You were friends with this guy since college, you graduated together, your honor was higher and you got a better-paying job than his.

Fast forward 5-10 years…

That person is sipping Pina Colada in the Bahamas while his business is running smoothly in the background. On the other hand, you’re still stuck behind a 9-5 desk job. You’ve tried several business but they all failed miserably.

Now, I know that this story is a bit cliche. However, it doesn’t mean that this is just a made up scenario. Try to attend you school reunions and you’ll notice this is what actually happens in the real life.

The question is, how can it be that a smart person like you is lagging behind that not-so-smart guy?

Today, I want to emphasize about the biggest trait that separates your destiny and his this far away…

It’s about mindset…and no, it’s not about keep thinking of your desired wealth or other law of attraction stuffs. (Don’t get me wrong, they’re still important and could help in some ways. But there is one very simple mindset that can bring similar result.)

This mindset that I’m talking about is being vulnerable.

What do I mean by that? Being vulnerable means you’re open to advices and act upon them obediently.

That’s it. Simple isn’t it. But if you’re thinking that only simpletons would do that, then you’re right about reading this post. Based on other people’s experiences and mine, I managed to draw a conclusion about this paradox…

Smart people tend to over-analyze the situation, thinking that some adjustments might be necessary but end up reinvent the wheel.

Simpletons do as what their coaches say. No question, no experiment, no improvisation. They follow the teaching to the dots and commas and be the closest to their coaches’ successes.

Now, I’m not saying that you have to be this way for the rest of your life. But when you start in this business, you really need to empty your ‘glass’. Seriously, your mentor will have no place to fill you with knowledge if it is full…full of junks that is.

I can relate that to my own experience. I started in this business with some background in affiliate marketing. So the mindset I had was: “people buy on impulse”. As the result, I just kept promoting and promoting but no one joined my business. My mentor’s advice to build relationship first went into my left ear then got our from the right. I thought I knew about this business, but alas…my commission said otherwise.

After taking a step back and reviewing what my mentor taught the first time, I then noticed how far I had deviated from the original teaching. And when I began to let go of my pride and allowed my mentor to take me by his hand, it suddenly become so clear. Now I see that it was a stupid mistake not to build relationship. But I certainly didn’t think so because I was so preoccupied with my past experience.

It’s also not a coincidence that you often read in testimonies: “I knew nothing about internet before, but after I followed his step-by-step teaching, I fired my boss in a few months.” And not to brag, but two days ago, I received $225 commission just by closely following an instruction from my mentor, Jonathan Budd. It’s all about finding the right mentor and follow his/her teaching to the teeth.

Too simple? It’s just as occam’s razor principle says: the best solution to the problem is the simplest one.

Copyright © Reyn Aria and MyNetworkMarketingBlog.com

I’ve also been thinking of posting about this. However, it was too cumbersome to list them all one by one because here are so many.

Fortunately, I just got my hand on this cool plugin that can list all the plugins I use in a single post.

So here’s the list of plugins that I use, including the non-active ones. I’ve also added some additional information from the creator’s original information about what exactly each plugin does.

There are 47 plugins used: 34 active plugins and 13 inactive plugins.

Enjoy!

Active Plugins

  Action Comments
Build your e-mail opt-in list using blog comments. This plugin adds extra checkbox below your comment input box, asking whether they also want to join your newsletter/mailing list.

  AdServe
Ads serve lets you manage your banner advertising in your blog neatly. It also shows statistics of how many impressions and clicks each banner gets.

  Akismet
Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use it. This plugin is a must have if (99% of chance) your blog gets too many spam comments.

  All in One SEO Pack
Out-of-the-box SEO for your Wordpress blog. This plugin can really boost your on-site optimization by reformatting key meta-tags, header information, and title tags for specific (or all) pages and posts.

  Auto Social Poster
Auto bookmark your Blog articles to over 30 bookmarking websites. Warning, this plugin is considered as a blackhat tool. But if you know what you’re doing, this plugin can bring good traffic to your blog. Use at your own risk.

  cforms II
cformsII offers unparalleled flexibility in deploying contact forms across your blog. Features include: comprehensive SPAM protection, Ajax support, Backup & Restore, Multi-Recipients, Role Manager support, Database tracking and many more. See the “Contact” tab at the top of the page to see how it looks.

  CommentLuv
Plugin to show a link to the last post from the commenters’ blog in their comment. A very good incentive to attract blog commenting. Just activate and it’s ready. Will parse a feed from most sites that have a feed location specified in its head html.

  FAQ-Tastic
Create and manage FAQs. Very self-explanatory.

  Get Recent Comments
Display the most recent comments or trackbacks with your own formatting in the sidebar.

  Google Custom Search Plugin
Integrate Google Custom Search into WordPress. WordPress default search function is very inefficient. With this plugin, you can also display Google search results without leaving your blog.

  Google XML Sitemaps
This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and Yahoo!.

  Lucia’s Link Love
Where a commenter has commented at least some number of times, their links are made “dofollow”. Another great incentive to ramp up commenting activity on your blog.

  Ozh’ Better Feed
Your feeds, on steroids. Add a feed footer with a copyright, “Add to delicious”, the number of comments… Add anything to your feed. If you’re subscribed to my blog feed, you’ll notice there’s a copyright notice at the bottom.

  Page Links To
Allows you to point WordPress pages or posts to a URL of your choosing. Good for setting up navigational links to non-WP sections of your site or to off-site resources. Can also be used to cloak your affiliate links.

  Permalink Redirect
Permalink Redirect ensures that pages and entries are always accessed via the permalink. Otherwise, a 301 redirect will be issued. I use this plugin because it automatically redirects older pemalink structures to the new ones, such as /%category%/%postname% (which is what I used to have) to /%postname%.

  Popular Posts
Displays a highly configurable list of the most popular posts. Requires the latest version of the Post-Plugin Library to be installed. It’s the plugin that list my 5 most popular posts at the bottom of this blog.

  Post-Plugin Library
Does nothing by itself but supplies common code for the Similar Posts, Recent Posts, Random Posts, and Recent Comments plugins.

  Quotes Collection
Quotes Collection plugin with Ajax powered Random Quote sidebar widget helps you collect and display your favourite quotes on your WordPress blog. See the top left of this blog to see it in action.

  ShareThis
Let your visitors share a post/page with others. Supports e-mail and posting to social bookmarking sites. Very neat yet it has a very complete list of bookmarking sites.

  Show Top Commentators
Encourage more feedback and discussion from readers, by rewarding them every time they post a comment! Readers with the most comments are displayed on your Wordpress blog, with their names (linked to their website if they provided one).

  Similar Posts
Displays a highly configurable list of related posts. Similarity can be based on any combination of word usage in the content, title, or tags. Requires the latest version of the Post-Plugin Library to be installed. This plugin will really boost my page-view-per-visitor stats. At the bottom of each post, I list 5 of the most related posts for them to read more.

  Sociable
Automatically add links on your posts, pages and RSS feed to your favorite social bookmarking sites. I use this as addition to ShareThis plugin as the buttons are bigger and more noticeable.

  Theme Test Drive
Safely test drive any theme while visitors are using the default one. Includes instant theme preview via thumbnail. I use this because I’m currently working on the new looks of this blog.

  WordPress.com Stats
Tracks views, post/page views, referrers, and clicks. Requires a WordPress.com API key. More or less like Google Analytics, just faster.

  WordPress Database Backup
On-demand backup of your WordPress database. You can also set to let it send you via email the automated backups daily, weekly or monthly. It’s very important. Who know? Maybe your blog suddenly vanished because of your web host fault. But if it happens, blaming them won’t resurrect your blog. So backup frequently.

  Wordpress Gravatars
Makes use of Gravatars and MyBlogLog Avatars, places Gravatars, OpenAvatar, Wavatar, Identicon, monsterID or MyBlogLog Avatars in the comments section. Uses the comment authors email to display their Gravatar. It also gives the user an Author Profile picture, based on his or hers Gravatar.

  Wordpress Thread Comment
WP Thread Comment allow user can reply comment and same comment On display. Useful for discussion so that your commenter don’t have to scroll the entire conversation to see who’s replying their comments.

  WP-PageNavi
Adds a more advanced paging navigation to your WordPress blog.By default, WP only display ‘older posts’ and ‘newer posts’ link. But this plugin will display how many pages of posts you have so readers can navigate easier.

  WP-PluginsUsed
Display WordPress plugins that you currently have (both active and inactive) onto a post/page. Here’s the plugin that made this post possible

  WP-Polls
Adds an AJAX poll system to your WordPress blog. You can easily include a poll into your WordPress’s blog post/page. WP-Polls is extremely customizable via templates and css styles and there are tons of options for you to choose to ensure that WP-Polls runs the way you wanted. It now supports multiple selection of answers.

  WP-Polls Widget
Adds a Poll Widget to display single or multiple polls from WP-Polls Plugin. You will need to activate WP-Polls first.

  WP-Print
Displays a printable version of your WordPress blog’s post/page. Useful to let your readers print the content your posts or pages easily.

  WP Greet Box
Show a different message to your visitor depending on which site they are coming from. For example, you can ask Digg visitors to Digg your post, Google visitors to subscribe to your RSS feed, and more! Best of all, this plugin is compatible with various WordPress cache plugins.

  WP Widget Cache
Cache the output of your blog widgets. Usually it will significantly reduce the sql queries to your database and speed up your site.

Inactive Plugins

While these plugins are inactive, it does not mean they’re useless. I still use some of them for special occasion or future implementation.

  Action Optin
Display optin forms that submit in the background. If you’re familiar with opt-in, I believe you notice that you’re usually directed to another page for acknowledgment, distracting them from your blog. This plugin will do that in the background so your readers will stay in your blog to continue reading.

  Action PopUp
Show an unblockable exit pop-up on your blog. Warning, it’s very annoying for some visitors. But if you can use it wisely, you’ll increase your opt-in rate by 50% or more.

  Challenge
Based on and improved over Steve Herod’s “Did you pass math?” plugin, Challenge restricts comment spam by throwing the commenter a challenge. Default challenge is an addition and multiplication math question involving three random numbers. The challenge and the answer can also be user defined. They can be of anything, including PHP-evaluatable mathematical expressions. This plugin can also be used to ensure the commenter’s basic intelligence before he/she/it leaves a comment :p

  Comment Approved Notifier
Send an e-mail to your commenters when you approve their comments. I feel it’s quite annoying to be receiving emails every time someone post a comment. I disable it for the moment while researching.

  Comment Fileds JavaScript Validation
This plugin check the required fields before visitor submiting the comment, and show nice message notice him about the error also highlight the required field by red color. Very useful, butI have to disable it because it clash with the feedburner’s email subscription form at the top. Still need to configure the coding.

  Do Follow
The Do Follow plugin removes the nofollow attribute that WordPress adds in comments. Some say the nofollow era is dead. But I prefer to play safe in the middle with Lucia’s Link Love.

  Global Translator
Automatically translates a blog in 34 different languages (English, French, Italian, German, Portuguese, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Arabic, Russian, Greek, Dutch, Norwegian,…) by wrapping four different online translation engines (Google Translation Engine, Babelfish Translation Engine, FreeTranslations.com, Promt).

  Minimum Comment Length
Check the comment for a set minimum length and disapprove it if it’s too short. Akismet usually mark a comment as spam if it’s too short, so I only use this as a backup.

  Official Comments
Adds functions like color or formatting to distinguish authorised WP user’s comments. I found it incompatible with WP Thread Comment, but will activate this again when I have adjust the PHP coding.

  Page Peel
Adds page peel advertisement on your blog. It’s a much cheaper alternative than the $97 page peel script sold out there.

  Random File
Retrieve the name, path, or link to a randomly chosen file in a specified directory.

  Snazzy Archives
Snazzy Archives is a visualization plugin for your WordPress site which creates completely unique archive pages.

  WP-Mythumbshot
allows visitors to preview your external links by using Mythumbshot. Pretty much help CTR of the link if the thumbnail is interesting.

Copyright © Reyn Aria and MyNetworkMarketingBlog.com

Why you ask? To survive in this business, that’s why.

Let’s be brutally honest with ourselves, you’ll quit if you keep on getting negative cash flow right? It’s okay, no one would call a money pit a business after all.

But the problem is, you can’t avoid having negative cash flow in the beginning because of your monthly auto-ship cost. And I haven’t even mention about the additional marketing costs.

Considering that much costs involve, many people took around 3 months to break even…and maybe more.

Let’s face it. On a monthly basis, if you get 100 leads, how many people can you recruit? Probably 2 or 3. Yup, if you’re brand new, 2%-3% conversion rate is quite good already.

Assuming that your direct downline also active, after 3 months, you probably get a total of 12 downline. Now, let’s estimate that on average, each downline earn you $5 per month = $60/month. This barely covers for your monthly auto-ship. Don’t forget that you also have advertising budget to cover.

Now this is where many upline suggest you to look at the other end of the rainbow by saying that after 6 months, you’ll be making profits. Yes you might…and if you’re cool with it, it’s okay.

But are you really okay with the idea of keep losing money for 6 months straight?

I don’t know about you, but many people sure aren’t. 97% failing rate is not a joke. Most people quit after losing money for 2 months…not to mention 6 months.

That’s why I said that if you just starting out, you need to focus on the short term goal first: getting positive cash flow. If you at least break even from the beginning, I’m sure you’re smart enough to decide to continue. Am I right?

This where the concept called “Funded Proposal” comes into play. The goal of this concept is to make money upfront to cover for your auto-ship and advertising expenses while still building the residual income at the back end.

So here’s how it work…

1. Promote Generic Information Product about MLM at the Front End

   The truth is, people are more comfortable paying for information that teach them how to make money rather than joining an opportunity which they have to put the money where their mouth is. It’s just the way people are.

   So the smarter approach is to first promote a generic info product that teach them how to succeed with MLM. Now this will surely convert better and you make affiliate commission for each sale. This upfront commission will then cover for your expenses, resulting in positive cash flow right from the beginning.

2. Pitch About Your Opportunity at the Back End

   Generating upfront commission is not the only advantage of Funded Proposal. After they have purchased your affiliate product, they are surely more eager to join a MLM business right away. This is where you come in. By this time, your prospects are also already familiar with you and a substantial relationship has been built. If they like the product you’re recommending, trust has been established and they will likely to listen to what you have to offer.

Can you see how smart this strategy is? It’s not just about making money fast, but it also converts better.

Go back to the first case, assuming that out of 100 leads only 3 people joining, it surely ineffective to let the other 97 just go like that. After all, you’ve spent money to gather them.

While only promoting your main opportunity works as well, it surely slower and more ‘expensive’. If you can generate positive cash flow right now and also later on, why don’t you?

Copyright © Reyn Aria and MyNetworkMarketingBlog.com

I always thought traffic exchange is such a waste of time. What good can I get from having people randomly visiting my website? It’s so untargeted. But boy, was I wrong.

Some people are actually looking through my page and become my leads. I don’t use it anymore though, but it was quite effective. I used to get 5-10 leads per day consistently.

Traffic exchange is free, but requires a lot of time. If you have more time but tight on budget, traffic exchange can be a great alternative.

Here are some tips I discovered that you can use to fully maximize this traffic:

1. Use Splash Pages or Squeeze Pages

   I’m sure you already know about squeeze page, and splash page is similar, only much more squeezed. Splash page is usually consist of only a picture or a few words. The objective is to focus the surfers’ attention and encourage them to click the picture/link which will then direct them to the real, intended page.

   The use of squeeze page or splash page is a must because you only have around 10 seconds (depends on your traffic exchange site) before they leave for the next website. They can choose to stay a bit longer, but most of the time they won’t bother if it takes more than 30 seconds to explore your whole page.

2. Put A Powerful Headline

   People determine whether to like or dislike your page based on your headline. Pretty much like reading newspaper. You skip news which headlines are not interesting or related to you, right? As usual, red-colored headline is preferable.

3. Study Your Target Market

   If you surf for about a week or so, you’ll get a good picture of what kind of people are in that TE site. This is important to know who your target market is and ultimately be able to offer something that pique their interest.

4. Track Your Results

   To get a decent result with traffic exchange, you need to surf more than one site. So tracking where you leads are coming from is crucial to pick which are worth surfing and which are not. Warning: not doing this will result in you shooting in the dark like crazy. This is why many people say it’s untargeted, because you’re wasting your time in sites that are not converting well.

5. Surf Many Traffic Exchange Sites at a Time

   This is my favorite. If you’re only surfing on one site, you’re wasting too much time. Why? Because you can only surf one page and then wait 10 seconds or more before going to the next one. What do you do in that 10 seconds? Just wait? NO! Surf 5 or more other sites concurrently!

   I personally use Firefox to do this trick easily. I open 7-10 TE sites in one window, but in different tabs. After I click on the first site, I press ctrl+tab to go to the next site to click, then ctrl+tab to click again and so on… With this trick, you can get 5-10 times more traffic than what you usually get with only one site.

Copyright © Reyn Aria and MyNetworkMarketingBlog.com

Social media is a real gold mine in this web 2.0 era.

Sites like Twitter, Facebook and Myspace are gathering millions of people everyday who are actively interacting with each other. And among them…tons of potential leads for your business.

First thing first, if you want to market your business through social media, make sure you understand that it’s called social networking, NOT social spamming.

Think social media as gathering or party. There are huge amount of people from all walks of life coming together in one huge ballroom and they’re all wanting to extend their network of friends.

Networking like real people is what you should do. Don’t bother with advertising upfront, it will just kill your business in no time. Never think that your offer is so compelling that everyone will be thanking you for telling them. It just won’t happen. On the contrary, they will get seriously pissed off.

Imagine coming to a birthday party and you suddenly being approached by an insurance agent offering his latest life insurance policy. Well, that’s the same annoying act if you try to message your facebook friends saying: “Hey, I’ve just found the latest amazing opportunity to make money online. Check out here…”

To effectively harness the power of social media to build your business, here’s the action steps you need to take:

1. Have fun!

   Nothing more intimidating than being near a geeky businessman who only talks about business, business and more business. Go wild, tell jokes and rock the house! Even if you can run a successful business, no one will stay around you for long if you’re labeled as ‘not fun to hang out with’.

2. Be yourself

   First of all, always use your real name and pictures. You’re here as a real person, not as a business opportunity. Let your personality shines and attract like-minded people. People are not drawn by the attractiveness of the opportunity, but by the people they’ll be working with.

3. Make friends

   Be proactive and add many friends. Automate your friend building with a software is OK. What you do after you’ve added them is what matter. Friendship over the net works the same way as in the real world. You need to first introduce yourself properly and build relationship over time.

Wait…I don’t see any part talking about marketing here…

Not yet, because with social media marketing, you only market your business at the back-end… after you’ve done the first three above - building relationship. After you’ve build a solid presence among your friends, it’s time to market your business to your social media friends very subtly.

First, you need a separate website where you can direct your friends to know more about you and your business. And you have to make sure that the website is NOT a sales letter…unless your friends specifically ask you to join right away. A blog would be the perfect one as it’s highly informative and not ‘pitchy’. The information on that blog is what will make your friends go to your lead capture page and become prospects on their own.

Marketing this way is a bit longer, but you usually get highly qualified prospects. Moreover, as they act upon themselves without you specifically order them to do it, it will put you as the position of an expert. They’re drawn to you because of your knowledge and expertise which will make them very likely to listen to what you have to offer.

Copyright © Reyn Aria and MyNetworkMarketingBlog.com

Article marketing has been around for ages. And the only reason why it’s still being used until today is because it works.

Articles are extremely effective in attracting targeted leads.

People are constantly looking for information on the internet and articles are just what they’re looking for.

The reason why people are still resorting to text information rather than video or audio is simple: speed. A 500-word article can be read within 1-2 minutes, while it takes about 3 minutes to get the same content on video or audio.

Not convinced? Just try to read your article and time your speech. Remember that you also need to insert brief pauses for the article to make sense to the ears. Don’t speak with a speeding-bullet pace.

Another great thing about articles is that they are getting indexed quite fast and can be ranked pretty high by search engines. Which means a greater exposure to your potential leads.

Enough with the reasoning and let’s just get into action…

Here are a few tips to launch an effective article marketing campaign:

• Research keywords carefully. Although you can get a decent amount of traffic from the article directory’s loyal readers, you can get even more from search engines visitors. Go to Google Keyword Tool and type in your intended keywords. Google will then show you some variations together with the estimated numbers of searches. Don’t try your luck by targeting highly competitive keywords. It’s better to go with long tail ones and rank in top 10 for many of them.
• Write the skeleton of the article first before you begin writing. Make sure you list your main point and at least 3 sub-points. Enlarge each sub-topic into a paragraph then add an introduction at the beginning and a conclusion at the end. The most popular template is list article like “5 tips to…” or “3 important things…”. Readers love list articles because it’s easy to digest and the points are clear.
• Don’t forget to sprinkle your articles with around 3-4 of your chosen keywords. This will greatly helps your article to be ranked high by search engine. Having said that, don’t overdo it because you ultimately need to…
• Always focus to the content. In the end, what makes people go to your lead capture page is because they find value in your article and want to know more. Spinning articles and producing unreadable, messed up words is a big NO-NO. If this guy’s writing sucks big time, why would I think his website is any better?
• Write a click-enticing resource box. This is where many people are doing it the wrong way. The purpose of your resource box is to invite people to CLICK on your link, not to make them join your business. Your resource box’s job is to romance the reader into clicking the link. Converting is the job of sales letter and follow up emails. Sell the click, not the opportunity.

The success of your article marketing campaign lies not solely on your ability to write, but on consistency. Try to write at least three times a week for about three months for this strategy to work.

Copyright © Reyn Aria and MyNetworkMarketingBlog.com

I’m sure your company must have already hired a great copywriter to provide you with template emails.

However, those emails usually give you little to no result.

Why? If you have those emails, take a good look at them and ask yourself this question: Will you be interested if your someone send you an email with this kind of writing style? Most probably not…

First of all, their promotional emails are usually full of hypes that usually not used in real life. Second, those emails have no personal touch. Most of them are talking in the way that detach yourself from the audience. After all, the purpose is to let every one to be able to use those emails, hence it must be as generic as possible.

Most of the time, you need to go the extra miles and write your own follow up emails.

So here’s three guides to write an effective follow up emails:

1. Write as If You’re Talking to Your Friends

   One of the follow up emails that resulting in highest reading rate are those that are using your personal language. Forget all those fancy and over-the-top words. Write as if you’re really talking to your best buddy - with manners but informal. This way, your prospects can feel the intimacy with you and they will trust you more.

2. Enter the Conversation That is Already Going through Their Mind

   Nothing more pleasing to your prospects’ eyes than reading words from someone who truly understands their situation. This part is quite tricky. You need to focus on more what your prospects want to hear rather than what you THINK your prospects want to hear. And there’s a huge difference between them. One will make you look like a sleazy salesman while another will position yourself as a mindful consultant.

   The best way to know that conversation is to survey your target market. If you already have a list, then you can ask them to give feedback on what they want to know. Not every one will agree on one thing, but if your list is targeted, their frustrations are usually rooted to one same problem…and that’s what you should emphasize on in your writing.

3. Swipe From Other Emails That Capture Your Attention

   This is the cheat sheet for copywriting - but totally legal. You take words from other emails, modify them into your own and create brand new ones. Of course I’m not talking about copy&paste and only change the name. What you swipe is the idea, not content. Notice the key elements that arouse your interest. Is it the joke? The way the benefits is listed? The personal story?

It would be great if you also learn about copywriting and the psychology of buying. But the golden rule is always the same: Put yourself in the prospects’ shoes. If you can think exactly like your prospects, you will break no sweat to find the ‘hot buttons’ that suggest them to take the necessary action.

Copyright © Reyn Aria and MyNetworkMarketingBlog.com