By Article Specialist
Most affiliate marketers have a goal to become known as a super affiliate. But what does the term mean, and what characteristics does a person have to exhibit in order to reach this lofty status? Here is some background on the super affiliate and what it takes to become one of the exalted few who can rightfully claim this title.
Essentially, a super affiliate is a marketing affiliate that has created a network that provides a high volume of traffic to affiliate products and a high percentage of completed sales from that traffic. The super affiliate is not one who reaches this level once, or even once in a great while.
Instead, the super affiliate reaches high sales volumes consistently over a long period of time, resulting in a steady flow of completed sales that never seems to drop off.
Being able to recognize a super affiliate from the rest of the pack may not be easy at first. After all, there are a number of affiliates who generate some steady income from one or a combination of affiliate programs, and in fact have some excellent skills. However, there are attributes that will set the super affiliate apart from most other marketing people.
One of the most important attributes of a super affiliate is a capacity for recognizing opportunities that others can't or won't see. Super affiliates have to be visionaries, in that they often come up with new ways and places online to generate revenue opportunities for the products they wish to move.
Not content with going down tried and true paths, the super affiliate will brainstorm new variations on old themes, even while thinking in terms of some new territory that is ripe for the introduction of affiliate marketing. You will never hear a super affiliate say that everything has been done. The super affiliate knows there is one more road to travel; all it takes is the vision to find the road and start walking.
Creativity is another hallmark of a super affiliate. The ability to present the same old information in new ways will keep people interested. Super affiliates know how to look at products from a variety of different angles, determine a series of ways to present the product, and then go out and find an audience to match up with each one of those ways.
For the super affiliate, there is always one more way to draw attention to a product, and find a larger audience than ever before.
A third characteristic of a super affiliate is the desire and ability to master technology. This does not necessarily involve becoming an expert in information technology. But it does involve learning enough about existing technology to make good use of avenues already open on the Internet to promote products.
Not being scared off by having to submit reports, articles, and classified ads in different formats to different sites leads to a greater ability to spread the word about all the good things that can be obtained through those links and ads.
Super affiliates do not shrink back because it may take a little while to learn something new. Instead, they will relish the challenge and look forward to the day when they have mastered one more new bit of Internet savvy.
Last, the super affiliate often exhibits a large amount of patience. Using a logical thought process, the super affiliate is able to push aside the desire for instant results and do what it takes to create and nurture a secure affiliate network that will pick up steam and then never slow down again.
This does not mean that the super affiliate is against earning a quick dollar. What it does mean is that when a super affiliate sees an opportunity that may take a few weeks or months to fully develop and bear fruit, they will not pass it over.
Instead, the super affiliate will diversify their operating strategies to include affiliate opportunities that provide a quick turnaround while still devoting time to nurturing one that will require more time but will ultimately yield big results.
Super affiliates may be few in numbers, but the fact is that they can teach the rest of us a lot of things, if we will listen. In the end, they may trigger something that allows us to get on the path to super affiliate status, and become known by that title someday.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
What Constitutes a Super Affiliate
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Avoid These Affiliate Marketing Mistakes!
By Article Specialist
While affiliate marketing is a great way to earn a living, the fact is that many people become discouraged and drop out of programs. In many instances, the failure to be successful with affiliate marketing has to do with making a few simple mistakes. Here are some examples of those mistakes and why they should be avoided.
Perhaps the most common misconception about affiliate marketing is that one can rake in huge amounts of revenue simply by slapping up a low-quality website with no original content and tossing in some affiliate links.
While it is certainly true that you need to have a web site up and running in order to participate in an affiliate program, there is also the need to apply some effort to getting the word out about your site. Otherwise, the chances of people visiting your web site and clicking on one of the links are pretty slim.
Promoting yourself and your web site is a big part of ensuring the creation of affiliate income. This will mean doing everything you can to raise your search engine ranking positions on Google, Yahoo, and MSN.
Far too many people assume that somehow the Internet magically will capture every lovely word on the web site and magically have it show up prominently when people do a search. This is not the case at all. Taking the time to carefully research keywords, craft content related to them, and then optimize your site for them is an absolute must.
And that’s not it. Marketing is bigger than just SEO. A strong and comprehensive marketing effort includes getting out there and using every legitimate means of promoting your site, from leaving business cards on restaurant tables to posting a printed ad in the local supermarket to listing your site at online business and informational sites.
Choosing to consider this sort of activity a waste of time is more or less deciding you want the program to fail.
Another mistake many affiliate partners make is not choosing products that have some relevance to the content of your web site. For example, you run a wonderful web site about the care and training of dogs. People will visit your site to see the images of your pets, read your comments on various aspects of dog training, and perhaps to post a message or two.
Since your visitors will already have an expressed interest in pets, why not make sure the ads that reside on your site have to do with some aspect of pets or pet care? You will earn much more money if this is the case, rather than having ads that have to do with home decorating or some other subject.
Keeping your site content and the ads more or less relevant to one another will make it easier to generate revenue, and not fail as an affiliate marketer. Now, this may seem intuitive – but many make this mistake in subtle ways (i.e. they mismatch their customers with products).
One final mistake that many affiliate marketers make is not sprucing up their web sites from time to time. Keeping the content fresh is one way of building and keeping a loyal reading audience.
If there is a reason to check back with your site every week, then chances are repeat visitors will click on ads that appear to be new to them, or that they enjoyed looking at the last time they visited your site.
Keeping the same old look and the same old text with nothing new to entice people back is a sure way to limit your chances at being a successful affiliate marketer.
In short, most of the more common mistakes all track back to an attitude that you do not have to do anything in order to generate revenue.
The fact is that you do have to proactively promote your site, keep the content fresh, and make sure the ads have some connection to the subject matter of your site.
By taking the time and effort to do these three simple things, you will have much better chances at being a success with affiliate marketing.
Friday, October 26, 2007
Creating A Legitimate Internet Marketing Company
By Courtney Tuttle
In today's internet marketing world, very few understand what it takes to be successful. Most struggle to make even a few hundred dollars per month. In order to beat the crowd and establish a truly legit internet marketing company, you will need to learn some key concepts that can take you to that level.
The first concept that many people miss is that you have to get yourself out there. You have to get started. Before you get involved, it's virtually impossible to come up with original ideas. If you think you're going to hit a homer while sitting on your couch you can forget about it. You need to get involved and learn as much as possible before you will reach the pinnacle of the profession.
In order to really make money with the internet, you will probably need to have a website. Yes, there are other ways but you need to learn how to use websites to your advantage so you would get started as soon as possible. Create a site about your dog if you want, you need something to start learning the ropes.
Now if you're truly going to create an internet marketing company, you will need to start developing a solid reputation. If you don't try to meet anyone in that field, how are you going to develop a solid reputation? The best thing for you to do is to start a site that has something to do with internet marketing, and start sharing the knowledge that you gain.
Now is where you have to take a step back to realize that a lot of patience will be required. Your instincts may tell you that it should happen really quickly, but you will need to be patient if it doesn't. Learn as much as you can, develop ideas, and share them with other people. Over time, with enough persistence you will be able to develop an audience.
Once you develop an audience, you will have more opportunities to grow your internet marketing business. You can sell your personal services, and create and sell products. You can offer consulting, search engine services, and website design services. It will be much easier to sell those services if you have made some kind of name for yourself.
One of the biggest benefits of developing an audience in the internet marketing field is that you will be able to easily engage in joint ventures with other individuals. These opportunities will come out of the woodwork if you offer advice on your site that actually helps people. Pay the price, and success will come.
Article Source: http://www.articlehighlight.com
Learn about internet marketing strategy at CourtneyTuttle.com. You can also find some of his work at Globe Dish.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Continuing Education Is Not A Choice
By Article Specialist
Nothing in this world ever stays the same. The only absolute certainty is change. Internet business is not an exception to this rule. As a matter of fact, business on the internet changes faster than just about anything you can imagine.
Another reason that so many new internet businesses don’t survive for very long is that a new e-entrepreneur will start a business based upon one single idea and never grow or expand beyond that single idea.
These people have what I sometimes call ‘tunnel vision’. They don’t look around at the internet business landscape and make the necessary changes that keep them visible and a player in the market place.
Internet businesses themselves will naturally grow and expand if the owner or manager of the business grows and expands his knowledge and is willing to adapt to the inevitable changes that take place on a daily basis in Internet business.
It is simply good business to invest a minimum of 5% of your time and your income back into yourself. You ARE your business.
I’ve heard the term ‘continuing education’ tossed about like it was a choice to be made.
Continuing education is not a choice if a business is to be successful. The 10% of new internet businesses that will still be around after the next 120 days will be owned or managed by people who are constantly learning new things and applying those new things to the internet businesses that they operate.
They attend real world seminars. They attend teleseminars and webinars. They read articles on an inspiring blog like this every single day.
They learn… they grow… they adapt… they succeed. That is very easy to say but it is much harder to accomplish. However, those who do accomplish it will still be in business when most others are not.
There is an old saying that I quote very often. “Those who fail to plan, plan to fail!” I say it often because it is the single most important fact of success in a nutshell.
A plan for an internet business is just exactly like a road map that would be used for making a road trip.
It is a detailed plan of how to get from point A (starting an internet business) to point B (having a successful internet business) in the shortest possible time and without taking the scenic route.
Most of the time those who begin new internet businesses have been working at jobs for which they were paid a salary. They are in the ‘work equals money’ mindset and they bring that mindset into their internet businesses.
They will even spend their time searching for more ‘work’ to do rather than searching for ways in which to make money.
Unless the ‘work = money’ mindset can be quickly changed to ‘sales = money’ mindset, the business will certainly fail and fail very quickly.
One of the most important items that can be listed in a business plan is to ‘find a mentor’. You can have all of the details written down of exactly how you plan to succeed but if you can find a mentor that process can be cut in half.
Of course, it is very unlikely that you will find a mentor within the first 120 days of starting your new internet business but that item needs to always be in your mind as you make contacts and build business relationships.
Building and internet business is a very exciting undertaking but it is one that is fraught with obstacles. You can overcome the obstacles and succeed, but don’t expect it to be easy or quick. It will be neither.
Related Article:
What Should We Focus On to Succeed in the Internet Business?
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Two Major Reasons Why So Many New Internet Entrepreneurs Fail
By Article Specialist
The success (or failure) of your Internet Entrepreneurship really is up to you now. If you succeed, the credit will all belong to you and if you fail, you will own that as well. Your success or failure is in your own hands.
Success and failure are two sides of the same coin. The coin in question is your own Internet Entrepreneurship and you don’t want to flip that coin into the air and leave it to chance as to whether it lands on success or failure.
You want complete control over the fate of your Internet business and you do have that control.
Every decision will be yours to make. If you make wise choices then you will claim victory and success will be yours.
If you make unwise choices then your internet business will crash and burn and your own hopes and dreams will go up in flames along with it.
You do realize, of course, that the odds for success are not in your favor. Every day thousands and thousands of internet business enterprises are launched. Of those internet businesses that will be launched today, 90% (ninety percent) will not be around in 120 days.
That is right! You have no better than a 10% chance of actually making a success out of your internet business unless you can change them that are not very good odds. If it were a horse race, winning would be considered a long shot.
That is the downside, but anytime there is a downside there is always an upside.
The upside in this case is that even though you have only a 10% chance at succeeding, you can greatly better your odds by simply following the guidelines that have already been offered.
You can increase your odds from 10% to 90% by simply applying a few very simple principles to the problem.
Here are two major reasons why so many new Internet entrepreneurs fail within the first 120 days.
1. They Do Not Have The Right Mindset
Unfortunately, so many people think that they can quit their jobs, open an internet business and just relax and enjoy life. They expect instant success and instant wealth without having to invest anything (even time and effort) to affect that success.
They really believe that they can sleep until noon, work when and if they want to and just rack up sales and profit. This attitude probably accounts for at least half of all of the failures of new internet businesses.
Making an internet business successful takes a lot of time and even more work. That old real world job demanded that you be on the job for probably 40 hours each week.
Your internet business will need about twice that many hours each week if it is to become successful. Very, very, very few people are willing to invest that much time and effort, thus the 90% failure rate.
Of the few that are willing to put in enough time and effort most expect instant success.
They don’t even consider the fact that they will need to continue to meet their own personal expenses for many months before they see the first penny of profit from a new internet business, even though those facts are readily available.
These are the ones who go out there looking for get-rich-quick schemes and end up becoming victims of internet scam artists.
The right mindset is this: You must expect to work hard. You must expect to work long and tedious hours. You will not be an overnight success. People are not going to line up to give you their money. You are going to have to earn it.
2. They Do Not Lay A Solid Foundation
Sometimes people will start an internet business with no business background at all. This is another reason for the high failure rate of new internet entrepreneurships.
If you do not have an education in business, then you would be very wise indeed to speak with those who are well versed in business.
An internet business of any kind is a BUSINESS. It must be run like a business and it must be build upon sound business practices. The only ‘dumb’ questions are those that are never asked.
You need information and the best way there is to get the information that you need is to simply ask questions of those who have the answers.
There are courses available both out in the brick and mortar world as well as on the internet about how to set up and run a successful business.
You can’t abide by the rules if you don’t know what the rules are. Do your homework before you launch your business.
You need to lay a rock solid foundation so that your new business doesn’t become one of the casualties that are caused by poor planning or even no planning. You need a business plan.
You need a business model and it needs to be one that you can understand and follow. Jumping in and hoping for the best isn’t a plan. That will only insure that your new internet business will not still be in existence four months from now.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
What Should We Focus On to Succeed in the Internet Business?
By Article Specialist
Nearly every internet business people that I have ever known has worked at some kind of job other than internet business before they launched their internet business careers.
There is a funny thing about working at a job that pays you for the work that you do. You get into a ‘work-equals-money’ mindset. After all, when you work for others, work does in fact equal money.
When we start our internet business we stuck in the ‘work-equals-money’ mindset that is actually counter-productive to building a successful internet business.
It isn’t hard to see why we get into this ‘work-equals-money’ mindset. We have been living with that concept since we were kids.
Think about it. What was your first job? Did you cut grass for a neighbor? Didn’t you get money after you had done the work? Of course, you did. He wasn’t paying you to think… he was paying you to cut grass.
When you got older and got a job at the local burger joint, you got paid for cooking hamburgers and French Fries. You cooked the hamburgers and fries and then you got paid. Work did in fact equal money.
The owner of the hamburger joint wasn’t paying you to find a better way to cook hamburgers or paying you to look for a new market to sell hamburgers. He was only paying you for doing the work of cooking the hamburgers.
But now in the internet business you are not getting paid for doing the ‘work’. The work isn’t what is making money for you.
What Constitutes Work?
What is ‘work’? The ‘work’ that makes any business work is just the day to day activities that must be accomplished in order for the business to function.
Telephone calls must be answered. Emails must be read and responded to. Files must be kept orderly. The list goes on and on but this is just ‘work’.
In your internet business, nobody is going to pay you to answer the phone, read emails or keep files in order. That is simply ‘work’ that must be done. It isn’t making you any money and it most certainly is not what you should be focused upon.
Once an internet business has gotten up and running, it is a very good investment to simply pay a virtual assistant to do the ‘work’ and set yourself free to make the deals that actually make you money and make your internet business thrive.
You can spend hours and hours and hours of your time working on your website… making it better… tweaking this and tweaking that. That is work that is not putting a single red cent into your bank account.
Until you can hire someone to do this work for you, get it fixed as best you can and move on the productive deal making.
What Constitutes Making Deals?
Yes, it is absolutely true that the ‘work’ must be done, but the work that must be done should be done as quickly and as efficiently as possible and you shouldn’t concentrate your energy on finding and creating more work that isn’t going to make any money for you.
You need to be focusing your attention on making the deals that will make money.
So what exactly are the activities that constitute deal making? Briefly and concisely they are the activities that have the potential for putting money into your bank account. A few of these activities are:
1. Visiting forums and blogs that relate to your niche. Forums and blogs are where you find the real living, breathing people who are YOUR potential customers and until somebody drags out their credit card, puts in their information and actually buys products or services from you, you haven’t made a dime so you need to go where the people are and find out how to best serve their wants and needs.
2. Visit websites that are related to your website. This is where you will find your potential joint venture partners. Contact the webmasters and work on making mutually profitable deals.
3. Start your own newsletter or e-zine. This is one of the most potentially profitable deals that you can make for yourself. The longer your list grows, the more profits you can make.
Does This Mean We Should Focus Entirely On Deals Only?
It would really be nice if we could just ditch the work-a-day-work and do nothing with our time other than make the deals that make us money! Now that would be what I would call a perfect world.
Unfortunately, the work-a-day-work must be done and until our ‘ship comes in’ we are probably going to be the ones who have to do that as well as make the deals that make us money.
As long as we are going to have to do both we can at least learn how to work smarter. We can learn how to get the same amount of ‘work’ accomplished in less time so that we can free up more time for making the deals that will make us money.
Get the work done as quickly as you can and put your focus on the deal making activities that will add to your bottom line. It is no longer your job just to make hamburgers… now you need to get out there and look for new markets. You ARE getting paid to think now.
The Importance of a Salesletter
By Faye Bautista
Not so long ago, when the computer was first mass-produced for selling to the public, a lot of industry experts predicted that nobody will want a box that does nothing besides handling data and hogging up the entire garage. They were obviously wrong. Nearly every household will have at least one computer in the US, and most even have two or three desktops!
This little bit of history tells us that no matter how good your product is, you cannot earn even a penny from it if you have a lousy salesperson. Likewise, no matter how good your product is, you cannot sell even one copy of it with a weak salesletter. Hence, it is vital to have a compelling salesletter that will pull the prospect right into it and see clearly the benefits that are presented against the very reasonable price you are charging.
A good salesletter will first catch the attention of the reader by resonating with the reader's needs and desires. That's why you often see headlines such as "Have you ever felt..." or "Does ... sound familiar?" They work because they empathize with the reader's needs, problems or desires. The Internet is like a very busy freeway and everyone's in a rush. Only a strong headline like that in big, bold letters will stop your target audience dead in their tracks to read through your salesletter.
Once you've obtained your reader's attention, you want to spend the first few paragraphs on telling your story how you have gone through what your reader probably has, the agony of the whole experience, etc. Once you get your reader thinking "he's one of us", you would be perceived as an understanding individual offering a solution and not an anonymous marketer looking to sell his product.
Next, you have to elaborate on the benefits of the product you are selling. List them all on a piece of scrap paper until you have quite a long list; then write your salesletter from there. In your salesletter, highlight the benefits in point form and elaborate on each benefit. Be sure to point out how your product helps the reader instead of pointing out the features of the product. For example, instead of saying "this gizmo cures headaches", say "this gizmo can relieve your headaches". Make it relevant to the reader.
Then, write a paragraph or two on how the reader's life could be changed if the problem he is facing can be totally solved with your product. It is important to use very descriptive words so that the reader can fall into the imagination more easily.
Last of all, make a strong call for action! Your final objective is to make your readers buy your product, so it is important to make a final, strong call for action, be it "click the Buy button", "whip out your credit card" and so on. Do not make the mistake of forgetting such an important step after coaxing your reader through the lengthy paragraphs.
Article Source: http://www.articlehighlight.com
The author also writes about Travel at Paradise Philippines, and also Internet Marketing, SEO topics at SEO blog
Overdeliver Your Way To Success
By Faye Bautista
As an online merchant, your customers cannot see your face. They cannot hear your voice when you are recommending your products, and they cannot see the emotions on your face when you are telling your customers what benefits they can derive out of your products.
The Internet is a level playing field for every Internet marketer and merchant out there. The sheer connectivity means that you can reach every individual in the world. You are not limited by geographic constraints and anyone can be your customer or client.
This is precisely why you should overdeliver. When every competitor of yours has access to everyone in the market, your only way of winning the battle is to overdeliver, again and again. When you overdeliver, you present yourself as a person with the customer's interest at heart. You become a trusted friend and not a greed-driven marketer out looking for their money. Overdelivering is simply your only way to differentiate yourself from your competitors.
You can start overdelivering by providing superb support for your customers. How many times have you been turned away with rude answers when asking about a certain product you purchased? Compare that with the number of times you have been provided very good service, as if you're being helped by a personal friend. The ratio is just off balance, proving how scarce good customer support is. By providing excellent support to your customers and answering to their every needs patiently, you will gain customers that are fiercely loyal to you because they know you have their best interest at heart.
When you provide excellent customer support, you're already ahead of most of your competitors. Take it a step further and think: in what other ways can you overdeliver to your customers?
One very good way is to give your customers a pleasant surprise when they make a purchase from you. For example, if a customer buys your cooking utensils, you might throw in a bonus recipe book for them. However, do not use the bonus as an incentive for the customer to buy your products. Your products must be good enough to make the customer buy it in the first place, and the bonus must serve as a surprise element; you must not announce it in the product catalogue.
The final way is to build a long-lasting relationship with your customers. If a customer buys regularly from you, you should send greeting cards during birthdays and on every holiday, be it Christmas, New Year, Easter, even Chinese New Year! Your customer will again remember you as a friend, not a business associate, and will favour you above other merchants because of the warm relationship.
So, remember to start overdelivering today!
Article Source: http://www.articlehighlight.com
The author also writes about Travel at paradise Philippines.
Monday, October 22, 2007
The Key to Continuous Growth and Expansion
By Article Specialist
Grow or die! This is one of the laws of nature that applies to all living things. All business lives by this law as well. A business cannot begin, grow to a certain point and then simply remain at that point and continue to thrive.
Growth and expansion are necessary for the business to survive and if that growth and expansion do not happen then the business will fade and die or crash and burn.
Growth and expansion of business must be controlled by the business owners or managers. If growth is too slow, the business lags behind the competition. If growth is too fast, the business can easily become overextended.
A steady controlled growth is the ideal. Of course, the ideal and the reality are sometimes two very different things.
Sometimes the terms ‘growth and expansion’ are a bit misunderstood. The most obvious meaning of both terms is to get bigger and broader but those meanings are not the only ones that apply.
Growth, for example, can mean gaining knowledge and becoming wiser, and expansion can mean broadening the knowledge base from which a company operates.
A small internet based company does not have to grow and expand until it becomes a giant multi-national company in order to survive but the owners and managers of these internet businesses do have to grow by getting smarter and expand by welcoming change with open arms.
Nothing ever just stays the same. Change is the only certainty in the world. What was hot or what worked yesterday is old news today and it will be ancient history tomorrow.
Companies and company owners and managers must grow with and adapt to changes as they happen and on the internet changes happen a lot faster than they do out in the brick and mortar world.
We all agree that growing, adapting and expanding is vital to the survival of any business and maybe especially to Internet business. So the question is: What is the key to growth and expansion of internet based businesses?
When brick and mortar businesses grow and expand, they build bigger buildings and hire more employees but that isn’t exactly an option for an internet based business.
The key to growth and expansion of an internet based business is for the business owner or manager to always and continuously invest in them.
They must be willing to stay on the cutting edge of technology and they must be willing to accept and adapt to changes as they occur.
Internet businesses are not buildings. Internet businesses are people. An internet business cannot grow by investing in a larger building.
It only grows when the person who is driving that business invests in his or her own knowledge and ability.
An internet business cannot expand by investing in hiring more people. An internet business expands when the person who is driving it invests in himself or herself.
The bottom line is this: The key to continuous growth and expansion of an internet based business is continuous investments being made in the owner or manager of the business. The short answer: Invest in yourself.
You have no doubt heard this refrain many times. “Invest in yourself! Invest in yourself! Invest is yourself!” But what does ‘invest in yourself mean’? Does it mean you should go out and invest in a haircut that costs two hundred bucks? Does it mean that you should go buy yourself a designer suit? What does it mean to invest in yourself?
Well, if you can afford it, go get that haircut and buy that designer suit but that is not the kind of investment that we are talking about here.
Your internet business is just you, your computer and your internet connection and you could actually operate your internet business from any computer on the planet that had an internet connection.
So basically, your business is really only you. Your business is based only upon your own knowledge and your own ability. Those are the ‘company’ assets and those are the ones that need to grow and expand constantly so that your internet business thrives.
Here is a rule that you might want to live by to insure that your internet business is a success and continues to be a success: Invest 5% of your time and income into improving yourself.
Expansion and growth are imperative to survival, and expansion and growth of an internet business means expanding and growing the knowledge of the person running the company… that would be YOU.
A tiny investment of only 5% of your time and your income per year in yourself can mean that you will continue to see positive monetary returns for many, many years to come.
You might be sitting there shaking your head and still wondering what is meant by a 5% time and income investment per year in yourself. What is meant is that you must expand your knowledge.
You must stay on top of new technological advancements and you must expand your knowledge base about your own area of expertise. Things change fast. New information becomes available on almost everything under the sun every day of the week.
It is very, very easy to fall behind very, very quickly. And unless you consciously put forth the effort to stay on top of things you will most certainly fall behind. Keeping up is easier than catching up and if you keep up, you can usually find a way to forge ahead.
Yes, you are so busy right now that you could use 48 hour days but taking just about one hour per day out of the 24 that you are allotted and only $5 out of every hundred dollars that you earn and investing that time and money in yourself can increase your future earnings a hundred fold.
There are newsletters, webinars, teleseminars and real brick and mortar seminars that can provide information and cause your knowledge to grow and expand so that your business can also grow and expand but you must be willing to invest in yourself so that you can take advantage of this information… learn it… and apply it to your own internet business.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Wrong Perceptions about Internet Business
By Article Specialist
Every day out there in the real brick and mortar world, millions and millions of people drag themselves from the warm, warm beds, take a shower, grab a cup of coffee, and head off to their jobs as they are thinking that there has got to be an easier way to make a living.
Everyone of those millions and millions of people knows somebody who has quit the ‘get-up-and-go-to-work’ grind and is making a very good living by working on their personal computers from the comfort of their own homes.
Working from home sounds like an ideal solution to them. Many of these dissatisfied souls will quit their jobs and plunge head-first into internet marketing with no preparation, no knowledge of what they are doing, no education, and no hope of success. Failure is their only option and they don’t even suspect.
The fact is that according to many sources, more than 90% (Ninety percent) of all Internet business start-ups end in failure within the first 120 (one hundred twenty) days. Yes, you read that right. NINETY PERCENT!
This failure rate should be a warning to those who are considering trying their hand at making a go of working on the Internet rather than at a job in the brick and mortar world.
Of course, success is possible. There IS the other 10% (ten percent) that do succeed. The thing is success doesn’t happen by accident. And success isn’t just a crap shoot. Success happens because of some very important factors.
Success happens because people have the right ideas about internet marketing and how it works. They do not expect to get rich quick or be able to make a killing overnight and retire to a tropical isle.
It is strange but somehow the same people who wouldn’t dream of starting a real world business, think they can make a go of an internet business even though they have no business background.
People will go into an internet business with the idea that they no longer have to get up and go to work. They think they can simply work when they feel like it and still make a good living. They simply do not expect to have to work hard or work long hours.
The 90% failure rate of new Internet businesses really isn’t all that surprising when you stop to think about the people who are starting internet businesses.
For some unknown reason most people think that running a successful internet business is as easy as getting a website built and hanging out an ‘open for business’ sign. They couldn’t be more wrong.
Running a successful internet business of any kind requires self-discipline. People will start an internet business and think that they can party all night, sleep until noon and then make a living in 3 or 4 hours sitting in front of a computer. They somehow think that the world is just going to line up on their website and hand over money. It isn’t going to happen.
Internet businesses do not run on auto-pilot. It is true that well established internet marketing gurus do not have to put in long, tedious hours on their businesses but it is a privilege that has been earned by putting in a lot of long and tedious hours.
It didn’t happen overnight for them and it won’t happen overnight for anybody. Most people are totally unprepared for the time investment that must be made in order for an internet business to become successful.
Affiliates And Affiliate Marketing Mentors
By Ann Liu
Affiliate marketing has been in the Internet industry for quite sometime now. It is among the most popular business model that used by many online entrepreneurs. It is also a great option for people who want to put up an online business quickly and cheaply.
However, there still has a large number of the population who knows a little or even nothing about affiliate marketing. But for the people who have just discovered this type of business, there are some misunderstanding needs to clear out.
First, a lot of them assume that they can easily make big bucks out of it in a short time. Well, they're definitely wrong.
To be successful in the affiliate marketing business is not an easy task and it will never happen overnight. It's just like an ongoing project and assignment where you need to find out and try various advertising strategies and tactics to make it work. This may even require you to sign-up with numerous affiliate programs for just to determine which merchant's program perform well. It takes your time and energy to find out.
Secondly, they expect to gain more if they place about 20 affiliated banners on just one niche. The things are it will not really work the way you think it would, because too many banners flooded on your website will make your site look like a link farm, it gives others messy feelings, visitors won't be interested and won't even bother clicking on any of those banners.
If you really want to promote several affiliate programs on your website, make sure that they match with your site theme, the topic you choose is also match with the rest of the content in your niche, place three or four affiliated links on your site is enough; but it is not always the case, you have to look at size of your web page as well.
Thirdly, some affiliates also think that if they just added affiliate materials to their site, they can receive sales right away. But the answer is no. One of the things they may not really know, affiliate marketing is all about advertising. If there's no traffic coming to your site, how can you expect to get any sales? So remember that the more you advertise your affiliate link or the site where the affiliate links are placed, the more clickthru these links are likely to receive.
If you want to be involved or you've already joined an affiliate program, but you have these misunderstanding to affiliate marketing, then, you might need a mentor to help you figure out where to start and what to do in order to succeed.
Speaking of mentor, it is defined as a wise and trusted teacher or counselor. Usually, these persons are experts in the field they are in. They can give expert advice and guidance as well as supervision to another person. So when I say affiliate marketing mentors, they are those people who are experienced counselors that have made affiliate marketing their specialty.
Following are some of the reasons toward why you need a mentor in your affiliate business:
1. Those affiliate marketing mentors have already been success in the business, so through sharing, you can learn their experience-based knowledge from the viewpoint of both affiliates and web merchants.
2. They know and can apply some theories and generalities regarding your business and telling you what works today and what are the things that could probably work in the future if the trend changes to help you see the things clear.
3. They are the sources of knowledge for your and they are the first one to teach you on how to generate more affiliate income. And also they have ability to guide you and help you boost your profits.
4. They can help you develop these traits, such as persistence, patience and thirst for knowledge to help you getting ready to take further challenge, because attaining success in affiliate marketing requires sweat, blood and of course, hefty time commitment. You need a person there to teach and encourage you how to not to give up.
5. Since to be proficient in search engine optimization, link exchanges, email marketing, newsletter marketing, reciprocal exchanges and forums advertising are hard to learn alone, affiliate marketing mentors can teach, supervise you in a systematic and efficient way to reduce your burdens.
So if you want to success in the affiliate marketing business in an effective and efficient way, don't want to face so many pressure, have a mentor there to teach, supervise, support and coaching you is a great investment.
Article Source: http://www.articlehighlight.com
Ann Liu, internet marketer and author of Online Profiting: Easy Ways To Start and Build Your Own Online Business. To learn how YOU too can succeed in Internet and affiliate marketing, please visit Marketingbyann.com
SEO As An Internet Marketing Strategy
By Courtney Tuttle
SEO stands for search engine optimization, which is the art and science of getting web pages to rank well in search engines. Since Google is by far the largest search engine, it can bring the most traffic to a site. Optimizing pages to rank well in Google has become big business, and those who are able to do it can definitely get a lot of extra traffic for their online business. There are positive and negative factors that one should consider before trying to use SEO to market online. This article will help you to learn more about these factors.
The first thing you should know about SEO as an internet marketing strategy is that it takes a lot of time. From the time you start your SEO campaign, it will probably take at least six months before your campaign bears fruit. For some, six months is too long to wait so they try to use other methods to promote their business during that time period.
If you can afford to invest six months to a year of time, SEO can be a great option. The wait can be frustrating for some, but once you do get your site ranked it will probably stay ranked for quite some time, resulting in traffic supplies that are pretty residual.
Getting ranked in Google and other search engines requires a lot of commitment and effort. What you need to probably ask yourself before starting an SEO campaign is whether you have the time to spend. If you have more money than time, you may want to consider pay per click advertising because it can jump-start your business more quickly. SEO is usually a better investment, as long as you have the time.
To get your site ranked in Google, you will need to use a few different strategies. First of all, you will need to make sure that your site is friendly to search engines. Important factors that you will want to consider are proper use of title tags, proper link structure, and proper placement of keywords. Placing the keywords you are trying to rank for in your title tags is essential, and is widely considered to be the most important on-site ranking factor.
Once you have taken care of making your site search engine friendly, you will need to start working on its authority. Authority is increased as more and more sites link to your site.
When very few sites have linked to yours, your site has very little authority. If you don't have much authority, it will be very difficult to rank well even if your on-page stuff is top notch. There are hundreds of ways that you can get sites to link to you, but the most important by far is creating content that is link worthy. If your content is good enough, you will always generate plenty of links.
Article Source: http://www.articlehighlight.com
Courtney teaches people internet marketing strategies so they can make money online.
Friday, October 19, 2007
The Secret Behind Internet Marketing Online
By Cuyler Callahan
With the advances in technology relating to the internet, making money online has taken the world by storm. For beginners in this fantastic world of internet marketing, sometimes a boost is needed to get business happening and some cash landing in your PayPal account.
With the right tools of the trade, knowing the different types of internet marketing, and enough income streams, a lot of money can be made on the internet. The purpose of this article is to show its readers the basic steps needed to getting a nice cash flow into their bank account by internet marketing online.
A lot of money can be made on the internet with internet marketing online, allowing people of all types to do it from the comfort of their own home. Since the invention of the internet, people have been trying to use it to make a buck. A lot of it started out with scamming and fraud, but that isn't so much the case today.
Although scams still exist on the internet, the majority businesses are real, and people have began making a lot of money honestly. But without the proper tools, making money online can be difficult.
Luckily, with the proper tools, internet marketing online can become very easy. Every internet marketer needs a PayPal account. Keywords, the words people type into Google or any other major search engine, are an internet marketer's best friend. Wordtracker can take care of this.
Many ways exist to get your website promoted, and an easy way is using Pay-Per-Click systems such as Google Adwords. Extra money can be made with Google Adsense as well.
Almost every internet marketer uses an opt-in list, and Aweber is the best of the best in auto-responder technology. Using these tools, you can implement a lot of different marketing strategies.
If you talk to any person who does internet marketing online, you will find many different answers on how you can get your website noticed, and traffic to your website.
A rundown of methods include article submissions, Pay-Per-Click advertising, forum postings, opt-in sign up lists, blogging, joint-ventures, and advertising with other websites that have high traffic. Everything read so far can be implemented into any website to generate a profit, now make another.
All entrepreneurs doing internet marketing online know that in order to make the big money online they need to have more then one website, in-fact they need a lot of them. As a beginner this is a big piece of information.
While the internet marketers who have been at this game for years can launch a new website and pull in $20,000 in a week, or even a day, the new guys aren't so lucky. They have no list to submit products, no traffic to their site, they are new, and don't have the reputation.
Luckily, if a beginner can get even $50 a month for a site, well, imagine the potential if they made five websites. They just made $250. And of course, beginners turn into intermediates, then into experts, and eventually the all mighty gurus.
Start small, build big, and it's surprising how short of time it takes to start pulling in $250 a website, then $2000, and eventually $20,000 to $200,000. Keep it simple if you want to go from beginner to winner.
It is easy to see how simple internet marketing online can be used to bring in another income, and why it has become so popular. With the right tools, and enough websites launched, anybody can be on their way to bringing in the dough and maybe one day will be the next great Guru.
Article Source: http://www.articlehighlight.com/
Cuyler Callahan is an avid internet marketer who loves making his money online. He runs an information website on internet marketing that includes a free website newsletter, as well as free reports about informational products and tools he strongly recommends to his visitors. To take advantage of this amazing information, visit his site at http://www.cdcmarketingcompany.com/
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Join Affiliate Programs - 15 Reasons Why
By Jeff Casmer
If you’ve been sitting on the fence deciding whether or not to take up affiliate marketing, today is the day you get off the fence and on with your affiliate marketing adventure. Below are 15 reasons to partake and join affiliate programs.
1. No production costs
The average person can not afford the costs involved in developing a new product. Joining affiliate programs you do not have to worry about this. The merchant has already gone through the trouble and expense.
2. Minimum setup costs
Compared to offline businesses held in a rented or bought building, an online affiliate business is relatively inexpensive. For the most part, one only needs a computer with internet access. Many affiliate programs are free to join which means that if you already have a computer then you can start this business without any initial capital.
3. No Fees or licenses
An offline entrepreneur has to deal with the costs of distributing a line of products within a limited geographical region. Affiliate marketers however, do not have to worry about this fee or about the geographical boundaries.
4. No business borders
The internet lets you reach different people without leaving your home. Your site can see more visitors in a day than an offline merchant will see in a year.
5. No inventory
The majority of us can not, and do not want to fill our house with storage. As an affiliate marketer you can sell large items without storage concerns.
6. No shipping
The costs involved with preparing and shipping products from one end of the world to another can be mounting. Affiliate marketers sell products without ever having to consider postal rates or packaging supplies.
7. No order processing
Trying to remember all the names, credit card number, and addresses of each order is not only a pain but more than the average person wants to handle. Luckily an affiliate marketer does not have to. The merchant takes care of it.
8. No employees
Employee salaries are the largest business expense. You do not have to worry about employee related benefits and compensations. All the work can be done on your own at your own pace. Even if you did want to work with someone occasionally or outsource some tasks to a specialist they can help you from their own home and only when you need them.
9. No customer service
No business is safe from customer complaints, but many people do not want to deal with them, and with affiliate marketing you don’t have to, the merchant does.
10. No merchant account
Unlike merchants who have to deal with the hassle of setting up and maintaining a merchant account, affiliate marketers don’t need a merchant account. This means that they are free from worrying about fraud, charge-backs, and possibly losing their merchant account.
11. Low risk
Offline businesses are frightening due to the major risk you take when you invest in a product. No other business lets you dump unprofitable products faster and easier than affiliate marketing. If you decide that you are no longer interested in a product you are selling, you can just take down the links and replace them with new ones. There are no long term contracts binding you to products.
12. No Sales experienced necessary
The notion that you have to be a sales whiz puts people off business. But this is not an issue with affiliate marketing. Many affiliate programs come with excellent marketing tools such as prewritten sales copies and banner ads to help you make your sales.
13. Sell almost anything
Nearly every niche is covered online, which means there are products being offered for just about every niche. An affiliate marketer can find at least two programs that offer products for their desired website theme.
14. High Income Potential
Because the internet is the world’s largest marketplace, your income potential exceeds anything you could ever make in a salary based job or even as an offline entrepreneur. Your income potential is limited only by you -- your drive and your efforts. Those who put in the effort can see themselves very wealthy, very quickly.
15. Make money in your sleep
This is perhaps the best reason to join affiliate programs. The internet operates on a 24/7 basis. Thus when you shut down for the day your business is still open and still making you money.
If you’re still contemplating whether or not to join, think of this: to date affiliate marketing is still the most inexpensive, convenient way to potentially make millions. Join affiliate programs? Still need to think about it?
Article Source: http://www.articlehighlight.com/
Jeff Casmer is an internet marketing consultant and work at home business owner. For more information on affiliate programs please visit his "Top Ranked" Internet Affiliate Programs Directory that gives you all the information you need to Work at Home in the 21st century.
Getting Traffic To Your Site -- How Do You Determine What's the Right Strategy For You?
By Michele Pariza Wacek
So you're looking for more traffic or visitors to your site. How do you determine the right strategy for you?
Below are some questions to ask yourself so you can put together what's right for your specific business.
1. Do you need traffic now (or sooner yet, like yesterday)? If you need immediate traffic then the choice is easy. Start running pay-per-click ads. That's the fastest way to get traffic to your site. (Those are the ads that show up on the right-hand side when you do search.)
If, however, you can wait for traffic, then you might want to consider doing some warm traffic strategies, such as Web 2.0 tactics (blogs, articles, press releases, social networking sites, podcasts, etc.) The good things about those tactics is they're either free or low-cost. They also bring warm leads and visitors to your site (unlike the pay-per-click, which brings you colder leads, more about that later). But they do take time, both time to see results and time for you to set them up. So that's why if you need traffic now, then you need to go the paid route.
However, you can do a combination of paid and unpaid -- paid traffic until the other, warmer, low-cost and free traffic strategies kick in.
2. Are you selling something relatively complicated, such as services or information products, or is it something easy to understand, like a toaster? If you're selling services or products that need a certain amount of explaining, then you may want to do more of the free and low-cost methods. Why? Because many of the free and low-cost methods are based on either information or building relationships (or both). You want your visitors to be interested in what you have to sell and interested in working with YOU. That will make the buying process go much smoother. A little 3-line pay-per-click ad can't do all of that.
However, if you're selling something like toasters, pay-per-click works well. Why? Because people already know what a toaster is, know they want to buy one, and all they're looking for is the right model at the right price. That's easy to get across in a pay-per-click ad.
3. Are you a master at writing copy that gets people to buy and converting visitors to customers? Okay, clearly this is key no matter how you're getting visitors to your site. But consider this -- pay-per-click traffic is pretty cold. What I mean by cold is these are people who don't know you at all. They're responding to an ad they see in a search engine (not even on a Web site or a publication they read), and it's a very short ad at that. They have no idea who you are, what you're selling, if you're any good at what you do, if you're credible and if your product or service will do what you say it does.
Therefore, when these cold visitors end up on your site, you have a lot of work to do on that page. You have to not only get them to know, like and trust you (at least enough, so at the very least you get an email address out of the encounter) plus you have to prove to them that the product or service you're selling is going to solve their problems.
This isn't easy. Even for people who are professionals at it. So if this isn't something you're an absolute master at, I would say either think twice about doing it or hire someone who is a master to help you out.
Now, consider this scenario. If you have people coming to your site who already have some idea who you are, like what they hear and are interested in finding out more, then your job to turn them into paying customers just got a whole lot easier. Warm visitors, or a warm list of prospects, will respond much more favorably to your sales messages. They're also more forgiving. The sales letters may not have to be absolutely perfect for you to get a decent conversion rate. That's because they already know, like and trust you (and people buy from those they know, like and trust) so all you have to do is match what you're selling to their needs.
Now, here's one more thing to consider. Even people who are masters at the pay-per-click and master converters still incorporate other traffic strategies into their marketing. Why? Because it's a smart thing to do. First of all, they'll end up making more money overall because all these tactics work well together. (And if they have a sales letter that has a high conversion with cold prospects, conversion rates should be much higher when the prospects are warm.) Plus, it's also never a wise idea to put all your eggs in one basket. You should diversify your traffic methods whenever possible. After all, you never know when one avenue is going to disappear, and if all your traffic is based on that one tactic, then you're entire business is at stake.
That said, I don't want any of you to panic because you don't have a variety of traffic strategies in place yet. Instead, pick one traffic tactic to focus on (use the above questions to get some idea on what that should be). Once you get that one down, pick a second one. And so on. Before you know it, you'll have lots of traffic swarming to your site.
Article Source: http://www.articlehighlight.com
Michele PW (Michele Pariza Wacek) helps people become more successful at attracting new clients, selling products and services and boosting business. To find out how she can help you take your business to the next level, visit her site at http://www.michelepw.com.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Understanding The Basics Of Keyword Density
By Karin Manning
Keyword density is an indicator of the number of times the selected keyword appears in the web page. But mind you, keywords shouldn't be over used, but should be just sufficient enough to appear at important places.
If you repeat your keywords with every other word on every line, then your site will probably be rejected as an artificial site or spam site.
Keyword density is always expressed as a percentage of the total word content on a given web page.
Suppose you have 100 words on your webpage (not including HMTL code used for writing the web page), and you use a certain keyword for five times in the content. The keyword density on that page is got by simply dividing the total number of keywords by the total number of words that appear on your web page. So here it is 5 divided by 100 = .05. Because keyword density is a percentage of the total word count on the page, multiply the above by 100, that is 0.05 x 100 = 5%.
The accepted standard for a keyword density is between 3% and 5% to get recognized by the search engines, and you should never exceed it.
Remember, that this rule applies to every page on your site. It also applies to not just to one keyword but also a set of keywords that relates to a different product or service. The keyword density should always be between 3% and 5%.
Simple steps to check the density:
Copy and paste the content from an individual web page into a word-processing software program like Word or Word Perfect.
Go to the Edit menu and click Select All. Now go to the Tools menu and select Word Count. Write down the total number of words in the page. Now select the Find function on the Edit menu. Go to the Replace tab and type in the keyword you want to find. Replace that word with the same word, so you don't change the text. When you complete the replace function, the system will provide a count of the words you replaced. That gives the number of times you have used the keyword in that page.
Using the total word count for the page and the total number of keywords you can now calculate the keyword density.
There are also a vast range of keyword software tools that can increase your income streams while making your online marketing efforts so much easier. These tools are highly recommended for ease of use and for the benefits they bring internet marketers.
Article Source: http://www.articlehighlight.com
Download the best keyword software tool for your online business now at http://www.keyword-elite-software-review.com and get $3210.00 in Keyword Elite bonuses free!
How Search Engines Work To Bring Traffic To Your Site
By Karin Manning
It is the search engines that finally bring your website to the notice of the prospective customers and where most people get their online sales from. Hence it is better to know how these search engines actually work and how they present information to the customer initiating a search.
There are basically two types of search engines. The first is by robots called crawlers or spiders.
Search Engines use spiders to index websites. When you submit your website pages to a search engine by completing their required submission page, the search engine spider will index your entire site.
A spider is an automated program that is run by the search engine system. Spider visits a web site, read the content on the actual site, the site's Meta tags and also follow the links that the site connects. The spider then returns all that information back to a central depository, where the data is indexed.
It will visit each link you have on your website and index those sites as well. Some spiders will only index a certain number of pages on your site, so don't create a site with 500 pages!
The spider will periodically return to the sites to check for any information that has changed. The frequency with which this happens is determined by the moderators of the search engine.
A spider is almost like a book where it contains the table of contents, the actual content and the links and references for all the websites it finds during its search, and it may index up to a million pages a day.
Example: Excite, Lycos, AltaVista and Google.
When you ask a search engine to locate information, it is actually searching through the index which it has created and not actually searching the Web. Different search engines produce different rankings because not every search engine uses the same algorithm to search through the indices.
One of the things that a search engine algorithm scans for is the frequency and location of keywords on a web page, but it can also detect artificial keyword stuffing or spamdexing. Then the algorithms analyze the way that pages link to other pages in the Web. By checking how pages link to each other, an engine can both determine what a page is about, if the keywords of the linked pages are similar to the keywords on the original page.
There are also software tools that you can use to increase traffic to your site and your page rank and linking popularity.
Article Source: http://www.articlehighlight.com
Download SEO Elite for your online business now at www.Seo-Elite-Software-Review.com and get $2610.00 in Seo Elite bonuses free!
Can A Regular Person Make Money Through Internet Marketing?
By Courtney Tuttle
This pretty familiar question runs through the minds of thousands of people. Since the beginning of the internet people have dreamed of striking it rich. The internet is full of opportunity, and internet marketing allows people to extend their reach to previously impossible distances.
The question then is whether a regular person, with no super-human skill can make their money online. The answer to this question isn't simple and for the purpose of discussion let's temporarily leave the answer at a maybe. What is a regular person anyway?
The difficulty with online business is that it takes more intensity then other types of businesses. The patience and tenacity required drives almost everyone to quit. Does that mean that the average person can't make money online? It at least means that most people aren't willing to do what would be required.
When attempting to build a profitable brand with the internet, people will run into many obstacles that they would never see in a brick and mortar type business. Traffic is excessively difficult to come by in the beginning.
Those periods of low traffic will drive most people out of the business, although continued effort would take them to sunnier days. The persistence required to make money with the internet is a lot like acting or being a musician, it can take literally years to get discovered.
What is required then? Making money with the internet requires the same attributes of most other businesses, but perhaps a more lethal dosage. Unlimited patience and creativity are a must. Persistence is the benchmark attribute of all those that make it online. A quitter will never make a full time income with the internet, too much is required. Most websites that reach serious levels of traffic have been online for at least one year, so plan accordingly.
Ironically, supreme levels of intelligence are not required to make money with the internet. In the past, people needed to understand the programming languages of the internet, but today's internet has made a lot of concessions that make learning these languages mostly unnecessary. The influx of blog platforms and other content management systems have made it fairly simple for regular people to have websites. Those that make it simply keep trucking when the going is tough.
If you would like to learn to make money with the internet, you should ask yourself a simple question. How much are you willing to put into it? Your answer will ultimately determine whether you make it or fail.
Article Source: http://www.articlehighlight.com
Courtney offers free internet marketing advice that helps people to make money online.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Creating Value for Your Online Customers
By Andrew Jones
Customers are the lifeblood of any business (whether it's online or offline). So it makes sense to look after your hard-earned customers and give them excellent value for the cash that they hand over to you. It's not about you. It's about the customer and their wants and needs. Giving value will increase the conversion rate of leads to sales, number of transactions and average $ sale. This results in greater profits for you for less work.
You should provide products and services that you can be absolutely proud of and that you would have no hesitation in selling to family or friends. This leads to happy customers. Happy customers will buy more from you, more often. Happy customers will recommend you to other people. On the other hand, unhappy customers won't buy from you any more and they will tell everyone of their bad experience with you... not so good for your business.
A business transaction is a simple exchange... cash is exchanged for your product or service. The customer needs what you have (the product or service) MORE than the money that they give you. It stands to reason then that the product must be of EQUAL or GREATER VALUE than the dollars that are given to you. Greater value is always better because this adds the WOW factor to their purchase. The product should be loaded with benefits... not just "so-called" benefits in the sales copy but real benefits that the customer will really appreciate from you.
With every customer, you should endeavour to "go the extra mile" for them. A lot of people will be questioning whether it's really worth going to "all of this trouble". But just consider that going the extra mile for your customers will turn most of them into profitable "lifetime customers". This is actually a lot "less trouble" than continually looking for new customers. So consider some really easy methods like "thanking" your customers, staying regularly in touch with them, giving them free tips and help (rather than just selling to them all time), and giving away free items of value (such as good e-books) for being such a great customer.
What if you get complaints from a customer? Even in this situation, you can turn this around and convert them into a loyal customer... if you handle it properly. If you get a difficult customer or someone with a complaint, stay calm, breathe (I'm not kidding), don't take it personally or attach emotion to the situation. Do your best to listen to what the customer has to say. If you treat them with respect and show that you are trying to help them, this should go a long way to resolving the problem... and keeping them as a customer. Obviously, some people are never happy no matter what you do, so you may have to just "move on" in this particular instance.
It's always easier and cheaper to sell to existing customers than to find new ones... that's common knowledge. Bottom line is: if you don't give your customers good value, they will simply return the product which isn't good for your profits or reputation.
Article Source: http://www.articlehighlight.com
To find the best home based business ideas and opportunities so you can work at home, visit: http://www.easycash-at-home.com
Why Hire a Web Designer
By Alexa Peters
A lot of online business owners start with very little extra money. You have to do everything yourself -- the preparation of a product, the development of a marketing strategy, the actual building of a website to cater to your product's marketing needs. As your business expands over time, you will find that your simple "homemade" site might not be enough to cover everything, and you will have to take a day or two (which you don't have) away to simply dedicate that to the website expansion.
Sounds familiar? Chances are, you're someone who started everything with very little money too, so you're pretty skeptical when it comes to giving away your money in exchange for something that you could have done yourself. However, there is a lot more to hiring a website designer than just finishing up a job that you don't want to do.
When you hire a web designer to do a job for you, you are doing more than just handing over the "dirty job" to someone else. In fact, by paying a little money, you can let the designer worry about the little annoyances that always evade the main picture and only come haunting when you're halfway through the job. That way, you will be more focused and have more time to spend on your actual business strategy.
On the other hand, the web designers you hire are professionals so they are very good at what they do. By outsourcing your web design jobs to them, you won't have to worry when problems surface because you can always get them to fix it for you. Again, they will be able to pin point the problem and fix it faster than you probably would be able to.
Also, the work you pay for will turn out more professional than what you can achieve because the reality is that the designers have been doing it longer than you have. After all, they do it for a living so they have to be good!
So, remember to not just work your business, but grow your business too!
Normally, if you want to have professional designers custom build your site, you must be prepared to dish out at least a few thousand dollars for a very basic website. That does not have to if you know where to find the best deals, the best designs for the lowest price. Here's a rough guide:
Have you ever seen those advertisements in newspaper classified ad sections that offer a 5-page website at $500? These companies are established companies with physical locations, therefore they have to increase the amount they charge to pay off some overheads: office rent, designer's wages, advertising costs and so on. More than likely, you will get a cookie cutter site that is like every other site, except for the name of your site.
Therefore, it would be wise to find freelance designers who work from home. These people are often working from home so they do not have a high operation cost like that of a company. And they will be able to design images with quality similar to those of designers from big companies, so it's a "no-brainer" choice.
It just takes a little bit of effort but you can find the good in hiring a web designer. And if you find a good one, it will be well worth the effort.
Article Source: http://www.articlehighlight.com
Larym Design is a leader in using Web 2.0 Strategies in Small Business Website Development. Visit Today and download your FREE REPORT Web 2.0 for Small and Emerging Businesses.
Monday, October 15, 2007
Why 95% Of Internet Marketers Fail And How You Can Avoid It
By Andrew Jones
It's the greatest dream for most people. To be able to operate your own business, earning income from home on complete auto-pilot, with no boss to worry about, work when you want or take a holiday whenever you want, and to buy a house, car, boat or other toys. But for 95% of people that start an online business, this dream will end in failure. Why do so many fail? The simple answer is that they quit before success has a chance to appear, and often only one or two months after starting.
If you've been around for a little while, you probably are familiar with some of the big name gurus in Internet Marketing. The interesting thing about their journey is that they are all fairly similar to each other, in that many of them struggled in their online business for years. Some for 2 years, 4 years or even 6 years before they started to make a profit. Obviously in this present day, it doesn't need to take this long to make it because we can learn from their mistakes and we have all the latest technology to make life easier.
The point is that, they aren't successful now just because of special skills or knowledge, because many of them started out with no such resources, the same as you and me. They are successful now because they just KEPT GOING no matter what. Can you imagine "failing" for 4 years before you started to make a profit? Many people can't imagine doing that for more than 2 months. Persistence, hard work and a burning desire for "the dream" is all that the gurus had, and all that YOU need. How badly do you want that dream?
The other stumbling block to succeeding online is your concept of failure. Usually when the 95% make a mistake, have a set-back or can't do something, they see this as a sign that they will always fail, that they will never get it, and that they aren't cut-out for internet marketing. On the other hand, the 5% see failure as feedback, letting them know when they are off-course and a learning experience where they can become even wiser. They see it as being one step closer to success. The irony is that successful people make more mistakes than anyone, yet they are willing to pay that price and make mistakes, and that is why they succeed. Any set-back is just an obstacle to go around, over, under or through.
Where would we be today if Thomas Edison gave up on the light bulb? He tried literally hundreds of different combinations to get the light bulb to work. Each attempt brought him one step closer to success and he knew it because he just expected to make it work - it was just a matter of when, not if. When a baby is learning how to walk they fall over many many times before they finally get it. Do you think they ever say to themselves, "Ah well, I guess I'm just not cut-out for this walking, I'll have to crawl around for the rest of my life."
Another trap to avoid, is measuring your progress based on how far you have to go to reach your goal. It seems so far away and no matter what you do, it never seems to get any closer (a bit like no matter how far you travel, the horizon never gets any closer). This will only make you feel discouraged, less motivated and more likely to give up. Instead, look back to where you started and see how far you've come. You will be absolutely amazed at how much you've learned, how much you've done and how far you have come. This will be very motivating because you will see that you have actually made a lot of progress. So focus your mind and actions on your goal, but measure your progress based on how far you have come.
When I first decided to start an online business, I almost gave up even before I got going. Why? Because I read about the 95% failure rate and I thought that I was probably wasting my time and there was little chance of me succeeding in this game. But I knew how much I wanted the dream and I decided that I would focus my mind on the 5% that make it, and learn as much as I can about how they did it. If you keep learning, keep taking action and NEVER stop, you will be in the 5%. It's just a question of when, not if.
Article Source: http://www.articlehighlight.com
Andrew Jones has been a business owner for the past 10 years, and is now a Plug-In Profit Site owner. Discover the best earn extra income opportunity.
8 Ways Creating Infoproducts Can Make You Money
By Almin Cehajic
When you start looking at creating infoproducts one of the first choices you face is whether to create an ebook or to come up with something else. eBooks are a great digital product to create and sell, but there is more than one way to sell information online. In this article we will give you a few ways you can create information products online besides ebooks.
1. Create a report that really addresses a very specific niche within a broad theme. An example of this would be a report on 10 things to do in Chicago in the summer. This is very specific and would attract an audience traveling to Chicago. A report on 10 things to do on your summer vacation is good, but not as specific.
You would want to know how many people are searching for travel information about Chicago. You could sell a quality report for $5-$10 and it does not have to be as long as a book.
2. Teleseminars are becoming a great infoproduct and an excellent sales tool for back end products as well. A 1 hour seminar featuring valuable information on a timely topic can be easy to create and sell for $20-$50 a person. You can limit the access to help sell out quicker. You could do a group of teleseminars and then compile them and sell access to the recordings at a later date.
3. In place of eBooks create ecourses and sell them. You can deliver them right to a person's email. A 5 or 10 part email course could be sold for $20-$30 and once you have it set up can bring you money over and over. It is easy to update whenever it needs to be. With the number of free ebooks and ecourses you need yours to really deliver, but many people will perceive it as more valuable than a free one and pay based on that.
4. Audio books are big business today. Why not create an audio version of an ebook or ecourse and make that available for sale. People will even pay a little more for an mp3 version of a product.
5. As social networking continues to advance people are looking for ways to become involved and interact with the products they buy. Doing interviews with experts and selling them as an infoproduct online offers huge potential to the savvy marketer willing to learn how to this. They are easy to record and can be done over the phone and then offered online.
6. Would you pay for a ezine that offered premium information and inside tips every month. There are people who do. One guy publishes an inside information newsletter online about stocks and bonds. He hires the writers to write fresh content and sells it as a monthly membership. He clears over $1 Million Dollars a year.
7. Private memberships are another infoproduct you can create and make very good money on. I know one membership site that was created off of a person's fascination with celebrities. He offers the contact information on over 10,000 celebrities for under $10 a month. He has over 40,000 members and works 10 hours a day 5 days a week keeping it updated.
8. Another popular digital infoproduct today is private label rights articles There are websites that offers a monthly membership with access to thousands of articles. You can take PLR articles and bundle them to create infoproducts on virtually any subject. With a good sales letter you can make money selling these in bundles.
This is 8 ideas on creating infoproducts. You really are only limited by your own creativity. Membership sites take work every month to make the membership worthwhile. Other infoproducts can be set up to make sales for years to come. The choice is up to you.
Article Source: http://www.articlehighlight.com
Almin Cehajic is experienced webmaster and resell rights products marketer. He writes informative articles on various topics, especially on resell rights business. If you are interested in resell rights business visit his new website Resell Rights Professional.
Saturday, October 13, 2007
How To Be Effective With Online Marketing
By: Pasi Kaarakainen
More and more businesses are monitoring the way they spend their advertising money. Yellow pages is one example of how advertising is changing. So is radio and television advertising. Let's look at how to be more effective with online marketing whether your business is on the internet now or not.
First of all you have to understand that any kind of marketing can be effective if it is targeting the right audience. Running a radio ad for cowboy boots to teenage rappers is an example of poorly targeted advertising. So is listing your website about cars in a directory listing for music downloads. You have to get your target right.
This is still a big problem for people who do online marketing because they are intimidated by the internet in general. Unless you have a very large budget you can quickly deplete your advertising funds and be out of business with no sales by not knowing or reaching your target market.
Pay per click advertising is an example of being able to target your market and only pay for quality traffic. This is probably one of the greatest things the internet has given business owners. The ability to not waste money on advertising allows you to do more of it.
But even ppc advertising is not without it's problems. You have to know how much you are paying per click, how many clicks does it take to get a sale, and how many sales does it take to cover the cost of your advertising. Knowing your break even point is the key in knowing how much to bid per click.
Google Adwords is one of the most popular forms of online marketing and much has been written about how to do it correctly. Because Google gets about half of all search engine traffic everyday you want your business on it.
A good pay per click campaign with Google Adwords can really pay off for you in terms of targeting your market and increasing your sales. If you sell a high ticket item you may not need as many sales to find your break even point. With a lower priced item you may have to make up for that in volume before breaking even. This is why targeting your visitors and pay per click work so well together.
Let's see if someone in offline business is going to become an expert in tracking what is working and what is not. Offline businesses can ask their customers on the phone, how did you hear from us. They can keep a simple stroke sheet that let's them know that newspaper ads are where they get the most calls, but radio ads are where they get the most sales. Armed with that kind of information they could ramp up on more radio ads and improve their profitability.
Same thing with internet advertising. You can use different urls to track the same ad. Then run it in various places like traffic exchanges or ezine advertising. Check your website stats to see which url is pulling in the most traffic. Knowing this will allow you to do more of that type of advertising. It will also tell you where to promote more. If one eNewsletter gets you more sales than another then that may be a newsletter to advertise on a weekly basis versus once a month.
Hopefully you get the idea. You have to know your target market and then you have to promote to it. Tracking how you spend your online marketing dollars and what is working is the key to increasing your business and profitability.
Article Source: http://www.articlehighlight.com
Pasi K. owns a website with resources of everything you'll ever need to start, run and grow an online home business. To read more about online marketing ideas and tips go to his web site today.
A Day In The Life Of An Affiliate Marketer
By: Jo Han Mok
Being in the affiliate marketing business is not that hard now with the internet at your disposable. It is much easier now compared to the days when people have to make use of the telephones and other mediums of information just to get the latest updates on the way their program is coming along.
So with technology at hand, and assuming that the affiliate is working from home, a day in his or her life would sound something like this!
Upon waking up and after having breakfast, the computer is turned on to check out new developments in the network. As far as the marketer is concerned there might be new things to update and statistics to keep track on.
The site design has to be revised. The marketer knows that a well-designed site can increase sign ups from visitors. It can also help in the affiliate's conversion rates.
That done, it is time to submit the affiliate program to directories that lists affiliate programs. These directories are means to attract people in joining your affiliate program. A sure way of promoting the affiliate program.
Time to track down the sales you are getting from your affiliates fairly and accurately. There are phone orders and mails to track down. See if they are new clients checking the products out. Noting down the contact information that might be a viable source in the future.
There are lots of resources to sort out. Ads, banners, button ads and sample recommendations to give out because the marketer knows that this is one way of ensuring more sales. Best to stay visible and accessible too.
The affiliate marketer remembered that there are questions to answer from the visitors. This has to be done quickly. Nothing can turn off a customer than an unanswered email.
To prove that the affiliate is working effectively and efficiently, inquiries would have to be paid more attention on. Nobody wants to be ignored and customers are not always the most patient of all people. Quick answer that should appear professional yet friendly too.
In the process of doing all the necessities, the marketer is logged on to a chat room where he or she interacts with other affiliates and those under that same program. This is where they can discuss things on how to best promote their products.
There are things to be learned and it is a continuous process. Sharing tips and advices is a good way of showing support. There may be others out there wanting to join and may be enticed by the discussion that is going on. There is no harm in assuming what opportunities ahead.
The newsletters and ezines were updated days ago, so it is time for the affiliate marketer to see if there are some new things happening in the market. This will be written about in the marketer's publication to be distributed to the old and new customers.
These same publications are also an important tool in keeping up to date with the newly introduced products. The marketer has put up a sale and promotion that customers may want to know about. Besides, they have to keep up with the deadline of these sales written in the publications.
It is that time to show some appreciation to those who have helped the marketer in the promotions and sale increase. Nothing like mentioning the persons, their sites and the process they have done that made everything worked.
Of course, this will be published in the newsletters. Among the more important information that have been written already.
The marketer still has time to write out recommendations to those who want credible sources for the products being promoted. There is also time to post some comments on how to be a successful affiliate marketer on a site where there are lots of wannabees.
Two objectives done at the same time. The marketer gets to promote the product as well as the program they are in. Who knows, someone may be inclined to join.
Time flies. Missed lunch but is quite contented with the tasks done. Bed time!
Ok, so this may not be all done in a day. But then, this gives you an idea of how an affiliate marketer, a dedicated one that is, spends the marketing day.
Is that success looming in the distance or what?
Article Source: http://www.articlehighlight.com
Jo Han Mok is the author of the #1 international business bestseller, The E-Code. He shares his amazing blueprint for creating million dollar internet businesses at: www.InternetMillionaireBlueprints.com
eBook Writing Tips To Prepare You To Write
By: Pasi Kaarakainen
One of the many ways to market on the internet is to write an eBook. If you have never done it, writing a book to published on the internet may seem a little bit overwhelming at first. In this article we will give you some tips on things to consider before you even write your first word.
It has been said that building a house happens one brick at a time. The same is true with writing an ebook. You do it one word at a time. Before you even start you need to sit down and put together an outline of thoughts that will make up your book.
You probably know the theme right now. Go ahead and write down a few titles that you could use for your ebook. Do not worry, you can change them or pick one after the book is done. Writing a title right now is a way to help you get focused on what your book is going to be about. Just put a few down as they pop into your head.
Next you want to expand on your title and come up with a thesis statement. This is a couple of sentences on what your book is about and how you will solve that problem. Most ebooks are problem solving in nature as people go online to solve their problems.
Your thesis statement is what you will develop the various chapters of your book from. Think of the thesis like the foundation of a house. You will build from it.
Here are a 3 questions to ask yourself before you actually start writing your eBook.
1. How will your book affect the people reading it?
2. Will the information in your book be useful to your readers?
3. As eBooks are problem solving nature, does your book solve your reader's problems?
Hopefully you can answer yes to all of these questions. This will help you to stay focused on what you write and how it is affecting to your readers.
Along these same lines is knowing who your target market is. An ebook gives you the same advantages in marketing that a blog or website does. But it will not help you much if you do not know who you are writing for. This can affect everything you write from the style, humor, tone, and the length of the book.
Many ebook writers are able to slip in links to various products and websites they want to promote. This is o.k. and is normally accepted as long as how you do it does not affect the flow of the book.
The other thing when promoting is do not just make your book one big ad. Naturally leading your readers to more websites they may find useful is being helpful. If one of those happens to be an affiliate sales page this is all the better for both of you.
Understand that the quality of the book will affect your reputation. Many ebooks are written simply to build an email list and to make subscribers of their readers. You will never do that if you write a poor book. This can be include everything from content and style, to spelling and grammar.
One other thing to consider is what will you do with your ebook after it is done. Are you giving it away to support another part of your business. Or are you selling it to make money. Will it be available on ClickBank as an affiliate product and be priced to pay commissions? These are all things to consider.
In conclusion consider these tips before you write your ebook. Get yourself and your thoughts organized. You will find yourself ready to write the great next masterpiece.
Article Source: http://www.articlehighlight.com
Do you need a legitimate home based business opportunity? Find the best ways how to achieve network ezine marketing success by visiting Pasi K's web site today.