Archive for November, 2009
Holiday Wishes
Let me wish you all a Happy and safe Thanksgiving holiday. If you will be traveling, please be safe, someone counts and needs you.
This is my first Thanksgiving without Barry and I’m sure it will be hard and I’m still struggling to make money and learn all aspects of our business that I was not familiar with but I am getting better at it so there still is hope for me to be able to support myself as an Internet Marketer.
Though I am not looking forward to Christmas because Barry loved how the house smelled with all the baking and how that house looked. I really enjoyed decorating the house for the Holidays but probably won’t do that this year.
I’ve made a small Christmas sale which I hope you will find useful. Most people enjoy graphics and templates and I’ve recently found some new ones.
Affiliate Marketing in a Nutshell
What exactly is affiliate marketing? Affiliate marketing is the single fastest growth industry on the Internet. It’s also true that affiliate marketing is one of the fastest and most creative ways to make money and have a career on the Internet.
Simply put, affiliate marketing is selling products on a commission basis. You own a business that advertises and sells products for other companies. You may have a product of your own to begin with or not. The things that a successful affiliate marketer must have are:
1. Your website is the jumping off point of all your marketing efforts. So the first step in any successful affiliate marketing business is building a good, credible and professional looking website. You must build a user-friendly website, which will attract your prospects and motivate them to click on the links to the products and services you are promoting and make a purchase. There are companies whose business is building websites that you can hire to build one for you.
2. You must find products to sell, you must be able to determine whether there is a demand for those products and if people will actually buy them. You may either have your own original product or products that are made by others. Which ever way you go, you must believe in the products.
3. It will be necessary for you to become an adept advertiser and be able to tell whether the advertising you are paying for is producing more income for you than the advertising is costing you.
4. It is necessary that you have good mathematical skills. You will need to be able to track your sales and determine profit, as well as, see to it that your suppliers are paid in full and on time.
5. You need the full and unwavering support of your family so that you can devote the time and energy necessary to launch your affiliate marketing business.
Affiliate Marketing Tips
Today, many of us want to pack up our jobs and be our own bosses. The idea of working for you attracts many. However, the reality of making it happen soon stops most. In fact the vast majority of us cannot get a business off the ground due to 2 main factors; the first being money and the second being risk.
Starting even a small business takes a fair amount of money. You need to buy or rent premises, purchase your stock and equipment and pay staff if you have them. You will also have other outside expenses such as advertising.
Risk is the factor that kills most businesses off. Even if you’re lucky enough to get the capital to start, nearly 90% of all small businesses fail in the first year. If yours is one of the lucky ones, you have to keep reinvesting your time and money to build up the businesses reputation. It could be anywhere from 5-7 years before any significant profit is seen. Most of us cannot wait that long which is what makes affiliate marketing such an attractive offer.
Affiliate marketing involves you, working as an affiliate for a merchant or company. You sell either goods or services and you’re paid on how much you produce. There are no costs and no risk. You put in what you choose and are rewarded accordingly.
Running an affiliate marketing business is challenging. You’ll have to work very hard to build it up. However, you’ll be rewarded for your hard work not someone else. Getting an affiliate marketing program going may seem difficult. The truth is it is down to you and how much you want to put in. There is no sure fire way to success but there are some good tips that you can follow to make you affiliate marketing scheme as successful as possible.
There are literally thousands of programs for you to choose from. However, to get started you may want to choose something that you are familiar with. This product or service may not be the hottest thing on the current market or make you a millionaire, but you will come off more confident and sincere with something you know and believe in.
This will also help when it comes to creating your site. Something familiar will allow you to be personal and creative. Trying to create a site around something you know little about will soon become boring and tedious.
Working with something familiar will also give you the some experience in the program. You can always expand at a latter time when you are more familiar with how things work.
Another good piece of advice is to watch the number of banners that you put up. A site full of banners will make the site look ugly and put off potential buyers. Carefully place your banners and use them to accent your site. Stuffing it full will not help.
Remember, in the world of affiliate marketing there is no such thing as the perfect program. Any particular program will be stuffed full of varying testimonials. Some will be great, others will not have done so well. You need to decide for yourself and not be put off by a few bad experiences. In the end it is down to you and how much you want to put in.
Affiliate marketing is a great way to make money and work for you. The risk to you is minimal and there is no start up cost. There are many great affiliate marketing programs out there and choosing the right one may seem like a daunting task. When you first start out remember to stick to what you know. Find something you know about and have an interest in. Make your site attractive to others and resist the urge to fill it with banners. This may end up having the opposite of your desired effect. Finally remember, there is no perfect program. Some will have success where others have failed. It is all down to you.
Don’t give up!
How to Use Viral Marketing
And the Buzz Goes On – How to Use Viral Marketing
Before we get into the meat and potatoes of how you can use viral marketing to help get a buzz going about your small business, let’s start with a definition of exactly what “viral marketing” means.
According to the Wikipedia, “Viral marketing and viral advertising refer to marketing techniques that use preexisting social networks to produce increases in brand awareness, through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses. It can be word-of-mouth delivered or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet. Viral marketing is a marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message voluntarily. Viral promotions may take the form of video clips, interactive Flash games, advergames, images, or even text messages.”
If you’ve ever had a hotmail, yahoo or G-mail account, you’ve participated in a viral marketing campaign every time you sent an email to someone – because the company inserted a small (and usually discreet advertisement) at the bottom of all of your outgoing emails – inviting the people you were communicating with to receive their own free email account.
So how can you put a viral marketing campaign together for your own business – and more importantly, do you even want to?
Let me answer that second question first, okay? YES! You definitely want to take the time to brainstorm your own viral marketing campaign – even if you don’t someday want to be as big as hotmail, yahoo or Gmail.
Why? Because according to a recent survey done by Forrester Research, people are almost 65% more likely to trust a review posted by a peer – or even a complete stranger – than they are to trust the marketing or sales information put out by the company.
Don’t believe me? Check out Amazon.com and I-tunes. Why is this the case? Because as consumers we tend to think that the average “Joe Blow” has less of a personal agenda when posting his review about the latest “Dixie Chicks” album and so we give it more weight.
And, by the way, this is a normal reaction – it’s one that’s kind of hard-wired into all of us. People have always shared the things they like – or hate – with their friends and family members. Back in the 50′s and 60′s, our grandparents used to talk to their neighbors over the “back fence,” call each other on the phone or tell their friends during lunch. The difference is, these days we use the Internet and cell phones.
What’s interesting though, is that with the popularity of the Internet, our trust – and believe in “social proof” – has become even stronger.
By creating your own viral marketing campaign, you’ll be doing more than getting the word out about your new affiliate product. You’ll be gathering social proof – and that will help your sales to go through the roof.
So how do you set up your own viral marketing campaign? The first thing to do is to get back to the basics.
Here’s the real “secret” to making a lot of money with affiliate products. Have the right product, with the right message to the right people in the right time.
So start with your affiliate product. Make sure that there’s a hungry audience for whatever you’re selling.
Then make sure that you’re sending out the right message – an in the right way. If you’re marketing a product to teens, you’ll want to make sure that it’s something they want – and you’ll have to reach them where they’re hanging out. That might be on MySpace, twitter or even Friendster.
What’s the right message? Maybe it’s a special report. But it could just as easily be a video. Or an audio mp3 file. Match your message to your audience. And finally, make sure that you’re getting your message out at the right time – when your audience is ready to buy it.
Make your viral marketing campaign stand out from the crowd – because that’s how it’s going to get passed around and become viral. By understanding the basics – who your audience is, what they want, how they want to get it and when they want it – all you have to do next is to create something that your audience loves – or hates – or finds interesting enough – to pass around to their friends. And because your product comes with an implied endorsement – social proof – those people will pass it around to other people – and the buzz goes on…and on…and on…and you’ll start hearing the “ka-ching!” of your cash register going off a lot more often.
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Come And See What Is New!
Because tomorrow I will technically I will be a year older I’ve put together a little sale that I hope will benefit both you and me. I remember Barry would do these special sales on birthdays and anniversary’s so I thought I would try it.
I’ve been feeling pretty good about things lately. I did my first adswap today, the 16th and it seemed to go ok. I’m still struggling money wise but I’m getting more comfortable every day with my business and I have found some pretty great guys in the Skype channel I go to, they have been both supportive and helpful and I know most of that I have Barry’s kindness, helpfulness and good character to thank. I do believe that if he wasn’t the sort of person he was I would not be getting as much help and encouragement that I’ve been receiving since his sudden death.
If you have the time, please check it out.
5 Qualities For Affiliate Marketing
More and more people these days are turning to one of the most popular businesses around – the business of affiliate marketing. In this business, there are
no bosses, deadlines to meet, or piles of work that have to be finished by the end of the day. In order to succeed, you only need the necessary tools.
There are basically five things you can’t do without if you want to make it in the business of affiliate marketing. Below, you’ll find each quality you’ll need.
1. Desire to learn
The first quality you must possess is the desire to learn, coupled with the willingness to be trained. Treading through unfamiliar territory
is tough indeed, especially if your lacking the right knowledge. This is a combination of the right frame of mind, coupled with a strong work ethic.
When starting out, you’ll need to be willing to keep your eyes and ears open, using the experience of others to learn more as you go.
2. Invest time and effort
The second quality you must have is the willingness to invest time and effort in helping your business grow, even if you don’t see immediate results. Even
though weeks may pass without hearing good news, it’s very important for anyone who wants to get their foot in the business world.
3. Determination
The third quality you’ll need is determination. If you want to make it in the world of affiliate marketing, you must possess this to push yourself forward. The ability to push yourself to greater heights will determine what type of future you have.
4. Discipline
The fourth quality is self discipline. If you teach yourself to work everyday with all of your heart and soul, you’ll be that much closer to reaching your goals and making your dreams come true.
5. Optimism
The last quality you must have is optimism. Bad attitudes should never discourage an affiliate marketer from pursuing their dreams in order to make life better for themselves or anyone around them.
The attitude you have towards the business should always be good, because you’ll have to realize that you’re the captain of your ship and your the one steering it towards destiny.
If you put the above tips to good use, you’ll go farther than you ever thought possible in the world of affiliate marketing. You’ll need these qualities to succeed, as affiliate marketing can be a cutting edge career. With the above qualities, you’ll do just fine in the industry.
Serious WordPress Security Flaw
There has been a recent attack on many wordpress blogs that have been injecting
Iframe attacks on accounts.
Here is what you need to know.
1. If you have no idea what wordpress is then do not worry, this is not affecting you.
2. If you do have a wordpress blog, make sure that you have upgraded your blog to the latest version. In your wordpress admin you can automatically
upgrade in there.
It seems many of the Iframe attacks are caused by an old version of WordPress. What hackers are doing is logging in via a insecure blog and then changing the index pages of all the pages on that specific server.
To prevent this from happening please make sure you are running the latest version of wordpress.
My First Adswap
I have my first adswap schedule with my friend Steve for the 16th of this month. I hope it does well for both of us, but mostly for him because I haven’t been able to “reach” my lists into much activity. I don’t think it is all my fault, they were starting to become unresponsive when Barry was still around. Some are still clicking the links but not buying anything.
Even when I offer them something “free” I only get a few more clicks than usual. So I am a little worried that it won’t benefit my adswap partner’s much, and I don’t want people to think I will not be a good adswap partner.
This Stuff Is Starting To Stick Finally!
Well it has been a busy week, so busy that I wasn’t able to email my lists as much as I wanted to. I’ve been doing some serious backups of my computers, now that I own 4, 2 pc’s & 2 laptops. I haven’t really even looked at Barry’s PC yet except to keep the updates going. I do back up my laptop pretty regular since it is the one I work from the most. It takes a lot of time to “move” things from one backup drive to the bigger backup drive so that is still in the process.
Today I was able to send a mailing and not just an affiliate product. I edited the sales letter to a product I have rights to, made sure everything worked and was right. But I missed something and a new friend of mine that is on my lists, skyped me and told me about it, so I fixed it. Here it is if you would like to take a look at it. http://bit.ly/zHVNn
Then I took a short break, got something to eat and started working on my Squeeze page and OTO for it. I had these done I thought but I had set up the autoresponder wrong and had to start that over. But I got it and all the pages to it finally done and tested. Now I just need to write the swipe email, but not tonight, I will do that tomorrow.
It will be nice to finally be ready to contribute in the Adswaps Channel in Skype and I hope it will work out good for both me and the person I adswap with.
My Membership Updates
I added more products to EasyToolBox.com membership area. ” With Reseller Products Added Nearly Every Day, EasyToolBox Will Give You All The Hot, New Inventory You Need…”
If you aren’t a member yet, please check it out here,
Members – http://easytoolbox.com/members
SuperQuickVideosClub has also been updated.
‘How To’ Tips, Tricks, and Techniques In Minutes, By Watching Us Show You How To Do It On Video, In Under 5 Minutes Each?!
http://superquickvideosclub.com
Members – http://superquickvideosclub.com/members
NitroBlogging has new content.
Now you can finally own dozens of niche traffic pulling blogs with so little work you will think it is illegal. You get the traffic and the income all while leaving the blogging to us!
Members – http://nitroblogging.com/members
