Let’s face it. Network marketing isn’t the easiest industry in the world. Like anything else, there are skills you need to learn and apply for you to succeed. But without focused attention you are going to have a hard time of it.

In this article I highlight some of the problems faced by network marketers and the solutions to those problems.

Problem: As you know, I choose to build my business online. I love the leverage it brings, plus the fact you can connect with people and build your business from anywhere that there is an internet connection. But the biggest problem with it is that there are endless distractions on the internet. Email, Skype, youtube, ads popping up, the temptation to check the bid you made on ebay or the reviews for the latest movie.

Solution: When you have something you need to get done, turn off all unecessary distractions. Turn off your phone, log out of Skype and other social media platforms, stop checking your emails and surfing the internet aimlessly. You’ll get far more done this way, and the quality is likely to be better as well.

Problem: Another kind of distraction which is also easy to succumb to on the internet, is information overload. Every week you get an email about the latest and greatest informational product. Not only that, but they make it seem that you NEED it or you are missing out big time. The problem is you can only take in so much at a time.

If you take on every new piece of information that you hear about, it won’t be long before you become overwhelmed which is one of the worst feelings in the world when you are trying to get things done. When you are overwhelmed, you get stressed and are unable to think clearly. You end up just looking aimlessly at the computer screen trying to figure out what your supposed to be doing.

Solution: Learn one thing at a time. Once you have learned the theory, put it into practice straight away and don’t move on to learning the next piece of information until you have implemented what you have learned. There is absolutely no point in learning something and then doing nothing with it. At the end of the day, it is your actions that get you results.

Problem: This is related to the previous point. There is such a thing as taking on too much at once. If you are trying to implement 5 strategies at once you are going to become overwhelmed. Not only that but you will struggle to master any of those strategies as your focus is dispersed.

Solution: Instead, focus on 1 or 2 strategies at time and then MASTER those strategies. Jack of all trades, master of none will not cut it. It is much better to be extremely good at 1 strategy than to be average or poor at 5. Once you have a strategy mastered, then you can take on another one if you feel you can.

I also recommend outsourcing what you can. It will alleviate your work load and enable you to focus on what’s most important to your business.

There is no denying that staying focused both on your goals and at the tasks at hand is a huge part of the puzzle. Once you get it right though, you will be filled with drive and enthusiams and will be amazed at how much you can get done.

Damien Willis

As discussed in the previous Creating Backlinks article, learning how to create backlinks is very important for the ranking of your website or blog. You want to get backlinks that are diverse, high quality and yet get a lot of them over time. But how exactly do you get these backlinks. Here are 6 ways of creating backlinks:

Publish/Distribute Your Content to Other Sites

There’s no point creating content if no one is going to see it. So distribute your content to other sites, preferably with high PR. The most common way of doing this is by submitting articles to Article Directories with a link or 2 back to your site.

Some of these sites get a ton of traffic and by submitting your content you can harness some of that traffic. Good places to submit your content to include Ezine Articles, Hub Pages, Squidoo, Go Articles as well as Better Networker.

Article Submitters

This is like the previous one but on steroids and is how you get a large quantity of backlinks. Basically you submit content to the article submitter and it will automatically submit it to hundreds or sometimes thousands of article directories and other sites. Not only can you submit to tons of sites, but you can usually have 2 backlinks in your resource box (double the backlinks!).

You have to be a bit careful with this one though. If you have a new site and it suddenly gets hundreds or thousands of backlinks from article sites in a short space of time, google might get suspicious. Fortunately many of these article submitters are able to limit the submissions to a certain amount per day.

To maximise this strategy you can also “spin” the articles which increases uniqueness, getting more of your articles accepted and indexed and therefore getting more backlinks to your site.

Distributing Videos

Do you upload videos to your site? Just like with your articles, you should distribute the videos to other sites such as Youtube & Viddler. Include a link in the description and you’ve got yourself another backlink (+ the extra traffic from people clicking on the link). Like with articles, there are submission services that will submit your videos to a number of different video sites.

To get even more value from this, you could turn your video into a podcast (or create unique podcasts) and then submit these podcasts to different podcast directories.

Blog Commenting

Yes you can get backlinks by commenting on blogs but you need to find the right blogs. Why? Most blogs are “nofollow” which basically tells the search engines to disreguard the link making it not count as a backlink. The type of blogs we are after are “dofollow” blogs because it will count as a backlink. You can search for these blogs on google.

Once you have found a suitable “dofollow” blog, leave a good, relevant comment (NO SPAM!). You will be asked to fill in your name (which will count as anchor text), your email address and a website (your actual backlink).

Forum Signatures

Are you part of a forum? Did you know you can have a link in your signature? Yup this also counts as a backlink. Join forums in your niche and like above only post good, relevant posts and comments or the administrators will catch onto you and ban your account.

Purchasing Packets or Backlinks

Another thing you can do is purchase “packets” of backlinks from certain websites. I’m talking like 20 – 50 high PR backlinks per packet not these shady deals where you get thousands of backlinks for $10. These are usually linkfarms which are bad and make google angry >:( .

If you decide to buy one of these packets of 20 – 50 backlinks, make sure you do some research on google to make sure they’re legit. One i’ve used recently is http://angelasdiscountmarket.com which appears to be pretty good. Once you get the packet there is some manual work involved but will be worth it, or you can just outsource the work.

Anchor Text

Just a quick point on anchor text for newbies. Anchor text is the text that you see and can click on in a hyperlink. For example, at the very start of this article I’ve got a link. The anchor text for that link is “Creating Backlinks”

Whenever you are creating backlinks make sure to include the keyword you want your website or particular webpage to rank for in the anchor text like I have done.

There are of course more ways of creating backlinks, but these 6 are some of the best and most popular ways of creating backlinks and are more than enough for you to start getting your site. So pick some or all of these strategies and get cracking and create backlinks for your site!

Creating backlinks is very import for your site if you want to get ranked in the search engines. In a previous article I addressed how to Optimize Blog for wordpress SEO.

Now that you have your blog’s on page SEO sorted out it’s time to take care of the off-page factors – the backlinks. Backlinks are basically like votes for your websites and you need votes to get ranked. Here are things to keep in mind when backlinks for your site:

#1. Variety

If you get backlinks from the same sources time and time again without any change, google is going to notice and are going to rank you lower than a website that is getting their backlinks from a wide variety of sources. So instead you should try to get links from unique domains. Aim for 100+ unique backlinks(not all at once).

#2. Quality

The quality of the backlinks you are getting definitely matters in the eyes of google. You might not get penalized if you are getting low quality backlinks but you won’t get much benefit either. So make sure that you are using at least some high PR sites when creating backlinks.

The quality of a site is measured in PR (Page Rank) on a scale of 0 – 10, 10 being the highest. A PR of 5 or above is considered high page rank, so if you get backlinks from sites with PR5+, it is going to greatly help your site to rank.

#3. Quantity

Having said that, you do still need to have a certain amount of backlinks for Google to deem your site as important. However, you also want your backlinks to build naturally over time, so once your site is established, you can start fleshing out your backlinking to increase volume.

As long as you increase the quantity of links naturally, you will only benefit from this because its not like you are replacing your quality backlinks, you are just adding to them. Generally the newer the site the more conservative you want to be in terms of the quantity of backlinks.

Caution: Keep away from link farms or packages where you get 1000’s of backlinks for $10 – this is the kind of backlinking that can hurt your site.

Conclusion

All of this won’t mean much if you’re not creating quality content, so make sure you have unique, quality content on your website because Quality is King!

In future articles I will go into more details and show you how to get backlinks, this article was just to show you what you need to keep in mind when creating backlinks.

Damien Willis

If you want to get ranked in the search engines, then you need to know SEO. But the very first step to SEO a website or particular webpage is to do the keyword research and find out the best keyword for your niche. There are many keyword tools out there but the best ones aren’t free. This video will show you how you can do free SEO keyword research and find those golden nuggets that you can get your site ranked for in the short to medium term.

Damien Willis

So you’ve created a facebook page for what you want to promote. Now what? One of the best ways to customize your facebook page is to add your own custom tab. Because this tab is completely customizable, you can create something completely unique to your Facebook Page. In this video I will show you how to add a Custom Facebook Page Tab.

Want to know why I know so much about Facebook Marketing? Then sign up to my free 7 Day Attraction Marketing Bootcamp.

Damien Willis

Hey Fellow Facebooker,

Facebook Page Marketing is where you need to be if you are promoting something via Facebook. In this video I show you how to add a cool Youtube Channel to your page which will make your page look pro and increase interaction.

Damien Willis

Facebook Marketing is like the king of Social Media Marketing, and the Facebook Page is the best way to promote yourself or a brand on Facebook. In this Video, I show you how to create you own Facebook Page.

Damien Willis

For all you marketers, hustlers & businesses out there wanting to use facebook for promotion there are basically two options: You can start your own fan page or you can start a group. Both can be really effective but which is better?

Group Advantages:

• Easier and quicker to set up a decent group – This makes it a good option for beginners.

• You can send out “Bulk Invites” and so can others – This can potentially put your group into overdrive. If you invite all of your friends and just 5 people invite all of their friends that’s a lot of extra members.

• You can message all members – This is the biggest advantage for me. You can send a message to all of the group’s members pretty much as often as you like. This is just like having your own email list.

Group Disadvantages:

• Limited Future Potential – You can have an unlimited number of members in your group BUT, you can only send out messages to the members if there are less than 5000. This is a pretty big limitation considering the messaging is one of the key advantages of a group.

• More susceptible to other’s marketing messages on the wall.

• Limited customization.

Fan Page Advantages:

• Add Your Own Customizable Pages – For me this is Fan Pages most powerful feature. Using the “Static FBML” application you can add your own pages which you can completely customize with your own html/fbml. You could add a lead capture page or you could add some sort of interactive page or something completely unique. Don’t be afraid to get creative. Good examples of great interactive fan pages are: Red Bull Fan Page, Adidas Fan Page & VW Fan Page.

• Branding – As you probably know branding is very important, and a fan page is one of the best possible ways to brand yourself or a company anywhere, not just on facebook. Because of the customization possiblities, you can create your own unique apps and content to build your image.

• Increased interacton – A good fan page will have more interactive fans than a group.

• Promote with PPC ads – You can use Facebook’s own PPC to drive traffic to your fan page. If you have a good lead capture page set up on your fan page you can generate leads cheaper than Google Adwords AND if your fan page is good, they will share it with their friends. That’s viral advertising!

Fan Page Disadvantages

• You need to know or hire someone who knows html/fbml to get the most out of your fan page.

• Once you’ve created a fan page you can’t change the name.

• You can send updates to your fans but this isn’t as good as sending out a message. I don’t know about you, but I rarely check the updates section of my inbox and I bet a lot of people aren’t even aware of it.

Fan Page VS Group Summary

I think Facebook Groups are a great way to get started promoting on Facebook. I started this way and it was a great way to learn and got me some good results.

However from a commercial and branding point of view, the Fan Page is far superior. It may not be able to provide the short term results of a group (assuming you are starting for scratch and aren’t already an established brand) but long term, the sky’s the limit. Plus you have the ability to put your page on steroids with Facebook PPC, but that’s for another article

Hey Everyone,

I just went to David Wood’s blog and was blown away by his current blog post. It wasn’t because of the content (actually that was pretty mind blowing as well), but because of one number in the top right corner:

Check out the blog post that got David Wood over 700 retweets: http://workwithdavidwood.com/sponsoring-funded-proposals-network-marketing-mlm/

Damien Willis

* Keywordspy.com: This website just feels to much like cheating . You know those industry websites? Put them into keywordspy.com and it will show you what keywords those websites are using. You can also use this for competitor websites.

Google Adwords can be an awesome source of fresh, targeted leads but you need to know what you’re doing. The first step to Google Adwords/PPC success is to build up a list of relevant keywords. Here are some ideas for coming up with keywords.

Keyword Tools: Keyword tools can save you a lot of time finding keywords. Simply type in some keywords and the keyword tool will come up with related keywords. Good keyword tools are the Google Keyword Tool, wordtracker.com & Market Samurai.

Brand Names/Companies: People are going to be searching for brand names in your industry which make them a great source of keywords. If you’re in network marketing like me, a good source is mlmrankings.com and npros.com

Books: Go to your local bookstore or an online bookstore such as Amazon and go through books that are related to your industry. Both the name of the book and the Author(s) of the book are potential keywords.

Other Products: This can be any other products related to your industry whether they be physical or digital. Again, Amazon is a good place to look but also try clickbank.com or even ebay.

Gmail: Chances are that you are signed up to many online newsletters and email lists that are related to your industry. Also, when you are reading an email, ads that are related to it will display above the email which could also lead to a source of keywords.

Industry Websites: Not only can the websites themselves be great keywords, but you will be able to find tons of other stuff on these websites that could become keywords. alexa.com & quantcast.com are both good resources for websites.

Keywordspy.com: This website just feels to much like cheating . You know those industry websites? Put them into keywordspy.com and it will show you what keywords those websites are using. You can also use this for competitor websites.

Industry Magazines: Similar to industry websites. There will be tons of websites and products listed in these magazines that you can use for keywords. The big difference is your competitors probably haven’t thought of looking in a magazine for keyword ideas.

Gurus/Leaders: People like to know who the best are and find more about them. Take advantage of this and include them in your list of keywords.

Search Engines: And finally we have search engines such as google itself. With the keywords you find from an industry magazine for example, you can research it on Google and come up with further keywords.

Final Tips

What I’ve listed in this article is more than enough for you to start building a large list of keywords. But if you get creative you can probably find heaps more.

Make sure you don’t chuck all of your keywords into one giant list of keywords. Separate them into different categories. eg. You could have a group of keywords for “MLM Gurus” and another for “MLM Companies”. This just makes it easier to sort through them when it comes time to put them into your Google Adwords Campaign.