What Is An EIN Number?

If you work-at-home, you may have noticed that organizing your tax returns were a bit messy if you use your own social security number for your online business. If you’re not ready to incorporate or create an LLC, an easier alternative would be to at least sign up for your own Employer ID Number (EIN).

Use your EIN number for signing up with all the affiliate programs and other sites you that normally ask and require a social security # for paying you. Remember that your social security number should be protected all the time, in order to protect your identity, and you shouldn’t use it on the web. Using your EIN number works just like a social security # - yet functioning like a sole-proprietor of your home business. Another plus is that an EIN number appears much more professional as well. You will really feel like you are building your own home business - and not a hobby.

You can sign up for a free EIN number here: https://sa.www4.irs.gov/modiein/individual/index.jsp

Share

**********************************************************************
New to the site? Don't Miss Out On New Article Ideas!
Subscribe to our RSS Feed or our email list, so that you don't miss out on great article-income building tips from Lisa Angelettie! Thanks for visiting!
**********************************************************************

Modeling Vs. Copycat Marketing

As an internet marketer, I am subscribed to tons of newsletters and ezines. Especially both the free and paid versions of experts who have shaped my business. I learn a lot of from them and try to implement many of their suggestions and techniques within my own business model - using my own voice. That’s called “modeling”.

About a year ago I subscribed to someone’s ezine who clearly was a student of a mutual marketing coach we both followed. Now while this coach has said in workshops etc. to “copy her” — she doesn’t mind. I beg to differ. For example, this particular student will take emails she sends, copies them verbatim, and plugs in her own links to her own products or affiliate products. And I mean if I got the original email from the coach on Tuesday, she is sending one out on Thursday. Now that is “copycat marketing”.

While I did email this student and tell her to at least re-write her copy, I would never put her on blast on my blog by naming her. I’m sure her other readers have figured out her shtick too — because I would guess that many of her subscribers found her via one of the coach’s salesletters (testimonial ad). She is only making herself look lazy, unprofessional, and insecure. Now I would never trust any product she creates, and would never recommend her to any of my clients.

Lesson here? Don’t copycat your business after someone else’s. It’s important for your credibility and profitability to find your own voice.

Share

Happy Memorial Day!

Hey, if you live in the U.S., most of us have the day off of work and school in honor of all of the soldiers who have fought and died for the freedoms that we all enjoy.

If any of you have family in the armed services - I hope that they are safe and well. And I also hope that many of you are reading this on your laptop in the backyard with your families, with a piece of chicken in your hand!

Share

Free Blogger Templates

I created one of my first relationship-based blogs years ago via the easy-to-use blogger platform. As the blog grew - my knowledge and experience with blogging grew and I moved on to creating blogs via the wordpress platform. Since it was so easy to manage my blogger blogs, I never felt like moving them over to wordpress was worth the fuss. They were monetized and being followed and well-indexed — so I just left them alone. The only thing that really was a pain - was the amateurish templates that blogger offers. I hated them!

A few years ago, as my business begin to really grow and move in a different direction — I wanted all my sites and blogs to best reflect my evolution into a “entrepreneur” and not just a “hobbyist”. And the blogger templates were REALLY beginning to annoy me. So I went on a search for free blogger templates that were a bit more flexible and professional looking. I found a lot of junk. A lot of sites offering the same 20 templates - and I do mean a LOT! I was getting really frustrated.

Lately I saw that a few blogger blogs were looking very professional, but had their templates professionally done. Before I made that type of financial commitment, I wanted to check one more time and alas…I found a site that was really worthwhile over at eblogtemplates. Read more

Share

Thinking About Upgrading To Wordpress 2.5?

I am by no means a blogging expert, but let’s just say I’ve been around the block:-) So today I wanted to talk about upgrading your wordpress blog.

If you’ve been considering upgrading to version 2.5 (which is 2.5.1 at the time of this writing), then I highly recommend that you do it. It’s easy. And even if you write a pretty basic blog with no bells or whistles — you’ll just be happy about the new interface of 2.5 — it is a drastic improvement!

If you host your blog with a great company ( I use hostgator) then you probably have fantastico in your admin section. With fantastico you simply have to point and click and your blog will be updated to the newest version of wordpress.

Some people don’t like to use fantastico and prefer to upload new versions of wordpress manually by using a FTP client. If you use a mac like me, then I think fetch is the way to go.

Improvements include: multi-file uploading, one-click plugin upgrades, built-in galleries, customizable dashboard, salted passwords and cookie encryption, media library, a WYSIWYG that doesn’t mess with your code, concurrent post editing protection, full-screen writing, and search that covers posts and pages.

But best of all — is the interface– it’s simple and clean, and I haven’t run into any issues. Just make sure that your current wordpress template is compatible with 2.5. If you’re not sure — just be sure to back up your current blog before you upgrade. Go here to learn more and download: http://wordpress.org/download/

blogging, wordpress

Share

Top 12 New Trends In Coaching

Are you a coach? Perhaps you haven’t quite settled on a niche or aren’t making enough money. Well one of my favorite coaches Andrea J. Lee has recently released what she says are the top emerging trends and markets in coaching today:

#1: Get Out of Debt Money Coaching
#2: Coaching Generation Y
#3: Coaching the Wealthy and Affluent
#4: Coaching with the Law of Attraction
#5: Coaching Hollywood Insiders
#6: Coaching a Specific Industry Segment
#7: Marketing Focused Coaching for Entrepreneurs
#8: Coaching Political Leaders
#9: Coaching Parents of Teenagers
#10: Coaching Love Relationships
#11: Career Coaching
#12: Coaching Baby Boomers through Later Life Transition

Remember that if you are struggling to make a good living at coaching — you probably haven’t defined your niche enough. Use this list to create a spark:-)

andrea j. lee, coaching, trends

Share

Do You Have Great Affiliate Resource Tools?

I must say - this is an area in which I am horribly lacking. I don’t have a kick-butt affiliate resource area for my affiliates — but I am so committed on working in that area because I really believe that building an army of affiliates is one of the best ways to create passive income and generate more web traffic to your site - hands down!

I just happen to be lucky that I have attracted some really good affiliates who were able to come up with their own great articles and blog posts to promote my sites. But imagine the possibilities if I made it REALLY easy for affiliates to promote my products and services.

As a part of my blog expansion in the next few weeks ahead, I am going to start writing reviews of new products and services that you may be interested in using for your business — so I recently just bought a newly released “Get Google Ads Free” product (created by a retired New York doctor) which I am going to review - but when I looked at his affiliate section I was amazed!

He has so many options for you to promote this product that I can’t imagine how he will not make thousands on it. Go take a look at the affiliate section over there if you want some ideas on what types of tools you need to develop in order to get your affiliates selling your stuff like hot cakes. I have already begun developing 3 different tools for my articology affiliates which were inspired from what I saw over in his affiliate section!

affiliate marketing, affiliate resources, get google ads free

Share

Premium Wordpress Themes For Solopreneurs

If you are a solopreneur looking to build your first website or update your old website, many business owners are using blogs as their only website for their businesses — especially because of the versatility of wordpress.

One of the problems with using only a blog interface is that some templates were not versatile enough to blog, and sell products, etc. Another is that some were just not pretty at all! OR they were very cluttered or basic blog layouts.

Well - a while ago I was looking for a new wordpress theme for another site I own and ran across developer Brian Gardner over at iThemes.

There are a lot of themes to choose from that will work really great for a solopreneur looking to establish a professional yet versatile web presence. Template themes include: essence series, icompany theme, business card series, revolution series, deep order series, ecommerce theme, corporate series, web 2.0 series, industrial series, and the brochure series. My favorite is revolution:)

Now while these themes do cost a few bucks - I think they are actually worth the investment. Because let’s be honest - not everyone is going to buy them! So you’ll have a unique presence in your market. Which definitely matters in this ever-crowding web world we live in.

blogging, premium wordpress themes, wordpress, wordpress themes

Share

Get More One-Way Backlinks To Your Site

There’s a cool new site in Beta called Quassia where you can get a lot of backlinks to your site - which you probably already know are like pagerank gold! The more one-way backlinks you get to your site - the higher rank and more importance the search engines place on your website and it’s content.

Over at this site, you provide content or what they call “intelligence” on any topic you choose - preferably not related to your site - and you will get a backlink to your site for adding that content.

Best of all it’s totally free. And it’s probably a good idea to sign up now while it’s in Beta and get the benefit of getting in on it early. Learn more about it here.

backlinks, one way links, qassia

Share