Monday, August 16, 2010

Start Internet Marketing in 4 Steps

To start Internet marketing, there are four basic steps you need to do.
  1. Pick a profitable niche.
  2. Find product to sell to the niche.
  3. Create an Internet presence.
  4. Market
Pick a Profitable Niche
A niche is a marketing term for a group of people who are interested in the same types of things or have similar needs. "Pet owners" a group of people who have similar interests and needs. A niche usually refers to a smaller group such as cat owners, or dog training.

The real secret to picking a niche, is to find something you like to do or enjoy knowing about.

Find a Product to Sell
There are all sorts of products out there, or perhaps you have your own creation. You can search for wholesalers and choose to either stock or drop ship products to customers.

Or, if you do not want to be involved with inventory, you can sign up with various affiliate programs. Affiliate marketing is a popular way to start Internet marketing. With affiliate programs, you get paid commission for selling other peoples products. Amazon has an affiliate program where you can make money when people you refer to their site make purchases.

Create an Internet Presence
We are talking about Internet Marketing. To start Internet marketing, you need to be on the Internet. This means you have to create a website. This means you need to learn all of the technical things about creating and hosting a website.

You can use Web 2.0 properties as an alternate or adjunct. Web 2.0 properties can make creating an Internet presence more simple, but you do not have total control of your site.

Market
After you have created your website, you need make people aware of it. The number one way people find product on the web is that they search for it. This means that your web presence needs to be designed in a way that search engines will point the searchers to your website. The process for doing this is known as search engine optimization (SEO).

An alternative, or better yet an addition to SEO, is advertising. You can advertise both on-line and offline. On-line advertising is know as pay per click (PPC). Search engines sell advertising space along with popular websites and blogs. A popular source of off-line advertising is magazines.

You can also get word out by getting involved in on-line communities revolving around your niche.

Do It
If you can follow the four simple steps, you can learn to make money internet marketing. Is it really that easy?

There is a catch. You need to know what to do.
If you do not know what to do, but you know you want to get the skills to make money on-line and you know that you can be taught, then check out the Internet training resources below.

Sunday, August 15, 2010

You Can Make Money Selling Online

Even in a recession you can make money on the net. The principles are simple, and they are similar to starting up any other business. The advantage of creating an on-line business, is that you can start with minimal capital and simply use a lot of hard work.

Hard work is what it takes to start a business, any business. Is this you? Or would you rather just punch a clock and do your time for an employer? It is truly much easier to work for someone else. The downside is that you are being paid for your time. The only way to earn more money is to put in more time.

You are being paid for your time whether you do anything or not. When you own the business, you only get paid when you sell something. Being in business is all about selling things and services. It is a different mindset. There is a learning curve to achieve a business mindset.

The next thing you need to do is find something to sell. It can be anything. It can be your own product, or products created by other people. You can sell anything as long as there is a demand for it, and you know how to market.

But before you market, you have to hang out your shingle. You need a store. In the real world, this means leasing store space. To make money selling on-line, it means creating a web site. 

Creating a website is a technical skill that you will need to acquire or pay someone to do it for you.

Marketing begins with your website. You need to create your site in such a way that people will find your site via the search engines. This means you have to tailor the text on your site to match the words users put in the search engine when they are looking for your product.

But writing search engine friendly text is not enough. You also have to write copy that will make the users want buy from you. People who do this well are know as copywriters.

Finally, setting up a store, or building a website is not enough. You need to tell the world that you are out there. This can be done by word of mouth, or by advertising.

So, the things you need to make money on the web are:
  • Business mindset
  • A product (or products) to sell
  • A web site
  • Marketing know how.
That is quite a few things to know about.

I cannot help you with your business mindset. However, if you have the mindset, and need to know about finding products to sell on-line, setting up web sites and on-line marketing, you can get training to make money online by click the links below.

Saturday, August 14, 2010

Affiliate Marketing Beginner Information

1. What is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is selling product for commission. You are not responsible for creating the product. You are not responsible for fulfillment. You are only responsible for connecting people to the product. Affiliate marketing is one way you can make money on-line.

2. What is my role as an affiliate marketer?
Your role as an affiliate marketer is to find an audience or market, find a product in which the audience is interested, and bring the two together. As part of the connection, you need to encourage the audience to take action. Action may consist of buying the product, clicking through to a sales page, or having them sign up for something.

3. What is a market?
An market is a group of people who have a common interest. It may be something like pets, fishing or sports. A hungry market is group of people who have a similar problem to solve. An example of this would be a group of people who want to know how to stop their dog from barking.

4. What is a niche market?
The last example identifies a small group of people with a specific need. This group consists of a sliver of all dog owners, and a smaller sliver of all pet owners. Identifying a market segment this small is known as identifying a niche. A niche market is a specific group of people with a specific need.

5. How do I choose a market?
There are two ways to choose a market. You can find an area where you have interest. Or, you can find and follow trends and market to the people who are creating the trend.

6. How do I find a product?
Once you have identified a market of interest, you can narrow your search for products to sell. Many companies have joined into groups know as affiliate networks. The affiliate networks allow you to search through the product offerings of the member companies. When you find something you would like to promote, you have to join the network. The network is responsible for collecting the commission from the orders which you have generated, and pay you.

Some companies do not belong to an affiliate network, but they still have affiliate programs. These are known as independent affiliate companies. To locate these companies, you can use an Internet search engine. Use the product name or market as your search term and add the phrase "affiliate" or "affiliate program". When you sell a product for an independent affiliate, you will be paid directly by the company.

7. How do I promote my product?
The next step is promoting your product. But that is a lengthy discussion for another article.
This article itself really glosses over what is really necessary to understand affiliate marketing. A short article does not do justice in giving you the information necessary.

Click links below for effective affiliate training programs where you can get the information, resources and support you need to understand affiliate marketing.

Friday, August 13, 2010

Newbie Affiliate Marketing Basics

Affiliate marketing is about connecting people (buyers) to people who have products (sellers). When you have successfully made the connect, the seller will pay you commission on the sale.
The initial challenge of affiliate marketing is to find a niche, and finding a product to sell to the niche.

A niche is a group of people with a specific need. An example of a niche is the group of people with dogs that have behavior problems. Another niche may be people trying to get their ex-lover back.

After identifying the niche, you need to find a product. You can find products through an affiliate network, or by searching for independent affiliates on the Internet.

Once you have identified a niche and have a product to promote, you need a place of business. In the Internet world your place of business is a website, or minimally a web page.

It is on this web page where you the niche meets the product or service to fulfill their need. Whether or not you are successful at making this connection depends on many factors such as how well you identified the niche and its need, how useful the product is to the niche and the presentation, both of your web page and the sales page of the affiliate company.

Once you set up your place of business (your website), you need to attract visitors. You need to help the people in the niche to find your website. People coming to you website is know as traffic. Getting that traffic is known as promotion.

There are two basic ways to get traffic to a website. This true for any place of business. You attract traffic by word of mouth, advertising and location.

Word of mouth advertising requires you to make your rounds on the Internet. You let the world know what you are up to by visiting forums and user groups, commenting on blogs and writing articles for article directories and blogs.

Over zealous word of mouth advertising is known as spam. Please do not do that.
The second way to promote your site is through advertising. You can buy advertising on search engines and on blogs.

And finally, good location is important. Location in the Internet world is having your site rank on the first page of the search engine results. The process of ranking high in the search engine results is known as search engine optimization.

Two respectable sources for Internet marketing education.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Why You Are Not Making Money With Affiliate Marketing

It seems like it would be easy to make money on-line. You have been at it for a while, and is just not working for you. It may be time for you to do something else.

Maybe you just are not cut out to be an Internet marketer. It does take a certain skill set. You need to know:
  • how to develop web pages,
  • about search engine optimization,
  • how to write converting copy, and
  • how to promote your site.
Maybe you are not cut out to be an entrepreneur. An entrepreneur is someone who is:
  • always looking for opportunity,
  • always working to solve a problem,
  • is out there promoting their business, and
  • works tirelessly day an night to make their business success.
They are not spending their time on the computer reading, researching, visiting web forums and mistake it for taking action. Taking action is the same thing as doing work. You need to work to become successful.

The difference between creating your own job and working for someone else is mindset. When you work for someone else, you are being paid for your time. When you are paid for your time, sitting at the computer surfing and researching appear to be work.
Perhaps as an employee you are paid for output (piece work). This is closer to what an Internet marketer gets paid to do.

In affiliate marketing, you really do not get paid for output. Output is what creates the opportunity to get paid.

What pays the bills in affiliate marketing and for all entrepreneurs is sales. You only get paid when you sell something. This is true of all business.

Salesmen for companies know this the best. They get paid commission for sales they make. These sales are what bring revenue into the company. This revenue is what goes to pay the salary for everyone else in the company, whether they are surfing the Internet or not.

You cannot make sales if you are spending all your time researching, visiting forums and otherwise frittering away your time on the Internet.

You need to be actively creating campaigns and taking action to promote. This means actively engaging in creating web sites, engaging in search engine optimization, article marketing and working an advertising campaign.

If you are doing this and still having issues. It may be time to get some help. Seek others who are doing what you are trying to do and are successful at it. Do like they do.

So, what about you? Are you someone who just is not willing to put in the work to become a successful internet marketer? Or are you someone who is sincerely trying, but could use some help and encouragement?

Training helps you become smarter with your marketing efforts and methods. Support helps you to follow through. 

Effective Training and Helpful support

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Understanding An Affiliate Marketing Niche

With affiliate marketing it is important to market to a niche. This is not only true for affiliate marketing, but for marketing in general.

The easiest way to understand a niche is to take a top down view. In the economy, there are many industries. These industries create products for sale. The word industry is also used to classify products in groups. For example, there is the pet industry; there is the health care industry; there is the toy industry.

So, industry is used to classify products into markets. A market is a group of people who are interested in purchasing products made by the industry.
Industry can be viewed as the producers, and the market can be viewed as the consumers. But when we talk about an affiliate marketing niche, the distinction often gets blurred.

A niche is a small segment of a market or industry, depending on you point of view. It is best explained by example.

Take the pet industry for example. The market for the pet industry is pet owners. This group can be divide by the type of pet, such as dog owners, cat owners, fish owners, etc.

These are still large groups of people, and they can be further subdivided. For example, dog owners can be separated by the type of dog they own, such as poodle owners, boxer owners, etc.

The dog owner group can also be subdivided by what they need. They may need dog food, dog collars, veterinary services, dog training services, and all sorts of other things.
So what is a niche? A niche is a sliver of an industry group or market. It is a specific group of people who need a select group of things or particular services.

So why is a niche important for affiliate marketing?
When people are searching for things on the Internet, they are searching for specific information. They are trying to solve a problem or filling a need. The problem or need can be mapped to a certain niche.

To be successful at affiliate marketing, actually all marketing, you need to understand the needs of the people in the niche. You need to understand how they search for information, how to get them to your site, and how you are going to solve their problem or need. You need to become an expert within that niche.

There is another reason why you need to find a niche, you cannot be everything to everyone. By selecting a niche for your affiliate marketing efforts, you can focus.

Understanding niches is an important aspect in Internet Marketing. If this is new to you, and you would like more information about affiliate marketing and training.

Links for effective training options

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Internet Marketing Campaign Techniques

There are three basic techniques for launching an Internet marketing campaign. However, prior to to starting the campaign, you need to have a few things decided and set up.

It is assumed that before you launch your Internet marketing campaign you have already established three things: a target audience, a product and a website. Then you are ready to begin marketing.

There are three basic ways to promote on the Internet. They one thing they all have in common is to drive traffic to your site. Ideally, it is targeted traffic.

The first technique is an electronic form of "word of mouth".

You want to tell everyone you can, especially those who would be particularly interested, that you have something great to offer.

You can search the Internet to for groups of people who are naturally interested in your target niche. You can find these people hanging out at forums, users groups, and in various social networking sites groups, like a face book group. Strike up conversations, make friends, and let them know what you have to offer.

Another way to get the word out is with article marketing. With article marketing, you write articles and submit them to various article directories. The idea here is that people read your article in the article directory, and follow the link back to your site.

The two above techniques can be effective, but they require a lot of time on your part. And, if you do it wrong, you will be viewed as a spammer. Then everyone loses.

The second technique is to advertise.

The most popular way to advertise is to buy ads on search engine results pages. These are the sponsored listings found in the search engine results when you search for something.

You create ads targeted to the keywords which are entered by the users to perform the search. The search engine gets paid anytime someone clicks on these ads. This type of advertising is known as pay per click or PPC.

When someone clicks on the ad, they are taken directly to a website chosen by an advertiser. The advertiser then pays the search engine for the click. PPC is an effective method to get a lot of traffic to your web page.

The third technique is to launch an e-mail campaign.

With e-mail marketing, you simply create a series of e-mails with links back to your site and send it out to a target list.

With e-mail marketing, you need to have already acquired a list of people in the target niche. 

Creating an e-mail list is a campaign in itself. However, once you have a list, you will always have a ready made audience for your campaign.

Launching an Internet marketing campaign is a bit of an art. It takes practice, experimentation and learning from others.

If you are a beginner, or even if you have figured it out, you can still take it to the next level with these two Internet Marketing Training resources below.

Monday, August 9, 2010

Affiliate Marketing Success in 5 Steps

Affiliate marketing success comes from doing these five things better than others.

1. Finding a need
The first and foremost thing you need to do is to find a need. This is true for any business, not just the Internet marketing business. You need to find a "hungry audience."

Once you have found your audience, then you can fill their needs. The most important thing about finding your audience, is find an audience with a specific need. This is known as a niche.

For example, you initially might decide that your audience is pet owners. This is a large group. It is better to focus on a smaller audience such as dog owners who have dogs that bark too much.

2. Finding a product

Finding your audience is the first step. The second step is to find a product, or products, which will fulfill the needs of the audience. This can be done by searching the various affiliate marketing networks for products and offerings.

3. Keyword Research

Once you have found your audience and product, you need to understand how your audience is going to search for that product on the Internet. They will be using one of the search engines on the Internet,

The terms that a person puts into the search engine are known as keywords. It is your job as an Internet marketer to determine what keywords they will use in the search engines to solve their need. This process is known as keyword research.

The next part of the keyword research is to assess the competition. How many people have websites which are targeting your keywords. You will be ahead targeting less popular keywords that have high traffic.

4. Create a web page

The Internet consists of millions of websites. Each website has at least one web page. Search engines index these web pages. So, if you want an affiliate marketing business, by definition, you will need to create web pages.

So what goes on these web pages? Content showcasing your product in a manner that will convince the searcher to take action. The strategies to do this vary by product, audience and the readiness of the searcher to buy.

The other thing that goes on your web page are the keywords you are targeting. If the keywords are not on your web page, how are the search engines going to find you?

5. Promotion

The final step is promotion. You need to define a strategy to promote your affiliate page. There are two main strategies: article marketing and advertising ( pay per click).

Each method has its pluses a minuses. Pick one, and do it well.

6. Get Training

Get the proper training is an important step to success. Even if you know what to do, it always helps to learn more. Click the links below for great training resources.


Sunday, August 8, 2010

Five Facts About the Internet Affecting Your Internet Marketing Business

An Internet marketing business by definition is a business that gets its revenue from the Internet. But in order to make money online, you need to understand a few things about the Internet.

1. There are various types of users

There are people who use the Internet to be social, link up with friends and to network. And there are people who use the Internet to get information. Of those people who are seeking information, you have readers, and buyers. Readers are seeking information to consume. Buyers are seeking a product to fulfill a need.

For an Internet marketing business, you need the buyers.

2. It is hard to get noticed

There are a lot of web pages in existence (maybe a Google or so). That is a lot of noise and competition. As with any business, the most important thing your Internet Marketing business needs to do, is to get noticed. This is a continual and constant battle you need to fight.

3. You need a web page

This is the Internet. The Internet consists of interlinked websites. Websites are created from web pages. This means that an Internet Marketing business deals with promoting web pages.
You need to either create your own pages, or promote pages for someone else.

4. You have to understand search engines

When people are seeking information on the Internet, they use search engines. They type words into a search box, click enter and hope to find something.

What that something is, if it is the right something, should be one of the web pages you are promoting.

The words people type into the search box are called keywords. The process of getting your site to on the first page of the search engine results page (SERP) for particular keywords is known as search engine optimization (SEO).

A successful Internet Marketing company needs to be an expert in SEO.
Or not....

5. Search Engine Marketing

You could just advertise. When search engines display results, they display results from the web pages that they have indexed, and they display advertising.

You can buy these ads. The cost is dependent on the the competition for the key word, and where in the SERPs you would like your ad to appear.

So, the five facts that you need to understand about the Internet for your Internet Marketing business:
  1. You want buyers and not socialites or readers
  2. It is difficult to get noticed
  3. You need a web page to promote
  4. You need to understand search engines to get noticed
  5. You can use advertising to get noticed
Learn About Internet Marketing

It can be challenging to work your own Internet marketing business. As you have read there is a lot to learn, do and there are constant challenges. Successful entrepreneurs get training to become more knowledgeable in their business.

Through the links below you can join these successful people and get the Internet marketing business training that you need.

Saturday, August 7, 2010

The 80-20 Rule of Internet Marketing

The 80-20 rule is also known as the Pareto principle. The rule states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes (definition from Wikipedia).
So how does the 80 - 20 rule apply to Internet marketing?

Let us start at the beginning. When you are beginning Internet marketing, you spend 80 percent of your time learning, and 20 percent of your time doing.

The biggest challenge when you are starting out, is to break the 80% passive learning cycle into an active 80% action cycle while allowing only 20% of your time in passive training.
So, once you become an active Internet marketer, you spend 80 percent of your time doing and 20 percent of your time learning.

That is not to say that you stop learning. You still learn as you are doing. The 20% training time applies to conscious learning time to gather new information and techniques to use.
What else are you doing as an active Internet marketer? 20 percent of your time will be going to building sites about products to promote. The remaining 80% of the time, you will be promoting your site.

This means, for instance if you are article marketing, 20% of the time you will be writing or spinning articles. The rest of the time, you will be pushing them to article directories.
If you are using pay per click (PPC), 20% of the ads will make 80% of the income. The rest of the ads will break even or lose money.

That is, the bottom 20 percent of your ads will cost you. It is quite possible for the bottom 20 percent to completely wipe out the profits of your campaign.

And finally, you will find 20 percent of your sites producing 80 percent of your income.
Some quick takes:
  • 80 percent of your time should be doing and not reading, checking stats, hanging out on forums, etc.
  • 20 percent of your sites will make 80 percent of your income, concentrate on making those more profitable
  • Repeat what you have learned from your top 20 percent of your sites to scale your profits.
  • Spend 20% of your time on new techniques and experimentation.
  • Your next 80% of profits will come from the about 20% of experimentation
Finally, your success in internet marketing will come from 20% of your efforts. Find ways to eliminate the waste in the other 80 percent.

If you are the type of person who is tired of wasting 80% of your time trying to figure out this Internet marketing stuff or 80% of your money on ineffective training then click on these two links to help you get to the top 20%.




Friday, August 6, 2010

The Various Hats of Internet Marketing

There are many different hats which you can wear as an Internet marketer.

Story Teller
As a story teller, you write articles and let people know about interesting things. It is your job as a story teller to engage the audience. Then you lead them story by story and create more interest in the products which you are promoting.

As a story teller, you job is to get people interested in what you are promoting and get them to take action.

Informant/Expert
As an informant, you tell people things that they would like to know. You answer questions that they have. You help them out.

When you continue to quality information, eventually your audience will perceive you as an expert.
As an expert, you can lead them to the best product to will help them.

Critic
As a critic, you are a comparison shopper. You analyze products for the good and bad points. You compare products, feature by feature and benefit by benefit.

As a critic, you inform your audience about what is available, how it stacks up and lead them to an informed decision to pick your product.

Copywriter
As a copywriter, you are getting people to excited about your offerings. You write compelling copy to make sure that they understand that their needs are being met with the product.

As a copywriter, it is your job to ensure that the reader takes action.

Publicist/Marketer
As a publicist or marketer, your job is to get the word out. This can be done many ways. You can use press releases. You can social bookmark,. And you can actively participate in forums and user groups.

As a publicist, you want the world to know about what you have to offer. You are obligated to do this in a responsible manner without spamming.

Advertiser
As an advertiser, you are responsible for creating and placing ad copy. Advertising can take the form of buying ads on search engines. Or you can buy content based ads and have your ads displayed on various websites.

As an advertiser, it is your responsibility to budget and run an effective ad campaign.

Web Developer
There is a technical side to Internet marketing. You need to have websites promoting your products. When you create a web site, you become a web developer.

Project Manager
There are a lot of hats you can wear to do the many different types of web marketing. If you are doing it all yourself, or having others help you, you have to manage it all. This makes you a project manager.

Become an Effective Internet Marketer
Wearing all these different hats can be intimidating to a beginning internet marketer. If you are overwhelmed, need some help, or just want to become a better internet marketer, then get some training.

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Win at Affiliate Marketing by Failing

Your journey to success in affiliate marketing is through failures. Successful people know how to fail gracefully.

Success, or failure, as an affiliate marketer is not generally due to a lack or strength of technical ability, web development skills or a past history of marketing. Success on-line is often a result of failure.

Many successful Internet marketer have experiences where times where their campaigns have failed. They may have lost money trying something new. Or, maybe they have researched relentlessly to find a "sure thing", only to find their efforts fail. It is part of the business.

By learning to fail, or more correctly learning from failure, you will learn to succeed. You increase your skills by trying something, and learning from it. You can learn from when it works, and more importantly, you can learn from when it did not work.

A failure is not necessarily a bad thing. You need to think of it as a learning experience. It is a stepping stone to a successful campaign.

A failure means you need to adjust what you are doing. When you first learned to ride a bicycle you probably fell a few times. You kept on getting back on it and made adjustments about the way you did things. Then at some point, you were no longer falling and were enjoying the freedom of riding the bicycle.

If you stopped trying after you fell off the bicycle the first time, or even the second or third time. you would have never discovered the joys of bicycling.

Internet marketing is the same way. You start with no prior knowledge, and you try things. You start out slow, and you learn. You speed up and you fail. Then you get back on, and try again.

If you give up when you fail the first time. you become another statistic. If you have the desire and the passion to succeed, you will succeed.

Learning from your failures means you have to try something. But in order to try something, you need to get training. You need to have ideas of things to try.

And then you try them. When things do not work out, it is time to learn from your mistakes. But knowing where you went wrong is not always obvious.

It is important to get feedback on your failures so that you can see and learn. Otherwise, you may be tempted to repeat yourself, and keep making the same mistakes over and over again.

You can join an organization where you can get all of the tools to achieve success online. If you truly set goals and follow the techniques in these organizations, you can be earning full time income in a year with affiliate marketing. 

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Look at the Upside of Affiliate Marketing

Are you on the fence about affiliate marketing? Are you not sure if Internet marketing is for you? Here are four reasons to give it a go.

1. You might get more than you could have hoped.

Perhaps you are starting your affiliate marketing career with modest dreams such as earning just part-time income. As you try to achieve this goal, it just might turn out better that you imagined.
You just might get more than you hoped. Maybe, it will become full-time income. Or perhaps, it could turn you independently wealthy.

Most millionaires just wanted to make money, and along the way they made more money than they ever dreamed.

2. You might get something which you never imagined.

So you are uncertain that you Internet marketing is for you, but you chose to try anyway, learn a few things and join an on-line community or two for support.

As you experiment, you may make some money, but you find Internet marketing not rewarding otherwise. All of it is not lost, you may have gained something unexpected.
But you may discover that perhaps you like writing copy. Perhaps you could now try copy writing for an ad agency.

Or perhaps, you made a friend or so in the on-line communities. You find that you can join up because each of you like to do what the other does not, and you become a successful Internet marketing team.

Or maybe, during your research, you came across something in which you are really, really interested. Now you would like to pursue a career in that area.

None of this was your intent when you started affiliate marketing. It was just an accidental, beneficial outcome that happened, just because you tried.

3. The outcome may be more likely to happen than you think

Affiliate marketing, like all jobs, requires you to work. But is it hard work? You do not know until you try. Perhaps, it will come to you easier than you think.
The only way to find out is to try it.

4. You outcomes happen at a much smaller price than you had thought

There is a possibility to spend a lot of money learning about affiliate marketing. You can experiment with pay per click advertising, and spend a lot of money with no return. There are a lot of programs that offer you training at lofty prices. More expensive does not necessarily mean better, or even different when it comes to training.

There are free ways to do affiliate marketing, and there are modestly price training options available. It does not have to cost you a lot to try.

Now that you know the upside. Let's talk about the downside. You need training. Without it, there is no way you can become successful. 

Training Resources

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Three Roadblocks to Affiliate Marketing Success

Do not let these three roadblocks stop you from pursuing affiliate marketing.

1. Feeling like a fool

Any time you start anything new, there are well meaning family and friends who will advise you against it. Your family, friends, peers and whoever else, will start making you aware of all the possible problems involved with your decision to become an Internet marketer, and the many pitfalls of working for yourself. They seem so smart, and know what is best for you. You soon begin to feel like a fool if you go on with your decision.

It is okay to be the fool. Take the time to research if affiliate marketing is for you. There are cost-effective ways to learn and try to make money on-line.

Try a small step at a time. When you find out it is something that you can, and want to do, you can commit fully to it.

When you become successful, then "all of them" will be the fools.

2. Fatigue

Fatigue tries to stop you in many things. It whispers in your ear, "Let it go." "Give up." "Stop trying." "Go home."

If you start out affiliate marketing part-time while holding down a job, fatigue is going to be bending your ear. Fatigue does not care about your best interests. It will try to win at all costs.

Do not let fatigue convince you that the rewards of affiliate marketing are not there. Rest if you must, but keep on keeping on.

Why should being tired convince you that there is no upside?

3. You have been burned before

You have bought expensive training. You have tried other "get rich schemes". You are not about to fall victim again and have your hopes and dreams shattered.

Affiliate marketing is not a "get rich scheme". It is a method for making money, not so different from other ways of making money. They all require work and commitment.

The reality is that you may have to kiss a lot of frogs to find a way to make money which works for you. You have to try a lot of things so that you have an opportunity to find something to suitable for you. If you focus on all of the ways you have failed, you will not put out the effort necessary, because you are afraid something bad will happen.

The less effort you put out, the fewer good things will happen and you will become convinced that there is no reward for your effort.

Becoming successful requires perseverance, training and support. You have to provide the first. You can get training and support by clicking any these to links.


Monday, August 2, 2010

A Starter Guide to Internet Marketing

If you are new to affiliate or Internet marketing, you may want to start out simply. There is one fact, you have to set up a website, or at least a web page, to promote your wares. The other fact is that you will need to write content. You need content for your website. You need content to promote your website. Even if, you use Pay Per Click advertising to promote your wares, you will still need to point it at some kind of web page. So these three facts are a given:

  • You need to create web page
  • You need to create content for the web page
  • You need to promote your web page

So if you are all new to this, the simplest place to start is with a Web 2.0 site. There are different types of Web 2.0 sites. Some will let you create a whole website. Others will let you create a blog. Others will let you publish articles. Still others are an hybrid between an article publisher and a website. This is the type of Web 2.0 property I recommend for your initial foray on to the web.

The two popular examples of hybrid websites are Squidoo.com and HubPages.com.

The reason to use one of these to sites is that:

  • They are fairly simple to use.
  • You can learn the basics of creating web pages and HTML.
  • You can learn to write effective content. You can monetize your page.
  • You have a page which you can practice promoting.
The art of making money with Internet marketing is to write content that attracts web search traffic that does not look like spam. Each of these Web 2.0 sites have a community that reviews the content of the site. So, if by accident, you write spam-like content, you might have your page banned. Also, if you make some friends in the community, you have a chance to get critical feedback of your work.

You still will have to promote the page, just as you would if you created a site owned and controlled by you. The reality, there is a lot of trial and error that goes into making a successful, profitable website. These sites put the necessary constraints on you to learn how to do things properly without creating a lot more spam on the web.

Ultimately it is better, and more profitable, to have your own sites. Use the free sites for learning until you get it. Then, start spending your own money on your own sites.