Making money online is an art form. It takes patients and persistence for one to achieve the results he or she is looking for. However, the journey can be shorten with knowledge regarding marketing. The majority of network marketers focuses on traffic generation and leads to increase their online presence throughout the internet world. The key to any successful campaign, is knowing what your audience want and how to get them to your product or services.For example, when marketing real estate, I always have found that locating the buyer first, getting them qualified, analyzing what type of home they want then proceed with locating the property produces positive results. Worked every time! I did this without the power of the internet.

The internet is a little different than personal contact, because one can’t see you and of course, you can’t offer your client coffee. All is based on words on your websites, sales page etc. One must create a social atmosphere with visitors in order to make money online by giving away tons of valued information to keep visitors coming back. Social Networking is positive proof of creating valuable relationships that will increase your money making skills dramatically with a little time. In fact you can build your own page, market your business, find new clients and keep up with family. Best of all you can do all of this free of charge.

Start by joining as many social networks as possible, especially the ones that are aimed towards business opportunities, making money online, marketing, etc. Check out Synergy, Facebook and Myspace to start. Reasons being, with social networks, the traffic is already their and growing everyday especially if you catch them around launch time. Your profile or page is always looked at because you are one of the first members that signed up. This gives you a jump on others to market your product or services. However, social networking has found new forms of expression on the internet which has helped to reshape the purpose and protocols of social networking in the online world and beyond. How to apply this in a corporate environment will be the next major challenge .

The possibilities are endless. Most social networks have blogs that enable you to place your articles or content with a link to your product or services. One can also start a class on how to make money with your services online. For example, Insurance agents that specializes in diabetic care enables clients with diabetes to obtain free diabetic shoes and other services that are not known to individuals that suffer with this illness. Concentrate your efforts on content and the value of that content. Start by interviewing people on your subject matter, taking surveys and upload your results to Google video or post them on your page that you created on one of the social networks. Making money online takes a little work up front and most of that is time consumption but well worth the effort in the end.

Share on Facebook

So you ve decided to start your own business: whether it s selling your own products or providing a service you think a lot of customers will pay for, it does not matter. You have just discovered the abilities of the Internet, and now want to use it to spread your word. But Where do I start? you ask yourself. You have already made your own website, and have put up snazzy pictures of your products. Now, you have to find a way to pull in customers but how? Before anything else, however, you must first be familiar with how businesses work online.

You are going to have to use the method Multilevel marketing (more commonly known as MLM, or referred to as network marketing) as a way to alert people about your business. It is definited as a popular method of distributing and selling products or services using independent distributors instead of having to rely on traditional retail outlets. Basically, you are your own boss, employee and store doesn t that appeal to you? And that is only the tip of the iceberg.

One of the most popular way to advertise and market your own products is through the model Pay per click, or PPC ads. They appear on all sorts of websites, from search engines, to social networks, to blogs, and everything else in between. You have most likely come across them in almost every website you have visited. Usually, they are those small blurbs or pictures that you see on every corner of a page, advertising a product that is somewhat related to the content of the site. Those PPC ads are also called sponsored links, and advertisers only pay when an interested party clicks on the advertisement, and is taken to the advertiser s website. It is possible to purchase certain keywords that will trigger your PPC ads to appear, but in order to create an ad, you have to pay a PPC provider (usually a big company such as Google Adwords or Facebook). Fixed pays are usually available.

When making your PPC ads, it is good to insert a memorable picture that will efficiently tell the viewer what exactly you are offering. State the nature of your product or service clearly, and mention any good deals or sales that will catch the reader s eye. Pick something simple and not too flashy so you will not turn off your viewer. Also, when inputting the keywords that will trigger your PPC ads, be sure to to use relevant and specific keywords that people are most likely to search. This way, PPC ads will be able to help your MLM business flourish!

Now that you know how to market your products a little better, you will be able to succeed in the business you have always wanted to manage. Thanks to the Internet, it is now easier for everyone to spread their ideas with the world. Advertise your business today, with your veyr own pay per click ads, and watch your popularity soar.

Share on Facebook

Using email marketing to enhance the traffic and sales to your website can be a confusing process if you don’t understand the psychology of the market. Email marketing can actually be a very effective tool in promoting your website if you know how to make them stand out.

Your main objective in your email marketing is to get the reader to take action, right? It is really pointless if you have a list and email to that list and when they open up your email they do not click on the link within your email. Your ultimate objective for building a list is to get them to click on the link in that email. Michael Cheney refers to a process he describes as the “list building chain.” There is a process rendered that builds trust and it is one link building upon another. In short, he refers to the first link of the list building chain as getting traffic to your website. That is followed by an opt in page and actually getting them to opt in. The next link would be receiving an email from you after opting in. Opening up the email would be the next successive link and the final link is that the individual takes action by clicking on the link placed within the email.

To be effective in your email marketing the first step is to put yourself in the shoes of your customer. What is the first thing you notice when you receive an email? You notice the subject of the email. When creating the subject of the email and to get the reader to open up that email it is important that you implement what is known as the “power of you” or the power of the word, “you.” There is not a more important word or word that people like reading more, in marketing, than “you.”

Consider the following two examples:

I just found this great program that will be generating me a lot of cash through my blog. This program will change my life by giving me not only more financial freedom but freedom of Time too. I m so excited about this program that I can t wait to put it into action and make a lot of money with it.

Now how does that make you feel? You probably feel, “Who cares? It’s got nothing to do with me.”

“You’re really going to love this new method that I’ve discovered for you. You’re going to discover exactly how you can make a lot more money on the internet, and you’re going to be able to explode your earnings and make so much more money for yourself. You’re going to have a lot more free time and you’re going to be rich beyond your wildest dreams.”

How does that sound? It sounds a lot better, right? It’s pretty much the same thing, but what have I done? I changed the wording and made it about you, and that’s what you need to do in all your marketing. Start using “you” more than “I” “me” or “myself.”

It has been statistically proven that the more times you can include the word “you,” the more times people will actually buy from you. This is because it speaks to them; it reaches out and touches somebody.

As you create emails look at the content and especially the subject line and you i fy it. Use the word
you and place you, your and yours in as many places as you can. It is important to occasionally give background information to build the story about who you are, where you ve come from and why you re marketing online. More importantly, though, you should answer their questions and help them overcome the issues or problems that they face.

Another important attention grabber is using a person’s name in the subject line. Nothing is more important to them than their own name. Auto responders have what is known as a “first name tag.” When you place the first name tag it will use their name so that it appears with the greeting as, “Hi John” or “Greetings Beth.”

A final suggestion in writing an email that creates cash is using curiosity. Humans are very curious creatures. We like to know what’s on the other side or what the secret is. You can use this idea to your advantage. Ask a question in the subject like, “Do you know the answer to XYZ?” “Can you guess what this is?” or “What does this sound like?”

You can even write a half sentence, “The biggest mistake online is….” and then they need to open it to actually find what the biggest mistake online is. You can even combine these methods by using the word you, their first name and curiosity in one line, John, this is most important to you. It s called…

These are some tools and text devices that you can use to make sure that people are actually going to read your email. Test these ideas and see if your emails don t start creating the response you desire. Taking the time to conduct these tests can make the difference between an effective email marketing campaign and one that is a flop.

Share on Facebook

No matter how hard some people try to mystify SEO, it is not as complicated as many would lead you to believe. Despite all the techno jargon that many in the field will throw at you: SERPs, SEM, PageRank, Keyword Density, Vertical Search, Algorithms.. SEO is really simple to do if you understand some basic concepts and follow some easy steps.

Search Engine Optimization is getting your content listed in all the top positions in Google, Yahoo and MSN for your targeted keywords. When someone does a keyword search in a search engine for your particular subject or niche – you want your site or content to be at the top of the list.

Here are 10 SEO tactics that have worked and are working for me at this moment in time.

1. Quality Content is and always will be your number one factor for getting high rankings and keeping them. You must understand search engines are simply businesses who supply a product like any other company. That product is information. They must offer quality results to anyone using their service to solve a problem, answer a question or to buy a product. The more relevant, the more targeted the search solution they return, the higher the overall quality of their product and the more popular their search engine will become. Providing quality content is vital for SEO success.

2. Keywords are your number one tools for achieving high rankings. You must understand keywords and how they work on the web. You must know how many searches are made each day for your chosen keywords. Sites like Wordtracker and Seobook will give you a rudimentary number of searches. Design your pages around your targeted keywords and don’t forget to do some deep-linking to these pages on your site. Find and build backlinks to these interior keyword pages and not just to your home page or domain URL. Picking keywords with medium to low competition has worked out well for me. So too has using the more targeted and higher converting “long-tail” keywords been very beneficial for me.

3. Onpage Factors and site design will play a major role in the spidering and indexing of your site/content. Make sure all your pages are SEO friendly, made sure all your pages can be reached from your homepage and no pages should be no more than three levels away from it – keeping a sitemap listing all your major pages makes the search engines happy. Make sure you have all your meta tags such as title, description, keywords… are all optimized. (Title = around 65 characters, Description = around 160 characters) Remember, your title and description should not only be keyword targeted but these are the first contact/impression anyone will see of your site – make sure you use them to draw and entice interested visitors to your site and content. Also make sure your title and URL are keyword matched for maximum effect. Having your major keyword in your Domain Name also helps, using a pike | to separate different elements of your title has helped my rankings, so too does having your keyword in the first and last 25 words on your pages.

4. Google will send you the most qualified traffic so concentrate the majority of your SEO efforts on Google. Don’t ignore Yahoo! or MSN but Google is king of search so give it the respect it deserves. With its new browser, Google’s influence will only grow stronger so you must optimize your pages for Google. Use Google’s Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics to fine-tune your pages/content for Google. I also use Google Alerts to keep up on my niche keywords and for comment link-building on the newly created pages Google is indexing.

5. Link Building is still the most effective way to boost your search rankings. Make sure you get backlinks from relevant sites related to your niche market and make sure the ‘anchor text’ is related to your keywords but don’t ignore the text and overall quality of the content linking to you. The anchor text is the underlined/clickable portion of a link. Don’t forget linking is a two-way street, make sure you link out to high quality, high ranked relevant sites in your niche.

6. Article Marketing is a well established method of getting quality backlinks and it still works. Writing short 500 – 700 word informative helpful articles with your backlinks in the resource box is still very effective for getting targeted traffic and backlinks. Longer articles have also worked for me and I use an extensive network of distribution including SubmitYourArticle, Isnare, Thephantomwriters… plus other major online sites. Don’t forget the whole element of blogging and RSS feeds in your article distribution. And always remember you’re also using these articles to pre-sale your content or products. Don’t forget to leverage sites like Squidoo, Hubpages… to increase your rankings and traffic.

7. Onsite Traffic Hubs have worked extremely well for me. These traffic hubs are whole sections of your site devoted to one sub-division of your major theme. For example, if you have a site on Gifts, then wedding gifts could be a separate section. This would be fully fleshed out with extensive pages covering everything dealing with wedding gifts – a self-contained keyword rich portion of your site on wedding gifts. Works similar as a sub-domain but I prefer using a directory to divide it up, such as yourdomain/wedding_gifts. (Most experts suggest always using a hyphen in your urls but underscores have worked fine for me.) Search engines love these keyword/content rich hubs but keep in mind you’re creating content to first satisfy your visitors.

8. WordPress blog software is extremely effective for SEO purposes. WordPress software is easy to install on your site even if you have no experience with installing server-side scripts. Besides search engines love these highly SEO friendly blogs with their well structured content and keyword tagging. I have at least one of these on all my sites to draw in the search engines and get my content indexed and ranked. I also use Blogger (owned by Google), Bloglines and other free blogs to help distribute my content.

9. Social Bookmark/Media Sites are becoming very important on the web. These include a whole range of social sites like MySpace, FaceBook, Twitter… media news sites like Digg, SlashDot, Technorati… you must get your content into this whole mix if you want to take full SEO advantage of Web 2.0 sites. You should be joining these sites and using them. It’s time consuming but it will keep you in the swing of things. One simple thing you must do is to put social bookmark buttons on all your pages so that your visitors can easily bookmark your content for you. You can use a WordPress plug-in or I like using a simple free site/service from Addthis.com which gives me a simple button to put on all my content.

10. Masterplan! Many webmasters and site owners forget to develop or have an overall masterplan/strategy when it comes to SEO. You must have an understanding of what SEO is and what it can do for you and your site. More importantly, you just don’t want SEO – you want effective SEO. In order to achieve effective SEO you must have three things: Relevance, Authority and Conversions.

First, your content/site must be relevant to the topic or niche area you’re pursuing – your content must fit in and be related to all the other sites in your niche. That’s why closely themed sites do so well in the search engines, they give only relevant content to what’s been searched for or discussed.

Second, your content/site must be perceived as an authority site on your subject or niche. Establish this authority position and the search engines will love you and your content. One way is to develop this authority, besides offering superior content, is to form links/partnerships with other perceived authority sites in your field. Always strive to make your site an authority site – tops in your niche – the one site everyone has to check before drawing or forming a conclusion.

Third, conversions should be your main goal of any SEO efforts because you want to convert your targeted traffic into site members, subscribers, buyers or just repeat visitors. If you’re into online marketing, conversions will be the most important element of the whole SEO process because you want buyers, not just visitors coming to your site.

Most of all, you must convince yourself Search Engine Optimization is not difficult, nor is it the equivalent of the online bogeyman as many would like you to believe. Used effectively, SEO can give you the targeted traffic you’re seeking, just follow some of the outlined steps/tactics listed above and you will have SEO working for you and your site in no time at all.

Share on Facebook

Large companies that have impressive advertising budgets are doing very well with animated or video directed banner ads on some of the most visited websites on the Internet. The content is creative and professional.

Many people may think of banner ads as a rectangular box with a static and stationary company logo with a clickable link. Some may remember early animated banner ads that appeared to be a game, but no matter where you clicked it took you to a business website or flashing banners that tell you that you are the 10,000th customer and a winner of some valuable prize.

Today’s banner ads are impressive and high profile. With the advent of AdSense and other Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising methods it was thought the use of banner ads was no longer something that business owners should engage in.

I think the truth is many business owners understood the value of visually appealing advertising. They could design creative ads for newsprint or television so why not the Internet. Had the notion of creativity been relegated to the fewest words with the most keyword specific target?

In the end the business owners helped reestablish banner ads with a whole new look.

Is it possible for small business owners to find success in banner advertising? Well, chances are pretty good you will not be able to successfully compete for the same ad space big business owners occupy. That being said you can look for a trusted forum that is geared toward the industry you serve. Most of these forum owners can supply an attractive price for banner advertising.

It is possible you don’t have a background in graphic design. You have two options. The first is to hire a graphic designer who can assist you in creating one or more banner ads. The second idea is to utilize the website logobogo.com. This site is filled with graphic designers who can provide logos at no cost.

What’s the catch?

The designers on this website are at various stages in their skill level. The designers accept a donation if you choose to provide one. The most professional among the ranks at this website provide design work to add material to their portfolio and to solicit additional work beyond the original free graphic work. Just make sure you ask the designer for the exact banner ad size you need (check with the site you plan on advertising with).

Most of these artists will provide one free graphic per customer and if you would like the same designer to work on additional material you may want to consider hiring them.

You do have options that include banner advertising. I’ve supplied a few ideas on ways you can go about developing a banner ad and I’ve also given you one primary location for banner ad placement. If I were to suggest another location it may likely be with an online magazine that deals with your industry.

Marketing is all about advertising. In an online environment advertising can be about Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay Per Click (PPC) or banner ads to name a few.

Explore your options and do your best to develop a plan that includes affordable ways to get your message to the buying public.

Share on Facebook

Nowadays the online world is full of network marketers, home business owners and people who wants to simply make quick cash on the Internet.
If you are one of them and your goal is to create substantial income online that will keep growing month after month providing you with better living, then you need to know a few facts before you get to work on it.

If you take a closer look at internet marketing, you can find loads of marketers following one common trend which is promoting their products all over the place. Well while this can’t be blamed and ignored it shouldn’t be the only thing to focus on.

A way more important thing is to promote yourself. When people get to know you and if you provide them with valuable information they will be more likely to trust you and to express their interest in your offer.

When it comes to self promotion, you may find a few effective ways to promote yourself online.

1. Social networking.

That’s right. Social networking sites such as Myspace, Yuwie or Facebook are great places to meet new interesting people and build relationships online. Also these are great places to promote yourself as an authority in your market.

However many network marketers forget about one important thing using Social networking sites as a way to promote themselves. They forget about promoting themselves first before they start promoting their products.

What they do is they build a list of friends and then aggressively attack them with advertising of their own products. Well for sure the strategy like that will bring them rather more “enemies” than prospects or potential customers. People won’t impulsively buy anything from someone they don’t know.

That’s why when you use social networking sites as a way to promote yourself you need to remember:

To promote yourself first by telling people your story of who you are, where you come from, what are your interests and what kind of people you are looking for to network with.

To interact with people, contact them, build relationships without mentioning your product at the first stage. Once you establish relationship with people you may gently present your offer.

To provide value for people in the form of free information they can benefit from, this way you will position yourself as an expert and get more of your online friends to trust you.

2. Article marketing

Article marketing is another powerful and free way to promote yourself. By writing articles on the subject you have experience and knowledge in, you can position yourself as an expert as well. By submitting your articles to article directories, your blogs and websites you will get more people to read them and consider you authority. You need to remember that people seek for information and giving them what they want in the form of articles you might get more prospects to your primary business.

3. Video marketing

Well, video marketing is consider a great way to promote yourself even more personalized way as people not only can hear you but also can see you as a real person ready to help them.

However video marketing is a strategy that must be used smart. Too many people tend to pretend someone they’re aren’t. They put themselves in front of the camera and claim to make millions dollars online without showing any proof of that and all of this just to get you in their scammy business opportunity.

Well the best way to promote yourself using video is to provide some valuable information in the form of tutorials that people could enjoy. This way they will associate you with value they get from you and this way you promote yourself as an honest guy who wants to help people instead of ripping them of.

People will surely appreciate that and this way they may be likely to join your business even without the need of you calling them to do so.

Promoting yourself online is all about showing who you are, how much do you know and how you can help people. Promoting yourself online might be a long process, however it may bring you loyal and lifetime business partners in the future.
To Your Success,

Share on Facebook

People in all walks of life are now so fond of the increasing popularity of facebook, friendster and Myspace. But have you ever wonder how these sites became so huge and popular? Well, it is simply because is called viral marketing.

Viral advertising or more commonly known as viral marketing is an effective marketing technique that provides brand awareness and creates the ability to have sales and achieve marketing aims. Most marketers use viral marketing to produce viral messages as well as to identify high Social Networking Potential (SNP) individuals that will be able to pass along some important marketing messages. As a matter of fact, Web 2.0 viral marketing is now present in all walks of cyber life. Whether it is an email chain letter that spreads from Inbox to Inbox or a profile on a social network site with thousands of friends, viral marketing drives the online marketplace. You can see this with the success of political figure Barack Obama. He was able to raise millions of dollars and supporters by utilizing a viral marketing campaign.

Web 2.0 is undeniably the most talk about topic in this period of time. If this is the first time that you have encountered such term, you would actually presume that it is another technology, though it isn’t really a technology at all. Web 2.0 is actually just a name which refers to the ever increasing growth of tools which are Internet based as well as the ways to use those tools. It includes AJAX, blogs, RSS, and tags. Web 2.0 deals with people who actively contribute, customize technology and media for their own intended reasons.

AJAX is a short term for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. It is actually a technology which refers to a group of Web page coding. This permits Internet user to lock in inputs to a web page even without reloading the said page. AJAX is used for interactive and effective applications on the Web. Google Maps is one of the most useful applications of AJAX.

One of the most popular technologies of Web 2.0 is the blogging. Blogging is a good way of telling stories about your experiences, about your doubts, or about anything under the sun. In short, it is just a journal that is online. Postings of blogs include audio, images, links, photos, simple text and videos. The said postings are archived and documented either by author, category or even date. Web site owners and other bloggers can directly link to particular posts through permanent links. This is a powerful tool to relay real time messages and get your point of view across instantly.

Really Simple Syndication or RSS works in a way like delivering the latest news or headlines directly to your desktop without having a hard time opening some websites or web browsers. On the other hand, tagging is the best way to find and organize URLs, projects, ideas or even photos. It is actually a good marketing method to provide catchy posts and have many visitors see it through aggregators and websites. Think of radio syndication when thinking of RSS. You have to only say it once in one location. But the world hears it where they are.

Web 2.0 is indeed a breakthrough as well as the beginning of a new era in the world of cyberspace.

Share on Facebook

Let the market know you’re out there

You may be wondering….Ok, now I have a home business but I have no idea how to go about advertising it. Well, there are a lot of different ways to advertise, some are free and others will cost you money. Many times the free advertising methods can work but may take more of your time. Then again, there are some advertising programs that you could pay money for and never see any real results.

It can be very confusing and frustrating and some times the new home business owner will get overwhelmed and just quit, saying that a home business does not work. It’s not that a home business does not work it is just that you do have to work at it. Many times you will see someone advertising a great new home business that you can make tons of money and you don not have to work at it. That is not true. You MUST work hard. If you do then you will start to see results. “Keep on, keeping on” and you will be successful.

Okay, here are some free advertising methods:

Manual traffic surf site

A manual traffic surf site allows you to promote your business online in exchange for surfing other websites. These sites can take some time but is well worth the effort. You can join for free and if you invest the time to click they CAN work

Safe-lists

Safe-lists are a great tool for generating awareness and promoting your business. To increase results without having to join a lot of safe-lists. Your best bet is to join some of the top lists that are credit based. Members must open your email to click to get credit in order to send their email ad. Downfall: it takes time to click and build up your credits to be able to send often. Positive note: usually there is no cost involved. Good for those with more time than money.

Classified ad sites

These can work and are usually free to post. Stick with top sites like Craigslist. Use (at) instead of @ and (dot)com instead of .com when placing your email so that spambots cannot harvest your email address resulting in a flood of emails that are spam instead of actual interested people

All of the above advertising methods will usually have an upgrading option that you will have to pay for. These can get you better results faster but the cost can add up. Use common sense and track your ads. If you are not seeing results don’t keep throwing good money after bad.

If you get nothing more out of reading this article then remember this. It is important to track your ads so that when you advertise your home business you are only spending time on ads and advertising mediums that will actually work.

Share on Facebook

 Google Adsense depends upon the content of the material in the web sites to be the key advertising selling point. The content brings people to the site to get information or to have questions answered. The rich content created by skillful and informative use of keywords about the subject at hand is what makes people stay at the web site and become clients or customers. The indexing and ranking of the pages contained in the web site is what allows viewers to discover what they will find when they go there. The more skillfully presented information that is available, the more opportunity to market the product or service.

Layout

Studies have been done about the best way to layout the Google Adsense ads. You can find information about which colors to use, whether or not to use borders on the ads, what shape the ads should be, whether the ads should be incorporated into the textual content of the ads and various other factors that make your Adsense ads noticeable yet not overwhelming. Every aspect of the layout is studied and confirmed by trial and error. In addition, certain types of layout styles will work well for one audience and may fail dismally when used for another targeted audience.

Location

Two main types of Google Adsense ads are often found on web sites. First is the text box where the ad is set apart from the content of the page by a border, white space, text size or color. Another type of location is that of blended ads. In this instance, the ad is blended into the text so that it becomes part of the content, yet the viewer can still click on the link and be taken to further information on the product in question. Since the English speaking world reads from left to right, and from top to bottom, it makes sense to place your ads in the upper left quadrant of the web page rather than in the lower left.

Colors

Using colors in your Google Adsense ads that either blend with or contrast with the general theme of your web page can make a significant difference in your click through rate. Much will depend on the theme of your web site, but better success is usually found by using colors that blend with the tone of your overall page. The best way to be sure is to test your presentation for several days and look at the statistics that result.

Keywords

With Google Adsense programs, the foremost thing to remember is that the site should not be created just for the purpose of collecting Adsense revenue. Use a web site dedicated to the idea of providing information about a subject that interests you and then add the advertisements that provide additional revenue. To do otherwise will reflect poorly on both the website and on Google and you generally will not be allowed to continue receiving revenue from Google with such an approach. Take the time to research the top selling keywords and use them in your own field for maximum profits.

Share on Facebook

In order to master internet direct marketing you have to understand the various options that are at your disposal. Today we want to cover the two basic formats that revolve around email marketing and utilizing pop ups. Both are the most used direct marketing tactics by entrepreneurs today and will be for many years to come. Unfortunately, it seems as though there is more and more software that comes out to diminish your abilities to take this route. This article will tell you several methods you can utilize to use internet direct marketing effectively.

Email Marketing

If you ve never utilized email marketing, the first we thing you need to be aware of is that it’s not about emailing your friends and family from a personal account. To be honest that can take way too much time and in the end, you might wind up annoying them after awhile. Real email marketing deals with sending messages to potential prospects that have Opted In to something you ve offered.

It may be a newsletter, a gift, training courses, or just discounts or special deals that entice any reader around the world. Once you ve placed an auto responder code onto your website, the internet direct marketing can begin. You ll be able to send out message after message telling your prospects about your business, crucial tips, and information about a product, or just simple hellos that get them to know you a little better.

Granted, most accounts today have filtering systems that will send your email right to the bulk mail folder or spam box. However, if you have a good auto responder company they will be able to teach you how to work around this issue. The end result is you will continually be in contact with people you wouldn t have before without one. We consider this a definite piece to the puzzle if you want your internet direct marketing to be successful.

Pop Ups

You ve probably come across a few of these when you surf the internet. Basically, they pop up on an owner s website with an opt in box to get you to join a program. While the turn of the century was very profitable for those that used pop ups in their internet direct marketing schemes, today the benefits have slowed some. This is due to major software companies coming up with blockers that keep users from even viewing them.

However, the downtime is extremely short because even though they are making it difficult, there are combatants who are coming out with new innovations that alleviate the problem. This means that while you may not reach everyone, there are still many individuals who see your pop ups each time they visit. So make sure you utilize this internet direct marketing tactic as well. Reports show that integrating this into your program will increase sales by 20 .

Becoming a Master

At the end of the day, you must take advantage of as many internet direct marketing options that you can. While getting positive results from one avenue will be beneficial, you want to become a master of them all. The end result will be less time being spent on your business and more time collecting money from all your sales.

Share on Facebook

Making Your First Clickbank Sale needn’t be a hard task. You can make it as easy or hard as you want it. I make thousands of dollars every year from Clickbank and I have found formulae for repeated success.

There is a process to making money from Clickbank, which I will show you in this article. Like everything else, this process has to be tweaked and improved upon to make it the best it can be and to give you the desired results. You will find your own way but what I outline below will give you the basic process I use.

The process of making money

The process of making money from Clickbank can be broken down as follows:

• The psychology of wealth – You really have to be open to receiving money and believing that you can make money. The more you believe the harder you will try. The less you believe the quicker you will fail. This is not some airy-fairy nonsense, it is fact and the quicker you accept this the quicker you will make money.

• Being organized – Being organized is crucial if you are going to make a living from Clickbank. You wouldn’t go on holiday and leave everything to chance would you, you would get your book tickets, book your airline, make sure your passport is organized, buy some clothes, book time off work etc, and so it is with affiliate marketing. You need to be organized and know what is working and what is not working.

• Pick a product – Choose a product from the marketplace at Clickbank and research your competition. To research your competition just type the keywords into the Google search bar and that will give you an indication of how much competition you have.

• Create a landing page – You need a landing page, which is a soft sales page telling people what’s good about the Clickbank product you are promoting. It is not a full blown sales page and never make the mistake of writing one as such, the sales letter is for that. Have some nice graphics, possibly a video to make your landing page more appealing. This is not hard to do even for the most technically challenged.

• Open a Google and Yahoo ad account – Essential if you want quick traffic to your landing page. Yahoo can be a lot less expensive but Google will get you the bigger amount of traffic.

• Run an ad – As above but be sure to test and teak the ad as you go along. Good keywords can be your saviour.

• Tweak – tweak, tweak tweak, always keep tweaking

• Repeat – Rinse and repeat. When you find a winning formulae go with it

That’s it. A very simple process and yet most people think there is a secret to it. The secret is that there is no secret.

There are people making thousands of dollars every day through Clickbank because they know how the formulae works. Now you know you can also start making money from Clickbank. You will not get anywhere if you don’t take action so go make Your First Clickbank Sale.

Share on Facebook

Marketing techniques come in innumerable shapes and sizes.

That’s largely because people are the same way–no two are precisely the same, and a communication approach that connects with one individual is a turn-off to another. When it comes to marketing XS Energy drinks, though, there are some basics that, once you have a command of them, will serve you very well as new prospects continually come across your path.

In this brief space, we will touch on two general categories: some of the top places to go when marketing XS, and what to say once you are there (or anywhere else, for that matter).

Here is a list of places where you could find energy drink enthusiasts, people who could use an extra boost and diverse audiences with different lifestyles:

Gyms, college campuses, malls, parks/beaches, offices/work, events, fairs, races, expos, parties, BBQs, social gatherings, coffee shops, and libraries.

And here are some icebreakers that will help you introduce XS Energy Drinks:

*Do you drink energy drinks and, if so, which ones?

*How do you get an energy boost?

*Do you find that your energy drops off mid-day?

*How do you find enough energy for home, work, kids, late nights, etc.?

*Isn’t it hard to find drinks that aren’t loaded with sugar and calories?

*Have you ever had an energy drink that gave you energy plus B vitamins and powerful herbs?

*Don’t you wish you could get a variety of flavors from your energy drink?

*Did you know that XS Energy Drinks actually taste good and can be part of your healthy lifestyle?

*Are you looking to make some extra cash? I am looking to increase XS distribution.

*Have you ever heard of XS Energy Drink?

To your success…

Share on Facebook

If you have a product or service which you want to sell… or are already selling on-line, you will want to develop and start Affiliate Program or Associate Program. Your own Affiliate Program will accelerate your sales and get you more exposure… for a very small investment of money… and time.

There are several ways you can start your Affiliate Program or compensate your associates.

The first is basically a click-through program… whereby anyone who clicks-through on the link is paid a referral or click through fee. It is pretty simple, if an affiliate / associate displays your banner, text link, or button and someone clicks through that link, you pay your associate a small fee (usually between $0.05 to $1.00 depending on your product and your margins).

The second method is a pay-per lead program. The affiliate is paid for each “lead” they send you. The affiliate can post a form at his site for you, and for anyone who fills out the form and submits it, you pay a referral fee to the affiliate for that lead. Or your affiliates display a banner, text link or button to your site and if someone clicks through they are presented with a form they can fill out. That form can be anything… a request for more information about a product, a request for a quote, or do something like downloading a trial version of a software program. Regardless of what the visitor is asked to do… your associates are paid for each lead they send you (or each time a form is submitted).

The third method is a revenue sharing program. This is by far the most popular type of Affiliate Program. Basically you are offering your affiliates a portion of the profits on everything that is sold.

This is the way I recommend you do an Affiliate Program. With this kind of program…

you are guaranteed to make money because you only pay for sales which are generated.

For example, if you set up a click through program you could potentially bring in 50,000 visitors… and even with that level of traffic, you are not guaranteed any sales! You could be paying out tons of money in click throughs but if you don’t have a good visitor to sale conversion you could end up not making any money in sales.

It is also possible that someone can “cheat” with a click-through or pay-per lead program as they could have software that automatically clicks through the link generating them a referral fee when no real human being has actually visited your site.

If instead, you set up a revenue sharing program… you are guaranteed a profit because you are only paying affiliates when your product is sold. So in the example above, if you brought in the same 50,000 visitors and didn’t make any sales… it would mean you had a very serious problem with your sales copy or your website… but at least you are not in the hole thousand of dollars that you owe associates for the visitors they have sent you… and you have no money to pay them!

When it comes right down to the “nitty-gritty”, the only real drawback of having Affiliate Programs for your product is the cost of installing the software to keep track of all your affiliates, traffic, and sales generated. There are a few other expenses… but they are mostly minor costs (i.e. taking care of your associates by helping them make sales, answering their questions via email, and sending your affiliates their checks in a timely manner).

To give you a perfect example, we receive over a hundred emails a day… A DAY!… just from affiliates having questions like:

*

Is something wrong? I can’t get my banner to work!
*

I didn’t get my package with the tracking code.”
*

“I lost my password.”"Please change my email address.”
*

“Please change the address you send my checks to.”
*

“I didn’t get my check last month, what happened?” …and so on.

Some are valid questions and some are people asking dumb questions. I am sorry to say “dumb” here, but it is the truth. We have actually had people who join our associate program, don’t put up a banner or link to us in anyway, then email us a month later asking where their referral check is? They have not linked to us, they have not sent us any visitors/prospects, they have not generated any sales… why do they think they are getting a check next month? You will be surprised… so be prepared to answer very reasonable questions and some obscure ones… there are all kinds of people out there.

As you get bigger and bigger you may find that you get more and more emails… but by that point you are making enough money to justify dealing with these extra questions and you can hire someone to take care of them (for example we have an employee just taking care of this because we have thousands of associates).

OK… it’s time to get set up.

There are three ways of setting up how you keep track of affiliates and sales. The first is setting up “mirror” pages, the second is hiring an Affiliate Program service, and the third is to purchase your own affiliate managing software. We will go through all the pros and cons of each in detail.

Method #1

The first method is to set up a “mirror page”… or even a mirror site.
Basically you set up a separate page… or a separate site, for each associate. This is a VERY time consuming way of doing things, but there is almost no cost involved other than your time. Here’s how it works…

Using yourdomain.com as an example. You’d set up a page for your 1st associate called http://www.yourdomain.com/info1.html. Then, as you got more associates you’d add pages… i.e. www.yourdomain.com/info2.html and …/info3.html …/info4.html and so on.

These would all be identical pages. The only difference between…/info1.html …/info2.html …/info3.html etc. is that it has a different tracking number. You actually hard code in the affiliates / associates tracking number (i.e. info5.html would have the tracking number or associate number of “5″) so that when you get an order, a hidden code in the order form prints the code. This allows you to manually track and give your associate credit for the sale.

Now this does work and is great for doing a joint venture or two with a few people… however it has MANY drawbacks.

First of all you can only sell one product. So if you have one sales letter which sells one product, doing it this can work initially… but having multiple products at your website or having multiple pages will cause you nothing but havoc.

But say I get 100 associates (and it’s pretty easy to get 100 associates… in fact it’s very easy to get 100+ associates in a matter of 30 days)… now if I want to change something like the price, or I have found a better way to sell my product so I want to change the sales copy, or I want to add in a graphic, or whatever; I have to go to every single webpage and change them all manually, all 100+ of them. It’s a HUGE job!

Trust me, most people used to do it this way back in 1995 when associate/affiliate software was not available. Updating the pages ate up days of time.

There is also the fact that you can’t offer any of your associates real time statistics. They can’t tell how much they’ve earned until the end of the month when you “manually” calculate it (which can take you a couple of days if you have 100+ associates). They don’t even know how many visitors they are getting or how many sales they are generating… they have no way of tracking it on this type of system. And on top of all that, they have to have 100% trust in me that I’m not ripping them off because I am the only one who has the “true” visitor and sales numbers… they have no idea if they are selling the numbers as I report it to them. It’s a pretty primitive way of doing it. It was a very old way of doing Associate Programs and you can “shoot yourself in the foot” because most people will not sign up with you if they don’t feel comfortable that you are reporting to them in real-time, all the time, about how they are doing with sales. Heck some of the Associate Program directories (which I will mention later) won’t even list your site on their list if you do not have real time tracking software.

Now the other problem could occur if you had a site selling four products, and wanted people to roam around your site, read articles and all that kind of stuff; but still tracking the associates visitors and sales. It’s almost impossible to set up a reliable system using this method. There would be no way to track your visitors or associates from webpage to webpage. The only way to do this is to set up a whole separate individual site for every associate within your main website (a VERY big job!).

It would take HUGE amounts of room on your web server and there is no way you could manage it. And if you ever wanted to change one small thing it would literally take you weeks to complete. It’s totally unrealistic!

In our case, with thousands of associates, this would be an impossible amount of work!

Ok, I know I have stated a lot of negative things about this method… so you may be asking, “What is the benefit to this method?” The answer, unfortunately, is only one benefit… it is really cheap for those who have no money and lots of time on their hands… as setting up takes only your time and knowledge of HTML. But remember, you may do more damage than good as many associates will not join because they can’t see their stats or have no confidence in you. Also you will get a low rating from many associate related directories as you will look like a “basement operation”. But I guess having this system is better than having no system.

Method #2

Let’s move on to #2, hiring an Associate Program service.

You can hire a service such as Safe-Audit or ClickTrade. They handle all the details as far as tracking your associates, tracking the sales, handling the money and basically charge you a healthy percentage of each sale (sometimes up to 30% of the money you are paying out to your associates) to organize all this and keep track of it. For example there is ClickTrade (mentioned above)… they don’t have a high set-up fee but charge you 30% as your payment to take care of all the tracking, reporting, handling of money and so on.

This is a very large chunk of your profit!

It may make sense at first as there are no setup costs, but realize that if you do your Associate Program right, you can be paying out thousands of dollars in referral fees very quickly. This can translate into hundreds and usually thousands of dollars in fees you have to pay them… each month. I am not trying to talk you out of it, I am just saying that you want to look at the big picture. If you plan to stay small, they may be for you, but if you start with them and grow, it is extremely difficult to “dump” them and move on to a more cost-effective way of managing your associates. To a certain extent, you are married to them, so be aware of that.

There are a few companies (i.e. LinkShare) which don’t charge you such a large percentage for each sale but do charge you a couple thousand dollars to get established… and then take a smaller percentage of your sales as their “management fee”.

This is not a preferred way to do it as far as I’m concerned because for less than $900 I can show you how to do this yourself from scratch. How to get your own software program and run your own system and never pay a dime of your sales to anyone but yourself, (which in my opinion, is the way to do it)! The reason you get involved in setting up an Associate Program is to make more money; you shouldn’t be paying all of it to another company!

The companies mentioned above are great for people who don’t know any better and see it as a more cost effective method compared to the $10,000+ associate software that is available on the market. But to be blunt, there are ways to get the same functionality for a fraction of the cost (for under $900) as I mentioned before… if you know where to look and what to look for. We will discuss the differences between the software out there in the next few articles.

Let’s move on to #3, purchasing your own associate/affiliate software.

Method #3

Purchasing your own associate/affiliate software

As far as purchasing your own software goes… some of the Associate Program software packages I’ve seen selling for under $1000 are very hoaky. They don’t have the proper tracking mechanisms and aren’t flexible enough to handle a variety of situations. What I mean by that is that they may:

* Not track and display stats to their associates in real-time.Or don’t work with shopping carts.
* Or they’re not 100% reliable to track “all” orders.
* Or they don’t have any means of tracking off-line orders.
* Or they won’t track visitors who come back and buy at a later date and don’t give the associate credit for that sale.

Generally speaking, almost everything I have seen (about 20 different pieces of software which sell for under $1000) is mostly garbage! There are a few exceptions to the rule, but even those pieces have their problems (i.e. a few charge a set up fee of $500 and then a $1.00 per associate you sign up – which can be thousands of dollars as you sign up associates… or software that only tracks certain types of orders, etc.).

The good stuff that I’ve seen sells for $5000 and even $7000 and more. And some of them are pretty slick. However they are not cheap… and represent a significant investment for most small businesses!

Don’t worry, later I have a solution to the problem so you don’t have to spend this kind of money.

Many of you are aware that The Internet Marketing Center (IMC) designed and developed their own software from scratch when they started up our Associate Programs many years ago… basically because there wasn’t any software out there that did what they wanted and how they wanted… they really didn’t have a choice!

To make a long story short, they have spent over $32,000 to develop their software (it has been costly) and they have put in features from a “marketing” point of view, not a “programmers” point of view. They have seen the need to get software out there that has the same features and functionality as the $5000+ software, but at a reasonable price tag which most small business owners can afford.

They have modified their software and made it “generic” so it will work with nearly any product or service their clients have (not just their products anymore). They’ve hacked through all the pros and cons, the problems they encountered, and done the “learning curve” for you.
they’ve developed this associate/affiliate software which they call AssocTRAC… and they are going to offer it to our clients and newsletter subscribers for only $877 – but they will only accept 30 orders for the first 45 days. They are limiting orders because, quite frankly, they don’t have the manpower to install that many pieces of software in a short period of time (this price includes installation) and they don’t want to sacrifice customer service.

Click here if you want to know more about the AssocTRAC software, what it does, and how it works.

In my opinion this is extremely underpriced for what they are giving… but they wanted to make a fantastic program available to customers at a reasonable price.

They’re actually quite excited about it, as it will be the first time this quality of software has been available at such a drastically low price (as I mentioned they have spent over $32,000 developing this software to make it a VERY powerful marketing tool). In order to give all customers the best service they can, their AssocTRAC software will be sold on a first-come, first-served basis!

Associate Programs are a powerful and really cost effective way to market your products. In fact, I can’t think of a better way to market your products or services with such a low risk! It is absolutely fantastic.

Do you want to know how much impact it can have on your business?

I am aware of two clients who started up a reseller program… and then had to shut it down because they got so many orders!

They had to suspend marketing because they were so far behind getting the orders fulfilled and keeping up with customer service requirements.
So it is a very, very, very powerful way of marketing!

Share on Facebook

Share on Facebook