This is good news for anybody in the YTB business!

By Nadine Godwin
Travel Weekly, October 13, 2008

The YTB Travel Network, which has to date lumped its affiliated travel sellers into one category (referring travel agents, or RTAs), on Oct. 18 will roll out a two-tier approach that differentiates between those who actively sell travel and those who merely refer prospects to a website for self-booking. 
     Kim Sorensen, president of the network, said YTB (No. 26 on Travel Weekly's 2008 Power List) would focus its training efforts on those who want to be more than referral agents, improving their skills and ultimately boosting productivity. 
     For those who merely want to refer business to websites, he said, nothing will change except their title; they will be called affiliates. 
     For those who want to handle bookings directly with suppliers and develop group business, YTB will offer an improved commission split: 70% of earned commissions, up from 60%, plus opportunities for bonuses. It will also require that they first complete a new educational program. They will still be called RTAs. 
     YTB has offered its RTA certification program, a one-day classroom event, 'but it did not go far enough in the meat department,' Sorensen said. The new online training program, called First Class Training, 'increases the meat ... pretty dramatically,' he said. It will include a range of supplemental reference materials, all in one place, to enable the participants to delve deeply into a range of subjects, he said. 
     Sorensen said YTB aimed to develop a third, higher tier for those who will drop the word 'referring' from their title and simply be called travel agents. 
     Meanwhile, he said, 'It may look as if we are trying to fit in better [in the industry], and there is a little of that.' 
     But, he said, 'I want a lot of well-trained people' to improve sales. In addition, he said, the plan will respond to suppliers' wish to be able to identify the active sellers among YTB associates. 
     This plan, he said, helps the industry understand the YTB sales force, which already is really two groups, he said. 
     He acknowledged industry criticism of YTB, but he said he believed YTB was performing a service by making it easier for prospects to get into the travel business, especially in a weakened economy where it will be tougher for newcomers to get fulltime jobs. 
     He used a sports analogy, saying the reason the biggest schools generally have the best football teams is because they can choose the best players from a larger pool of candidates. 
     Similarly, he said, at YTB, he wants quality, too, but 'we have to get the quantity first to get the quality at the end.' At the end of June, YTB counted 131,572 RTAs. 
     In July, YTB advised the Securities and Exchange Commission it was considering replacing its RTA business model with a franchise system, possibly in 2009. Sorensen said YTB was still working on the franchise plan, but the company was 'probably several months away from that.' 

source: Travel Weekly 10/13/2008 edition, page 9 

Whatever business you are in whether you are in Network Marketing, a business owner, or doing internet marketing…you must have the B.E.A.R. philosophy.

B stands for Belief. It all starts from here. You got to believe in the industry you're in. You got to believe in the company. You got to believe in the products you're selling and the services the company is providing. And most importantly….you got to BELIEVE IN YOURSELF. When others are telling you that you can't do it…Believe you can do it. When others are laughing…Believe you can do it. When others are telling you No you can't…Say YES I CAN! You've been hearing NO your whole life. I'm telling you….YES…YES…YES. When you believe…you will get excited. E stands for excitement. You will be so excited at what you're doing that you'll be sleeping at night with your eyes open. You're excitement will turn into action. A stands for Action. You'll start doing more and selling more. People are going to come up to you and find out what you're doing. You'll be the Energizer Bunny…You'll keep going and going. When you take action…guess what? You will get results. R stands for Results. The best paycheck is an unexpected one. You'll become more and have more. When you get results…you'll believe more…then you'll get more excited and take more action. Then you'll get more results and it'll just cycle. But it all starts with BELIEF. It's not the R.B.E.A. philosophy. You don't get results first. It's the B.E.A.R. philosophy. So start believing!

 

I found an article from slate.com on Yahoo's front page about how people are making a tremendous amount of money blogging. If you are starting out a blog website...you definitely want to read this.



Last week, the blog search engine Technorati released its 2008 State of the Blogosphere report with the slightly menacing promise to "deliver even deeper insights into the blogging mind." Bloggers create 900,000 blog posts a day worldwide, and some of them are actually making money. Blogs with 100,000 or more unique visitors a month earn an average of $75,000 annually—though that figure is skewed by the small percentage of blogs that make more than $200,000 a year. The estimates from a 2007 Business Week article are older but juicier: The LOLcat empire rakes in $5,600 per month; Overheard in New York gets $8,100 per month; and Perez Hilton, gossip king, scoops up $111,000 per month.

With this kind of cash sloshing around, one wonders: What does it take to live the dream—to write what I know, and then watch the money flow?

From the perspective of someone who doesn't blog, blogging seems attractive. Bloggers such as Jason Kottke ($5,300/month) and the Fug girls ($6,240/month) pursue what naturally interests them without many constraints on length or style. While those two are genuine stars of the blogging world, there are plenty of smaller, personal blogs that bring in decent change with the Amazon Associates program (you receive a referral fee if someone buys a book, CD, etc. via a link from your blog) and search ads from Google. (The big G analyzes your site and places relevant ads; you get paid if people click on them.) Google-ad profiteering is an entire universe in and of itself—one blogger by the name of Shoemoney became famous (well, Digg-famous) when he posted a picture of himself with a check from Google for $132,994.97 for one month of clicks.

Read full article

I was online checking out some internet marketing sites and I came across 2 websites that are very interesting. Ashley Qualls started www.whateverlife.com when she was 15 and Carl Ocab started www.carlocab.com when he was 13. Their internet marketing websites are awesome! Whateverlife.com is a social marketing website for young girls where they can get layouts for their websites while Carlocab.com is a website where he teaches you how to make money through internet marketing. If you take a look at their websites…both are doing extremely well. Ashley is getting a tremendous amount of traffic to her site and Carl is #1 on Google search results for "Make money online." And they are young kids! I bet they are making more money than most adults do too. I understand that they have a lot of time in their hands. They don't have to go to work. They don't have to chase their kids running around. They're not in a marriage or any couple relationship (Let's hope they're not). They just go home from school and start working on their sites without worrying about paying for bills, doing laundry, or cooking dinner. But it's not how much time you have…it's what you do with the time that you have.

That's why when you combine your own travel company with internet marketing...you set your own hours and your own schedule so the time is so flexible, it doesn't go against to what you are doing right now.  It doesn't matter how much time you have whether you have 2 hours a week or 2 hours a day...we have all the tools you need to become successful.  Click here for more information.