When you face great difficulties and feel discouraged, it is normal for your thoughts and your emotions to begin to get out of control. It happens to everyone, men and women alike (although men are less likely to admit it…. imagine that) and the results of unbridled thoughts and emotions are nearly always disastrous. The first step you need to take when you find yourself going down that slippery slope is to slam on the brakes, bringing everything to a complete stop. Stop your thoughts, stop your feelings, and just take a step back. You may not be able to control the events that are happening to you, but you most certainly can control how you react to them. While I may not agree with all of the claims some people make about the power of positive thinking (I have yet to have a Mercedes-Benz materialize in my driveway and I’m still nearly bald….), there is still a great deal of power and strength that you can tap into simply by controlling how you think and feel. If you allow fear to dominate your thoughts, you will always be afraid. If you allow failure to dominate your thoughts, you will certainly fail. However, if you maintain a positive outlook and cultivate a quiet steadfastness in your thoughts; if you can create and maintain an attitude of determination and perseverance, you can overcome most anything life throws at you and have an infinitely better chance of achieving your dreams. I can hear it now…”Well, RP, that sounds great, but just how do I do that???? It is not as difficult as you may think - you can do this and change the way you react to the hardships that life throws at you. I’ll lay out some things you can do in my next post, but until then just remember that nothing is over until you say it is over- Never Surrender!!

See you next time -

RP

OK, I realize the title of this post is going to show my age, but what the heck - I’m a seventies child and I admit it! “Keep Pushin’ On” is a song released by the rock group REO Speedwagon waaaaaay back in the 70’s, and it’s basically about hanging tough through all that life throws at you. I know there are countless songs with a similar theme, but this particular one has a special place in my heart because I first heard it as a young man going through a difficult time in my life. In any event, what I want to talk about over the next few days is the importance of hanging tough through difficult times. Difficulties and problems come upon everyone-no one is exempt. When they do come upon us, it is extremely important that we respond in a positive and constructive manner. Our country is going through some difficult times right now, and I for one don’t think they will end tomorrow. I hope I am wrong, but if I’m not, we need to be ready. You always have two choices when faced with hardship- fight or surrender. This may sound simplistic to you, but it is the truth nevertheless. In order to succeed at anything - business, life, relationships, learning -you must have a “never surrender” attitude! I cannot stress this enough. I won’t go into all the old clichés or trite sayings that have been used and abused throughout the years, but the truth of the matter remains unchanged – you cannot ever give up, no matter what. You may need to make some adjustments and course corrections, but you must “keep pushin’ on” !! And in my next few posts, we’ll talk about some things you can do, attitudes and thought processes you can cultivate, that will help you not only be prepared but to actually grow and improve in times of difficulty!

There are a myriad of different ways, programs, and techniques for making money online. Some of the more common avenues are affiliate marketing and selling digital content like e-books. Affiliate marketing involves your driving traffic (i.e., people) to other people’s web sites in the hope of that they will purchase a product or service from the web site you direct them to. If they do purchase, you’ll get a commission which can range from a small percentage to as much as half the value of their purchase! There are people in the online marketing community who have been extremely successful at this technique. It is not a difficult concept to comprehend, but to get really good at it requires perserverance and good coaching. It really is a viable way to earn money online. The other method of selling digital content online is also an effective way to earn money. It is not as hard as you might think to create your own digital products that you can offer to people and make money each and every time someone buys it. Since you create the product yourself, there is no “cost” to it other than your own work and no overhead to pay. That makes the profit on items like this is very high, and that makes it very appealing.

I hear this question a lot from people, and I completely understand why they ask this question. A quick look around the Internet will show you literally hundreds of thousands of cannot fail, guaranteed, get rich quick internet marketing programs. Obviously, they can’t all be legit and they can’t all work, or we would all be millionaires already! One quick way to separate programs that you should at least look into, and ones that you should completely ignore, is whether or not they offer a money back guarantee. If they do offer this guarantee, then you can least begin to do some research on the product. The first thing I would do is examine the money back guarantee and see what all is involved in getting your money back. Even if it says they offer a no hassle, no questions asked, money back guarantee, you cannot just take their word for it. It is always best to pay for items with a credit card if possible, so that if the product is not what you expected and you do not get your money back quickly, you can file what is called a charge back with your credit card company. A charge back is simply where you notify your credit card company that you did not receive what you paid for or that the company is refusing to honor their money back guarantee. The credit card company will then reverse the charges on your card and charge it back to the company or individual that you purchased from. One other fact that a lot of people do not realize is that if you purchase a product online through ClickBank, a huge clearinghouse for online publishing, you can contact them and request a refund directly from them. I have personally done this on many occasions and have yet to run into any difficulties in getting my money back from them . So, now that we’ve examined the first criteria in separating what should be considered and what should not, let’s look at a couple of ways to genrate an income online.

One of the things that simply astonishes me in the world today is the absence of common courtesy, especially with regard to how sellers treat their customers. Here’s a quick example of something that happened to me recently. There was a new pizza restaurant in our neighborhood, and we had received a coupon to get a medium cheese pizza free with the purchase of a large. It was a good deal, and on a particularly busy night I decided to stop by the restaurant and bring it home for the family. As luck would have it, in my haste to get out the door and to the restaurant, I forgot the coupon and I did not realize it until I had all ready arrived at the restaurant. When I explained what happened to the person at the restaurant, they informed me that without the coupon I would have to pay for the second pizza . This really floored me and here’s why - they could see from my driver’s license that I lived in the neighborhood that they had just sent out the coupons out to and they also knew that I had never been there before because I wasn’t in their system. Here was a golden opportunity for them to set aside the “rules” and win the gratitude and repeat business of a brand new customer, and they totally blew it! What would it have cost them to give me that second pizza? Probably less than five bucks! what did they lose ? A lot more than that - my business that night as well as my overall opinion of their restaurant. If you ever have a chance to show a customer that you care, I mean really care, about them and their business, never ever fail to jump all over that. The benefits you will get from it will far outweigh any inconvenience or slight cost you may have to incur to take care of them.

I’m sure you have heard this many times-the customer is always right. Is that true? Absolutely - if a customer purchases something from you and they are not happy with their purchase, the worst thing you can do is let them remain unhappy, and here’s why. Generally speaking, when people make a purchase and they’re pleased they will tell an average of ten people. Now that sounds great, doesn’t it? I can hear the referral bell going off in your brain right now! It reminds me of an old television commercial that featured the line “ and she told 2 friends, and she told 2 friends, and so on “ showing how referrals grow exponentially as they are passed on from one person to another. However let’s look at the opposite scenario-the one where your customer is not happy. So many times I have seen sellers take a hard line stance and refuse to deal graciously with the problem customer. They feel that the customer is out to get them and trying to take advantage of them. They think that the only to deal with that is to hold their ground and fight. We have already established that when someone is pleased with the product or service that have purchased, they will tell an average of ten people. How many people do you think they will tell if they’re unhappy? Ten? Fifteen? How about twenty? Not even close – when a person is upset about a product or service that they purchased, they will tell as many people as they possibly can for as long as they can, and this total can reach into the hundreds! So now ask yourself this question; Do I stand to lose more by being firm or by giving the customer whatever they need to feel satisfied? We both know the answer is obvious-if you want your business to grow and your reputation to be top notch, you need to do whatever you can to make sure your customers are pleased with you and your product or service every time.