earning money for things I did last week, last
month, and even several years ago, because I invested the time, effort,
and money over time in the past. As a result, today I have several
income streams that provide 100% of my income, letting me work from a
cabin in the mountains about 100 miles from the nearest traffic jam. I
really do earn while I sleep!
The patience required to keep building and looking for
potential comes from my experience of building and owning past
businesses and watching, over time, as my income from my marketing
business continues to grow. Without that experience and an ever-changing
mindset, I would have bailed out a long time ago because I didn't see
the big picture and couldn't understand the potential.
As SFI sponsors, our challenge is to find a way to pass along
some of this knowledge and experience to our affiliates who have a
dream of building a home business but lack the knowledge and skills to
make it happen—joining SFI and promoting TripleClicks comes darn close.
You also have to have faith and hope that your efforts will be
rewarded. I decided that my marketing business won't fail. It has to
succeed because that is the only outcome I will accept. That gives me
the fortitude to weather problems and find ways around obstacles that
would have otherwise defeated me several times over the last few years.
In fact, I now earn more in one month than I did in my first two years,
and it continues to grow. There are occasional downturns and some really
horrible months now and then, but overall, the trend is upward.
Most importantly: act on your dream, and pass your enthusiasm on to others!
Subject: Getting non-responsive affiliates to respond to you
From: Janis Bradfield
NEW JERSEY USA
One reason behind non-responsive affiliates could be the
powerful spam catchers used by most ISPs. Your Welcome Letter or other
e-mails may not be getting through to their intended recipients as a
result. (AOL is notorious for preventing ordinary e-mails from getting
through, clumping them in with spam.)
Try taking URLs out of the body of your e-mail and put them
into an e-mail attachment. When I did that, I was able to get more
e-mails through. Another way is to disguise the URL by replacing the
punctuation with words, so that the filter cannot recognize it as a
Website address and mistake it for spam. For example:
http(colon)//www(dot)name of site(dot)com
This works so long as you explain to your recipient the reason why you have to do this—without using the word "spam"!
One more thing. Lack of response from new Affiliates may just
mean more persistence on our part is needed to "woo" them. Keep in
touch, e-mailing about once every week or two with an easy-going, upbeat
e-mail. Let them know how excited you are to have them on your team,
and include a tip about where to find something on the SFI Affiliate
site, how to post a classified ad, or some other helpful marketing
strategy that has worked for you.
As your new affiliates sense you are serious about helping them
get started, they will be much more likely to become serious about
taking action as an SFI Affiliate.
Subject: Feeling overwhelmed is NOT a requirement to getting started
From: Scott Barrett
CONDELL PARK NSW AUSTRALIA
I only started with SFI very recently, and I might have kicked
things off a little differently than others. Essentially, I spent a heap
of time just reading—reading
SFI Forum
posts, reading training manuals, copying, and noting things that I
either liked or thought would be good to try. I might be a little slow
off the mark in personally sponsoring people, but I figured I'd be much
better prepared to support them when the time comes.
That leads me to something I've noticed in my Forum travels:
from time to time, there is a post that exhibits a somewhat frustrated,
or "what-am-I-doing-wrong" type of undertone. It's important to remember
that every now and then, particularly when you're just starting out,
there will be moments of frustration and times when you question
yourself. Sometimes, you need to remind yourself of this fact. For
everyone out there who is new and having a bad day, I suggest casually
wandering through the
SFI Forum.
Just cruise around, and you'll see some really motivating,
inspirational snippets. If you find one that really resonates with you,
click the thread poster's name to find other posts they've written.
You're bound to find more of the same. Do a spot check on your level of
confidence and motivation each time. If you're like me, you won't be
feeling as low as before, and the sun will start to poke its way through
the clouds blocking your potential from becoming a reality.
Another thought: When we're learning something new, it's very
easy to get overwhelmed by all the information. Some of us need to let
things sink in a bit. So maybe you just need to give it a bit of time.
Stop trying to take it all in at once, and just focus on one thing. Or,
look to your past or others' lives and notice how things tend to
transpire. What are you good at outside of SFI? Can you take that skill
and apply it to something within your SFI business?
For instance, single moms: You might have signed up to generate
extra income so that you can spend more time with the kids. A little
way into things, you might be a bit frustrated and start thinking it's
not worth the effort. Instead, think about what you do well as a single
mom. I'll bet you're organized, can manage things a million different
ways, and have routines and systems in place to get everything done.
So, put some of those single mom skills to work for you with SFI—get
something organized, even if it's just your favorite posts or your
marketing ideas; create some routines or systems to approach your new
venture.
Just as important, every new affiliate should post something on the
SFI Forum,
and not just technical questions. From what I've seen of the posts
from more experienced SFIers, they're not only successful, but they
really seem to be good people with good values. I was initially nervous
about posting my first entry, but I feel really comfortable with Forum
members. I feel I could post something about having doubts or feeling a
bit down, and there would be fellow SFI affiliate to prop me up again.
They've been there and done that and can probably relate to what we're
all going through.
One last thought: If you are still doubtful about SFI, just go
for it. It's all too easy to procrastinate on the basis of "I'm still
checking it out." If you decide its not for you, then at least you've
looked at it properly and given the system a chance.
Subject: What have YOU done?
From: William Hughes
COLORADO, USA
Jim Rohn says, "You will Pay the Price IF you believe the promise."
Gold mining requires digging. There are more ways to advertise
FREE on the Internet than I could count, if I dedicated all my time to
finding them. In fact, I locate three or more such resourses daily.
What have you done today to build you business? How many ads
have you placed this week? Do you have access to a printer? Can you find
bulletin boards to put flyers on?
Did you complete the
SFI Internet Income course? When have you revisited this series? How often have you asked your sponsor or other upline for tips, hints, or assistance?
NOTE: By the way, the
IAHBE
is a GREAT resource for anyone, including affiliate marketers and
network marketers, and there are many tools there that can be very
useful to building your business. Also, a membership meets the VP to
qualify as EA each month.
Don't think negatively. Find the positive. Whatever you put on center stage in your mind, magnifies itself.
And keep in mind—it is possible to get VersaPoints via retail
sales rather than personal purchases. Where are your sales ads? Are they
in the burn pile with your recruiting ads? Isn't it time you pick up
your shovel and walk to the mine? You can not mine any gold lying in
bed.
One great master once said, "Let the dead bury the dead." Are you like the dead? If not, get up and get busy!
Subject: Back-linking can increase traffic
From: Jim Golding,
CALIFORNIA USA &
Cornerstone Ventures, LONDON UK
Participating in forums and leaving your SFI
Gateway(s) as part of your signature block can be a good way to increase
traffic to your Website.
However, the point with this method is not to sell or recruit a
great deal from these links. The real benefit comes from increasing
back-links to your Website, and that means your page will rank higher in
generic search engine results because of it—and THAT could mean bigger
profits and more prospective team members for you!
You'll need an original Website (a blog can do), NOT an
affiliate URL to use this method; or, you could simple use a free URL
masking service.
An effective, fast way to get thousands of
forum back-links is to find forum members who have thousands of posts
and nothing in their signature. Offer them a fee ($20 to $50 a month
maybe) to place your ad and link. Almost overnight, you could have
THOUSANDS of backlinks!
Subject: Follow-up—a personal experience
From: Adam Levine
FLORIDA, USA
To follow up or not to follow up? This has been a question I have seen debated a few times in the
SFI Forum.
Some say "Do it often" or "Do it once then wait for them to
reciprocate." Some say "Don't bother, if they want to succeed they will
get involved themselves."
Well, like everyone else, I now have an opinion to share. My
purpose is to motivate those who feel "left in the dark" when it comes
to getting training and getting started as well as to tie this in with
the merits of following up with your team.
First, a little background: I joined SFI 273 days ago as of
this writing. I jumped in with both feet, became an Executive Affiliate,
started reading, and then fired off some questions at my sponsor.
Unfortunately, as many of you have experienced for yourself, I got no
answer. After going up the line, I got one reply from several levels up,
which referred me right back to the training I had questions about. I
was discouraged to say the least. Nobody from my upline would contact
me, I never got any team e-mails and some of the training was a bit
confusing to someone with little to no marketing experience.
So I gave up, but kept my Executive Affiliate rank in case I
wanted to "come back" later. Every few weeks I would get motivated to
learn something new and dig in for a little while. A few months later I
had a few ads on sites targeting work-at-home parents, as well as a few
"paid-to-read/paid link" sites and referrals starting coming in.
Eventually I moved on to pay-per-click and built some Web pages for
sales letters. The latter was just in the last two months or so.
The biggest thing to remember is that during all of this, I
kept stopping for weeks at a time. The upline was no help for me with
the learning curve and answers via the Forum often take time to get.
This can be very frustrating and discouraging...I know.
Now we move forward (nearly 300 referrals later) to just a few weeks ago:
Now money was spent and my team was dead in the water. So all
that was left to do was master the "helping others" aspect of a
successful home-business strategy. I had performed some follow ups but
never with any real sincerity or consistency, and it was time to try it
for myself and see what happened. So here is the thought process that
ultimately came to fruition in my mind.
1) Forget the debates roiling among other affiliates and
just start TRYING things. If there was agreement about a topic, perhaps
I would follow suit and apply the tried and true, but there was not. So
the only option was to try for myself.
Really try.
2) Just be helpful in general. Not just to your down line, but adopt a willingness to help other affiliates whether you
actually SEE any benefit or not. I always thought I was a helpful
person, but when it came to SFI, I was hogging my time to do things and
help people I thought would benefit me most.
3) Do my best to show my team (and others) that I was
willing to give more of myself to them than to myself. That includes
time, effort, and even money. Why? I would refer you back to "If you are
successful, then I will benefit from your success," a popular
follow-up line. In ANY network, the OTHER GUY MUST BENEFIT FIRST. A
store must make sacrifices for the customer FIRST (provide a building to
shop in, employees to help them, etc.). Any business must make
sacrifices to its employees (provide a paycheck, supply a break room,
provide uniforms, etc.). The point is that the guy making the money
never, ever comes first in the relationship, but he does have a
responsiblity to make the first effort.
With those things in mind, I began looking for every excuse
possible to "talk" to my team. It started with reminders about SFI
features I personally found useful and included the fact that I, as
their "leader," use this feature myself. Communications quickly moved on
to offering contests with
Gift Certificate rewards
for just about every activity that had to do with building their SFI
business. These were presented in the form of contests and challenges. I
never expected some of these challenges to be met, but I was perfectly
willing to reward and support them for the effort.
Another personal, favorite "excuse" to contact my team is
questions I see asked on the Forum. If two or three people ask the same
question, that's the perfect opportunity to reasearch the answer
yourself, answer it for those who asked the question on the Forum, and
then send out a letter to your team. I usually open such letters with "A
common question among new affiliates is, "How Do I XXXXXXXX?"
I now have more excuses to contact the team than I will ever
need, and over the last few weeks I've sent out several letters each
week. Guess what happened?
I started getting questions and e-mails from affiliates. Some
of whom have been members for a long time. They didn't contact me right
away, but started trickling in one or two at a time. I now usually have
the pleasure of communicating with individual affiliates on an almost
daily basis. I had no idea that some of them were so hungry for
interaction. Furthermore, the number of daily logins has gone from two
or three every day or two, to as many as a dozen per day. All because I
went from "Yell if you need me" to "Hey, I'm still here and will be
everyday!"
It gets better. One morning I checked my inbox and there
was an e-mail filled with credit card information. With it was a note
explaining that the affiliate was having difficulty getting an IAHBE
standing order set up and requesting my help. After a few extremely
difficult-to-understand (due to communication barriers) communications
back and forth, I had all the information I needed to help this
affiliate out and SFI support kindly took care of the order processing
for me. That guy is now in my own co-op and eagerly asking both myself
and his sponsor for ad copy and help getting started with his own
promotion efforts.
A few days after I initially received the e-mail I mentioned
above, I received ANOTHER e-mail with SFI log-in info and personal bank
account information with a similiar request as the previous affiliate.
That has yet to be completed, but here is the point I was ultimately
coming to:
People want help and they desperately want to be involved...so
desperate, in fact, that as soon as trust was established, they were
willing to throw extremely sensitive information my way just to accept
the help I was offering. So, it is my experience that people want to
become involved—almost desperately. And they want to follow someone on
their journey getting there. However, they will only follow you if they
trust you. And of course, building trust DOES require
communication—regular communication, including following up.
It is my opinion and just my opinion that if someone really
doesn't want to hear from you, they will opt-out. If they have ANY
desire whatsoever to build a business, but they still find your e-mails
annoying, they will merely delete them. Most of your affiliates want to
hear from you, though. Not once or twice, but often because they want
assurance that if they need you on any given day, you will be there.
Don't abandon an entire team of people just because you're
afraid that one or two might be annoyed. SFI is an optional business.
Nobody is forced to do anything they are not comfortable with, but they
are far more likely to follow the follow through with this business if
there is someone out in front leading. To me this means:
Walk out
front, get seen and let them hear your voice over the crowd. In other
words - Lead, and it's nearly impossible to lead quietly.
You can take the above however you will. If you did not get the
support you felt you should have received, you are the only one who can
break the cycle. You can complain about the lack of a sponsor or you
can do the extra work, learn it yourself and save your team from
experiencing the same letdown you experienced.
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