It is not a good idea to discuss salary early in an interview. It can be too much information when trying to negotiate a new salary, but how can you dodge the question?

A good rule of thumb is to always be honest. Discussing salary during the early part of the recruiting process is not a good idea.

The best way to deal when pressed for your salary information is as follows:

1) Just let them know that your past salary is not all that related to the work you’re going to do in the new job. The terms and work conditions and responsibilities are different, and therefore your past salary should not factor into your new job compensation.

2) If the employer insists you mention your previous salary, mention with the total value of your salary package. Also, restate that it is not the same company you will be working for, and so your past salary is not related. There are so many factors including lifestyle, vacation, time in lieu of pay and other things that also factor in.

3) Be aware before going into the interview what the standard range is for that job, and know where your performance level would be within that range. Most people are not at the top end of the salary range, so unless you are a total star, don’t expect the absolute max unless you can justify it. Your clout will be confirmed by your reference checks it will be obvious if you are not in the highest percentiles.

4) Regardless of whether or not you were earning at or below or even above the market average for your career, your past salary is not relevant. You may have had any number of reasons for working below market in the past, but what is important now is that you earn current market rates for the work you do. Your past doesn’t explain your worth as a resource to the new employer.

5) If you divulge your salary, restate that you expect to be paid the standard industry rate for the posting, and explain what you do understand about the industry at that time. Most employers will respect you for standing your ground on the matter. Just remember that in negotiating you should be firm in your stance but respectful in your demeanor.

Never tell a lie to your prospective employer. Just be aware that they have ways of knowing or discovering the truth that you don’t have control over. The most important thing is to communicate honestly the value you can bring to the employer and impress them with that.

Good keywords can be compared to a good tagline. They are both equally important for the success of your advertising campaign. Your keywords are in effect the base of your PPC advertising campaign. If you choose weak keywords they will cause your campaign to fail, however strong ones can make your campaign soar.

In order to make a good keyword list you will need to make sure you do your research. Drill down and look into every likely keyword carefully. You can then choose the very best keywords for your campaign.

Here is an example to clarify the concept of keywords. “Real Estate” can be used as the base keyword.

Because of high commissions “Real Estate” is a very saturated word on the Internet.

The first thing to do is create your first list. Think of all the alternatives that your prospective clients could use to interpret the base word. Now for the word real estate, people can use words like real property, investment property etc. these words are still very similar to the base keyword therefore you should continue the search.

Next you will need to enlarge your search into different niches or types of real estate. Some examples include; boarding houses, commercial real estate etc. After this you will be able to mix your new keywords with your initial ones and get some completely new keywords.

You can also create an ad group that will focus entirely on real estate company names. You can also add a .com to the name or your own country extension. It would not matter if such a domain does not exist, sometimes people type similar things into the search engine giving you an opportunity to get your product some low cost clients.

Never use general keywords; use specific keywords to attract the target market. When you are thinking of a keyword then try looking at it from your client’s point of view for best results.

Here are some tips to hit the jackpot:

- Attach .net and .com to keywords.

- You can capture visitors with company and domain names.

- Enhancing keywords with words like; best and cheap can be added to your keywords.

- Check your web logs to find out the keywords your visitors used to find you.

- You can glance over the copy on your competitor’s site.

Make sure to separate all these keywords into different lists. Place all the typos in one ad group, the plurals in another and similarly go on with the rest. This will lead to easy targeting of your ad.

You can make considerable lists of keywords from the information you have found in this article. When you choose winning keywords nothing will impede your progress. When you arm yourself with effective keywords you will make an outstanding campaign. Good luck!

The most effective method of marketing your business is advertising your products and services using a PPC (pay per click) campaign. It is important to do this with a thorough planning model, paying attention to all the details of what you are advertising. This type of planning allows you to avoid pitfalls and won’t cost you money that doesn’t need to be spent. Here are great PPC tips to help you get started and you will get all the benefits of this advertising method without the downsides.

Picking the right keywords is the first step. Saying a common keyword will best serve couldn’t be farther from the ideal truth, but it may get you several clicks. Visitors who are clicking on a general key word are less likely to buy. Using a targeted key word phrase might not get the clicks of a more expensive common keyword, but is the best way to get a wide and suitable audience for the lowest cost.

Search Google or another search engine that will give you a few ideas to try with your own PPC campaign. Specific phrases or keywords allow your campaign more latitude and using some of the available tools for AdWords is a great assistance when trying to find out what works. You can test your keywords this way or just try seeing where you score on a Google search.

Once you’re certain you’ve got a good keyword list, it’s time to design your ad. After all, even the best keywords can’t save a poor ad. You need a compelling headline to interest a potential customer, and copy that encourages him or her to click and find out more. Make sure your ad is an accurate description of your product or service, to avoid clicks that don’t lead to sales.

Make sure your ad copy includes a sense of urgency, as well as the chief benefits of the products and services you offer. Let your customer know that clicking on the ad now to make a purchase has advantages. Many ads do well by including promotional or discount information in the third line - a limited time offer is an excellent choice.

Try for a high ranking on a search page, but remember that many people click reflexively on the first-ranked ad. That could result in more sales, or more empty clicks, as visitors realize that wasn’t where they meant to go. Being high on the page is good, but if it’s a waste of resources, don’t try to be the highest. Focus on a great ad that’s well targeted to your audience, instead.

Pay attention to the competition, too. Adjust your keywords and ad copy according to what appears to be working for them, although direct copying should be avoided. Check the results of each keyword set and the ads associated with it to find out which ones are working, and which aren’t.

PPC ads are a new and uncertain entity and careful thought needs to be put into any advertising campaign for it to succeed. The best way to do this is to make sure you know what you’re doing. Here’s to reaching your target audience, and lots of sales.

It all comes down to choosing the right of keywords and phrases. By researching what works best you should come up with quality keywords and phrases that give results. Make a list to start with and consider what will work for you. Start with one of the very popular keywords, “credit”. This word gets typed into search engines every day- maybe even every minute. But if everyone else is using it how can you make it work, too? The best method is to include some related terms that are specific to your business.

This is where you need to think like one of your customers and start using the words they will type into their search engine at home. The word credit goes with many services, things like credit cards, credit reports or consolidating poor credit to name just a few. So when you’ve got yourself a list, you can start to narrow it down further.

Start to think about the sorts of things people will type into a search engine when they are looking for these goods and services. They might type “free credit report” or “credit card offers” There are lots of others, when you start to scratch the surface suddenly more and more will pop into your mind. These are the words that will decide which ads are to accompany the search results.

Stick to the basic concept, but expand your horizons. There are plenty of credit related search terms, like the names of the individual bureaus, consolidation companies and more. Mix them in as part of your first list, and you’ll have created a number of different keyword groups from just one starting term. Go on to create ad groups made up entirely of consolidation companies, for instance.

Add an extension, such as .org, .net, or .com to the end of the search term, or consider the extension of a country you’re targeting. It doesn’t even matter if that domain doesn’t exist. Some people still type this kind of search term in. You’ll expose them to your ads, increasing your chances of a well targeted click.

Remember to avoid very general keywords. There’s too much competition for these. Instead, expand on related terms, and rephrase existing keyword phrases. It’s easy to turn “free credit report” around to get “credit report free”. While the concept is the same, this phrase will reach a different set of viewers. Just ask yourself what your target audience is going to search for, and use the answers to that question to choose your keyword groups. Remember that search terms can be in an unusual order.

It’s not all there is to a good PPC campaign, but a good keyword list is the foundation of one that works. Explore all your options and pick the right words, then track their progress to be sure your campaign is a successful one.

Sometimes working a full time day job is more than a drag; it’s paralyzing. Not for your body, perhaps, but for your creative energy. When you get home from work, you don’t want to do anything but stare into space, or at most, absorb things like TV, movies, or internet. Below are some ways to structure your time so that you’ll never lose touch with your artistic side.

Make the time:

Arrange time to get creative each day. Do it in an unusual spot like the train or the shower or even right before you go to bed.

Even if it may only be 10 minutes, have your mind just go through ideas. Try using a voice recorder instead of writing; this usually helps you throw more wild questions out that incite you to dig deep.

Hold onto a 3X5 card wherever you go:

Ideas may pop out of nowhere and in the unlikeliest places. By carrying a 3X5 card, you are able to note down those ideas. Take this note card with you to work utilize them at work.

Get up earlier for creative thinking time:

Just because you love to sleep, doesn’t mean that ten minutes lost in the morning is going to ruin your whole day. If you rise and shine a little earlier than usual, you can put your best foot forward into your own projects before you’re forced to apply your fresh morning brain to someone else’s routine.

Ask yourself inquiries:

Ask crazy questions like, “What exactly would I do if I had no limit in spending that I now have and would still succeed?”

Simplify your USP:

Make sure your businesses USP is stated in a clear and brief manner. Even if you may have great ideas, it may not address the USP if it’s unclear and ambiguous. If it’s clear, then your idea will stand out for all to see.

Building relationships with joint venture partners/mentors is very important if you want to learn from high, world-class mentors. Within this article I will discuss how you can develop these relationships very inexpensively - actually at zero cost.

Number one, write this down, circle it, underline it, and highlight it. Participate. Write that word down. Participate when given an opportunity.

When I first started, nobody knew me from a fly on the wall. The first time that I went to the John Childers’ Million Dollar Speaker training, he taught me a very important lesson in business. He said, “It’s not what you know or who you know. It’s who knows you.”

My whole point here is get known. Your mentors and possible future joint venture partners will give you all kinds of opportunity to ‘participate’ so take advantage of it.

This is what I’m talking about. If there are questions in their emails, or they ask for feedback on their projects, give it to them. Give the feedback, ask questions, participate as much as you can. If you participate on a regular basis, the more likely it is that they will get to know you. That is the end result we are looking for.

A lot of people underestimate this next tip. Provide testimonials. Not just ‘normal’ testimonials, but the best one you have ever given. Make sure you send a picture to go a long with it as well that they can use.

In fact, send testimonials even when no one has asked for them. Do you know how many times I have done that and then been put up on their websites? This is a strategy that I learned from Alex Mandossian.

When I first got started in this business, every single website I seemed to go to, Alex Mandossian was there giving a testimonial. Do you know how effective that strategy was for him?

Alex was able to get all kinds of leads and business through putting up testimonials on other people’s websites. Use this strategy and learn how to give really good testimonials. Give them even when they aren’t asking for them.

Being specific and relevant to a measurable benefit is an example of what a good testimonials should include.

A quick example of a good testimonial could be heard from a gentleman who was one of the winners of a testimonials contest for a recent teleseminar of mine. What was so good about it was that he made sure he included his name, where he was calling from and gave a specific benefit that he received from the teleseminar.

That is how you get your testimonials posted on other people’s websites, and when they post your testimonial with your picture, there’s a good chance they’re going to post your website link as well, and that helps you generate traffic and advertising and all kinds of benefits.

Two, it also helps build the relationship with your mentors/future joint venture partners.

Here’s another strategy: Participate in forums. Many people have their own forum. There’s all kinds of forums out there online in just about every kind of industry.

Seek out forums that you want to participate in, doesn’t matter if you’re in that market or not. You can write about anything you really want in these forums - give lots of tips, resources, content. It is all about getting yourself known.

The other thing I want you to do is read people’s newsletters and scour those newsletters for important and personal insights and details.

Here’s some things you should constantly look for. Any birthdays, whether it be the specific person who writes the newsletter or their wife, husband or even their kids. Look for birth dates and then send them cards or a happy birthday E-mail, or perhaps even an audio postcards.

Look for anniversary dates or to see if they’re doing product launches. All kinds of things. Read their newsletters and scour for important and personal insights, and use those to build a relationship.

Another suggestion to help build those relationships with your mentors is to look to offer help to them. By just asking the simple question, is there is anything you can do to help them in your business, you will not believe the response you will get.

When asking if they need help, it will work even better if you ask to help with something specific you know they have coming up in their buisness. If they have a product launch, or seminar, or anything really, coming up and you ask to help them with that they will now known you’ve been paying attention to their business. This will not only surpise them, but will make you stand out and become a memorable name in their mind.

I’ve sent information that I believe would be of value to my mentors as well. My goal is always to build good relationships with them. These strategies are not rocket science and are so easy to do, just no one does them.

Anything I come across and think it would be of value to them, I send it their way. Articles that they could extract from, website links, resources online. Even off-line tools and newspaper clippings work. All I do is shoot them an e-mail saying, “Hey, I think this might be of value to you.”

However, when you send links NEVER include any affiliate links or anything like that. Just sending them information that would be of value to them.

Your focus is on building a relationship and providing value - not making a quick buck. They’ll see right through that and you’ll ruin any chance of a long-term relationship.

I’ve used all these strategies and you can too, which will then allow you to leverage those efforts to building great relationships with all of your mentors and future joint venture partners. For me it has resulted in all kinds of projects with different people. If you focus on just building a foundation with individuals it is amazing what can come of it.

A great way to get people to want to buy your products or services is to be considered an expert in that industry.

It makes sense. Would you rather buy an eBook on making a website from someone who just decided to write a book or from someone who has written several eBooks on that topic?

Creating an eBook is a great way to become established in your industry as an expert on a particular subject. In the following article I am going to tell you how and why you should be doing this.

Creating an eBook provides you with a status.

Creating a status is very important to do for your business because once you are known for something, people then begin to think of you when they need that something.

Quick example. My branding is My Idea Guy. I am known as an idea guy. I provide solutions for people. Particularly authors, speakers, and information marketers.

Branding myself has now made me known for being able to help people build their businesses through generating all kinds of ideas.

What has happened is because I’ve become known for that one thing, you wouldn’t believe the business that is automatically attracted to my ideas, my philosophies, my services, and my products, and it’s because I’ve established that.

Creating an eBook on a topic that you are an expert in can help you do just that. You may be thinking, ‘Wait a second, you keep talking about being an expert, but I’m not an expert at anything.’

That is the great part about this, you don’t have to be an expert. Compiling all the information for your eBook will allow yourself to establish an identity of an expert. You have put in the research to find the solutions people are looking for. In my opinion, if you are able to provide answers to people’s questions that you are of value and can be seen as an expert in that particular topic.

By doing this you’ll quickly become known for providing information on that particular topic, which will only raise your expertise status and allow you to leverage that within your business.

The more eBooks and other services you create full of high quality content, the more you will start to be recognized and the more customers will want to purchase from you.

More business is a result of eBooks.

Hopefully this article has convinced you why every business should use eBooks as part of their marketing platform.

By exploring your creativity ideas will come to you when you need them the most!

We’ve all had those questions in our business that either stop our train of thought or slow our level of productivity down. Ranging from product creation, affiliate marketing, teleseminars, financial matters, I know in my own business I’ve come upon hundreds of business questions that I wish I could know the answer to. So, in this article I am going to answer a question I’ve had about teleseminars.

Lets start with the question:

Can you actually charge for a teleseminar, or is it better to host it for free and then try to sell products on the call?

Free calls are great but I like charging as well. I am going to throw a couple of things out there for you to think about.

Even though you will get more people on your call when you do it for free, the people will be less qualified. When someone has paid for the call they are a better prospect to sell your other products and services to rather than someone who is just listening because it is free. That is what I mean by less qualified.

You can take a variety of stances on this situation. One method that I like doing is holding a free call, but giving people the opportunity to purchase the mp3 and transcripts right away as an up sell. The transcripts and mp3s aren’t given away because by selling them I am establishing a sense of value on those products. Often times I will put together a registration offer, something that will grab their attention right after they have registered. It may say something to the effect of, “Congratulations on your registration. Since you have just registered, there is a special offer available to you which includes getting the mp3 and transcripts for $10, would you like to take advantage of that?”

This is my up sell process. I provide them the mp3 and transcripts for $10, and then I let them know that after the call is finished, it will be sold for $47 or whatever price you are going to sell it for. So in that way, it is a great deal for them right out of the gate. They are going to save a whack of money by buying it now, but at the same time, it allows me to build a sub list of more qualified people.

At the same time, I am able to hit both markets. By providing the content for free, those people are able to receive the valuable information by joining me on the call. The only problem for them is it may be inconvenient because they have to be on the phone at that time in order to listen to the content.

Then I am also building a sub list of more qualified people who are willing to take their credit card out of their wallet and invest in the materials that I have even though it is only $10. I do that for a reason because I do not want it make a huge hurdle. I want to capture those people right away just so that I have identified who they are and at the same time I have established value for the mp3 and the transcripts. I am training people to know that the mp3 and the transcripts are something of value that they need to pay for. It is not free.

I do not like giving everything away for free. I do not think it helps your whole back end sales. I like to try to qualify people as much as possible, establish value where I can and this model has worked really well for me. Provide the call for free so the freebie seekers still get what they want. Provide the mp3 and transcripts for an up sell price. I like to offer them a deal at the time of registration. So again I give it to them for $10. And I let them know that after the call I will be selling it them for $47 or $97 or whatever the price may be.

By separating the two groups, freebies and qualified prospects, you can create two different sub lists. The people who have invested in the material have already expressed an interest in your products and you can then follow up a lot harder with them on future promotions.

Doing a teleseminar you have the opportunity to both charge for the call and give it away for free and get qualified buyers another way. Think about what you want to accomplish for the call and the type of market you might have if you are charging for it.

To get more of your affiliate marketing questions answered and more, check out www.InstantBusinessAnswers.com

We’ve all had those questions in our business that either stop our train of thought or slow our level of productivity down. Ranging from product creation, affiliate marketing, teleseminars, financial matters, I know in my own business I’ve come upon hundreds of business questions that I wish I could know the answer to. So, in this article I am going to answer two questions I’ve had about product creation.

First question:

When launching a product that includes teleseminars and monthly send outs, how much of the product should I have completed and how much lead time should I allow?

Product creation will always take longer then you expect, so make sure you try and give yourself as much lead time as possible.

Let’s take for example a 12 month course. For that type of product I would give yourself a three to four month buffer and continue to stay that far ahead throughout the course as it goes along. By doing this you will keep yourself in a real safe zone.

Unfortunately, that is the reality of creating products, there will be hiccups along the way sometimes. It is better to be ahead of the game then to get caught up with problems that sometimes arise with packaging and delivery.

So the reality is expect it to take longer than you think and give yourself a buffer zone and try to get the product created as quick as possible. That is going to be your number one focus as far as just getting it complete and staying ahead.

Second question:

Do you have any suggestions for a quick way to create a product to sell on a topic that I am an expert on.

There are a variety of ways to do this, even when you may not be an expert on the topic. A teleseminar series is a very easy and fast method of creating a product. From personal experience, I have just started selling courses for the first time as a a teleseminar series. From those calls I can then turn them into a series of products. Those calls that not been created before, but as soon as they were conducted, those calls were transcribed and a course was built from there.

This is definitely something you can do and a method that I would suggest to make things easier is to map out what content you want to teach about and put it in a modular format. This model makes it easy to create content. Once you have a major topic for a particular module you can then dive deep into all the individual strategies that fit under that category. You can really crank out a lot of valuable information pretty quickly this way and by using the call itself to create the content you don’t have to have it ahead of time.

To get more of your product creation questions answered and more, check out www.InstantBusinessAnswers.com

Do you think that giving away your eBook instead of selling it separately will generate you more business in the long run? I do, and that is why I am going to show you how to do just that in this article.

How do you make money by giving away your eBook?

It’s simple

You can use it as a viral marketing tool. It provides you an opportunity to give something to other people to increase the number of visitors coming to your website.

By providing an eBook to other people and giving it away for free, it creates a viral marketing mechanism that brings you business. It can be used as a great viral marketing tool.

Secondly, giving away your eBook can help generate leads to increase the number of people on your list or improve your database. Use the free eBook as an incentive for people to sign up for your list or provide you information for your database.

You won’t be able to get people’s names and emails easily anymore. In today’s age people are swamped with junk mail and have therefore become very protective with who and where they give away their information to.

In order to get that information out of people you have to win them over by giving them something they want or need. An eBook can work as an incentive for them to give you their email address, name, or whatever piece of information you are looking for because they are getting something out of it.

To go along with that strategy, here is another tip. When people are collecting email addresses and names, often they will have a section on their main website where people can submit that information. Once they have submitted the information many people give the download for their free eBook on the next page.

The problem with that is somebody can give you a bogus name and a bogus E-mail address that doesn’t lead anywhere, and they get the reward for doing that.

From my point of view that is not a way to gain respect. I don’t like to do that to people because I want to be respected in return. It is my goal in business to be as transparent as I can be.

Instead of providing them with the download right away, I send them to a thank you page that basically just says, “Thank you. The information for where you can download the free eBook has been sent directly to the email address you provided.”

Now the people who gave a real email and name will get rewarded for their honesty. An auto responder will send them an email immediately which will have a link where they can go and download the eBook.

Although you may look like your building up a database with a lot of names and email, if half of them are leading to false emails it is useless. You should really think about this concept because it won’t do you any good building up a database that is full of bogus information. You want to be sure you have set up measures to weed out people who would leave false information so your database and your business is protected.

Lets go back to how to give away your eBook. Research can be a powerful mechanism you can use to learn key information that would help your business. By using your eBook as a reward, you could put it at the end of a survey, so people will actually fill it out.

Asking your market is the best way to find out what new products or service they want, or how they feel about a new product you may have launched. One of my mentors, Alex Mandossian, has taught me so much in regards to marketing and he is known to use Ask Campaigns. Basically, this is when you learn what your market wants just by asking them.

Here is an example of how Alex uses this. He is able to bring in some of the biggest names in business and put together high-level teleseminars. Some of the people he has done them with are Brian Tracy, Harv Ecker, Mark Victor Hansen and Bob Allen. These teleseminars are with the who’s who in business. You name it, he has probably done one with them.

I know that he is setting up teleseminars right now with people like Bill Clinton, Lance Armstrong and Steve Jobs of Apple.

For every teleseminar, he goes through the same steps to ensure the people paying for the call are satisfied. Alex gets them to submit their burning questions for the expert so he has a pile of material when he goes to do the call that evening.

By doing this, he knows exactly what people are wanting to know and he doesn’t even have to create any questions himself.

It is as easy as that. You can use this strategy. By providing an eBook at the end of the survey it will entice people to complete it and in return you will gain some really great market research.

Often times are like, Yeah, a survey. I don’t want to bother doing it. But if there’s a great reward at the end of the tunnel, they’re going to do it. So it’s a great way for you to conduct market research by providing a valuable E-book to give away at the end of the survey.

The other bonus from doing this is you will get information about what your clients really want. From this you can generate more products and services to fit those needs and generate more business.

You can now see there are many different way to give away something creatively to generate more business in the future. Put your thinking caps on and ask yourself what might be other ways this is possible.

May ideas come to you when you need them the most!