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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.