Empower Network

Before I get into this I want to wish you a Merry Christmas ( even though some time has passed) and in advance I want to wish you a happy new year.

Time flies, the year went by so fast. It seems just the other day I have celebrated the new years eve and yet we will do it again tomorrow.

The Center of Madrid

Joking. Actually it doesn’t feel like that, the year of 2012 was full of experiences, so much new things I have learnt, met a lot of new people, evolved mentally and spiritually and also learnt so much about myself. The year was full of action, if I would have to name the most memorable event of the year it would be the trip to Spain, it was really amazing.

Business wise the year was also very exciting. When I go back even further down the memory lane to when I got started around two years ago and I compare my knowledge to what I know now, is just amazing how much I have progressed just in two years.

Lesson Of The Year

This year one of the biggest lessons that I learnt was that you need to focus. It’s a crucial element to build your business. In the middle of this year I was juggling so many projects: 4 blogs, two email lists, a product launch and two business opportunities.

Yes, it was as crazy as it sounds. I made up a schedule for myself where I had to work like a horse in a village to get all the things done, it was super stressful which is kinda weird though, because I don’t have a boss or a family that I need to take care off, the only person to whom I was accountable was me and still it was stressful, because of the constant workload.

Maybe I could have carried on with that schedule, but not seeing results that I wanted was very demotivating. Actually I wasn’t even seeing any results except a few sales here and there. I got drained.

Thankfully I stumbled on a video by Anik Singal where he was talking about focus, that video made me realize that changes need to be done.

The problem when you aren’t focused and have tons of projects is that neither of them lifts off and starts producing results, because the start up process is the most time consuming. Many top income producers say that it’s harder to get from zero to $100 than it’s to get from $100 to $1000, because there’s already a foundation there which you just need to scale up and that foundation is key.

So, I started thinking what to do. The first thing that I have done was that I sold one of my blogs. It was a big step and I’m glad that I have done it, got some experience in selling websites and freed up my focus.

Next project on which I was working, I could say solved itself. I launched a product with a team and it was kind of a disaster. We made no sales and everyone silently abandoned the project, a blog was also tied up to this.

Now I was left with two blogs, two mailing lists and two business opportunities. These projects were actually my main ones right from the start and I have invested a lot of time in them already, but I wasn’t focused enough, I had to let go of more projects. Which comes to the next lesson.

Lesson Number Two: If It Sounds Too Good To Be True – Do a Background Check

You might have heard about Zeek Rewards or Zeekler, if you are following the business opportunity news. This year it got shut down as one of the biggest ponzi schemes in history. Sadly I was a member of Zeek Rewards  and I lost some money, not a fortune, just around $200, but I got a valuable lesson from it to question all the business opportunities that sound too good to be true.

This opened my eyes and I decided to check the other two business opportunities that I were in: Profit Clicking and Banners Broker and what I didn’t saw before it got very clear once I have read an article about these two programs, they don’t produce any value they just turn the money round in circles – modern ponzi schemes. It’s just a matter of time when they go Kaboom! and run away with your money.

Well, there are people who make good money from High Yeld Investment Programs (HYIP) they know when to join and when to get out. I personally don’t approve of this “business”, because it doesn’t create any value, it’s like gambling. I joined, because I was blinded by the dream of making big bucks without any effort and because these programs don’t show off that they are HYIPs, they actually show off as legitimate business opportunities and they are very attractive for the inexperienced fools like I was. I no longer participate in such programs and I don’t recommend them to anyone. I will talk more about them in a future post.

So, I got left with two blogs and two mailing lists. One blog and email list was ran just by me and the other blog and email list I was running with a friend. I got the focus thing handled.

Third Lesson: Quick Way Is The Fool’s Way

My main internet marketing blog is now almost two years old. When I started it I didn’t really enjoyed writing articles, but I was pumped by starting it so I was motivated to write, after sometime I got tired and started looking for faster ways to create content, because I knew that it will make me a lot of money.

When I started my blog I had already tried out spinning articles and got my Blogger blog shut down, so I didn’t use spun articles. I stumbled on guest post communities and I started getting free content regularly, I was getting up to 6 articles a day and even more. I didn’t have to write anymore just publish what I get.

Later, I also learnt about content curation which was another super quick way to create content. So, I kept creating content until I got penalized by Google Panda. At that moment I was getting a decent amount of traffic and generating around 5 leads a day which was huge, I was building a list and getting sales once in a while and Google took it away, the traffic dropped and the leads stopped coming in.

I had a lot of crappy content on my blog and Google didn’t like it, more than half of the guest posts were low quality and curation wasn’t working like before. Trying to build my blog the fast way ended me nowhere. I had to delete the bad articles to lift off the penalty.

Practically, those Google penalties ended me up here in Empower Network, because I got tired of fixing the mess that I made by publishing crap on my blog. I got my blog fixed and penalized again, fixed and penalized again and now it needs fixing again.

EN is a fresh start for blogging, without using any tricks or other ways for faster content creation. Writing all the content with my own hands and without fears of getting penalized. Sharing my knowledge that I gained through these years.

Now, I’m not giving up on my old blog, I have plans for it. Firstly clean it from all the crap and lift off the penalties and then post only high quality guest posts. I’m thinking of creating an internet marketing news site, but that might be a plan for further years.

On 2013 I will be focusing mainly on Empower Network, building a blog the right way and building a business. EN is a lucrative business and I will make it work for me in 2013.