Monthly Archive June, 2007

Start Your First Product - What Are You Passionate About?

By now you should be creating your and get it listed in the Clickbank Marketplace (one-time cost of $49). If you are not convinced why this is one of the best ways to make money online, then think about what other 90% of internet marketers are doing to make money online. Most internet marketers are sold on the idea of becoming an , or making money by selling other people’s products or services. Everyday, affiliate marketing gets more competitive as more people enters the arena. New software tools and membership sites pop up in the affiliate space every month just to help affiliate marketers make more money by selling other people’s products. What better way to leverage affiliate marketers than to become the product provider?

Another reason why most affiliate marketers stay an affiliate marketer is because they do not want to deal with the creation of the product and the after-sale customer service. What I am here to tell you is that the you are leaving a lot of money on the table by only taking a fraction of the sales and not willing to spend a few hours of your time to create your own product and automate or outsource the customer support. The cost is really minimal compared to what you are losing out on each sale.

Don’t know what to put in your ? Start by creating a list of hobbies and things that you are passionate about. Don’t rule out anything at this point because you are not worried about whether this thing is going to sell or not. There are more products that can be sold on the internet than things that can not be sold. Once you have identified your topic, do a search with Overture search & bidding tool (no longer available, but a good alternative is here: http://keyword.secretstohighprofit.com) to make sure that there are people search for your topic and that there are advertisers selling in your niche.

Don’t think you are a writer? Well, you don’t have to! come in many shapes and forms. Most popular is the ebook or PDF format where information is conveyed via words. There are also other great media of communication such as pictures and audio. You can start by speaking into a microphone and record your audio product. You can use free desktop recorder (such as CamStudio) and record a desktop instruction video as your product.

Since we ware talking about internet passive income, won’t you trade a few hours of your time for a lifetime of passive income from sales generated by other affiliate marketers? The opportunity is only limited by your imagination, so start your today!

Market Vs. Keyword

Are you keyword-centric?  What I mean is that most , especially those who are in the PPC arena focus a lot on keyword research.  They often forget the market that they are trying to sell to, or the people behind those keywords.

For example, let’s assume you are trying to sell an ebook on “parenting.”  Ninty-nine percent of internet marketers would start by performing keyword research with their favorite keyword tool or keyword research service on “parenting”, and they would brainstorm other related keywords and hopefully to land on some longtails.  While this is fine, but can you imagine how many other are doing the same thing you are doing?

So, let’s look at another approach.  Forget keyword research.  Brainstorm the market.  Ask yourself who are the people behind parenting.  Who are the people who would be interested in the subject of parenting?  What age group are they?  Are there magazines or tradeshows on parenting?  Are there existing communities online for these people?

Once you start brainstorming in that perspective, you will discover other mediums where you can advertise for your product.  You can try out buying an ad in the magazines, hit up the owners of the parenting communities and do a deal.  The advertising possibilities are not limited to just the search engines.  You are probably thinking to yourself, “Oh, gosh, this is more work than PPC!”  Well, you are absolutely right, and that’s the reason why few are eating the whole pie while the majority are scrounging on the crumbs.

Google Adsense Alternative

Here is another Google Adsense alternative to monetize traffic for your website.

I’m sure you have noticed those “free” ringtones, “free” ipod advertisements. Well, those are one of the prevalent . As an publisher, you will get paid per action taken by your visitor. Most action calls for your visitor submitting an email or a zipcode, some call for completing a short lead form, or a free trial with credit card.

My wife keeps a blog called Baby Announcement Websites and she has several free baby offers on her navigation bar. She gets paid around $1 per email or zipcode submitted. Sounds easy?

If you are not familiar with CPA (Cost Per Action) offers, then have a look at AzoogleAds.com

Here is a tip for you to get accepted to the on your first trial. Always present yourself as a advertiser. As a PPC advertiser, you do not need to submit a website to be reviewed, and CPA networks LOVE PPC advertisers - they are the driving force in getting high-quality leads to advertisers.

Now, I just received an email from AzoogleAds inviting me to try out their contextual delivery of CPA offers on my website. Like Google Adsense’s media bot that reads the context of your website and delivers the most relevant ads on your website, AzoogleAds will also be presenting relevant CPA offers directly on your website. This is exciting news because it presents another opportunity to test out CPA monetization for your website and see which method pays you better for your traffic.

SpyFU… WHAT did you say?

If you are into getting traffic using PPC (, specifically) and you have not heard of SpyFu.com, go check it out!

I was a beta user when it first came out and there are a lot of competitive data that you can use for your advantage. It allows you to type in a keyword and will spit out a list of advertisers who are also buying that keyword. Alternatively you can also put in a website address and have it spit out a list of keywords the advertiser is bidding on! Think about what kind of competitive advantage you will having with this kind of business intelligence!

Now that SpyFu.com has come out of the beta mode and you’ll have to pay to use its service. The regular annual subscription is $296, but as a beta user I have a 50% OFF coupon code and 3 others that I can give away. So here they are:

Invite Code 1: 8XI7-VVU91
Invite Code 2: 7I1B-URV42
Invite Code 3: IWWI-56SD3

Use the code above also gives you a 50% OFF on monthly subscriptions. Again, I’m not endorsing this service, but if you are working for a employer who hired you as a PPC consultant, you may present your company’s competitors’ data and blow your boss away and possibly get a raise on your J.O.B.

I’ll Be Taking A Few Weeks Off

My wife is expecting to give birth to our boy by this weekend so I’ll be taking a few weeks off. Having a business online and allow me to “not work” and still have money coming in.

Make sure whatever you are pursuing online allows you this freedom otherwise it couldn’t be called an . Don’t spend your life chasing after and then look back at your life and realize that you haven’t really built a business that can be passed along to someone else or your kid (assuming the kid wants an online business, but who wouldn’t, eh? :)).

While I’m away, read John Reese’s post Here’s The Big Secret To Becoming An Internet Millionaire on his blog (yes, it’s very long).

Clickbank Recurring Billing

It’s about time that Clickbank implement the ! Now that they have opened this up, I can only imagine it’s marketplace getting flooded with membership/subscription based sites.

This should be exciting news to who are looking to promote for a program that will pay commission for the lifetime of a subscriber, something I’d advocate over products that only pay you a one-time commission.

To read more about Clickbank’s recurring billing, you can login to your account and there should be a big button graphic on the upper right hand corner.

Clickbank Leverage

Do you want to be the 2% who create products or the other 98% who sell them?

Dr. Mike and Eric Louvieres had created the AffiliateSalesLetters.com membership site where each month you will receive several re-written and highly converting sales letters for products in the Clickbank network. They will also provide you with keywords that are ready for your Adword campaigns. So what does this mean to you?

If you don’t already know, Dr. Mike is very involved in the health niche and having been a member of his AffiliateSalesLetter.com I know majority of the re-written salespage are indeed for info products related to health. So if you are a smart , go and create your own clickbank product in the health niche and most likely it will be picked up by Dr. Mike and Eric Louvieres to have your salespage re-written and sent off to their members to be promoted!

Don’t have a Clickbank account? You are crazy! It only takes $50 or so to get a product included in their marketplace which exposes your info product to other to be promoted. Remember, affiliate traffic is one of the best traffic you can get.

Get A New Website Indexed In Google In 24 Hours

Here are 3 processes for you to get a new website in 24 hours (speaking from my own experience, but no guarantees on the time frame for which your site will be indexed):

1. Use QUIT. QUIT (QUick Indexing Tool) submits your site to several and other “secret” places that the author does not disclose. It’s currently free so take advantage of it, but be sure to make donations to keep it that way.

2. Have an existing website already indexed by Google? Link the new website from it. Don’t have one? No problem. Install a copy of Wordpress on a subdirectory of your new website and install wp-autoblog plugin and use it to pull in relevant feeds for your website. Then include a link from the blog to the new website’s index page (assuming this is what you want indexed).

3. If appropriate and not violating Craigslist’s TOS, post an ad in the appropriate category with a direct link to your website (be sure to use anchor tag to link it, ie. <a href=”http://www.yoursite.com”>anchor link</a>). Do the same with Backpage.com, USFreeads.com, and other , when appropriate. A good way to minimize the chance of having your ad removed is to post in a remote city.

It is not necessary to do all 3 processes to get your site indexed. However, if you want speedy inclusion in the Google Index then you would naturally want to perform all 3 processes.

There is another way that I use wp-autoblog plugin to get 1) top ranking in Google as well as other search engines, 2) for a very popular program in CJ.com. The beauty of it is that I do not need to do any SEO, and zero promotion and still get first page ranking for keywords that are possible long tails. Talk about . I’ll share with you how this is done at a later post. Be sure to put in your name and email in the announcement list to be notified of my next post.

Money For Your Internet Business

If you need money for your and don’t have any, then listen up. Quite often one of the “excuses” that keeps someone from taking action to pursue or grow his internet business is lack of money. Yet, if you ask them further what his business plan was, he couldn’t tell you! So, the root of the problem isn’t about the money, it’s about coming up with a profitable and system.

Think about it. If you have developed a profitable business process, then money shouldn’t be an obstacle for you to get your business started. You can always work in your business initially until it generates enough seed money to automate the process and eventually work your way out of your business process. Not only that, when you have developed a profitable business system, people who are investment minded would want to fund you for it. If you do not have any outside contact, then start with your family or friends and sell them your business idea - most likely they will ask you for a return on their investment or perhaps not even charge you interest! Regardless, it’s a win-win situation.

If everyone fails you, then you would need to rely on your own credit and your ability to borrow. In real estate business, I learned to leverage OPM: . Say you found a real estate deal that will make you a profit of $75,000 and upwards, but requires you to bring $20,000 to close the deal, would you have borrowed the $20k if you don’t have it?

What if you can get $50,000 on credit, 0% interest rate, and not needing to pay it back for the next 9 to 12 months, how would that help with your internet business? This free report shows you how you can get up to $50k in 2 week’s time.

I use OPM to start one business after the other. Money can “proof” your business process and accelerate the growth. If you have a business idea and would like to run it by me or possibly get some funding, I’m all for it.

Acne Control For Internet Marketers

I’m sure you have heard this before. Just because other people jump off the cliff does not mean that you should follow them. This is like one of the those lessons that you were preached by your parents when you get in trouble in school because you listened to the other kids.

Same goes with your business. If you are an internet marketing junkie I am sure you are on many other marketers’ email list. Products and coaching programs pop out one after the other like the zit of a 16 year-old. Have you ever sat in front of your computer, scrolled up and down the sales page, and asked yourself “should I get this?” Yes, the benefits are so compelling that if you don’t buy it, you are going to miss it, right? Time for some acne control!

There are only a few successful Netreprenuers (woo… almost called him a “guru”) whom I trust and listen to. James Brausch is one and in his post The Right Action Vs. Distraction he talks about taking the right action. Taking action alone is not going to cut it.

What business are you in? Really define your business and break down the processes and create a system for it. Owning all the software and being in all the memberships out there aren not going to make you a dime. Really ask yourself - What business are you in? What are you selling? What are you doing to grow your business? What are you doing to automate your business so you can work less and make more?

I would not be surprised if you do not have an actual business because everyday you spend hours sifting through your emails looking for the “next best thing.” Start by ridding your daily distractions. Un-subscribe from lists that will only waste your time by directing you to read other people’s products and sales letters. Spend time creating your own products and sales letters is what will set you on your way to make you more money online. If you need help, start with this Information Product Creation Course by James D. Brausch where he teaches you step-by-step how to create your own information product in 5 hours or less. I know this works because I have gone through his course.

Traffic Goldmine - Free Classifieds Websites

In my previous post I mentioned that I recommend using to drive traffic to your website. When it comes to free classifieds, Craigslist.org would no doubt pop up as the top website of choice. Indeed, Craigslist is one of the most visited website on the internet and can bring you tremendous amounts of traffic if you know how to use it.

However, it is because of the popularity that use and abuse the most. Thus, Craigslist has since came up with more stringent posting requirements and smarter bots to detect “advertisement spam.” Whenever an opportunity presents itself, it is almost always abused by marketers online. Sort of like Google is now taking helm to crack down on “spammy” looking, page generated, Adsense websites. Most marketers would then give up, some will persevere, and others will move on to another “opportunity.”

Same goes with Craigslist and MySpace. If you shall choose to move on, then have a look at Backpage.com. The playing field is wide open even though it doesn’t promise as much traffic as Craigslist. Does Craigslist still “work”? Sure it does. You just need to be smart about it.

*hint* As an additional bonus to bringing traffic directly to your website, it can also boost your PageRank for your website if you direct link from your ads. I was able to bring a brand new domain from PR0 to PR6 in 3 months with no other backlink promotion.