Who or What is Watkins?

Continuing along our line of finding income streams to support the freelancer working from home, I have recently stumbled upon watkins products. After having done a brief overview in January on What Kind of Work You Can Do From Home as well as discovering How to Make Money Writing Online, I have decided to grab a specific product declaring that you *can* make money while working independently at home.

So, I start to ask myself: What is Watkins?

Well, it is a mlm selling system.  There are real physical products which are sold online via affiliates.  However affiliates are not created equal.

MLM stands for Multi-Level-Marketing and implies that you will

1. sell the products
2. recruit other affiliates and
3. teach others to recruit affiliates

So it is a classical pyramid system.  You get commissions for the sale of the product as well as a slice of what your recruited affiliates sell.

Unlike the affiliate programs I am part of (like amazon, ebay etc.), Watkins also expects a financial commitment from you before you start. Yes. That means you have to pay them money for the right to sell their products.

Remember, it is not all REVENUE to join a MLM system, you do have costs to be part of the program. Also, you need to have your own “Watkins shop” hosted via the Watkins program (which costs less than $20/month).

I personally would not get involved with any mlm systems. It does sound lucrative, however I find clickbank with it’s 50-75% commissions to be superior. I HAVE no costs (no hosting per se, no URL, no “registration” fees) unless I want to have my own site up and running (one which I would then find hosting for on my own terms). I find the freedom with clickbank (and other affiliate programs) to be greater and if you consider that the workload is the same for both systems, why not go for the greater return on your (time) investment?

Those are just my two cents.

Regardless of HOW you go about earning an income online:

• look for solid programs with excellent support (contact the support BEFORE buying and see how quick and thorough they answer)
• compare the “money back guaranties”
• read the tos (terms of service) carefully and diligently
• consider how you can get the most return on the time you invest (meaning keeping your investments low and income high)

* There are NO affiliate links in this article.  I am not endorsing any specific affiliate program with this email.  If you are planning on creating your income via affiliate sales, it is your sole responsibility to inform yourself of the program, your rights and your commitments before signing up.  Affiliate marketing can be a viable source of income, in fact it can be downright lucrative.  Do your due diligence in research before you commit to anything before you boldly go to make your destiny.

Puglia Luxury Wine Tour

Not too long ago the fine people at Hallmark travel approached me with the request to do a guest post here on my blog. In the lively tradition cultivated here, it was my pleasure to profile their work in Italy: Apulia, Beautiful Wine Country Nestled in Italy. Especially after watching Murphy Goode candidate Tanya Melillo traveling to Italy (and watching all those mouthwatering food pictures… and her descriptions! Surely she must be in heaven?), it is with a certain yearning I share with you today another offering from Italy: Puglia Luxury Wine Tour…. some dreams do come true!

more about "Puglia Luxury Wine Tour", posted with vodpod

If you are so fortunate to experience the Puglia Luxury Wine Tour this year, please let us know! We would love to hear about your travels!
And when you are there, greet the fine people at Hallmark Travels, tell them Andy sends greetings from Germany!

What Kind of Work Can You Do From Home?

With the state of today’s economy, it’s no surprise that many families require two incomes in order to properly maintain the family financially. Both mothers and fathers are entering the work force to keep the family monetarily above water. Therefore, it is no surprise that mothers continue to struggle with the “work or stay at home with the children” issue that so many mothers face today. Yet, some mothers have found a way to alleviate the issue faced by many mothers by taking advantage of work at home opportunities. Working at home gives mothers the best of both worlds: mothers can earn of valid living working from the comforts of their own home, while they remain a home with their children.
There are a variety of unique ways to earn money from home and create a home career that will allow you to have a flexible schedule, time with your family, and a mortgage payment every month at the same time.
In fact, you have so many to choose from that you can try more than one to find out what is the best fit for you. Some of your choices include:

• Freelance Writing – Write everything from advertising to blogs to ebooks to product descriptions to EzineArticles.
• Graphic Designer – Design graphics for websites, signs, business cards, and more.
• Reseller – Sell the products of a company you trust. Some even allow you to create your own labels!
• Online Editor – Editing includes everything from student papers to book manuscripts to website copy.
• Blogger – Tons of people are adding blogs to their sites as a way to make money through advertising. Is this for you?
• Sell on eBay – Start with a few items around the house and then hawk your wares, be they electronics or hand knit sweaters.
• Starting Your Own Web Site – On your website, you can sell products, services, even yourself. Post a resume with examples of your work and use it like an online business card.

Thanks to the advent of the Internet, there are working at home opportunities abound for mothers looking to stay home with their children while bringing in the second income for the family. With Internet access, many mothers are taking an advantage of freelance writing opportunities, virtual assistant positions, web and graphics design opportunities, marketing solutions positions, as well as many other online opportunities.

In fact, work at home mothers even have the option to improve their education online; by taking an online courses to earn a degree in any number of fields, the working home mother can improve her marketability in the workforce. Finally, as more and more businesses take advantage of outsourcing opportunities and increased their overall web-based communication systems, new avenues of work at home employment will open up for work at home moms.

Read more books on how to turn your passion into Success.

How To Make Money Writing Online

Image by Photos8.com via Flickr

by Sue LaPointe

Are you one of the people who love the Internet and love to write? Maybe you wonder where all these websites get their content. You are searching for information that will tell you how to make money writing online. Here is information to get you started on your writing career.At Textbroker.com clients submit jobs to be done and Textbroker posts them by category and skill level on their order board. A writer like you goes to the board and chooses which job to work on. Each job has a deadline, a minimum number of words needed and special instructions from the client. To write for Textbroker.com go to the website and apply. In addition to the application, a writing sample is needed. This is a great way for anyone over the age of 18 to make some extra money. There is no weekly quota. Payment is made by Textbroker to the writer’s PayPal account twice per month. Visit their website for more details.

How a Single Wine Web 2.0 Strategy Lead to the Idea of Purpose and Passion Paired For Success

A strategy is a course of action you plan to take to see specific results. When companies wanted to get the word out about their business in order to increase their revenue, they engaged in a marketing campaign.

Then along came Web 2.0 and altered the way a company could share their business with the world. Smart business entrepreneurs paid attention to social marketing and recognized its value for what it was worth-a way to improve not only sales but also relationships with customers.

Gary Vaynerchuk is the man who took a local wine business (family owned) and made it go national with his wine web 2.0 strategy. He saw the strategic advantage the company would gain in the industry by effectively using social media. Anyone can use social media, but it takes a purpose and a passion to make social media work.

Social media bridges a gap between the company and the consumer but to use it just as a selling tool for your business won’t garner you the results you’re looking for. Gary Vaynerchuck had something to offer-something to share with others through social media-his expertise in the wine business.

Strategy combined with passion is the key to success. If you don’t enjoy what you do that lack of enthusiasm will be glaringly apparent. The wine web 2.0 strategy used by Gary Vaynerchuck helped to propel his knowledge about the wine industry into a very successful venture.

Using that strategy with social media, Wine Library TV became a top viewed video blog. That social media strategy paved the way for Gary to be interviewed on television and because he used it so effectively, it led him through the door of opportunity in the form of a book deal by a major publishing company.

Whenever you look at the big picture-someone’s obvious success, you have to look backward and dig deep to find the roots of where they started. Successful entrepreneurs never start at the top. They climb their way up. Along that climb, they learn that it’s okay to break away from the traditional way of doing things. That moving ahead requires risk.

Not one to hold on to that success and keep that passion all to himself, Gary chose to share that knowledge in his book Crush It! Why NOW is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion. As you read this book, you won’t find any secret passageways that will hide a flash in the pan success. What you’ll find is that when you work your passion, your passion will work for you just like Gary’s wine web 2.0 strategy did for him.

Andrea Schmitz resides in Germany and was an instrumental player in the Murphy Goode Wine Country Lifestyle Correspondent search, where she offered her help to those who were seeking to be hired for the position. Following her passion and helping others along the way has opened the door to many new business experiences for her. Click here to learn more about Gary Vaynerchuck’s Passion Driven Life.

SEO Darmstadt

As many of my readers know, I live in Germany. I never considered blogging in English as I assumed that the “scene” would be overstuffed with all you wonderful writers world wide. I finally did get involved with an English blog when the MG Wine Country Lifestyle Correspondent position was open and I wanted to see what I can learn and eventually pull over to my German blogs. Well, it has been an eye opener on many levels. I have taken a liking to the English online world and have multiple projects now running, but today I came across seo darmstadt, a German company located not far from me (I could get there by public transportation!) doing what I have been doing right here in Germany… perhaps I give the boys over there a call and see if they might be interested in a joint venture?

In any case, if you need seo in Germany, tell them Andy sent you! Grüße an den Kollegen in Darmstadt!

Affiliate Millionaire

Like all respectful budding Internet gurus, I have joined the affiliate ranks. But to this very day, it has not been very profitable. Perhaps I should be looking to the Affiliate Millionaire for some pointers?

Digital Photography: Where the Old and New World meet

In this digital day and age I wonder if my children will know what an LP is (I have resigned to the fact that they will never understand what an 8 track is ), a roll of film or board games.  My kids come off with the most exotic Christmas wishes:  mp3 (ipod), cellphone (with all kinds of knick-knacks like integrated video camera!), wii…

What is a wii, anyway?  And do my children need one?  What happened to good old Twister?

One area we have opened up to is gifting our children with digital cameras.  Honestly, if you have a budding photographer at home, you are gonna want to invest in one of these.  They are surprisingly inexpensive and you save oodles of money in developing the films (there are NO films — so you process only the good shots and toss the rest in the digital bin).

Like all things gone digital, photography is profiting.  Just noticing some of the great works done for the application process for a ReallyGoodeJob shows how coupling your camera skills with your computer can give you a pretty cool 60 second spot.  I remember being totally stunned by the fact that photography actually combines the old world with the new world:  you can add some heavy duty lenses to digital cameras and get some awesome results.

If you are serious about photography as a hobby or profession, I cannot stress enough, that the choice of lens/s you make now will stand you in good stead for a long time. In fact, the only time you should need to change them, is if you change the make of CAMERA that you use.  This is good news for the photo buffs amongst us.  I did some research online and found this review SLR Camera Lenses… anyone got any more suggestions?

Wine Web 2.0 Strategy and the Idea of Purpose and Passion Paired For Success

Whenever you look at the big picture – someone’s obvious success, you have to look backward and dig deep to find the roots of where they started. Successful entrepreneurs never start at the top. They climb their way up.

I published another article to EzineArticles the other day and thought I would share it with you. This time as a podcast!

If you would like to read more about 7 Success Tips to Help You Achieve the Kind of Life You Want or find out how to get your own copy of Gary Vaynerchuk’s Crush It for 32 % off the list price, then have a look at these Books That Cater to Your Passion Driven Thirst for Success.

Grab your own copy: click to find out how!

Wine Web 2.0:  How augment your ranking in the search engines with podcasts

Oh, and by-the-way, this actual post demonstrates one way to increase your find-a-bility at the search engines:  podcasting!  Not only have I encorperated two “other” web 2.0 properties on this one post (squidoo and ezine articles), by adding podcasts and submitting these posts to be pinged for podcasts, I am increasing the chances of ranking for my keyword phrase  “wine web 2.0“.

Ezine Articles are Dead, Long Live the Ezine Articles! An Interview with Charlie Page

Success of a blog largely depends on the kind of promotions you do along with the content you publish. It is difficult to sustain a good amount of traffic on your blog without spreading the word in the initial stages. A lot of bloggers around the world feel that just writing good content on their blog would draw visitors, but in verity it does not happen for most of the time. A passive blogger thus loses out hope when he does not get results in terms of returning traffic on his blog.

One very successful avenue for the wine social media was Twitter,  back in the day of the search for the Wine Country Lifestyle Correspondent for the Murhpy Goode Winery.  Over 70% of the networking and communicating was funneled via twitter.  But if you check #areallygoodejob today, you wont be likely to see much action…

So, what is a blogger to do?  Use Syndication to your advantage.  It is not always RSS, you know.  Submitting your own articles to ezines for syndication is an excellent source of traffic.

Here’s 5 Reasons Ezine Advertising Traffic Rocks!
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1. Bring in Tons Of Traffic Ezines are targeted! There is almost no better way to drive tons of targeted traffic to any site you want to promote. Forget the shotgun approach.
2. Increase link popularity Ezines are meant for re-distribution.  This means others can pick up your articles and reproduce them on their own blogs.  You are the “guest poster” so to speak, the greatest law with submitted articles for redistribution is that the article must be published in it’s entirety, links and all.  So if you play your cards right, you can have some fine anchor-text deep backlinking happening from blogs you never heard of, but whose admins know the secret power of ezines and article submission.  (By the way, brownie points to you if you allow trackbacks and hop over the those blogs publishing your work and join the conversation happening… this is a great way to get your name and content in front of a different crowd and most likely win a few readers!)
3. Increase Your Reputation and Web Presence You are building your online authority in your niche.  Submitting articles and grabbing other’s posts allows you to gain a circle of publishers who are working the same or similar niches as you are, collegues whom you can help and who can help you move forward with your goals.
4. Free Advertisement You benefit from the reverse side of the coin:  looking for a couple of filler posts?  Need to expand your keyword density in certain areas?  Go to an Ezine and grab yourself some “guest posts” to add more diverse content to your own site.  Google will love you and if you choose relevant posts to your blog, your regular readers will love you too!
5. Get Indexed In Search Engines Faster Higher number of websites linking to you will make the search engines, such as Google, to look at your website as the authoritative content for your niche market. Eventually, your website will have better chance of ranking up higher in the search engines.

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Look, I have a podcast that Jack Humphrey did with Charlie Page about ezine articles submission and I wanted to share it with you.  This may not be what you are looking to get in to (Charlies service is a payed service…) so take what he says and consider how you can adapt the truths he is talking about to your blogging without going out and spending over 100 bucks a month.

Think about these questions:  how can you harness the power discussed here without being an affiliate marketer and perhaps without even submitting articles to ezines (which is still a great option to increase traffic to your blog, by the way.  And it is a great way to get content for your blog, too)?

So tell me, what have you learned something you can use to increase the value of your blog today?

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