The Samantha Milner Blog

Posts Tagged ‘income streams’

If you want to make money online the more income streams the better

By Samantha On October 9, 2009 Comments Off Thank you for returning to our Internet Marketing Blog. To be the first to hear about updates please subscribe.

When you start your own online business it is important to establish your own income streams as soon as possible. The way the formula works in internet marketing is that you find a worthwhile product to promote and then you cash in the rewards. But once you reach this point you then need to find lots of other income streams that will build your brand at a steady rate and put lots of notes in your wallet.

An offline rescue through the recession

By Samantha On January 18, 2009 4 Comments

I am often in undated with emails from people that just don’t know what to do as there close to going bankrupt or losing their jobs. At the moment with the current recession that we have found ourselves in its even worse than most.

This is why I am thanking my lucky stars that I am in this business and that I am not in that awful position.

I also came across a lot of other similar stories and posts on The Warrior Forum over Christmas some were as bad as how can I get some money to buy my kids a Christmas present two weeks before Christmas it is truly awful and I myself was in a similar position with a lack of money a few days ago and even ended up working nights in a dodgy care home over Christmas just to make sure I could give my son the best at Christmas.

I friend of mine also asked me what I should do back in May (my apologies for not writing about it sooner!). Me & Jon have been friends for over ten years and have often been inseparable I am an only child so I’ve often looked upon him as the older brother that I never had.

His mum and dad or ma and pa as he calls them have their own farm in Yorkshire and it’s been in trouble for a while now. I can’t believe that now it has finally causing problems. After all they’ve managed to see off the depression in the eighties and nineties plus the foot and mouth outbreak that wasn’t so long ago but everyone seems to be in the same boot now and everyone is cutting back on what they spend.

When I went round to visit them we were interrupted by the bailiffs and even though I managed to get rid of them there was always the worry that they would return at some point in the future.

I talked to Jons dad Jon Senior about the problem and I could tell he was seriously worried and would have to declare himself bankrupt very soon as he couldn’t carry on.

I said to him that I would like to have a good at turning things round and would he give me two weeks to do so. His face lit up as he knew what I was like for finding money from a very poor situation.

I looked into the size of his fields and decided that the best thing to do was to set up a Carboot as it was the start of the season and it was the perfect way to cash in on the summer trade. The nearest Carboot in the area was 40 minutes drive away so there was defiantly the niche for it.

First of all I made sure that I had just the spot within his land to do the Carboot and trimmed the hedge down and with his workers created an entry and exit. We then created the Boards and went about getting a set of blue travel toilets for when people arrive.

Once this had all been done we set about placing advertisements in the papers. The regional and the locals which was very cheap considering the type of advert we wanted.

The cost for running the advert for the month in both papers came in at just short of £100 and we had it ready for the coming Sunday and the following Thursday as people love both midweek and weekend events.

On the Sunday we were up at the crack of dawn. I seriously wasn’t used to these early morning wake ups but I had given my word that I would be there to help at this event.

Sure enough the cars soon started arriving………………

I couldn’t believe how many of them there were. We even had a turnout of businesses using the venue including shoe sellers, cake stalls, jam stalls etc.

All in all we had 500 different vehicles descend on us in the glorious sunshine.

This included…………

300 None Traders at £6 each

100 Traders at £10 each

100 Large Traders at £15 each

This brought us a turnover of £4300 for very little work!

We then hit 400 vehicles for the following Thursday at a profit of £3250

Our outgoings were…….

Advertisements – £25 per week

Staff – 6 staff @ £6.00 an hour – £648 a week

Toilet Hire and clean at £100 per week

Insurance – £50 per week

This left us with a profit of £6727 and we did this for the whole season and within a few months he had his debts completely in check.

However you also need to appreciate that this is England and you do get a lot of bad weather and this is not a winter trade. This bit of effort got rid of his debt problems but probably made him realise that there is no profit in farming during a recession and he would have to re-think the situation.

After sum sole searching he gave up on farming and unleashed the profits he could make out of his land. Now during CarBoot season his wife now makes her own homemade jam on one of the stalls and yes takes advantage of the situation and gets the best pitch there is!

He’s also taken advantage of lack of facilities in Yorkshire and is now ready for this year so that he can use his land for strawberry and raspberry pickings to the locals this is yet another niche that can be taken advantage of.

He also rents out land to locals who have their own horses and ponies.

Once he opened his eyes he saw that there was so much potential that he could write an essay about it.

Remember if you can find your niche the rest will follow!

New Year Inspirations

By Samantha On December 29, 2008 4 Comments

Well it’s got to that time of year again hasn’t it? That hard part we will go through each and every year. The part when we have become bored after eating all the Christmas food, drinking far too much celebrating the Christmas season and stuffing our faces with chocolate.

That’s when we have those thoughts………..

Have I achieved everything that I set out to achieve in the past year and what do I want to achieve in the year to come. I’m not talking about unrealistic goals either.

Using eBay to obtain sales

By Samantha On December 24, 2008 6 Comments

In the Internet Marketing field we ALL take the mick out of marketers that sell information products on Ebay. I know I used to regularly be the victim of those jokes. We have always believed the same that Ebay makes your product look cheap and tacky and completely looses its value. After all how many cheap e-books are sold on Ebay for less than £2.00.

There are far too many to go into great detail about – you could probably do a search on Ebay and find way over 1,000 different ones.

Before I carry on I used to be one of them until the autumn of 2005 when I realised that the Ebay fees were simply too much of an annoying outgoing.

I used to find niches on Ebay that everyone else was oblivious to and I was one of the first to sell products for a penny on Ebay but it was all about Internet Marketing.

When I sold an E-Book for a penny I could VERY easily sell over 1,000 a week and it was my starting point for building up my mailing list. When I sent out the customers order via email download I would offer them some extra products for free in exchange for opting in. In general one in five would join up (20%) and many are still on my list today.

The penny auction was also rather popular with sellers too! When you join Ebay as a seller it doesn’t look good that you have zero feedback so sellers would buy about 10 different products from the low auctions and use the feedback from those sales to get them a good reputation.

One of my other gems was selling the Cabbage Soup Diet and at £6.99 a go I was laughing even though now it is over done at the usual £1.99. I’m just using this as an example there are many, many more niches to be had on Ebay its just a case of secretly looking for them just like I have.

Let’s get on to the best bit!

Ebay trying to cut down on the large quantity of information products sold on Ebay recently banned automatic download for their sellers. The way the sellers have got around this is by selling the downloadable media on CD or DVD instead. But we all know the amount of content that we can place on a CD these days is it really worth it!

After all why sell a copy of a Police Auction guide on a CD on its own?

What would the environmental Secretary have to say about it?

Well there are an awful amount of Ebayers selling just that right now on Ebay. What if you could go to them and offer them a solution.

I have personally been contacting sellers for weeks now offering them the opportunity to cash in on it. Say you have your own viral e-book or report that you can offer for free in exchange to fantastic exposure back to you. You see every time a new person buys off Ebay they will also receive your new product on the same CD and when they read they then go on to either visit your website or join your mailing list.

Now that is a result!

I don’t have a sellers account anymore as I don’t need one all I do is buy things from Ebay for personal use. I also have a fantastic about me page with links to my websites and affiliate links. I regularly contact ten different Ebayers a week and offer my products for free in exchange to feature on their CD.

The best bit is they always say YES!

They are always thankful and can’t believe they are getting up to date content to their customers for free after all many are selling E-Books that are four years old!

In affect this is completely free advertising or selling of your products without having to list anything or pay any sellers fees – what more could you want?

This loophole though isn’t going to be available forever sellers are soon going to get wise and start selling space on their discs and who could blame them – if I was selling on Ebay I would.

So any sellers reading this that sell on Ebay – why don’t you sell space on your discs via Internet Marketing Forums or your About Me Page after all it is FREE advertising and you have nothing to loose.

What if you sold 10 spaces a week on the grounds that it would be included in 50 CDs at £30 a go that would earn you an extra £300 per week for doing nothing!

Also think about the wonderful feedback you will receive for their “bonus e-books” it would be amazing!

Think about the difference it could make either as the seller or the E-Book owner!

I have a fantastic pack of two E-books where I write about my ideas surrounding Ebay and ways to discover your own niche. It also comes with help on Ebay issues. The best bit is that it comes with Master Resale Rights. Click Here For Details

Thanks for reading and I hope that this blog is making the difference in showing you how to make money online. Whether you are new to internet marketing or are an internet marketing expert there is always something new to learn.

Article Writing is it worth it?

By Samantha On December 3, 2008 7 Comments

Ive been writing lots of articles lately and submitting them to a range of places including forums, article directories, review sites and so on.

But the big question that I am asking is………..

“Is it really worth it”

The answer that always pops into my head is YES!