Owning a .com website address (URL) is not an option, it’s a necessity. Leave the .net, .org, .name, .tv and all the other dot suffixes for someone else. In a recent radio marketing campaign, the importance of a .com URL became very apparent.

Here’s the story. I own iClickUniversity.com with a partner. And I own iClickuniversity.ca, the Canadian franchise, on my own. Recently, I decided to try radio advertising for the Canadian franchise, but not the international franchise.

The radio ad was written and produced by the radio station in my test market and ran for three weeks. At the end of the campaign, the statistics were shocking. The .ca website had received 45 hits and the international .com site had received 47.

If we look at the results and ignore the fact that the radio campaign was a flop, you’ll notice that the .com site got more hits than the .ca site, even though the .com site was not being advertised.

Why?

When people hear a domain name on the radio, they have to write it down or remember it. Either way, half the people get it wrong and assume they heard .com.

In short, if you own a domain that’s not a .com and you’re promoting on the radio, you’re sending the .com domain owner lots of free traffic. That’s great for the other guy…not good for you.

Terry Telford

Whether you’re starting a new business, or your business has been around for years, getting back to the basics will help you pinpoint areas you have overlooked in the past, and help you build a stronger business for the future.

The four keys to your business success are:

Mindset
Focus
Education
Action

In this series of four articles, we’ll explore each area see how it fits into your business.

Focus
The next battle you’re going to wage is with your mind. You need to stay focused on one task at a time. Pinpoint your focus to stay effective. When you sit at your computer, you are there to get a job done. There are hundreds of distractions online and offline, but you need to focus on the task at hand or your work will never get completed.

We all suffer from information overload. When you are online, it’s easy to start out with great intentions of completing a task like answering email, and 2 hours later find yourself surfing mindlessly. You click on a link in an email that takes you to a website that leads you to another website with intriguing information in a link that… you get the picture. We’ve all been there. So you need to guard your focus and not lose sight of what you’re actually supposed to be doing while you are sitting in front of your computer screen.

To prove this point, look at the results of a recent experiment. Whether you agree or disagree with the methodology, the outcome is fascinating.

An experiment was conducted with a group of mentally challenged people. Each person had the ability to listen to simple instructions and carry out a simple task. None of them could do more than one simple task at a time, but all of them were able to complete menial tasks on a computer.

The top person in the group had been taught how to copy and paste text from a Word document into a simple form on a website. Each day, he would sit down at the computer for 20 minutes, copy and paste exactly as he’d been shown and then turn off the computer. This was his “job” every single day, day-in, day-out.

The text he was copying and pasting from the Word document into the form on the website was a simple article. He was given a new article each morning to copy into an article submission website and then push the send button. That was all he did. That was all he knew how to do. He didn’t suffer from information overload. He simply followed the instructions he had been given.

Each article promoted a website. After 3 weeks of sending out one article a day, the website made its’ first sale, then another and another until the website was making at least one sale a day.

If a mentally challenged person can generate sales from a website, using one simple tactic, so can you. The key to making it happen is focus – your focus.

Narrow your focus and block out all the other noise in your life. Do not hop around, don’t get side tracked, don’t get bogged down with information. Follow the steps in the order they have been presented and you will have a solid business that you are proud of.

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Terry Telford

Terry Telford is a co-founder of iClick University, a step-by-step program for building your internet business. For a full course outline, visit http://www.iClickUniversity.com
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NOTE: You may copy and publish this article in your newsletter or website as long as you leave the bi-line intact at the bottom.

Whether you’re starting a new business, or your business has been around for years, getting back to the basics will help you pinpoint areas you have overlooked in the past, and help you build a stronger business for the future.

The four keys to your business success are:

Mindset
Focus
Education
Action

In this series of four articles, we’ll explore each area see how it fits into your business.

Mindset
The way you think, directly affects the results you get from your business. If you look at your business as a hobby, you will make a hobby income. If you treat your business as the professional entity that it is, your income will match your expectations. Although it may seem like psycho-babble, the way you think and view your business has a huge effect on whether you can actually buy your shiny yellow Corvette, or whether you can only afford the gas.

Here’s your new mindset: You are the President and CEO of your own company. It doesn’t matter if you are the only person in your company, and your company consists of a 10-year-old computer sitting in the dusty corner of your bedroom. No one cares about your company except you. Your customers only care what your company can provide for them.

Next, take a realistic look at what you want to achieve. It’s easy to see the success stories online and get caught up in the excitement.  But look behind the scenes to see what actually happened to achieve those successes. There was a lot of groundwork that went into creating the results you read about. The money is there, but it takes some work to get to it.

To prove this point, we’ll look at TheBusinessProfessional.com. One of the milestones in the company’s history was generating $41,439 in sales in 17 days. But there’s more to the story.

The Business Professional was born almost 2 years before the first major sales achievement. Originally, it was an online portal with a print quality magazine. Then it was transformed into a membership website.

The sales were generated, for the most part, by affiliates. The affiliates made a 50% commission, so $20,000 was paid to them. After payment processing fees, hosting and other miscellaneous fees, there was approximately $20,000 left to run the business and draw an income. So as Paul Harvey used to say, “Now you know the rest of the story.”

So when you see stories of large amounts of money in short periods of time, keep in mind there is always a story behind the story. Remember to keep your expectations realistic.

Look at your business as if you were climbing a ladder. You have to lift your foot up to the first rung before you can reach the second rung. You have to make your first $10 sale before you make your first $100 sale. You have to experience your first $100 month before you have your first $500 month.

With perseverance and the right mindset, you can reach your goals, but you have to walk before you can run.

Terry Telford

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Terry Telford is a co-founder of iClick University, a step-by-step program for building your internet business. For a full course outline, visit http://www.iClickUniversity.com
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Over half the small businesses that open their doors today, will close their doors in less than a year. That’s a 50% failure rate and that’s scary. But if business owners set their mindset before opening their businesses, the failure rate could drop.

Every entrepreneur faces a plethora of mindset challenges. We’re going to look at three of the common challenges that plague small business owners in a series of three articles.

Article 1 – Business Pitfall #1: Money Paradigm
Article 2 – Business Pitfall #2: No Plan
Article 3 – Business Pitfall #3: Information Overload

Business Pitfall #3: Information Overload

Information overload has become part of our every day life. Each day, the average person is exposed to almost 4,000 marketing messages. That’s in addition to the regular information they need to complete their jobs. The only way to cut through the noise is to focus.

Ignore the “amazing offer” that ends at midnight and will never be repeated. Today’s hot product is replaced by tomorrow’s hot product. To focus, you need to choose a path and follow it.

Although it’s very easy to look at this information and say, “I know that,” or “I have seen that before,” do not fall into the trap of misreading the simplicity. Knowing how to do something and actually doing it are two different things.

The easiest way to cut out the information overload in your life is selective ignorance. Ignore whatever is not important to you at this moment. If you’re working on a project, put your full focus into the project and block out anything that is not relevant to that project.

Although it’s easier said than done, you can learn to do it. Start by saying a polite “No” to unrelated activities that don’t help you finish your current project. At first it will feel unusual, but when you finish projects in record time, the rewards outweigh the slight awkward feeling of saying “No.”

Learning to cut through information overload is like discovering a 36 hour day. It’s an adrenaline rush. Finishing projects in record time, leaves you more time for the more important things in life, like golf and beaches

Terry Telford

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Terry Telford is a co-founder of iClick University, a step-by-step program for building your internet business. For a full course outline, visit http://www.iClickUniversity.com
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Over half the small businesses that open their doors today, will close their doors in less than a year. That’s a 50% failure rate and that’s scary. But if business owners set their mindset before opening their businesses, the failure rate could drop.

Every entrepreneur faces a plethora of mindset challenges. We’re going to look at three of the common challenges that plague small business owners in a series of three articles.

Article 1 – Business Pitfall #1: Money Paradigm
Article 2 – Business Pitfall #2: No Plan
Article 3 – Business Pitfall #3: Information Overload

Business Pitfall #2: No Plan

Let’s start with a well-known saying “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail”. Without a plan you have no idea where you are going or how to get there. You do not need a 50-page thesis outlining every detail of your business. All you need is a very simple action plan.

A plan will also help you set benchmarks and allows you to celebrate your successes as you progress.

Setting up a simple business plan can be as easy as defining your:

1. Objectives
2. Strategies
3. Tactics
4. Daily To Do List

Objectives
Starting at the top, your objectives are your broad overview. They define what you want to accomplish. For example, ABC Business will gross $100,000 in sales in 2009…

Strategies
Your strategies answer your objectives. They describe how you are going to accomplish the objective you’ve set. For example, …by selling affiliate products on the internet…

Tactics
Your tactics explain how you plan to accomplish your strategies. They explain what you’re going to do in more detail. For example, …by setting up 10 websites that promote 5-10 products each and then promoting them…

Daily To Do List
And the final piece of your business plan is your daily to do list. This is where the rubber hits the road and where you take a definite action or actions, every single day. For example, …by writing one article per week, contacting ten new joint venture partners each week, and placing pay per click advertising on Google and Yahoo.

When you piece them all together you have a specific objective that will be met daily by your To Do list actions. For each business objective, you’ll have a complete path to a daily To Do list.

Here’s what your plan for the first objective looks like:

ABC Business will gross $100,000 in sales in 2009… by selling affiliate products on the internet… by setting up 10 websites that promote 5-10 products each and then promoting them… by writing one article per week, contacting ten new joint venture partners each week, and placing pay per click advertising on Google and Yahoo.

Now you have a very specific business plan with a daily To Do list. It makes it very easy to measure your progress by measuring what you accomplish each day and the results from each action you take.

Your business plan doesn’t have to be a book, it simply has to be a plan that you can follow to achieve your goals. And the smaller, more easy to follow your plan is, the more likely you are to follow it to success.

Terry Telford

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Terry Telford is a co-founder of iClick University, a step-by-step program for building your internet business. For a full course outline, visit http://www.iClickUniversity.com
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