Booming in the Bust: How to Make Money in a Recession

On Saturday I went to an event with Loral Langemeier, Joel Comm, Harry Dent and David Bussau speaking.

The event was amazing! Harry started out with a great presentation about how a Great Depression is Great and how it creates a level playing ground for entrepreneurs. He also talked about how and why they happen and how it's not about all the little indicators many economists use, it's about population trends and what people are doing with their money. At the moment in the western world the people who have been driving spending- the Baby Boomers- are in the time of their lives where they slow down spending. And the younger generations don't have the population to sustain the spending of the baby boomer's past. So as a result you have deflation which in such a big impact results in a recession. He predicted this recession years ago, as have many others, and has many predictions for the near future. For example when he moved to Miami a few years ago he chose not to buy and decided to rent knowing what would happen to the real estate market in the coming years. Since then some parts of Miami have dropped 80% in value. He also talked about how to use the current times to our advantage and what to do. It was truly mind opening. Find out more about Harry here www.hsdent.com/

Loral spoke about maximising your time, not wasting time with people that will drag you down and masterminding with people that will help you succeed. Specifically her speech was targeted to making money no matter what.

Joel Comm's was totally motivational. He was sincere and you could see that he really believes in what he does, and that anyone can do it (his mother even). He spoke about the internet and different ways to make money on the internet. Specifically he talked about using youtube, linkedin, facebook and twitter to get traffic and credibility and connect with people. He also talked about adsense and how he makes loads of money with it. And his IFART iphone application that has sold half a million units world wide! All in all it was a great talk, his was one I enjoyed the most. His website is http://www.joelcomm.com/

The last of the day was David Bussau, an entrepreneur who went from an orphan to creating Opportunity International, a self sustaining micro finance organization with the vision of ending poverty in this generation. It was inspirational and heart warming to see the change we can make once we "be the person God made us to be" as he says. I wrote like crazy during his talk, one of my favorite things he said was "Just be yourself because everyone else is taken". He was inspirational and truly touching. Visit Opportunity International here www.opportunity.org/ Oh and his organisation creates a job every 20 seconds of the day for people in developing countries.

We also got a chance to form mastermind groups which I have spoken about before and are a great way to hold yourself accountable to others in taking the actions necessary to make money. The emphasis of the day was definitely on taking action.

I got great insights and learned from those who have paved the way before us and network with like minded people. I also got a chance to interview two millionaires and set up an interview with a third. Great!

How to Make Money with Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is one of the storms that has captured the Internet for the past few years. Most major websites incorporate it in some way to their sales strategy. So what is it?

Put simply, the process works like this: you refer someone to their website, they buy something, and you get a commission from the proceeds of the sale. Sounds great! Then why is it that only a small proportion of affiliate marketers make money?

I guess because many people that sign up as affiliates aren't doing it as a serious business venture. Many may just be doing it because they bought something, saw the company's "make money" link and let all their friends and family know to make some extra cash.

Those who do it a business venture know that it requires persistence, a good system and application of that system.

For example, you need
1. A list of potential buyers, website traffic interested in the product, a way to reach hundreds to thousands of people
2. A system of communicating with those people so they are interested in what you have to say
3. A good sales page (provided by the company).
4. A match between interested buyers and the products they are interested in (no point selling baby goods to single men)
5. A company that's in it for the long haul (so that when you build your income stream it's there to stay)
6. A good product so that you don't get charge backs

The good thing is, most companies offering affiliate programs also give the basic training needed to make money in their program. Good companies give great training in how to make money in their program. Some even teach how to build a list and get traffic to your site.