This subject is familiar to many solo entrepreneurs. Yet you will rarely see it discussed openly. It is a side effect of selling a good product. Sort of a “bonus” that comes with being successful.

Once in a while I get an e-mail that reads along these lines:

“Send me your product first. If satisfied, will pay. Too many scams out there. Prove that you’re not.”

or

“Help me make it happen for me, then I will send you my payment.”

or better yet

“I am a poor man from South Africa. Praying to God that you will send me ALL of your products for free. I want you to be my guide, my coach, my mentor… and have it in your heart not to charge me until I start making money.”

At first, I thought, what the heck – his $40 will not make me any richer, and would send the person my products free of charge. Especially since these e-books didn’t cost anything to deliver.

But after a while, as my online business grew and traffic to my web sites increased, I started getting similar e-mails about once a week. People would ask me to send them my products for free, and when they start making money on the Internet, they would send me their payment.

What is going on? Can you imagine writing to Bill Gates, asking for a free PC, promising to pay as soon as it starts turning profits?

Or how about a free college tuition? “Let me go to school for a year, if I learn something new, I will pay”.

Now, some of these claims may be true and sincere. Many people do not have the money to start their online venture. What should they do if that’s the case?

The answer is easy: self-education. That is how I started, and that’s how most successful but low-budget ventures begin.

• Subscribe to 10-15 different web marketing e-zines published by reputable authors, and read each issue thoroughly, with a marker in your hand.
• Visit popular Internet Marketing forums, participate in free teleclasses offered by gurus, download and read free e-books on the subject.
• Spend a few hours a week browsing the Internet for web sites of companies in your target area – learn what the competition is doing.

Always keep in mind – it’s either TIME or MONEY. If you don’t have one, invest the other.

In this audio, Karen is interviewed by Barbara Schreiber, idea strategist.

This 30-minute interview thoroughly covers the subject of choosing a business partner. Karen discusses how she defines a business partner, and what, for her, makes an ideal business partner.

With her usual wit complemented so brilliantly by Barbara, Karen explores the advantages of having a partner: personal growth, synergistic exchange – and exponential growth of energy; an antidote to the rather isolating life of having a home-based coaching practice – and partnering up can also be just plain fun!

Karen’s request for this audio: Take some time to think about your core values, and go through the Standards of Presence, and truly make them your own – tweak them, change them if necessary. Then look for resonance with your potential partners, and there you have it!

• What are your 5 Core Values?
• What are 5 Key Agreements, or Standards that are important for you in a partner?

To receive your own copy of the Standards of Presence click here.

Have you ever had done something you thought was a really good idea at the time and then it completely backfires on you?

Well, it happened to my good friend Nancy Marmolejo, Viva Visibility.

If you don’t know Nancy yet, you really need to. She is a social media rock star. However, sometimes even rock stars have days where the guitar is out of tune and the speakers catch fire and explode on stage.

Here’s the story in a nutshell. As you all know, social networking is pretty darn new and Twitter is the brand spanking new kid on that shiny new block. Because it’s so new, things like vocabulary and etiquette are still being hashed out.

It’s better coming from Nancy herself why she got so fixated on this, but she was busy telling people you “tweet” not “twitter” (including yours truly). She also decided to write a letter to Inc Magazine about this.

The result? Inc Magazine called her on it and, well, won.

Now I’m telling you about this for 2 reasons.

1. I’m quite excited I can now use “twitter” as a verb (I just hated saying “tweet” — I felt like I should put a chicken coop in my yard.)

2. Nancy handled the whole situation brilliantly. In fact, I would go as far to say this was actually a really good thing in the end.

So what did Nancy do? Well, to start she owned up to it. She didn’t try to hide her mistake or pretend it never happened (which is simply not possible to do in this day and age anyway.) She ‘fessed up.

Lesson #1 — if you make a mistake, and it’s a public mistake, just suck it up and admit it. It’s when you start lying and hiding that things get so out of control. Look at Bill and Monica. People lied, tried to hide things, and that just made everything worse.

By owning up to it, Nancy completely diffused any negative publicity around it. In fact, if you read the comments, most people didn’t think this was a big deal at all. (Which it isn’t — until you start hiding and lying about it. Then suddenly everyone wonders why you’re lying and hiding and it can blow up into a bigger deal.)

The second thing she did was write a very charming and witty blog post about it. Now, you might not be able to write a charming and witty blog post, but it might be worth it to find someone who can for you. She was entertaining about it, which again helped diffuse the situation and caused all her followers to rally around her.

Now, humor isn’t good for all situations. Remember the Tylenol and Cyanide scare? If the Tylenol CEO had come out with humor that would have been completely inappropriate. However, what he did do was immediately take responsibility, come up with a solution, and didn’t come across as defensive or trying to shift the blame.

Lesson #2 — if you’re going to take a stand, do it graciously. Don’t be defensive, don’t try and shift blame, and for heaven’s sake don’t be a baby about it. Do it with class and people will respect and admire you for it.

The result? Nancy’s post got TONS of comments, pretty much all of them supporting Nancy. She’s back on stage, bigger than ever, with her guitar all tuned up and brand spanking new speakers.

A question I often ask my target market is, “what’s your biggest challenge with building your business online?” And one answer I get frequently is this:

How do I make my website earn money?

If you’ve got a business online, then it’s likely you have some sort of web presence. Perhaps it’s a one-page ’sign up for my list’ kind of site, or a full-blown brochure site with a menu of choices, or maybe your site is in the form of a blog. Regardless of what kind of site (or sites) you have, if they’re not doing what you want them to – and since we’re in business, ultimately that means making some sort of a profit – then it’s time to make some changes.

But how do you REALLY know whether your site is working or not? Here are four strategies to test and track your pages to know what needs fixing:

1. Let the numbers speak
I’m sure if the sky was the limit, you’d hire the most expensive web designer with the fanciest tools to create the most spectacular site imaginable for your business – and someday you just may do that.

For now, though, even an ugly site can make money. I can think of at least two sites right now that I personally think are not that pleasing to the eye, yet I know they are raking in the bucks each and every month, year after year.

So don’t get caught up in having the most polished and professionally looking site. Focus more on having the pieces in place that will bring you the cash, too.

2. Give your site only one job
Think of each page of your website as a separate entity with one main purpose. It may be to sell something, or to sign up for your list, or to get people to call you for an appointment. Whatever it is, make it clear that that one thing is the action your visitor should take from being on that page.

3. Track your numbers
Most web hosts offer statistics that you can use to watch your numbers, or there are other web stat programs that you could use as well (such as Google Analytics). However you are keeping an eye on your numbers, you should be looking for two things: how many people visit your site and how many people take the action you want them to take.

From those two numbers, you can figure out your conversion rate, which tells you how many of those visitors took the action you wanted them to – like sign up for your list. If you make small changes to your page AND watch these numbers at the same time, you’ll be able to tweak things to increase your conversion rate.

4. Make one change at a time
This is a very effective way to increase the conversion rates on sales pages and sign-up pages. Change just one thing – for example, the headline – and watch your numbers. Compare those statistics to your previous ones and decide whether or not to keep the change. (You can also do this via a split-test in your shopping cart, where the software does the number crunching for you.)

I see so many sites that try to be all things to all people by offering everything under the sun in too small a space – a website – and all that does is confuse people and encourage them to click away. Remember, ‘a confused mind always says no’, so always go back to the main questions when considering making changes to your website: What’s the purpose of this page? What is the one thing I want my visitor to do here? And then design your copy around the answer. Keep it simple and you’ll get better results every time.

Want to know what the five deadly mistakes of home page design are? Grab a copy of Carma Spence-Pothitt’s new book, Home Sweet Home Page: The 5 Deadly Mistakes Authors, Speakers and Coaches Make with Their Website’s Home Page and How To Fix Them! at www.homesweethomepagebook.com. Stop by the website between March 15 and 19, 2010, to join the launch and housewarming party, and download a plethora of free gifts!

Let me begin by saying I was very impressed with Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump’s daughter. She spoke at the Dan Kennedy/Bill Glazer Superconference and it was fascinating hearing her take on business. Here are a few nuggets I came away with:

1. You got to really want it. Ivanka is a driven woman. In fact, I would go so far to say she is succeeding despite her father and wealth. She works 3 times as hard as anyone else to prove that she is really is the best person for the job. And she has succeeded.

Now you could say it was easy for her. She has connections, a name, money. However, that’s exactly the reason why it’s difficult for her. People assume her success is due to her family and not her ability.

She could have thrown in the towel, turned into another Paris. Instead she decided to work 3 times as hard to prove to the world she is just as capable as her father at being successful at business.

My point here is that everyone has obstacles. Even if you can’t see them, we all have issues and blocks and obstacles. And we can choose to give in to them or to succeed despite them.

And, we all feel the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. Ivanka truly believes her father would fire her if she screws up. (Actually he publically said that in an interview he’d fire his kids if they messed up.) Can you imagine the public embarrassment and humiliation if that actually happened? Sure we can all look at Ivanka and think “oh, she has it so easy.” But if she ends up in the middle of a colossal failure, the world will all know about it and talk about it. That’s not the case with someone less well known.

This is very common in business (well, in life in general) – people assume someone else’s business is a piece of cake while they have to X, Y, Z to contend with. While it’s true maybe that person doesn’t have X, Y, Z, they do have A, B, C, which are just as difficult in their own way. So the best thing to do is rather than wasting energy on comparisons, focus on making what you have that much better.

2. What’s going on with the economy is just a way to make businesses stronger. Okay, she’s 28, which means she was an infant during the last big recession. However, she is learning from her father, who not only lived through that recession but nearly went bankrupt. How did her father handle it? He got up every day and did something about it. He didn’t let the fact that he owed millions of dollars with no way to pay it back stop him. He got up every day and did something about it.

What are you doing right now? Are you sitting there waiting for the economy to “get better” so you can start making money? Or are you going to start doing something NOW to make that money?

Businesses are still making money right now. People are still buying products and services. You can make money, you just need to be smart about it.

3. Find what you love and do that. Ivanka had been offered a very prestigious job in another company after graduation, but wanted to work in the family business. Her father questioned that decision, which for a long time made her angry. However, he just wanted to make sure she was doing something she loved and not just getting a job in the family business because she thought it was expected of her.

What I liked about this story was what it said about both Donald and Ivanka. Ivanka knew she loved construction and buildings, so she designed her career around doing what she loved. Her father knew how important doing what you love is, and wanted to make sure Ivanka was following in his footsteps. Not his footsteps in the family business but that she truly was doing something she loved.

Are you doing what you love? Or are you doing what is “expected” of you? Think about it. Make sure you really are designing a business you love and that motivates and excites you.