Is Good Search Engine Optimisation Enough for your Jobsite?

Is Good Search Engine Optimisation Enough for your Jobsite?
You have set up your jobsite or recruitment website and now
you want visitors, in fact you want more than that you want
candidates and their CV's or Résumé's. You
have a market niche, the guys that built your site tell you
that they have optimised the pages and so you begin to
eagerly wait for the traffic to appear in your website
statistics. Yet day after day the numbers are just a
handful. You speak to the tech guys and they tell you not
to worry it just takes time, or they suggest that you use
some pay per click. So off you go and spend hours
researching which PPC system to use, you decide on one of
the big three and you spend hours setting up your adverts
and begin spending your daily budget. You are horrified by
the cost of some of the keywords that the system tells you
are best for your advert, you have an advert for a mortgage
manger and it is going to cost you £2.50 for each
click to be ranked in the top 5, but still you need the
traffic and those candidates and you have just spent
£10K on the website so you had better make it work,
or it could cost you your job and forget the next pay rise.

If this sounds a familiar story you might like to broaden
your horizons, think outside the box a little. Does
everyone that want a job as a mortgage manager really
search for "mortgage manager" on the top search engines, do
they only search on the top search engines. Do a search
yourself on the top short keywords and phrases and see how
many other sites are competing fro the word or phrase. I
was recently talking to a corporate account manager for the
UK's most dominant search engine and he told me that one of
the retail banks was paying £8.00 for each click to
be number 1 for the keyword "mortgage", well that might be
financially viable for the very large corporate purse of a
bank, but it would be crazy money to attract candidates to
a jobsite or recruitment website.

The next few paragraphs are some of the things that you
need to consider:

Niche Keyword and Key phrase Analysis and Report £75
for 300 Keywords with KEI Analysis, find the Niche Keywords
and Key Phrases that will make your site a success. These
are the Keywords and Key Phrases that many people search
for every day and yet few sites have been optimized for
them. This is the quick route to the top 10 on the major
search engines. Get this right and save thousands of
£s and gain thousands of Candidates. Web Page
Optimization report for one key phrase and one search
engine including a detailed analysis of the top 10
competitor sites.

Meta tag creation, it is essential that you have the right
Meta tags for each page of you site if you are going to
achieve maximum site visitors.

Hand Directory submissions; To create high quality one way
links to your site is the best way to raise your Page Rank
within Google. Please be aware it can take up to 6 months
for all directories submitted to list you. DMOZ and Yahoo
Directory Submission; These are the two most important
directories to get listed in, however it is equally
important to get the right description for your site to
achieve maximum ranking across the hundreds of search
engines that are influenced by these two directories.
Submission to 450+ Search Engines including full top twenty
ranking report for all index page keywords RSS Feed
Submission to 76 Engines if you have rss or xml feeds to
the job vacancies on your site this service will help
maximize the number of vacancies that appear in the search
engine listings. Let your vacancies work for you and drive
quality candidates to your database. Doorway Page Creation
including Flash Redirection and keyword research, a niche
keyword based domain name registered just for your site,
and then a very clever bit of black hat SEO generates
thousands of extra visitors to your site. In the next
Article I will discuss a variety of internet marketing
techniques that will help maximize the SEO of your jobsite
or recruitment website.

----------------------------------------------------
Louise G is the Managing Director of Ianson Internet
Markekting and an expert in SEO and Internet Marketing for
Jobsites and Recruitment Websites. Find out more about
Internet marketing and SEO at
http://www.internet-marketing-ianson.com

Have You Found A Legitimate Work At Home Affiliate Opportunity?

Have You Found A Legitimate Work At Home Affiliate Opportunity?
There are a lot of different work at home affiliate
opportunities that you can choose to use to start your own
home business. One thing you need to know about is that not
all of the opportunities will be legitimate. There is an
easy way to find out if it is legitimate or not. Here are
some things that you can do to tell if you have found
legitimate work at home affiliate opportunities.

One: The first thing you want to do is to thoroughly read
everything on the affiliate programs website. Find out what
their privacy policy is and everything else you can about
them. The more information you learn about the company, the
easier it will be to tell if it is one of the legitimate
work at home affiliate opportunities.

Two: The second thing you want to do is to contact the
company. Contact them more than once and with more than one
method over a week's time. In other words, send them an
email, call them and even write them if you want to.

This is important to do because you want to make sure that
they are going to answer you each time no matter what
method you use. The legitimate companies will contact you
all the time and will be friendly and helpful. If they are
not legitimate then they may contact you once or twice but
then they won't bother after that no matter how many other
times you contact them.

Three: You don't want to jump into any home business
without first finding out what others are saying about it.
Visit forums and blog reviews that will let you know
whether others have had a good experience with the company
or not. People will talk and let others know about a work
at home opportunity, especially if they have had a bad
experience with them. This is one step that you want to
take if you really want to know if you have found
legitimate work at home affiliate opportunities.

There are other things you can do such as contacting the
Better Business Bureau, to find out if a company is
legitimate. However, these three things are the most
important things you can do to tell if you have found
legitimate work at home affiliate opportunities. Don't skip
any of them because if you do then you will end up
regretting it. It is always best to know if a company is
legitimate before you start your home business. That way
you can concentrate on making it a success, instead of
beating yourself up because you didn't do your homework
first.

----------------------------------------------------
Noel Lillis is the owner and webmaster of
http://bilt2sell.com
Noel looks at some research people should do before
starting their own affiliate marketing business.
To help you succeed in your online business venture. Free
literature, training videos and information on
Quality business opportunities is available at: =>
http://www.bilt2sell.com/newsletter-signup.html

Get Hordes Of Traffic To Your Website Today

Get Hordes Of Traffic To Your Website Today
The backbone of any online marketing effort is traffic. No
matter how well your site converts, how good is your sales
copy, how great your product is, if no one sees it, all is
lost. Really, if no one reads your ads or sees your site,
you will not make it online.

So you have to have traffic. Not just any old traffic, but
targeted high quality traffic from people that are
interested in what you are offering. Beware of sites that
are willing to send you 10,000 hits for 25 bucks. You get
what you pay for.

So how do you get good quality traffic?

1) Although potentially expensive, pay-per-click can be a
really good traffic source. The key here is to highly
target the traffic. If you are selling fly fishing
equipment, you want to bid on "fly fishing", not fishing.
You can experiment with different types of keywords, but
only do it if you can effectively track everything.

2) Article writing. I especially like article writing
because if someone clicks on a link of mine, it is after
they have already read 300-700 words of mine. That means
they like my style and want to know more. In a way, they
already trust me.

3) Ezine advertising. This is also potentially
productive, but testing is critical. Response rates can
vary significantly from one ezine to the next and with one
ad to the next. Start small in any given ezine, and once
you have a successful small ad, then you can make it bigger
or go with a bigger subscriber base.

4) Exchange links with other like-minded web site owners.
I don't mean link farms or big link exchanges. What I do
mean is trading links with sites whose customers compliment
your own. For example, if you are selling fly fishing
equipment and another company sells deep-sea fishing
equipment, you can trade links with that site. You will
not be directly competing with the other site, but you are
targeting many of the same customers.

That list may seem small, but I prefer quality traffic over
volumes of useless traffic. There are many traffic
exchanges and list building programs out there, but my
attitude is that most of that traffic and subscriber base
are others just like you, trying to get traffic. Unless
you have a product that specifically targets that customer,
stay away from traffic exchanges.

----------------------------------------------------
Westly Lager is a success mentor and coach helping teach
people how to work online. With Westly's experience and
expertise you can't go wrong. See how Westly can help you
today by visiting http://myinternetbusinessreview.org also
checkout http://www.squidoo.com/my_internet_business_review

Home Business: Great Idea, But Can You Monetize It?

Home Business: Great Idea, But Can You Monetize It?
The absolute key to the success of any home business idea
is its ability to make you money. Doing something you like
to do as a home business opportunity is great fun however
it needs to make you money.

As an entrepreneur you are always coming up with great
ideas. Entrepreneurs are great idea people and wonderful at
strategizing. But the idea of any home business is of
course to make money. So ask yourself, within 10 minutes of
coming up with a new idea, how will I monetize this? If you
can not think of a reasonable, obvious way of monetize that
idea, you need to abandon that idea and going on to
something else. There will always be another idea... Don't
fall in love with an idea that months down the road have
drained your pocket book and your enthusiasm.

Basically there are three ways to make money online

1. Sell something you've created

This can be broken down into two groups, information and
products. Information is things such as e-books, videos,
audios, membership sites, coaching programs, and
teleseminars. If you have never done any of this before you
should, this is an amazing opportunity. Your costs are
minimal or nothing and profit margins are huge.

Product or services are something physical. A product is
something that would be sold by means of an online store,
and services are something you provide like babysitting,
painting or article writing. This is a great method for
long term profitability.

2. Sell someone else's stuff

There are many ways to sell other peoples stuff. Creating
an online line store to sell like products is one. This
option comes in several forms, dropship, warehouse or a
combination. Dropship has a lower profit margin to cover
the cost of someone else handling the shipping for you. The
warehouse model cost you less to ship however you must
inventory the product. Or do a combination, warehouse high
volume pieces and dropship less requested product. Amazon
did this for years.

Affiliate programs are another way to sell some else's
product. They handle all the product distribution you
generate the sale and receive a profit for your efforts.

Joint ventures are a hot topic these days. This is always a
way for someone new to the home based business without a
list. You approach someone with a buying list and strike a
deal to sell your product to their list for a share of the
profits. That can look like a 50-50 split or 70-30; make
your best win-win deal.

3. Sell advertising

This can be in the form of Google Adsense or selling
advertising on your site. There are many online businesses
that make all their money by putting up a site, get it
ranked high in the search engines and then sell advertising
to others.

All that said, don't limit yourself to just one of these
techniques. It's a good idea to have a mixed portfolio to
minimize your risk and increase profits. Mixing up the
products means to mix up the industries as well; network
marking, health and wellness, information products etc.
Generally if one area is not working the other one will be
producing for you, keeping your profits balanced.

Whatever your home based business is it should be fun and
profitable. So consider these few monetizing ideas when
brilliance erupts, but most of all just take action!

----------------------------------------------------
Bob and Cindy are both home based business entrepreneurs
with 15 years experience in owning Real Estate and Network
Marketing businesses. You can own your own business today
that provides residual income for your future. To learn
more about how you can secure your financial future... Go
to: http://www.ThingsLookGreatIn2008.com
Visit our blog at
http://www.BuildingOnlineBusinessSuccess.com for great
business strategies.

Driving WebSite Traffic

Driving WebSite Traffic
Driving traffic to your site is one of the first
requirements to a successful online business. Without
traffic, your site may as well not exist. There are
numerous ways you can drive traffic, so let's take a look
at some of them and evaluate them. Keep in mind, this
isn't a comprehensive list, but it is some of the more
successful ways. . I invite you to share any other ideas
that have worked for you.

PPC

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Affiliate Programs

Article Syndication

Press Releases

Blogging Banner ads

Joint ventures

Offline campaigns (that drive traffic to your site)

Advertising (on other sites, ad networks and industry
publications)

Let's look at the pros and cons of a few of the methods, to
help you determine what methods are viable for your
business. Stay tuned for parts 2 and 3, as we work our way
through the list above and determine the pros and cons.

PPC

Pros:

You can drive traffic quickly -- that's a good thing!

Your traffic is targeted if you select the right keywords
-- also a good thing!

You can use PPC to test things (headlines, landing page
copy) -- great way to use PPC, in addition to just driving
traffic for sales. Be willing to sacrifice some profits
and use PPC to test ideas before you fully role them out.

You control the settings and can turn it on and off any
time -- control is good.

Cons:

There is a lot of research and set up required (unless your
outsource it) -- not necessarily a bad thing, unless you
don't have the time to learn and implement or the budget to
outsource. Your best bet is outsourcing, if your budget
allows it. You should be running your business not
becoming a PPC expert.

The cost per click can be very expensive on some words --
in some industries and on some words it is prohibitively
high. In other cases it's just annoyingly high. You have
to determine where your keywords would fall and if you can
afford it. How much is a lead worth to you? How much is a
sale worth to you? You should figure this all out before
your start.

You have to worry about click fraud -- bummer! There is
software out there to help.

Once you've reached your daily spend (the amount you are
willing to pay each day) your ads are turned off and your
exposure disappears -- that's just how it works. It means
there is often a good part of the day where your ad isn't
showing, unless you have a large budget.

SEO

Pros:

· Organic search listings have a higher click
through rate than PPC listings. -- Getting the most clicks
out of any listing is a good thing. Major pro!

· Traffic from the organic results converts at a
higher rate than PPC traffic. -- Another major pro!
Conversion is what it is all about, so getting traffic that
is more likely to convert is your ultimate goal.

· Your traffic is targeted if you select the right
keywords. -- That's a good thing.

· It is more cost effective than PPC (usually,
depending on the cost of your keywords) -- Just run the
numbers and determine if that is true for you. In many,
many cases, $300 of SEO will bring in more traffic than
$300 of PPC.

· Your listing appears 24/7 and doesn't turn off
after you've reached a certain limit (like in PPC). --
Constant exposure is definitely what you are striving for.

· Search engines are the prime source for finding
information and websites, with more than 8 out of 10 people
using them to find products, services and information. --
Makes it a no-brainer. If you aren't ranked in the top of
the engines, you are losing out on traffic.

· You can get content, videos, images and news
indexed. -- Cool!

Cons:

· There are unethical companies out there and many
people have been burnt before. -- True, and very
unfortunate. The good news is there are also good
companies out there. Find a company that will share
references, has a good history and is willing to talk with
you and share their action plan.

· It can take a while to get results, depending on
the keywords and the history of the site. -- True. SEO
doesn't happen overnight. However, I'm sure you'd rather
get rich slowly than not get rich at all. It's the same
here, get rankings slowly or don't do anything and get no
rankings.

· It requires a lot of time and attention to detail
(unless you outsource it). -- As with PPC, this is only bad
if you don't have the time or the desire to spend the time.
Outsourcing is a solution.

· Knowing what the "right" keywords are is a little
tricky for the average person. -- It's true. If you aren't
outsourcing and are going to handle it yourself, spend some
time learning about keyword research. It will be time well
spent.

Affiliate Programs

Pros:

· You tap into other people's ideas, creativity and
circle of influence. -- Always a plus, you may even get
some ideas from you affiliates.

· You have people out there working for you, and you
can leverage their efforts. -- Leverage is the key factor
most successful, wealthy business people understand and
embrace.

Cons:

· You can't put your business in someone else's
hands, so you can't rely solely on affiliates to grow your
business. -- It's true there are concerns about how
affiliates will represent you, but that is not a reason to
avoid setting up an affiliate program. It should be part
of your marketing plan ' but don't rely solely on it.

· You can't offer a duplicate version of your site
to affiliates anymore, or the engines won't like it, so you
need different content to provide the affiliate or let them
come up with their own content. -- This is a change from
how things used to be, but if you didn't run an affiliate
program before, you may not have even known that, so it's
definitely not a reason to not proceed now.

· You have to be careful people don't misrepresent
you or cause any harm to your business and reputation. --
Very true. Have a strong and direct affiliate agreement,
so your affiliates understand the rules.

Stay tuned for part 2, where we look at Article
Syndication, Press Releases and Blogging.

----------------------------------------------------
Jennifer Horowitz is the Director of Marketing and co-owner
of http://www.EcomBuffet.com

Since 1998, her expertise in
online marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has
helped clients increase revenue and achieve their business
goals. Jennifer has written a downloadable book on Search
Engine Optimization and has been published in many SEO and
marketing publications. Jennifer can be reached at
Jennifer@ecombuffet.com

Does Self Storage Have a Silver Bullet?

Does Self Storage Have a Silver Bullet?
What if I told you a secret that increases occupancy,
decreases expenses, and enhances manager performance?
Intrigued?

Well without further adieu, the secret I'm referring to is
marketing tracking... tracking your marketing effectively
so you know what marketing efforts are really working for
you and which ones are wasting your money. When I say
marketing tracking I'm not referring to just asking the
customer how they found you. Today's customers use multiple
marketing channels to find your facility and most likely
have done the same for other facilities as well. So by the
time you ask them how they found you, they are not going to
have an accurate answer. Not only that, they honestly don't
care to remember how they found you. They have a hectic
schedule and all they care about is getting their stuff out
of their messy garage.

If customers can't accurately tell you how they found your
facility and that's the only data you're using to track
your marketing then you're going to be making decisions
based on faulty data. And since the goal of tracking your
marketing is to be able to determine what's working and
what isn't, it's very important to have accurate data.

So how do you ensure that your tracking data is accurate?
If asking the customer doesn't work what are your other
options? First let's talk about what to track, and then
we'll get into the how.

Tracking Prospects. When you look at a marketing source you
really need to analyze all of the ways prospects can
contact you from that marketing source so you're sure to
track them all. For example, if you have a website that
gives the customer the option to reserve online, you might
think that the main thing for you to track will be online
reservations. But don't forget that your phone number is
also posted on your website, so you need to track calls.
Many times your email address is also, so be sure to track
emails. And lastly, do you have your address posted or any
maps or driving directions on your website? Because of this
you also will be receiving walk-in customers. We'll talk
more in depth shortly about how you can track each of
these, but just keep in mind that with every marketing
source you need to carefully analyze every avenue prospects
use to contact you.

Tracking Rentals. Here's where it matters most...you want
to be able to track how many rentals each of your marketing
sources is bringing you.

The main reason for tracking rentals down to each marketing
source is to determine your Cost per Acquisition, or Cost
per Rental. Simply put, Cost per Acquisition (CPA) is how
much it costs you to get a new tenant. CPA is the most
effective way to evaluate which marketing sources are
working and which ones aren't.

Once you're effectively tracking your prospects and tenants
CPA is easy to calculate. Just take your monthly or annual
cost for that marketing source divided by the number of
tenants it produced in that time and you will have your
CPA. Once you know your CPA for all of your marketing
sources you can compare them head to head to see which ones
are most effective. In fact, CPA is the only way to
effectively compare marketing sources that cost you $3,000
per month with those that cost you $100 per month. You may
find that the marketing source that costs $100 per month
only brings you two new tenants ($50 CPA) and the marketing
source that costs $3,000 per month brings you ten new
tenants ($300 CPA). At first glance, you might think that
the one that brings you ten new tenants is more effective
because it's bringing you a higher volume of tenants; when
in fact, you're paying 6 times as much per tenant with that
marketing source as you are with the other one! In some
cases you'll find that some of your marketing sources are
so ineffective (have such a high CPA), that you can make
the decision to cut them immediately. This is where the
value of tracking really kicks in!

Where do you start? Now that you know how valuable it is to
ensure you are tracking, what can you do to ensure your
tracking methods are accurate? Two tracking methods I
recommend most (beyond just asking the customer how they
found you) are unique phone tracking and unique coupon
tracking. Both are pretty simple and entail using a unique
phone number and unique coupon code on each marketing
source you want to track. By doing so you can know that
when a customer calls in on a specific line or mentions a
specific coupon code he or she has found you from the
marketing source connected with it.

Phone Tracking. Phone tracking technology is inexpensive,
very simple to use, and the data is foolproof. It allows
you to run reports on your calls such as volume of calls,
duration of calls, time of day most calls are being
answered or missed, and more. Also, most phone tracking
technologies allow you to record every call. Once you have
all of this data, you can then start to get a feel for the
number and quality of calls being provided by each
marketing source. By listening to the calls you can know
without a doubt whether or not a prospect rented.

I recommend you use unique tracking phone numbers in as
many places as possible ' definitely on Yellow Page ads,
any direct mail pieces or newspaper advertising, your
website, and on any affiliate websites you may advertise on.

Unique Coupon Codes & Specials. Unique coupon tracking is
also very easy to implement and can be a useful way to
track all forms of prospects, walk-ins, calls, and emails.
Just make sure that on each marketing source you'd like to
track your coupon code is unique. That way when customers
mention the promotion, your managers can ask what the
coupon code is and give credit to the correct marketing
source. For example, if a customer calls and mentions that
they saw your ad for a free truck rental and you know that
the only place you have that printed is on your sign you
can know for sure that the customer saw your sign while
driving by. You can then, with confidence, call this
customer a drive by customer.

With all of the advertising you are doing it's most likely
not feasible to come up with a unique special to feature on
each one ' the alternative is to use a unique coupon code.
For example, maybe your special is First Month Free and you
want to promote it on all of your advertising. That's
great, but make sure that you put a unique coupon code on
each one (First Month Free!* Mention coupon code ABC) so
that when the prospect mentions that he or she saw your ad
for First Month Free you can prompt them to mention which
coupon code they saw. Doing this will once again allow you
to track that coupon code back to the marketing source it's
featured on. Be sure that you or your managers really
prompt the customer to mention the entire special or coupon
code. Since you're running the First Month Free special
everywhere it is extremely important that you get the
coupon code, or your data may not be accurate.

Many management software programs allow you to input these
coupon codes and/or marketing sources. This makes it very
easy to run reports on how many coupon codes were redeemed
in a certain time frame. You can also run reports on the
sizes that were rented and how long the customer stayed to
get a good feel for how valuable these customers are to you.

All of this might seem like it will take more time than
it's worth, but I guarantee you that once you take the time
to set it all up and get your systems in place you will not
regret it. You will be able to make more informed and
confident marketing decisions and will eventually be able
to cut ineffective marketing to trim your marketing budget!

----------------------------------------------------
Megan Eckert is Executive Vice President for
USstoragesearch.com, an online storage directory providing
service to more than 9,000 self & mobile storage facilities
in the U.S. Their unique online marketing program allows
operators to instantly put their facilities in front of
customers searching the Internet for storage in their local
area for a very reasonable fee. For more information call
866.880.0742 or visit http://www.usstoragesearch.com .

Online Survival For Affiliate Marketers: Three Essential Tactics

Online Survival For Affiliate Marketers: Three Essential Tactics
Affiliate marketing is a high pass through marketing
system; it's designed to deal with traffic and relevance
and referrals, rather than the Hypo-Matic Marketroid Blast
method used by Madison Avenue. Real world people giving
real world opinions are the key.

It's still a competitive field, and while there are people
out there who claim to have the "get rich quick" scheme to
make it all happen, there ain't no rich, and it isn't
quick. You will be able to make a good supplemental income
from it, though.

Making more requires hard work and dedication and following
three solid pieces of advice that have been true since the
Internet was invented.

Tip number 1: Any product you're promoting deserves its
own web page. Attempting to lump all your products into
one page to save on hosting fees is the very definition of
a false economy. Make a site of multiple pages focusing on
related products.

Every product deserves its own review; this is where
customers will get their initial understanding of the
product, and it's the largest determinant on what turns
browsers into buyers. Let customers write their own
reviews; with applications like WordPress to handle this
for you, there's no excuse not to let them do this. If you
can get customers to give you true testimonials, with
photographs, even better. It worked for print catalogs, it
works on the web, and it'll work for you.

When you write the reviews of the articles, consider
writing tutorials on how to use it. Make them attractive,
make them compelling and, like people have said about sales
copy since the invention of the printing press, end with a
call for action.

Tip number 2: Free stuff brings people back. Free stuff
brings people in. This is the basic driver on the "squeeze
page" ' someone gives you their information for an
autoresponder to get a free report. They get something
they want, and you now have a channel to tell them about
cool stuff you've found. Remember, it typically takes
seven contacts to close a sale. By making sure there's
relevant and interesting information in their inbox at
specified times, you're encouraging them to come back to
your site on a regular basis. Your content should be
interesting in and of itself, but it should not read like a
sales pitch.

If you can't write your own content, there are web sites on
the web (like need-an-article.com) where you can hire
writers to generate content for you. They already know to
focus on the important points, like how your product can
make life easier/better/more fun, or how the product helps
a customer solve a real problem.

Convince those who signed up for your free reports that
they will be missing something big if they do not avail of
your products and services. That's your ultimate goal. Do
remember, when sending out your email reminders, avoid
using using the word "free" because there are still older
spam filters that dumps those kind of contents into the
junk before even anyone reading them first.

Tip number 3. No web spider ever bought anything from
anyone. You want targeted traffic, which means your
content has to be read by real people. Avoid excessive
Search Engine Optimization. Sure, it gets you page ranks,
followed by readers hitting their back buttons to get the
heck out of there. Write articles for publication in
e-zines and e-reports. This way you can locate your target
customers and what you have put up might just grab their
interest.

Make sure your content is fresh. You want at least two new
articles per week, with 300 to 600 words per article. You
need to constantly generate this new content to give your
readers a reason to come back to your site and look at your
affiliate links. These articles, posted to article
directories, can generate as many as 100 targeted readers
to your site in a day.

Remember that it's a numbers game, click through rates are
around half of one percent; it takes 200 or more visitors
to get a link, so you need at least 2,000 visitors per week
to get 10 click throughs, and one sale.

None of these are difficult, none of them are rocket
science. They do require planning, time management, and
all the other icky things about being a grownup running
your own business.

----------------------------------------------------
Haydn Tomas is a professional web designer and affiliate
marketer who has been making money online since 2000. For
more money making tips and ideas, visit me at
http://www.superaffiliatecashsecrets.com/blog

Affiliate Marketing Training -- Work At Home, Can You Stay Grounded? Part 1

Affiliate Marketing Training -- Work At Home, Can You Stay Grounded? Part 1
Affiliate Marketing as an online business is portrayed as a
vehicle by which anyone with a personal computer can gain
financial security, the freedom to work at anytime,
anyplace, and develop an extravagant lifestyle if so
desired. Much of this is true ... but the road to these
goals is very winding and certain realities must be
accepted.

One of the "rules" of article writing is to use third
person ... lot's of 'ones', 'peoples', 'author's', etc.
This article uses "I", because ... well, it's MY story ...
MY reflections. For that very reason, if you should
disagree with my reflections ... GOOD. Every author strives
to provide useful information and, when possible, to enable
the reader to relate and consider that information, even if
controversial.

A brief bio to set the stage. I am a live in caregiver in
Hilo, Hi. As such, an outside job is impossible, so, about
7 months ago, I began pursuing online marketing as an
income source. Under these circumstances, I am long on
time, and short on money. As honesty is the basis for this
writing, after 7 months I can count on around $450 per
month, with occasional peaks and valleys, and that amount
is steadily increasing.

Not much money, huh? The 'myth' factor makes it hard to
discern fact from fiction. However, if you're patient and
read what people have to say, the truth does trickle out.
The owner of a popular, well known online program recently
stated that after 3 years of active marketing operations,
he is now earning $1000 per month after finally recovering
all of his start up expenses. (Paying for his 'learning
curve'). "Marige O'brien", in her very popular ebook,
"Tracker Mo's BootCamp, Basic Training For Online
Marketing", can be quoted as saying, "... can expect to
make a consistent income of between 25 - $100 within a few
months, 250 - $500 by the end of the first year, and 1000 -
$2000 per month by the end of the second year." This is not
quite what the new internet marketer wants to hear, but at
least it is refreshingly honest.

Was I initially disappointed ... yes. Am I surprised ... no
longer.

I fully believed that I began this journey with exactly the
right mind-set. I knew that I had to discover what this was
all about. I soon learned, and believed, that I would have
to 'pay my dues' before I would begin to sniff success. I
heard the message to be patient, find a program or method
that I was passionate about, and STICK WITH IT.

Did I do this? Well, sort of. I did not practice the
'program of the week' approach; however, I did shift my
focus 3 or 4 times. Was it because I became disillusioned
and smelled greener grass?

No, it was because I reached a point where I did not have
the skills, knowledge, or tools available to take it to the
next level ... I would reach a point where the next step
was written in a language that I did not understand.

There was absolutely nothing wrong with these programs ...
I just was not in a position to do what this business
requires ... Market them effectively.

At this point, some of you will 'roll your eyes' and
proclaim "ah ha, the dude got scammed". Well, no I didn't.
My research indicated legitimate opportunities with a
proven track record. My lack of success stemmed solely from
my inability to completely follow the prescribed marketing
plan. In spite of my own self assurances, I had lacked
patience and tried to rush the learning curve. I was trying
to follow a business plan without having set a suitable
foundation.

If you will, please, envision building your own house.
Among other things, you will need to know how to lay a
foundation, rough frame, raise walls, hang joists, frame in
windows and doors, sub floor, etc. I don't care how many
'do it yourself' books that you've read, I won't 'come a
knockin' on your new door if, during the process, you
didn't seek professional, expert advice. There's just
something about a house falling down that does not appeal
to me. :-)

Therein lies one of the problems with internet marketing
... just WHO and WHAT is expert advice? When you are
building that house, your expert is looking over your
shoulder and inspecting your work. On the internet, that
expert tells you what to do and, well, you try to do it. If
your wall is not plumb, you simply move on. After all, you
were told to build a wall, and you did, to the best of your
(current) ability.

To those of you that ARE experts, and have had success on
the internet and tried to help others ... please don't get
your feathers ruffled ... hang with me a little while
longer and I will explain.

So, as the little pieces begin to come together while
building the foundation for you internet marketing
business, you will inevitably reach a juncture where you
just get stuck. In part 2 of this series, we will look at
just WHO and WHAT is expert advice and how you can go about
finding it.

----------------------------------------------------
While the natural beauty of the "Big Island" of Hawaii,
USA, is alluring, the author enjoys pursuing his Internet
marketing interests. For your FREE report from Super
Affiliate Ewen Chia (SELECT the "Grounded" article), and
other Affiliate Marketing Training information, tools, and
goodies, visit "Newbie Heaven" at http://now4u-website.com

Top Five Ways Your Virtual Assistant Can Help You Make More Money, Today!

Top Five Ways Your Virtual Assistant Can Help You Make More Money, Today!
The best decision you can make as an online business owner
is to decide to get out of your own way and begin to
delegate those tasks which really don't require your time
and attention. A simple way to do that is by hiring a
virtual assistant.

A virtual assistant is a business owner who specializes in
handling the administrative details of your business from
the comfort of her home office. Now that virtual
assistance has been around for awhile, you'll find virtual
assistants who specialize in different types of
administrative services: real estate, Internet marketing,
and event management, to name a few. You may actually
discover that you could use several virtual assistants in
your business, each with a different specialization.

I can hear you now. You're thinking, "There's no way
anyone can do this as well as I can."

Are you guilty of "I'll-do-it-myself-itis? If so, you've
got much in common with most other online business owners
in the world. We never think that anyone else will give
something the time, attention, and dedication that we will.
And, you're right, to some degree. No one cares as much
about your business as you do. However, if you don't
choose to delegate those things that prevent you from
engaging in business development, marketing, and sales
activities, you won't be in business very long.

Whether you're just starting out or have been in business
for awhile, the thought of bringing on a support team
member can be daunting, and you wonder, "How can I bring in
someone else when it's just going to increase my expenses?"

You need to make the shift to seeing this cost as an
investment in your business, rather than as an expense, and
let go of the need to be in control.

To help you evaluate what you might delegate to an
assistant, take out a piece of paper and on the left side
write, "What I Love to Do" and on the right side write.
"What I Don't Like to Do".

Then, think about all of the functions you manage and roles
you perform in your business, like planning and setting
strategy, marketing, providing the service or product in
which you specialize, dealing with financial issues,
speaking, writing, networking, customer service, order
fulfillment, etc. Most of my clients have three or four
items on the "What I Love to Do" side -- speaking,
coaching/consulting, training, and writing. The remainder
of the other functions and roles fall on the other side.
The items on the right hand side, the "What I Don't Like to
Do" list, will serve as a great indicator of the types of
things you need to be delegating in your business.

Based on my past experience as a virtual assistant and
online business manager for a number of clients, here are 5
tasks should delegate to your Virtual Assistant right away
to help you begin to generate additional income in your
business:

1. Ezine. An email newsletter will help you get
prospective clients into your marketing funnel. Your VA can
format the plain text and HTML versions of your email
newsletter. All you need to do is write your primary and
filler articles each week and forward those to your VA to
format and send the finished product out to your newsletter
list.

2. Media. Have your VA research an industry-specific media
list . This value of this list is in developing
relationships with these media contacts so that you're the
expert they immediately think of when they're doing a story
on your area of expertise.

3. Article Marketing. Write once and have that article
work for you again and again. Have your VA submit articles
you've written to online article databases to increase the
number of links back to your website and to send more
visitors to your website.

4. Strategic Alliances. Once of the quickest ways to grow
your business is by creating strategic alliance or joint
venture relationships. Have your VA research potential
strategic alliance or joint venture partners who provide a
service to a similar audience or whose client base could
benefit from your product or service.

5. Product Development. Got recorded interviews sitting
around gathering dust on your hard drive? How about
information you've created for presentations that you've
never done anything with? Have your VA coordinate the
transcript and audio editing of any recorded files you
might have and help you polish those into saleable
products. Your VA can also help your format printed
material into an ebook, ecourse, special report, etc. and
before you know you, you'll become an information marketer!

What operational aspects of your business could you
delegate to someone else? If you had extra time, how could
you increase the revenues of your business? Give these
questions strong consideration--and use your Virtual
Assistant to help you make more profit with less of your
time today!

----------------------------------------------------
Online Business Resource Queen (TM) and Online Business
Coach Donna Gunter helps independent service professionals
learn how to automate their businesses, leverage their
expertise on the Internet, and get more clients online. To
claim your FREE gift, TurboCharge Your Online Marketing
Toolkit, visit her site at http://www.OnlineBizU.com . Ask
Donna an Internet Marketing question at
http://www.AskDonnaGunter.com .

The True Way To A Search Engine's Heart

The True Way To A Search Engine's Heart
You really only need one thing to make legitimate money
online: Traffic. It's the holy grail of Internet
marketing. Every online business strives to seek out that
rare artifact that will bring waves of visitors to their
website. One of the most popular and best portals that can
deliver quality traffic, is through the search engines.
These Search engines are treated like gods, being offered
well optimized sites by Internet entrepreneurs everywhere,
in the hopes that their site gets rewarded with high
rankings in the search result pages. Some of the popular
SEO(Search Engine Optimization) techniques being used today
seem to work well for some, but not for others. There are
some SEO strategies that could actually get you banned from
the search engines. What really makes search engines happy
and What do they want from us?

Through all of our attempts to influence the search
engines, we forget why they exist in the first place. The
search engine's primary and most important function is to
provide the best relevant search results from every search
inquiry made. So, it's actually in the search engine's
best interest that no one manipulates their rankings
through SEO techniques to ensure that the people using
their service get the most relevant search results
possible. Obviously, this doesn't happen the way the
search engine companies want them to and they really can't
penalize most websites for it. However, they can and will
penalize those websites that are using deceptive SEO
strategies that are used only to fool the search engines.
These strategies are know as Black Hat SEO techniques, and
if caught using them, you can get your site removed from
the search engine indexes.

Some examples of Black Hat SEO are: Linkfarms(massive
linking with other sites in a group where the only goal is
to increase link popularity), creating web pages with
duplicate content, overuse of keywords, cloaking(purposely
giving search engine spiders different pages than visitors
see) and hiding text from visitors that only spiders can
read. These are some of the unethical methods that people
are using to try to fool the search engines. Some of these
techniques will drop your ranking significantly and others
can get you banned. Search engines don't want to be
manipulated to this extent. If they find out, you will be
penalized.

If you want your website to rank well, it's important to
know how search engines work. Algorithms are the formulas
that engines use to determine how to rank a web page.
These formulas are a well kept secret in the search engine
industry. No one knows for sure exactly how they rank
pages, and these can vary between search engine companies.
We know that these algorithms are constantly changing,
especially to combat unethical and over abused SEO methods.
Optimization strategies that work today may not be
effective tomorrow. It's a good idea to stick to the basic
fundamentals of SEO that have been time tested.

Search engines are always looking for ways to bring better
search results to their customers. Instead of
concentrating on strategies to fool these companies, it's
more important to focus on creating relevant content on
your website. You won't ever get penalized if you do this.
Put yourself in the search engine's shoes. They want to
give searchers the most relevant search results possible,
so give them lots of relevant content on your site.
Trickery will only get you punished, resulting in the loss
of valuable traffic to your Internet business. Just
concentrate on continually growing your website with good,
solid content and avoid unethical SEO tricks. This is the
true way to the search engine's heart and it always will
be. Good luck to you and your success!

----------------------------------------------------
Learn to start and maintain your own Internet marketing
business the right way. For the best legitimate
opportunities and resources, visit
http://www.legitimatecashflow.com

3 Features A Quality Article Should Have To Drive Traffic To Your Website

3 Features A Quality Article Should Have To Drive Traffic To Your Website
Article writing and article marketing today are very
effective means of getting traffic to your website. I look
at articles that I have written over a year ago and still
see traffic being sent to my website from these articles.
The key is to write an article that is high enough quality
so that web masters want to publish your articles on their
web sites, and for your readers to have enough interest to
go to your web site after reading your article. This
article goes over the features your article should have
that will achieve these results.

1. Your Article Should Provide A Solution Or Answer A
Common Question

Your article should provide a solution to a common question
or a problem that your target audience has. You can easily
research questions that your target audience has by going
to places such as yahoo groups or yahoo answers to see what
people are discussing and wanting help with. Another great
place is to find great topics is to search for niche forums
within your target market and see what questions people are
asking in these forums. This exercise will give you a
goldmine of very relevant data that you can use as subject
material for your articles that will be valuable to your
readers.

2. Your Article Should Leave The Reader Wanting More

Your article should be useful and provide valuable content,
but let's face it, you can only do so much in an article,
even if it's 750 words or so. You should write your
article so that the reader feels like they have received
some value, however your article has now generated greater
interest, and they would like to know more. I have found
that using lists such as ("The Top 5 Things People Can Do
To Relieve Stress") and then make it clear to the reader
that there are 5 additional things they can do that are
also just as effective as the things listed in your
article, is a good way to create further interest in the
subject.

3. Your Article Should Give The Reader A Strong Call To
Action

Your article should end by giving the reader a strong call
to action. This is telling the reader where they should go
to get more information (the rest of the stress reduction
tips). Creating a strong call to action in the conclusion
and stating it strongly in the resource box is a powerful
way to create your call to action. Remember, your article
is not a sales letter, so the call to action is really the
only place that you have to get the reader to go to your
website, sign up for your mailing list, call you on the
phone, or anything else you want them to do.

If you are going to set up your call to action in the
conclusion, then you should make sure you recap the
article, and then just add a sentence or two that brings up
a question or similar thought that would cause the reader
to want more information. Most English teachers are
probably rolling over in their graves right now, but you
are writing your article to get more traffic to your
website, not to win an essay competition.

A quality article will be published by others more often as
well as demonstrate to your readers that you know what your
talking about, so they would feel comfortable finding out
more about what you would have to say on your particular
topic. It is relatively easy to find topics that will be
of interest to your target market, as well as structuring
your call to action so your article drives visitors to your
website in larger numbers. These tips combined with other
tips such as how to structure your resource box and how to
use keywords in your articles increases your traffic to
greater levels. These are things that you need to keep in
mind when writing your articles to make them even more
effective in driving traffic to your website.

----------------------------------------------------
Discover more tips that will teach you how to write
powerful articles that will drive qualified traffic to your
website. Go to http://www.allwebcontent.com/articles and
access the goldmine of information on how to write quality
and effective articles.
http://www.allwebcontent.com/directory
(A http://drivetraffictomywebsite.com creation)

6 Ways To Attract More People To Your Web Site

6 Ways To Attract More People To Your Web Site
You've built your website and it's brimming with cool
features and great content. All you need now is visitors to
come along and enjoy it. And maybe buy a thing or two as
well. But somehow they seem reluctant to cross your virtual
threshold. What can you do?

1. Start your very own newsletter or e-zine. It's really
not that difficult. You must be interested in the theme of
your website, right? So that means you know more about the
subject than the average person. Just write a few
paragraphs once a week about a single topic related to your
niche and send it out. There are free auto-responder
services if you are just starting out and if you want
subscribers there are free advertising websites such as
trafficswarm.com that will put your ad in front of the
right people.

2. Give your visitors lots of free quality content. If you
can write your own articles, that's great. Otherwise the
web is heaving with great articles on practically any
subject you care to mention. Try ezinearticles.com or
goarticles.com for starters, or search on the term 'e-zine
directories'. Change the content frequently and visitors
will return to see what the latest article is.

3. Make sure you have some freebies for your visitors to
download. These could be eBooks relating to the topics that
your target audience will be interested in, or maybe
software. There are sites where you can obtain both eBooks
and software as give-aways. You could also include
shareware and demos.

4. Run a contest from your site with prizes connected with
your site topic. Set a closing date and then publish the
winner or winners. People will keep coming back to your
site to see who won. The contest can be run using a free
service such as surveymonkey.com.

5. Search engine submissions are also important. You can do
this manually, and there are also services that will do it
for you.

6. Write articles and submit them to article directories.
At the bottom of each article put a resource box or
writer's bio. Here you can put a link back to your site.
This has two benefits. First the readers of your article
will visit you site to see what benefits it has for them,
and secondly, for every directory and every website that
picks up your article and publishes it there is a link back
to your site. The search engines pick these up and your
search engine ranking is improved.

Building your visitor traffic is an ongoing process and you
should take it seriously. If you devoted just an hour a
week to putting into practice the things I have recommended
above, your visitors will steadily increase.

----------------------------------------------------
Mervyn Love writes articles on various aspects of Internet
Marketing, and his website '
http://www.fortresspublishing.com - has a wealth of
resources and information on all aspects of starting and
running an online business. Join his newsletter here:
http://www.fortresspublishing.com/MPNsplash.html

Viral Marketing - Giving Away Free Viral Reports Can Make You Rich! - Here's How...

Viral Marketing - Giving Away Free Viral Reports Can Make You Rich! - Here's How...
What's all the fuss about free viral reports and what can
they do for you?

If you've been involved in internet marketing for any
length of time, then you will probably have heard about
viral marketing.

Viral marketing is a method that has helped a lot of people
make their first real money online.

Basically viral marketing involves producing something very
topical, funny, interesting or useful that can be given
away for free.

You would give it away for free and the recipients would
pass it on to their friends, who would pass it on to their
friends and so on and so on.

One popular way of doing this is by producing a free report
that helps people in some way. Ideally the free report will
solve some sort of problem for the potential reader.

Most people involved in internet marketing will have heard
the phrase "The money is in the list". But how do you go
about building your own list of subscribers to your
newsletter or e-zine?

Well one way is to give away valuable free content in the
form of a free report. This encourages people to sign up
for your newsletter, thus building you a list of
subscribers that you can market products to in the future.

The difficulty for most people is that creating these free
reports can be very laborious and time consuming. It would
normally involve researching the subject thoroughly and
then sitting down and actually compiling and writing the
report.

You would then have to turn the report into a pdf format
etc etc, all of which takes a great deal of time and effort.

But now all this has changed. You can now combine the power
of viral marketing with killer content and have all the
work done for you.

There are now services available on the internet where free
reports are written by staff writers as well as other
subscribers just like you. New reports are produced each
month which you can give away in order to build your own
list.

The clever part is that these reports can have affiliate
links embedded in the content and because you can rebrand
these reports, you can have your own affiliate links
embedded before you give them away.

So as well as pleasing your subscribers with good quality
content, you also have the chance to make some cash if they
go ahead and buy a product from your affiliate link within
the report!

It's a real 'win-win' situation.

In addition to all that, there is often the option for you
to create your own reports that promote your own product or
perhaps an affiliate product.

You can then submit your report so that other subscribers
can give it away free. In which case you could quickly find
that your report is distributed all over the internet, thus
promoting your product or affiliate product and making you
some serious extra income! Voila! You have your own viral
marketing system working for you.

Viral marketing in this way is making a lot of people just
like you a lot of money.

I have already downloaded some excellent free reports from
services like this and rebranded them with my own affiliate
links. The whole process is very easy and straightforward
and i'll be giving away the reports to help me build my own
list whist making money at the same time!

I have also written a report of my own and submitted it to
one of these services. That was also very simple to do and
it has already been downloaded by a good number of other
subscribers, who will in turn be giving it away and so
promoting my own product.

As I say, a very clever viral marketing idea. Wish i'd
thought of it first!

----------------------------------------------------
If you'd like to watch a short video that explains how you
can start easily making money with your own 'Viral Reports'
you can do so here:
http://www.butterfly-reports.biz

Why Are So Many People Starting Home Based Internet Marketing Businesses?

Why Are So Many People Starting Home Based Internet Marketing Businesses?
Do you know why so many home based internet marketing
businesses are popping up all over the world? There are
many different reasons why so many people are starting
their own home business. Here are some of the most common
reasons why people everywhere want to be their own boss
with a business at home.

One: Wanting to be your own BOSS is obviously the number
one reason. Who doesn't want to be the boss and be able to
make your own choices without others always dictating your
life for you?

Two: With home based internet marketing businesses there
are a lot of different ways that you can start your home
business. So the second reason is that a lot of people are
getting TIRED of going to a job that they don't like. They
instead want to do something they enjoy. The best way to do
this is over the internet because of all of the different
ways that you can make money online.

Three: People are getting tired of watching their bosses
get RICH while they do all the work and get peanuts. When
you have a home business, you can make as much money as you
want to. All it depends on is how much Time and Effort you
are willing to put into your business. You are the one that
decides how much you make and how soon.

Four: Spending more time with your family is another reason
why so many people are finding home based internet
marketing businesses that they can start. You will be able
to go on vacation with your family when you want to and for
how long you want to. If you want to just skip a day and
not work at all, instead you spend time with your family,
then you can easily do that. Remember YOU are the boss now.

Five: People are being laid off from their jobs. This is
one really big reason why people are looking for home based
internet marketing businesses. You can't go without a way
to make money if you want to survive and who wants to get
another job only to worry about being laid off again? When
you have your OWN home business you don't have to worry
about this happening again. These are not the only reasons
why so many people are starting their own home business.
You may even have your own reasons. It doesn't matter what
your reasons are to anyone but YOU. No matter what your
reasons are, you will definitely not have any problems
finding home based internet marketing businesses that you
can start with.

----------------------------------------------------
Noel Lillis is the owner and webmaster of
http://bilt2sell.com
Noel looks at some reasons people are drawn into starting
their own affiliate marketing business. He sees job
security and family issues as prime motivators. To help you
succeed in your online business venture. Free literature,
training videos and information on Quality business
opportunities are available at: =>
http://www.bilt2sell.com/newsletter-signup.html

8 Simple Strategies For Affiliate Marketing Success

8 Simple Strategies For Affiliate Marketing Success
It always surprises me how much money you can make by
selling other people's stuff on the Internet. Eight years
in and the numbers still shock me. Always.

More than the numbers, what really amazes me the most is
the lifestyle one can achieve from online marketing. You
can be your own boss, work your own hours, carry out your
business from anywhere in the world you want to live. You
can create automatic marketing systems that work 24/7/365
days of the year. Earn money even when you're sleeping,
vacationing or out enjoying a gourmet meal at your favorite
restaurant. Total freedom.

So is it any wonder then why I am constantly analyzing my
whole marketing structure to figure out what is working and
what is not working? Finding out just what strategies are
giving me the best returns on my efforts and time. And I am
constantly trying to discover ways to increase my affiliate
sales and online traffic.

It basically means breaking down your online marketing into
its core elements and examining each one with close
scrutiny. What can be improved? What can be eliminated?
What needs to be redesigned? Any serious online marketer
must be actively working on these core elements to stay
competitive in the affiliate game.

With these thoughts in mind, here are some simple marketing
strategies that can affect and contribute to your success
for selling affiliate products on the web. Marketing
factors that should always be at the back of your mind,
influencing your every move.

Quality Content

People use the web to find quality content or information.
Always remember this fact and apply it to each step of your
marketing plan - give your visitors quality content and you
will succeed online. There are no ironclad guarantees, but
get this one step right and you will probably make money
online.

Design your website and your webpages around quality
content. Useful, relevant content will give people a reason
to come to your site and also give them a reason to return.
Provide good information first and let the sale or selling
be secondary. People do not like a pushy salesperson, not
in real life and not on the web. Develop a friendly,
helpful relationship with your potential customer and you
will succeed.

Keyword Driven

The Internet is keyword driven. These are words or phrases
people type into search engines to find what they're
looking for on the web. They are also your keys to online
success if you're going the SEO route, picking the right
keywords will be your main starting point.

Professional marketers use keyword software like Brad
Callen's Keyword Elite to research and find their
profitable keywords, but there are many free tools/sites
which you can find online to help you do your keyword
research - Seobook.com is a good one. Daily monitoring of
your major keywords is also important to keeping them in
the top positions. Any movement downwards should spark more
link and/or content building immediately.

Keep in mind, Google, which controls 60 percent of the
web's search traffic, is also a great source of information
on your keywords. Use Google to search the sites in the top
10 spots for your keywords; also check Google for the Paid
Ads related to your keywords and monitor these ads over a
period of time to see which ones are profitable. Do your
keyword homework and your affiliate marketing will be a lot
easier.

Niche Focused

If you're into affiliate marketing, you must concentrate
your efforts on small niche markets where the competition
is not too stiff. Choosing the right niche markets is vital
to your affiliate success. Demand should be high and/or
you're selling a high-ticket custom item.

Once you have chosen your particular niches, concentrate on
dominating these in all the search engines. But don't
forget that the fastest and sometimes the most profitable
way to tackle a niche is through PPC (Pay Per Click)
advertising - especially if there is little or low bidding
on your keywords. Google Adwords, Yahoo Marketing,
MicroSoft AdCenter... should be explored and tried.

List Building

The power is always in the list. Make sure you collect the
contact information of your site's visitors. Offer free
ebooks, guides, special deals or bonuses... to get your
prospects to opt-in to your AR follow-up systems. Studies
have shown that people usually don't buy until the six or
seventh follow-up.

I like building hundreds of micro-lists for all my major
promoted affiliate products. These follow-ups with
specialized information and special deals, coupons and
bonuses will increase your sales.

Traffic

Obviously, traffic is one of the key elements to earning
money online mainly because without traffic you're dead in
the water. You must explore all avenues to generate
targeted traffic to your affiliate links. These sources are
always changing; blogging and social bookmark sites are
very important now. So too are video and audio formats so
make sure you use them in your marketing.

Article marketing has worked extremely well for me and it
is, along with search traffic, the main reason I can earn
income online. A simple marketing technique that still
works because articles will bring targeted traffic to your
site or sites.

Conversion Rates Are Crucial

In affiliate marketing or in any kind of marketing, your
conversion rates are crucial to your success. You can get
all the targeted traffic you want but if you can't turn
those visitors into a sale, it's game over.

Your sales pages or content must convert into a sale in
order for you to succeed. With affiliate marketing it is a
little trickier because not only do your pages have to
"pre-sell" the affiliate product but the landing page/site
where you send that traffic must also convert into a sale.

However, I have discovered one of the keys to high
conversion rates has nothing to do with landing pages,
sales pitches, etc., but has to do mainly with which
products that you decide to promote. You must thoroughly
research your affiliate products and ONLY promote the top
quality brands in your niche and you will have much better
success. Also choosing products that are only available
online will increase your conversion numbers; so too will
promoting products that offer special discount coupons and
deals.

Multiple Streams & Residual Income

Any serious online marketer will leverage their traffic and
marketing by promoting many different products and
services. They will develop different sources of income
from their sites with affiliate links, Google Adsense, paid
advertising, partnerships... are all used to develop
multiple streams of income. It one should dry up, there are
countless others still producing income.

I have found the major third-party affiliate networks like
Commission Junction, LinkShare, Shareasale, Affiliate
Window, Amazon are really good for finding and promoting
products online. These sites will handle all the record
keeping and sales stats for you. Plus, they send your
monthly checks to you like clockwork. All you have to worry
about is providing quality traffic to your affiliate links.

However, like any professional marketer, I save my special
promotions and efforts to affiliate products or services
that will give me a high return on my marketing efforts.
Mainly, I only promote high-ticket items or products that
will give me residual income. Make one sale; get paid time
and time again. I also like forming partnerships with
companies so that I get a percentage of the sales for the
life of any client I refer. Those arrangements have special
priority for the obvious reason they give me long-term
residual income.

Testing Will Show You The Money

Perhaps, like in those multiple-choice exams, there is one
sticking point. You can check-off "None of the above" if
you don't apply one thing for all of the "success
strategies" listed above.

You Must TEST Everything.

You must constantly test and track what is working and what
is not? Which traffic is converting? Which keywords are
converting? Which products are converting? Which niches are
profitable... you simply must TEST and KNOW which factors
are working in your online marketing structure? Unless you
test and track everything you will be marketing blind, and
that's no way to run an online business.

I have found Google Analytics to be extremely helpful for
testing and improving your conversion rates. I am also a
firm believer in the daily reading of your traffic logs and
stats... these places will show you where the real money is
hiding. Use this information to improve your traffic and
sales.

Like any endeavor, the more knowledge you have, the more
successful you will be in reaching your goals. This is
especially true for affiliate marketing on the web. And
always remember, affiliate marketing does take some work
and time to set-up, but the rewards are extremely
rewarding. I hope you will use some of the marketing tips I
have given you so you can experience these rewards for
yourself.

----------------------------------------------------
The author is a full-time web marketer who owns and runs
numerous websites, including two sites on Internet
marketing. He contributes his online affiliate success to
using the best Internet Marketing Tools:
http://www.bizwaremagic.com and his proven strategies at
List Building: http://www.bizwaremagic.com/opt-in.htm 2008
Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed if
this resource box stays attached.

Myths about direct response marketing - online and off

Myths about direct response marketing - online and off
Skepticism is a part of life and business. People don't
trust you at face value it is completely up to you to earn
their trust. I hear it ALL THE TIME. Excuses why it won't
work for them... because their business is "different".
They tried it before and it failed so there is no way it
will work now.

"Direct Marketing doesn't work"

There is really 2 forms of marketing at play... measurable
results marketing and non-measurable results marketing.

The kind you cannot directly measure (in terms of dollars
generated from a specific campaign or marketing action) is
commonly called image or brand marketing. The point behind
those kinds of campaigns is to build general awareness of
your offering and your message and not about specific
results on a day-by-day basis. There have been many
multi-million (and billion) dollar empires built
exclusively on this form of marketing (firms that have
never used direct marketing techniques).

BUT... the average entrepreneur doesn't have deep enough
pockets to sustain imagine only advertising.

They need to know right now what ad is working or sales
letter is pulling in clients and which aren't. Without this
knowledge they will quickly go broke.

When they know which ad, placed in which media publication
or website, works and makes them money they then have a
system they can repeat until it stops working. They can
measure exactly what each new lead costs them to generate
and how much they need to invest in each real lead to
convert them to a paying customer and then how much to
convert each one-time customer to a repeat buyer.

This knowledge is pure gold when you know it.

And yes, direct marketing DOES work and can be proven right
down to the penny how well it does work. You cannot say
that about image or brand awareness campaigns (the exact
amount it made for the business can never be measured as
they have no way of measuring it).

"No one will read all those words people are different now
and don't read as much"

There is truth in that people are increasingly lazy and
illiterate. BUT, and this is a big but, are your clients in
that group? If you are trying to sell to a bunch of ADD
13-somethings then long copy sales letters with zero
graphics probably won't work all that well. But, it you
are trying to sell to the boomer or senior market they want
to know what they are buying and will research what you are
selling until their fears are alleviated (that is assuming
you kept their attention throughout the copy).

The key is to balance the copy with supporting visuals. And
then to match this balance with your exact target market.

Lots of people (including myself) are testing shorter copy
websites that have people clicking through to specific
things they want to see rather than asking them to scroll
down through a 25 page sales letter.

People won't read all those words if they are boring... or
if they are not the right target market... or if the visual
appeal is downright hideous... or if the offer makes no
sense or the claim sounds ridiculous.

You have to test and find out what the balance should be
between words...graphics... message/market match... and the
offer.

Only through testing will you know what the right amount of
words is.

And assuming you know is the surest way to kill your
marketing results. You don't know what your clients want
until you ask them (through marketing tests). They will
often tell you they want one thing, but will show different
responses when tested.

It is completely up to you to find the perfect match.

"There is a magical percentage conversion rate"

This is quite common. "I need a 2% conversion rate anything
below that is unacceptable." My question to them is "WHY?"
Any person familiar with marketing 101 knows that the real
money is in the backend products and services you sell to
your clients. If you are selling a $25 book you will never
get rich without something to sell. You MUST have something
else at a much higher price point to sell.

And if you know that 10% of your book buyers will buy your
$1,000 backend offer who cares if you lose money or break
even on the book sale.

In other words concern yourself less about the conversion
rate and start worrying about the PROFIT you make. If you
don't have a system in place to up the profit you make
after the initial sale (to a new client) then a 3%
conversion rate (which is very good on it's own) means
nothing other than the fact you are going broke fast
selling your $25 book.

Do you honestly think that a company selling million
dollar, ocean front, and gated community homes is concerned
about a 1% response rate to their mailer? They are more
concerned with the quality of people they attract and the
follow up system they use to make sure the lead buys.

They may only get a 0.1% response rate to their mailer but
it makes them a million dollars.

"Hiring a professional marketer or copywriter is guaranteed
to make you a million dollars first time you run the promo"

HA! If you were guaranteed to make a million from a simple
letter campaign do you think any sane copywriter would
price his services below... say.... $500,000 per letter
campaign?

Of course not.

The only guarantees you can expect from your copywriter or
marketer is that they will find the approach that works
best with your clients and your offer. They should be
willing to stick with you, and rewrite, until the perfect
combination of client offer and media is found.

Also, if there was a "magic" guarantee and formula that
worked every time there would only be need for one book or
training course on it right?

The guarantee is more about the persistence of your team
members to do whatever they need to do to make the
promotion work.

Direct marketing is a field few understand and those who
don't understand it like to bash it. Remember, many people
use direct marketing in their business and see exceptional
results and it can work for you too if you give it a chance
and some patience. The perfect combination of message
market media and you will have a winner. But to find the
combination, it may take time, money and lots of patience.

Direct marketing DOES work... if you know how to work it

----------------------------------------------------
Troy White, The Marketing Results Mentor and Expert
Copywriter helps clients achieve HUGE growth surges in
their business in very short periods of time. If you're an
entrepreneur in need of quick cash flow surges ' here is
the quick-hit solution to put money in your bank.... The
Wild West Wealth Summit! Make sure you visit
http://www.WildWestWealth.com or sign up for the Free Cash
Flow Surge Newsletter at http://www.CashFlowSurges.com

Boost Highly Targeted Traffic To Your Website Like Crazy

Boost Highly Targeted Traffic To Your Website Like Crazy
Any online businessman worth his salt knows that traffic is
the most valuable commodity that he can get for his
website. And highly targeted traffic is even better. If
you have targeted web traffic coming to your site on a
regular basis, you have more leads, more prospects, and
better chances of securing those sales.

There are a lot of techniques and tactics to get that
coveted traffic to your website. I have even tried some
of them before. And to be blunt and honest about it, some
of these techniques work; some don't. I have also been
asked by a lot -and I mean A LOT ' of people what are the
best and most effective ways for driving targeted traffic
to their sites. That's why I decided to sit down and write
this article to share some very useful techniques for
getting those targeted traffic. I have used these
techniques myself and found them to be effective. I hope
you will, too.

First, you can try buying some traffic. If you want to go
this route, I would suggest using PPC (pay-per-click)
search engines. You can't go wrong with using PPC search
engines if you want highly targeted, high quality traffic.
Personally, they are my favorite sources of traffic
especially when I want to test the waters on any new
websites I have. Why? Because I want to see if my website
can convert those high-quality prospects into customers.
If not, then I know I'm doing something wrong.

Second on my list is trying out some banner ads. Yes, I
remember those days when banner ads got a bad reputation
when the dot-com bubble burst. Because of that, most
online marketers are now leery of using them. But make no
mistake about it: banner ads are a proven source of
quality traffic, and right now they are also one of the
most overlooked. One more good reason to use banner ads is
that they are now dirt-cheap, as compared to what they once
cost during the dot-com era. Back then, it would cost you
around $80 to $100 per 1,000 impressions. Now, you can get
them for as low as $5, perhaps less.

Speaking of overlooked traffic sources, I couldn't help but
remember the next option: purchasing existing websites.
This is the next technique I want to give you. What makes
this method effective is that existing websites already
have established themselves and accumulated a regular fan
base, which will provide a steady stream of traffic for
you. There are a lot of websites on the Internet that are
enjoying relatively high traffic, but the owner hasn't
found a way to cash in on that traffic. These sites are
the best purchases for you.

Another effective method you can use is to take advantage
of the search engines. Remember that 95% of Internet users
go to search engines when they want to look for information
online. Get the search engines to help you increase your
website traffic. And how are you gonna do that? By
creating websites that are rich in quality and unique
content. If you haven't heard it by now, let me tell you
that search engines just love unique content. This method
is effective and long-lasting, but it can be extremely hard
work producing the kind of content that is required to make
this method effective.

Fifth on the list is to create your own traffic. Write
articles or have them written by someone else, then submit
them to article directories (make sure the articles contain
an author biography with a link to your site). Create a
website rich in content, or start your own affiliate
program where you get other webmasters to send you traffic.

Last, but certainly not the least effective, is to go on
joint ventures. This will be a win-win scenario for both
partners. You start by sending JV proposals to your
prospective partners, asking them to help you promote your
site or your product. Split the profits with them or make
a similarly attractive offer, and soon you'll see traffic
piling up on your site from your JVs. Other offers you can
propose to your JVs include exchanging links or ads. You
place their ads on your website or newsletter, and they do
the same with yours. Don't be afraid to ask for joint
ventures, because it could mean at least 1,000 more
visitors to your site, or even 100,000. If they say no, so
what? At least you tried, right?

That's all I have to teach you for now. Just remember: if
you don't take any kind of action, you will never see the
kind of traffic you want.

----------------------------------------------------
Discover how to drive free targeted website traffic to any
site at: http://www.MyInstantTraffic.com