Hey guys, first of all, let me again apologize for the lack of posting and updating going on here at Click Consultants.  It started happening around the first of the year and I made a comment here about it before and how things were going to start picking back up.  Unfortunately, this has yet to happen.  I’ve been posting but it’s been more sporadic and the posts haven’t been as informant as I normally like them to be!

So I’m sure you’re all wondering what’s going on?  You all want your information and you want it now!!!  You’re here to make money and this blog is suppose to help you with that!  So again, what’s up?

Well, the first and major thing, I’m just unable to currently talk about.  There have been some major personal problems going on for a while in my life and it seems like things have finally happened with the situation leaving some carnage behind.  So, I’m working on getting things in my life put back together.  Hopefully I can get back on a more stable routine here shortly again.  Of course, I’m sure I’ll post about the situation once I feel it’s appropriate.

Secondly, and this is something that I can share and express freely, is that I’ve been finding some other revenue streams that have been producing more income that affiliate marketing stuff, although in all fairness it still kinda has to do with AM and AM still has a part in it.  Anyways, I’ve been debating this for a while and I believe I’m going to go ahead and just do it…

Do what?  Well, CC is going to start changing and I believe this change in the long term is going to be for the best.  CC started out as a professional blog.  Most that have been reading it has noticed that in the beginning there weren’t many personal posts…if any really!  Recently however personal posts have been picking up more.  I’ve been talking about favorite iPhone apps, death of a pet, etc.  Anyways, I believe that I’m going to continue to post personal posts and also I believe I’m going to start posting about more stuff than just affiliate marketing!  *Gasp*  Yeah, I hear ya!  I did a poll here a couple months ago in the sidebar and a lot of you said to just stick with posting about AM, but here’s the problem… I’m discovering that there are tons of other ways to make a ton of money online!  Yes, AM is great and it’s still my biggest money maker at this time, however, I can see several things taking over that.  I want to share these things with you guys!  So….I will be…

This blog will be changing, don’t worry most of the info here will still be AM related I’m sure, but slowly you’ll see other subjects coming up as well!  Not a bunch of fluff and stupid stuff, but things that actually make money!

Also, I’ve been neglecting the paid forums just like I have this blog and for those that are a part of the forums I’d just like to add that be patient with me just a little while longer and you’ll see that it will be worth it!

Keep me in your prayers about the direction my life is heading and that the Lord will guide my steps.  Thank You!!!  My readers and subscribers are the best!  Woot!

Popularity: 23% [?]

Hey guys, I’ve been addicted to a new game here the last few days.  It’s called iMob and basically you want to raise yourself up from being a joe nobody to a great crime lord.  You must complete campaigns, fight other mobs, etc.  Anyways, basically it’s a fun MMO game for the iPhone about the mob.

So why am I making this post you ask?  Well, in the game you need to have a mob in order to do better…I don’t have one…I’m all by myself!   So, I thought I’d post my info and anyone here can invite me or join my mob so that we can complete higher missions.

iMob is completely free to download, install, and play so if you haven’t tried it out yet I highly recommend you don’t!  It’s very addicting lol!  Anyways, my code is 121134167 so if your in a mob or want to start one so you can complete the higher missions, shoot me an invite!

Popularity: 21% [?]

Another year has come and gone and your still stuck in the same spot when it comes to your business.  You’ve tried to conquer, you’ve tried to dominate your niche, but you just didn’t seem to accomplish much.  What did you do wrong?

Maybe all you need in order to succeed is to create some goals for yourself.  Goals are an extremely important part of having a business, I believe that with all my heart.  Setting goals has helped me push past adversities and laziness and accomplish what I needed in order to reach those goals.  However, if goals aren’t done properly they could very well be ineffective!

Write Your Goals Down!

The biggest and first mistake you can do when you are setting goals for yourself is to not write them down on paper.  In your head may be great, but having your goals written down and posted in a place where you can see and read them everyday is even better!

Writing your goals down makes you define your goals more clearly and also encourages you to state in greater detail exactly what you want by accomplishing your goals!  Also, by writing down your goals it becomes a written contract to yourself which usually causes a personal motivation to appear which causes you to want to achieve your goals!

Be Specific and Tell a Story!

When I write tell a story, I mean putting down on paper exactly what you need to do in order to accomplish your goals.  Too many times I’ve written down goals on a piece of paper that looks something like this…

My Goals for 2009

1. Buy a New Car
2. Increase my Business by 200%
3. Get a Loan and Buy a House
4. Get my Savings Account up to $50,000 in savings
5. etc…

Now, while I wrote my goals down, I wasn’t very specific.  However, by writing my goal list with a little more detail it may provide me with motivation during those hard times by listing exactly what I want, thus allowing me to picture them in my mind!  In fact, you could even include pictures of your goals (if possible) into your list to really hit a home-run!  If I was to add more detail to my goal list, it may start to look something like this…

My Goals for 2009

1. Buy a New Mazda 6
2. Increase my business so that I’m making 10,000 dollars instead of 5,000 dollars a month.
3. Fix my Credit so that I may get a home loan to purchase a 3 bedroom, 1 bath home with a good sized yard!
4. Increase my savings account total from 15,000 dollars to 50,000 dollars by the end of 2009!
5. etc…

As you can see, I laid out exactly what I wanted and was very specific about it. By doing this, when I look at my goal list I can now visualize my goals in my head and possibly motivate myself!  Also, it allows me to see that the goals may not be as hard as I may of originally thought.

For example, in my first goal list, I said I wanted to having 50,000 dollars in my saving account by the end of the year.  I didn’t say that I already had 15,000 dollars in my savings account.  In the second goal list I made that clear which says that I only need to really raise 35,000 dollars in a year to complete that goal!

So are we done?  Is that what your finished goal list should look like?  Absolutely not!  While we are now getting somewhere, you still have some work to do!  Now that you know exactly what you want, you need to lay out a plan and explain to yourself how you’re going to get there!  The more detail you go into, the great the chance you’ll be successful in accomplishing your goal!  So after adding what I need to do to achieve my goals, my list may start to look something like this…

My Goals for 2009

Buy a New Mazda 6

• Get several quotes on the monthly payment for a new Mazda 6.
• Get several quotes on insurance premium on a new Mazda 6.
• Adjust budget to compensate for extra monthly payment.
• Put away 2,000 dollars in a special account in case I have a couple bad months I’ll still be able to pay the payment and insurance for a few months.

Increase my business so that I’m making 10,000 dollars instead of 5,000 dollars a month.

• Take a step back and see what projects are working really well for me and which ones aren’t.
• Possibly get rid of projects not making enough and instead focusing that time on ones that are working well that I may be able to expand.
• Enter 2 new niches a month to try to find some new revenue streams
• Look for opportunities outside of affiliate marketing to increase my income and also diversify it.
• Work 2 hours extra per day during the weekdays and 1 hour extra a day on Saturday and Sunday.

Fix my Credit so that I may get a home loan to purchase a 3 bedroom, 1 bath home with a good sized yard!

• Pay off Capital One Credit Card
• Pay off an old cell phone bill from my teen years
• Pay off etc…
• Redo my budget to allow me to start putting away 1,000 dollars a month into a special account towards a down payment on my house.
• If I’m unable to budget the 1,000 dollars out of my 5,000 dollars a month I have too many bills and need to start getting stuff turned off, extra cell phones, all the extra cable channels, etc (*wink wink*)

Conclusion:

You get the picture!  You need to know what exactly you need to do in order to reach your goals.  When you break down your goals they become much more manageable and it allows you to see that your goal very well is possible with a bit of hard work and dedication!

If your goal list doesn’t look like the last one we just did, you need to get it back out and rework it till it does!  Below is a excerpt from a blog I read that I had saved.  I would link to the original article but I wasn’t able to find it again.

In 1964, all members of the Harvard Business School graduating class stated that they have, at graduation, clear goals that they want to accomplish in life. Among them, 5% took the time to write it down on paper. In 1984, a follow up study was done and it was discovered that 95% of those who wrote down their goals were able to achieve them within 20 years. Among the “lazy” majority, only 5% of them were able to reach their expected goals.

An earlier study in Yale University also had similar results. This time, only 3% of the 1953 graduating class made written goals. Twenty years after, in 1973, it was found out that this 3% of Yale graduates were able to accomplish more goals than the rest of the other 97% combined.

As you can see, writing down your goals can mean the difference between succeeding and failing in your business.  So while it may seem stupid, funny, or your just plain being lazy, you need to get over it and write down your goals!  We are talking about your business here!

Good luck in 2009 and I hope you meet every single one of the goals you write down!

Happy New Year!

Click Consultants Inc.

Popularity: 20% [?]

Hey Guys!  It’s time for another round of Q&A.  If you’ve never participated in one of these before it’s really really simple!  I’ll take questions for approx. the next 48 hours, after which time the comments will be closed.  You can ask me any question you like whether it be personal, about affiliate marketing, seo, content sites, etc.  Whatever you can think of to ask I’ll be happy to answer!  So start thinking of any questions you’d like to ask and make sure to put them in the comments below as soon as possible because as I said I’ll be closing the comments in approx 48 hours which means it could be a little sooner than 48 hours!  So to be on the safe side just get them in now!

Popularity: 15% [?]

So as most of you know, the United States has finally admitted that we are indeed in a recession and President Obama announced that things will only be getting worse for us here in the United States!  I personally know several families in our church that are now struggling because they’ve lost their jobs.  So far, I believe that most online business have been unaffected by this recession and hopefully will remain so throughout it.

However, you should be well aware of what’s happening and also take steps to prepare yourself and your business so that if we should start seeing the recession affect online businesses you’ll be able to make it through the recession.

In the first part of this blog post I want to talk about ways to prepare your business.  In the second part of this blog post (which will be posted a day or two after this one) I want to talk specifically about affiliate marketing and niches that I believe will be the niches to run during this recession!  In fact, they are the three niches that I personally have been setting up and will be running when it’s time for them!

1. Cut Back On Unnecessary Spending – During the good times, we tend to as business owners (yes if you do affiliate marketing you have a business) spend money on things that we don’t actually need.  If your anything like I am, you love spending money to check out the latest affiliate tools even if you already have 3 that do the same exact thing!  Also, we tend to love buying domain names that we’ll never actually end up using!  The point is we all love to buy things, even when it’s things we don’t need.  During a slow down you need to start understanding that there are things you go without that wouldn’t hurt the productivity of your business or affect your profits.
2. Have a Solid Plan, Know When to Cut – Going along with the first point, not only do you need to stop spending money on unnecessary things, but you also need to sit down and layout a plan on things that you could cut if later circumstances required it.  Knowing when to cut and already having the decision made will help alleviate the stress of trying to figure out what to cut and what to keep when the time comes.  Not having it already laid out will just cause you to end up getting rid of things you do need and keeping things you don’t!
3. Don’t Wait Till Later to Save – Now that you’ve started cleaning up your spending habits and aren’t throwing tons of money into stuff you don’t need you probably are starting to realize that you have more cash flow to work into expanding your core parts of your business.  However, while reinvesting back into your business is great, it also doesn’t hurt to plan for those rainy days!  Why not start a fund just for that?  Doing so, will allow you to have cash on hand if profits drop for a couple months, niches dry out, etc.
4. Don’t Get Scared and Miss Out on Opportunities – Now I know I just said to cut back on spending, start saving, etc in the first three points.  However, while you need to do those things, a lot of times we get too over frightened and when a gold opportunity presents itself instead of jumping on it, we freeze.  So while you are being cautious don’t let yourself miss out on any opportunities either!  You need wisdom to determine when something is unnecessary spending or when it’s an opportunity.
5. Increase The Value You Offer – If you want to continue to strive during a recession you need to increase the value of your product or service.   Does this mean lowering the price?  If it calls for it yes, but I’m talking about providing more quality as well.  During the good times, it’s easy to throw out a mediocre product and make some killer bank on it, however, when money starts drying up, people quickly become more leery on the stuff they spend it on.  They start to only buy the services or products that they believe offers them the most value for their money.  This could be things like price, time saver, quality information, etc.  If there are products or services that provide better value then you do, then you could potentially have a huge problem on your hands!  Heck, even if you provide the best value in your niche, it doesn’t hurt to increase it even more!

So there you have it, the 5 steps I believe you can take to make sure you recession proof your online business!  While we may never experience the effects of this recession in our online business, it doesn’t hurt to at least prepare yourself.  I’m not saying quit advertising, producing new sites, etc.  I am, however, saying think stuff through a little more before acting!

Popularity: 14% [?]