Are you a good Tweeter?

Looking around on Twitter today, I have noticed some of the super Tweeters follow about 10 to 20 people while having 15,000 followers. Now how do you not know who is following you, and how difficult is it to hit the follow back button to follow them back? I realize that some people may not have a whole lot of information to give or has something intelligent to say, but I like to give everyone the benefit of the doubt and I will add anyone who follows me on Twitter. I also don’t like the “thanks for the follow… now make 10k now by looking at my special report” That is a good way to get un-followed.

Like my friend Perry Belcher says” You don’t go to a social event and say hi I’m so and so and I sell such and such want to buy?... you would be the biggest A-hole there and no one would want to talk to you.” I’m paraphrasing, but you get the idea I hope.

You were once new to Twitter, you wanted other people to follow you. You were very thrilled to see all the visits to your blog when you looked at the traffic it created. Now that you have all those followers, do you care about them or are they just $$$ because these followers help increase traffic to your web site. If you are new to Twitter get a free copy of twitter basics.

I don’t have 15,000 followers on Twitter, But I do try and listen to the followers I do have because they post a lot of things that I haven’t heard about Or sometimes I get good information. I follow the people who follow me and I look at all the profiles and try to learn more about them. I also like to type a welcome message to them and not use automated replies, another big turn off to a lot of twitters.

To me Twitter was designed to be a network and share thoughts and ideas. So if you get a new tweeter that follows you follow them back and see what they have to say. By doing this you are showing that you are a real person and your following will increase naturally. If someone sends you a DM with a question, answer back. If you have 15,000 followers and only follow a few, I figure you want to be heard but you don’t want to hear.

Learn more about Twitter for FREE!

4 charged in MLM Scam

In prior posts I have blogged about is MLM a scam? And that you should do your research on the particular company you plan on joining. Well here in the news recently four people were hauled to court on charges of being involved in a fraudulent investment scheme in connection with the controversial multi-level marketing firm Sunshine Empire.

Phang Wah, 49, better known as James Phang, his wife, Neo Kuon Huay, 46, Jackie Hoo Choon Cheat, 29, and Yong Wai Hong, 27, face between six and 20 charges each.

The prosecution alleges that Hoo, a director of Sunshine, abetted Phang and others to siphon $947,905 from the firm between December 2006 and August 2007.

Both men are said to being party to Sunshine's business when they knew it was fraudulently selling prime packages which included potential returns.
Phang, described as a manager, and Hoo are accused of failing to keep accounting and other records for financial year 2007.

Phang, who has the most charges, is said to have conspired with his wife, Ms Jenny Chan, an accounts clerk, and others to falsify accounts involving amounts of $20,000 to $245,000 on six occasions between December 2006 and August 2007.
Another charge states that he was a director of Empire Communication Technology when he authorized someone to falsely lodge a return to the Registrar of Companies on May 24, 2006.

Yong was charged with six counts of authorizing one Ng Chee Tiong to falsely lodge returns to the Registrar of Companies that shares in the Empire Investment Group, of which he was director, were allotted for cash.

The cases have been fixed for a pre-trial conference on March 5.
A probe into Sunshine's affairs started in November 2007, two months after the company was placed on the investor alert list by the Monetary Authority of Singapore.

Sunshine was set up by Phang, who says on the company's website that he has almost 30 years' experience in retail, sales and multinational enterprise building.
Sunshine is reported to have attracted 20,000 clients here since it was set up in July 2006.

Again ask questions, do your research, and get a Mentor
Thanks to straight times for the info

Work From Home

Many people dream about being able to work at home at some time or another. But maybe your boss laughed you out of their office when you asked if you could do your current job at home. Maybe you’ve searched the internet and got nowhere. While there are thousands more people working at home now than in the past, unfortunately, most employers still require your presence at their place of work, not yours.

So why not start a business of your own? There are many business opportunities that can be done at home. If you like the idea of taking advantage of a business opportunity, you must do your due diligence and thoroughly research its credentials before investing!

If you have your own work-at-home idea, follow these steps for turning your idea into a successful business that lets you make money from home:

1. Come up with an idea. You know what you like to do so why not make money doing it? After all this is why you are thinking of running a home based business right? If what you come up with is truly your own idea then you will have to know marketing. Some of the best ideas fall flat without proper marketing. Know your market and what will work. You can have the best hamburger out there but if people are not hungry they will not buy it! Probably the easiest way to get into a home based business is to go with a company that has a product and marketing already in place.

2. Research. Get a group of people together and brainstorm ideas around, this is called a mastermind group. Get a copy of the think and grow rich book. The internet is also a great place to research your work-at-home idea. Go check out some social networking sites, Facebook is a great place to start.

3. Make a plan. Most people don’t plan to fail, they fail to plan. Any successful small business starts with a business plan. Think of it as your blueprint, the map of where you want to go. You can find a lot about business plans on the internet, or take a business course at your local college.

4. Find a mentor. Locate someone, ideally another business person, who is successfully running a home based business. Compare notes. Share ideas. Problem solve together. Need a Mentor?

5. Work at home! When all above steps are in place, you’ll be ready to get your home business started and begin living life on your terms. While there are many stepping stones along the way, you’ll happily plod on, knowing that you’re working for you and your family’s future on your terms. Look forward to that day when you can fire your boss. I know I did, my only regret was I didn’t video tape it!

Is MLM A Scam?

MLM Scams: is there such a thing or is it just a whole lot of people wrong here? Well yes there are some scams out there and there are also some good MLM companies out there too. As my gramps used to say “One bad apple spoils the bunch.” So let’s dig in to what is a scam?
To correctly and safely identify MLM scams a person has to first know a lot about MLM.

Most beginners in MLM and those just considering MLM don't know much about MLM so what most people do is they automatically group all of MLM, or at least most MLM deals, into the group of 'MLM scams'.
Although this is not fair to the MLM industry it does help many people, who know very little about MLM, from getting taken by those few MLM scams that do exist because they then decide to not get involved in MLM.
Okay, so just what can you do to protect yourself from MLM scams? That is the $64,000question! The answer is not so simple.

You have to do your homework and undertake a very detailed investigation of the company you are looking at.
You have to have a keen understanding of how MLM really works so that what may at first appear okay turns out looking like a scam, after a little investigation.
And what looked a little funny may actually turn out, after a thorough look, to be okay to pursue. You have to get educated on the whole concept of MLM scams.

At some level the person makes an emotional decision about doing an MLM program. And when the emotion clears up and level-headedness appears the person begins to see the deal, for the first time, for what it actually is.
And more often than not the deal isn't what it first appeared, through emotion laden eyes, to be.

So keep your emotions out of any decision you make about joining, or not joining, an MLM deal and you'll be virtually guaranteed to not find yourself in the middle of another of those many MLM scams. More on Is MLM a Scam in my next post. Need a Mentor?

Is MLM A Scam?

In my last post I asked the question is MLM a scam? Most people would say it is because let’s face it; there are a lot of not so honest people out there in MLM. This unfortunate reason makes it hard for the people who do run a legitimate business and not a Pyramid Scheme. Within a pyramid scam, you cannot make more money than the people above you. In other words, you cannot make more money than the person who introduced and only the people at the top actually make money. This is not true with a Network Marketing company. The plain truth is that it’s work and not a get rich quick scheme. Most who fail at MLM don’t plan to fail they fail to plan. There is no guidance or leadership in most MLM’s. You sign up, are told the sky is the limit, you buy the product and pretty much you are on your own. This is NOT the way to run any business.

The other challenge I see is commitment: most network marketers fail after 90 days. Let me ask you this: how long did you go to college or high school? So why not give your home based business that same commitment? Seek out advice and do your research and ask questions. If you are considering starting a home based business, and a lot of people are in this economy; you need to be Teachable, motivated, and have the burning desire to succeed. You will need a Mentor, someone to guide you and prevent you from making the mistakes others have made and not become one of the statistics. Let your Mentor teach and you be the student and watch amazing things happen. Not all MLM’s offer mentoring or coaching. More on my next post.

Is MLM A Scam?

I was on a forum the other day when someone posted Is MLM a scam? Let’s just call him Joe; Joe was new to the concept of MLM or Multi Level Marketing aka Network Marketing. Joe had jumped right in to a business not knowing how to run a business or where to start. Joe used emotion to make a decision that he should have used logic. We have all been there admit it, that new car, house, or gadget. We bought it on emotion, not thinking about tomorrow sort of like our current state of the economy. From what I read Joe was signed up and forgotten about. He was left to run this home based business on his own. Then when Joe called up his uncle Bill and told him about this incredible business opportunity his uncle told Joe that this was a pyramid scheme and he wanted nothing to do with it. Wow! Joe thought this was going to be his way out of the rat race, put his kids through college and sip on those drinks with the little umbrellas on the beach somewhere and collect a paycheck.

Ok so is MLM a Scam? Well I guess that depends on who you talk to. With our current economy and unemployment, people have been flocking to the home based business arena a lot lately. The problem is that while there are good companies out there, people sometimes don’t understand how MLM works or they get very little guidance. The pyramid scheme theory? Here’s my take on that: You work at a company, you have X amount of bosses who have X amount of bosses until you get to the top boss or CEO. Ok draw that out and you have... you guessed it a pyramid! If you don’t have a clue how MLM or Network Marketing works there is an awesome video called the brilliant compensation HERE. (no you don’t have to sign up for anything) MLM is not a scam if people are shown how to run the business and are guided through the steps to get where they want to be. They need a Mentor that will help them through the whole process, and make them successful in the business. More on MLM in my next post.

A paradigm

Paradigm; what a strange word, in fact how many times do you use this word? Bare with me here I promise this is not boring. This could change something for you. So let’s dig in shall we?

Dictionary.Com defines paradigm as:

A) Set of forms all of which contain a particular element, esp. the set of all
inflected forms based on a single stem or theme.

B) A display in fixed arrangement of such a set, as boy, boy's, boys, boys'

C) An example serving as a model; pattern.

Ok let’s go with C a pattern, a pattern of thinking. What is your thought process? Or what do you think when someone communicates something to you? Let me give you an example:
A young lady was speeding down a mountain road one day in her convertible. It was nice sunny day so she had the top down enjoying the ride. Tooling along she came to a bend in the road with a blind spot. At the same time a young man in his convertible was going the opposite way. As they came along side each other he yelled “PIG!” Well she looked backed and yelled “JERK!” when she turned back around there in the road was the largest pig she dad ever seen! She hit the brakes, missed the pig but totaled her car. In the little time the young man had to communicate to her that there was a pig in the road up ahead he only had time for one word. She took the word as an insult, a pattern of thinking on her part; a paradigm.

So my question is do you need a Paradigm Shift? Paradigm shift is a change from one way of thinking to another, and can apply to anything; your job, your married life, your relationships, your home, and your surroundings. What, however, changes is your attitude to all these. Your positive or negative, and good or bad, attitudes define the way things appear to you. So check out your thought patterns you might need a change; the next time someone yells “PIG!” you might want to slow down. Need a mentor? I’m right HERE