I find it ironic how just last week I wrote article about avoiding disaster with affiliate marketing and here I am pulling out my hair like a madman. It's been a tough few weeks. Some of it my fault, some of it not. I finally got my computer de-virused and de-spywared after about two weeks of constant fighting it (on a good note, I avoided having to re-format my hard-drive, which I was very close to doing!). I did find some damn good anti-virus and anti-spyware, which I will write up in an upcoming blog. In this whole process of fixing my computer, I am now about two weeks behind on a campaign that I started developing back in July. And to add insult to injury, my main campaign's website has fallen off not only the top 10 positions in Google, but the top 1000! That has dropped my traffic in half, and with it, my sales in half. Very frustrating to say the least! Keep in mind, too, that I do have a 40 hour per week job and my time is fairly limited on these tasks.
So what to do? Of course, I want to do EVERYTHING and NOW! But that won't get much accomplished. This is the point where you need to step back from the problems and outline a plan:
1) Fix my computer and protect it better (DONE!). Viruses are now gone and I have some bitchin' protection installed.
2) Finish up my new website and campaign. Yes, this will cost me money on my "big" website, but the solution to that problem may just be time. I have been reading a lot about this phenomenon. Some call it the "Google Sandbox Effect". Others refer back to last year and the "Google Jagger Update". But a lot of these theories still seem out of date. I will find out, though, and pass on what I discover...but not until I finish my current campaign!
3) Figure out what the heck happened with my rankings! I'll spend a few weeks working on SEO research to strengthen not only my new website, but my old website as well.
4) Re-vamp my big website and start promoting it at a higher level.
One point I am trying to make here is that time is definitely a factor when it comes to promotion. PPC's allow us to get out their immediately, but SEO, good page rank and position does not happen over night. The Google problem I am having may only require time to fix it (that I what many are telling me). So instead of freaking out and trying to "quick fix" the problem, my time will be better spent on things that I have more control over. Like I said last week...this is just a bump in the road, not a cliff!
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Friday, August 11, 2006
Coping with Affiliate Marketing Disaster (Article)
Affiliate marketing is a great and easy way to make money online, but things do not always run smoothly. Learning how to cope during times of frustration is critical to succeed.
I have yet to find the affiliate marketer who initially started their first campaign in a matter of minutes, made gobs of money immediately, and sustained that through the end of time. Some affiliate marketing eBooks and programs actually promote that their system is this easy. I admit that affiliate marketing was a bit easier in its infancy, but right now, the demand is great and the rules are a lot tougher. Anyone who says that affiliate marketing is a smooth sailing ship at all times is lying to you.
So far in my adventures of making money online, I have come across two major bumps in the road.
The first major disaster that most of us face is making our first sale. It took me three months and I spent more than $300 until I got my first $7 commission. Then I went another 2 weeks before getting a second $7 commission. I then got 2 sales in a week. Then I got 5 in a week. I finally stabilized at about 3-5 sales per day, averaging about $30 per sale. What is the lesson here? Perseverance! At the beginning, two major things happen for success:
1) You become a smarter and more educated at affiliate marketing. I can look back at the first three months and know exactly what I did wrong.
2) Patience. At the beginning, you are so anxious to make a buck that you do silly things to “make it happen”. For example, I overbid tremendously on Adwords to get more people to my site. Also, it takes time to build successful Adwords campaigns as well as building your SEO (or Search Engine Optimization) to get high positions in search engine general inquires. In time, you will target the right people and the traffic will increase naturally, all resulting in sales!
The second major disaster recently occurred to me. I had build a very stable, income producing website that was making about $100/day and attracting about 300 unique visitors per day. Then it stopped. My uniques dropped to about 100 and my sales virtually went to zero. I then did some research and found that my top 5 position on Google free listings dropped off the face of the earth. How devastating! Months of SEO and work down the tube. I panicked! I went racing for answers. Then I got a nasty virus on my computer which sent me off the rails. Three weeks I spent doing nothing but trying to “fix” my website (and my computer) and nothing seemed to improve. I was ready to second-think affiliate marketing once again…when my sales returned. I did not do anything, either.
This is just a part of the affiliate marketing world. Many people stress “multiple streams of income”, and they are absolutely right! Focusing all of your eggs in one basket is a bit risky. I now run a few campaigns and as one slumps, the others seem to pick up the slack. (Keep in mind, though, that you must get one campaign up and producing income prior to building a second one. This is one of the many mistakes I made at the beginning.)
The moral of this whole story is to stay focused! At the beginning, set yourself a goal and a plan of attack and stick with it. Do not let lack of sales and expenses get in the way of your plan and commitment. And when things do build into something profitable, be prepared for the off-week. Stay with your game-plan and do not let it distract your from you current job at hand. Affiliate marketing gives you a lot of good highs once you get to the top of the mountain, but do not let the subtle lows bring you down to the ground. As the old saying goes, you may need to take one step back to move two steps forward.
- Matthew Bredel
Monday, August 07, 2006
I Hate Spyware!
What a waste of a frickin' weekend! I was all excited about a new campaign that I was getting close to finishing up and then it happened! First it was one IE window, then 2, then I couldn't close them fast enough. My lower toolbar disappeared and the Task Manager was no longer responding. Firefox started adding new tabs. You could only imagine the explitives that shot out of my mouth!
What happened? Basically, I got lazy over time. I had a version of Norton circa 2004 sort of running in the background. I have not bothered in upgrading it either. I was too good for this. "I'd never download anything malicious". I'm smart! I control what happens with my computer. What an idiot am I...and it is costing me a bundle right now.
Two lessons here:
1) I don't care who you are and how good you are with computers, there is no excuse for not protecting your machine...especially when it comes to a machine that you conduct business on (wasn't that one of my rules about affiliate marketing: treat it like a business?)
2) As awful as an experience this is, I am going to make the most out of it! Just trying to figure out what is going on with my computer, I am learning a lot about anti-virus and spyware software. Do you see where I am going with this? So instead of just upgrading to a new version of Norton, I am spending time learning all about viruses, spyware and the best software out there to protect yourself. I am still trying out a lot of programs, but I am learning that the "popular" programs are not necessarily the best ones. Sure, they may have a lot of features, but when it really gets down to it, I need something that protects me, period! As soon as I find the best programs, I will be sure to pass on the info here.
Now this still does not make me less angry and the a-holes who write this stuff should be in prison. It is also a slap in the face to real affiliate marketers out there. Things like spam and adware just make us look bad.
You know, I can go on for days about how annoyed I am, but I won't dignify the scum of the earth that do this with any more time than they have already wasted of mine.
What happened? Basically, I got lazy over time. I had a version of Norton circa 2004 sort of running in the background. I have not bothered in upgrading it either. I was too good for this. "I'd never download anything malicious". I'm smart! I control what happens with my computer. What an idiot am I...and it is costing me a bundle right now.
Two lessons here:
1) I don't care who you are and how good you are with computers, there is no excuse for not protecting your machine...especially when it comes to a machine that you conduct business on (wasn't that one of my rules about affiliate marketing: treat it like a business?)
2) As awful as an experience this is, I am going to make the most out of it! Just trying to figure out what is going on with my computer, I am learning a lot about anti-virus and spyware software. Do you see where I am going with this? So instead of just upgrading to a new version of Norton, I am spending time learning all about viruses, spyware and the best software out there to protect yourself. I am still trying out a lot of programs, but I am learning that the "popular" programs are not necessarily the best ones. Sure, they may have a lot of features, but when it really gets down to it, I need something that protects me, period! As soon as I find the best programs, I will be sure to pass on the info here.
Now this still does not make me less angry and the a-holes who write this stuff should be in prison. It is also a slap in the face to real affiliate marketers out there. Things like spam and adware just make us look bad.
You know, I can go on for days about how annoyed I am, but I won't dignify the scum of the earth that do this with any more time than they have already wasted of mine.
Thursday, August 03, 2006
Wholesaling Versus Dropshipping: Does it matter? (Article)
Wholesaling Versus Dropshipping: Does it matter?
The internet has given us, the common person, the ability to be our own distributor. But where do you start? Wholesaling? Dropshipping? And does it matter?
Back in the stone ages (oh, about 10 years ago before the internet), going into business for yourself was never an easy task. I personally have always been interested in the distribution business. Why? First, I don’t have to make or produce the products. That requires a lot of time, money, and risk. Secondly, I really have never been very keen with dealing with the public. I once worked in a retail store and the hundreds of customers I would deal with on a daily basis drove me nuts. So I looked for an in-between: distribution. My goals were to be the middle man. Unfortunately, ten years ago becoming a distributor was not easy at all. It required finding the products and negotiating the wholesale terms as well as finding the sellers and those who were going to buy your products. I gave up and became an engineer instead.
Recently, my desires to go into business for myself have been resurrected. Why? Because it is a whole lot simpler now because of the internet! My two biggest problems are now ten-times easier to solve:
1) Finding the Products – You can still do it the old fashion way and spend hours on the phones calling and trying to find the products you wish to distribute. The internet, though, speeds up this process considerably. Search engines allow us to find things fast all over the world. Even better, there are internet companies who do not only the finding of these companies, but test them out as well. The risk is very low, your time to market is much faster and your rewards are just as great.
2) Selling the Products – Now that we have products, we need to find sellers. We can still set up a shop or distribute your products to other stores for resale. But why? The internet is currently the biggest and broadest shop in the world. It requires no storefront. It requires no employees or direct customer relations either. Promotion does come at a cost, but only a small fraction. With the emergence of companies like eBay and Amazon, setting up a store with a lot of visible is simpler than ever.
Understand that there is work involved. This is where you have further options in how you would like to manage your business: Wholesaling or Dropshipping:
Wholesaling: This is pretty straight forward. You find a product you like and you initially buy a lot of the product at a reduced, wholesale price. When you make a sale, you ship the products to the end customer yourself. For a true wholesaling business, you need to purchase a large quantity up front to obtain the lowest wholesale price.
Light Bulk Wholesaling: This is the same as wholesaling, but the minimum buys are much less. This may be more suitable for the everyday eBay or Amazon powerseller. The wholesale prices are a bit higher, but your stock and money up front is much less.
Dropshipping: This is wholesaling at its simplest. In dropshipping, you purchase no product upfront. When a person makes a purchase, you then place the order with your dropshipper (at a wholesale price) and they will ship it directly to the customer. This is by far the easiest and least risky, but the wholesale prices are the highest and there is usually a dropshipping fee as well (usually a few bucks).
Like all business, there are trade-offs. The more product you buy up front, the higher the potential rewards. As you get more conservative, the amount of financial and time commitments become less, but so do your profits. But at the end of the day, no matter which program you choose, there is money to made.
- Matthew Bredel
To learn more about dropshipping, wholesaling and reviews of the top wholesale websites online, visit http://Dropshipping.TheWebReviewer.com
Visit
The internet has given us, the common person, the ability to be our own distributor. But where do you start? Wholesaling? Dropshipping? And does it matter?
Back in the stone ages (oh, about 10 years ago before the internet), going into business for yourself was never an easy task. I personally have always been interested in the distribution business. Why? First, I don’t have to make or produce the products. That requires a lot of time, money, and risk. Secondly, I really have never been very keen with dealing with the public. I once worked in a retail store and the hundreds of customers I would deal with on a daily basis drove me nuts. So I looked for an in-between: distribution. My goals were to be the middle man. Unfortunately, ten years ago becoming a distributor was not easy at all. It required finding the products and negotiating the wholesale terms as well as finding the sellers and those who were going to buy your products. I gave up and became an engineer instead.
Recently, my desires to go into business for myself have been resurrected. Why? Because it is a whole lot simpler now because of the internet! My two biggest problems are now ten-times easier to solve:
1) Finding the Products – You can still do it the old fashion way and spend hours on the phones calling and trying to find the products you wish to distribute. The internet, though, speeds up this process considerably. Search engines allow us to find things fast all over the world. Even better, there are internet companies who do not only the finding of these companies, but test them out as well. The risk is very low, your time to market is much faster and your rewards are just as great.
2) Selling the Products – Now that we have products, we need to find sellers. We can still set up a shop or distribute your products to other stores for resale. But why? The internet is currently the biggest and broadest shop in the world. It requires no storefront. It requires no employees or direct customer relations either. Promotion does come at a cost, but only a small fraction. With the emergence of companies like eBay and Amazon, setting up a store with a lot of visible is simpler than ever.
Understand that there is work involved. This is where you have further options in how you would like to manage your business: Wholesaling or Dropshipping:
Wholesaling: This is pretty straight forward. You find a product you like and you initially buy a lot of the product at a reduced, wholesale price. When you make a sale, you ship the products to the end customer yourself. For a true wholesaling business, you need to purchase a large quantity up front to obtain the lowest wholesale price.
Light Bulk Wholesaling: This is the same as wholesaling, but the minimum buys are much less. This may be more suitable for the everyday eBay or Amazon powerseller. The wholesale prices are a bit higher, but your stock and money up front is much less.
Dropshipping: This is wholesaling at its simplest. In dropshipping, you purchase no product upfront. When a person makes a purchase, you then place the order with your dropshipper (at a wholesale price) and they will ship it directly to the customer. This is by far the easiest and least risky, but the wholesale prices are the highest and there is usually a dropshipping fee as well (usually a few bucks).
Like all business, there are trade-offs. The more product you buy up front, the higher the potential rewards. As you get more conservative, the amount of financial and time commitments become less, but so do your profits. But at the end of the day, no matter which program you choose, there is money to made.
- Matthew Bredel
To learn more about dropshipping, wholesaling and reviews of the top wholesale websites online, visit http://Dropshipping.TheWebReviewer.com
Visit
Monday, July 31, 2006
Tracking Affiliate Marketing Keywords to Sales: An Unresolved Issue
Normally, my posts are based on useful information for making money online. Today, though, I pose my current problem and I'll looking for comments and feedback on the issue!
One of the most important aspects of succeeding in affiliate marketing is tracking your keywords and sales. If you are using PPC's, it is almost essential that you track the quality of your clicks. For example, let's say that keyword #1 is costing me $0.05 per click and keyword #2 is costing me $0.30 per click. Now lets say that I get 60 #1 clicks and 10 #2 clicks. They both cost me the same. But when I check my statistics, I see that my #1 clicks produce a 99% bounce rate (Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who immediately leave your site when they initially visit) where my #2 clicks produce a 50% bounce rate. I'll tell you right now which $3 was better spent! (I'll go over how to use Google Analytics to do this analysis in the future).
Well, great! I now know at least which keywords bring interested customers, but how do I evaluate which keywords bring BUYING customers? This is my dilema. One thing that stinks about affiliate marketing is the lack of control you have once someone leaves your website. You really cannot use google conversion tracking because you do not have a "thank you" page. I have spent some time looking at tracking software, but none of them seems to solve this problem (they require a "thank you" page). So I pose the question to my readers: How do you track affiliate marketing sales with your keywords?
And even if you do not know the answer, at least take a lesson from the moral of this blog: TRACKING YOUR KEYWORDS AND SALES ARE CRITICAL FOR SUCCESS!!
One of the most important aspects of succeeding in affiliate marketing is tracking your keywords and sales. If you are using PPC's, it is almost essential that you track the quality of your clicks. For example, let's say that keyword #1 is costing me $0.05 per click and keyword #2 is costing me $0.30 per click. Now lets say that I get 60 #1 clicks and 10 #2 clicks. They both cost me the same. But when I check my statistics, I see that my #1 clicks produce a 99% bounce rate (Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who immediately leave your site when they initially visit) where my #2 clicks produce a 50% bounce rate. I'll tell you right now which $3 was better spent! (I'll go over how to use Google Analytics to do this analysis in the future).
Well, great! I now know at least which keywords bring interested customers, but how do I evaluate which keywords bring BUYING customers? This is my dilema. One thing that stinks about affiliate marketing is the lack of control you have once someone leaves your website. You really cannot use google conversion tracking because you do not have a "thank you" page. I have spent some time looking at tracking software, but none of them seems to solve this problem (they require a "thank you" page). So I pose the question to my readers: How do you track affiliate marketing sales with your keywords?
And even if you do not know the answer, at least take a lesson from the moral of this blog: TRACKING YOUR KEYWORDS AND SALES ARE CRITICAL FOR SUCCESS!!
Thursday, July 27, 2006
Dropshipping: A Step Beyond Affiliate Marketing (Article)
Affiliate marketing is a great way for some of us to make money online. Dropshipping may be a better solution for others. It may be a bit more daily work, but the rewards can be just as good!
As I continue to grow as an affiliate marketer, I strive to learn new and more diverse opportunities to make money online. Remember that the one of the most common suggestions of online entrepreneurs is to create multiple streams of incomes from many different campaign and programs. Further, understanding the multiple types of online money making programs helps you find the “niche” that will ultimately make you the most money.
For some, affiliate marketing may seem a bit intimidating: It is driven a lot by reviews, reports, advertising, promotion and sales. In affiliate marketing, you, the online entrepreneur, are just a middle man: You direct people to your site (or landing page) and it is your job to convince them to buy from another website. If you achieve your goals, you will receive a portion of the sales, lead or click that came from your site. There are a few downfalls to this:
1) You have no control over the selling site.
2) You must rely on their ad-copy as much as your ad-copy to ultimately make the sale
3) You lose sales tracking ability the minute the buyer leaves your site. Tracking sales to ad campaigns is very difficult.
4) You are competing against other affiliate marketers.
5) Relatively speaking, compensation can be low and out of your control.
For example, I currently promote a product that the website founder likes to change the price and the commission of the product very regularly. Some weeks I make close to $30 per sale, other weeks, less than $8 per sale (for the SAME product!). As an affiliate marketer, what I am to do? I either must grin and bear it or drop them as an affiliate.
So what other options are there to help reduce these issues? The closest program to affiliate marketing that reduces or eliminates the affiliate marketing issues is dropshipping. With dropshipping, you are actually selling the product; you are no longer the middle man. This is similar to buying wholesale and marking up the price for each product, but with a little twist! With dropshipping, you only purchase the product AFTER someone purchases the product from you. In addition, the product is never in your hands; it is shipped directly to the end customer.
For example, let’s say you want to sell ipods. First, you would find a dropshipper that sells the product (at a below market value to you). Second, you create a website, an eBay auction, Amazon Shop, etc. When someone makes a purchase, you return to the dropshipping site, place the order for them, include their address information and the sale is completed. Your earning is the price difference between the final customer cost and the wholesale cost + shipping cost + dropshipping fee. Let’s say that your wholesale cost of an ipod is $150 and you sell it for $200. The dropshipper charges you $18 for shipping and $2 for the dropship fee. Your profit on the sales is then $30.
What are the advantages over affiliate marketing?
1) Control of the final landing page and how the product is presented.
2) Less competition
3) Ability to set your own price and earnings
4) Ability to track your sales to completion
5) Less time required (in some cases) creating an avenue to sell the products (through eBay and Amazon, for example)
6) Potential higher earnings per sale (relative to affiliate marketing)
What are the disadvantages over affiliate marketing?
1) You are now required the action of purchasing each product after a sale
2) Setting up payment methods (though companies like Paypal make this pretty easy…they just take a percentage of the sales)
3) Direct contact with the customer
4) Finding the right product at the right price with the right dropshipper can take some time and negotiating.
5) Higher risk of fraud and poor dropshipping companies.
As similar as the two programs are, they are quite different in what they have to offer you. Affiliate marketing usually requires a bit more front-end work, but once the commissions start coming, the maintenance is fairly minimal. As for dropshipping, you can get set-up and going relatively quickly. With superstores like eBay and Amazon, dropshipping requires no custom landing pages and minimal promotion. This, however, requires a little more work throughout the existence of the campaign. The per-sale-action ultimately requires more work in the long run. Both work very well, but it is up to you to choose which one works best…maybe it is both!
- Matthew Bredel
Visit http://www.TheWebReviewer.com for more money making articles, resources and reviews on today’s hottest online money making ventures.
For more details on Dropshipping programs, visit http://Dropshipping.TheWebReviewer.com
As I continue to grow as an affiliate marketer, I strive to learn new and more diverse opportunities to make money online. Remember that the one of the most common suggestions of online entrepreneurs is to create multiple streams of incomes from many different campaign and programs. Further, understanding the multiple types of online money making programs helps you find the “niche” that will ultimately make you the most money.
For some, affiliate marketing may seem a bit intimidating: It is driven a lot by reviews, reports, advertising, promotion and sales. In affiliate marketing, you, the online entrepreneur, are just a middle man: You direct people to your site (or landing page) and it is your job to convince them to buy from another website. If you achieve your goals, you will receive a portion of the sales, lead or click that came from your site. There are a few downfalls to this:
1) You have no control over the selling site.
2) You must rely on their ad-copy as much as your ad-copy to ultimately make the sale
3) You lose sales tracking ability the minute the buyer leaves your site. Tracking sales to ad campaigns is very difficult.
4) You are competing against other affiliate marketers.
5) Relatively speaking, compensation can be low and out of your control.
For example, I currently promote a product that the website founder likes to change the price and the commission of the product very regularly. Some weeks I make close to $30 per sale, other weeks, less than $8 per sale (for the SAME product!). As an affiliate marketer, what I am to do? I either must grin and bear it or drop them as an affiliate.
So what other options are there to help reduce these issues? The closest program to affiliate marketing that reduces or eliminates the affiliate marketing issues is dropshipping. With dropshipping, you are actually selling the product; you are no longer the middle man. This is similar to buying wholesale and marking up the price for each product, but with a little twist! With dropshipping, you only purchase the product AFTER someone purchases the product from you. In addition, the product is never in your hands; it is shipped directly to the end customer.
For example, let’s say you want to sell ipods. First, you would find a dropshipper that sells the product (at a below market value to you). Second, you create a website, an eBay auction, Amazon Shop, etc. When someone makes a purchase, you return to the dropshipping site, place the order for them, include their address information and the sale is completed. Your earning is the price difference between the final customer cost and the wholesale cost + shipping cost + dropshipping fee. Let’s say that your wholesale cost of an ipod is $150 and you sell it for $200. The dropshipper charges you $18 for shipping and $2 for the dropship fee. Your profit on the sales is then $30.
What are the advantages over affiliate marketing?
1) Control of the final landing page and how the product is presented.
2) Less competition
3) Ability to set your own price and earnings
4) Ability to track your sales to completion
5) Less time required (in some cases) creating an avenue to sell the products (through eBay and Amazon, for example)
6) Potential higher earnings per sale (relative to affiliate marketing)
What are the disadvantages over affiliate marketing?
1) You are now required the action of purchasing each product after a sale
2) Setting up payment methods (though companies like Paypal make this pretty easy…they just take a percentage of the sales)
3) Direct contact with the customer
4) Finding the right product at the right price with the right dropshipper can take some time and negotiating.
5) Higher risk of fraud and poor dropshipping companies.
As similar as the two programs are, they are quite different in what they have to offer you. Affiliate marketing usually requires a bit more front-end work, but once the commissions start coming, the maintenance is fairly minimal. As for dropshipping, you can get set-up and going relatively quickly. With superstores like eBay and Amazon, dropshipping requires no custom landing pages and minimal promotion. This, however, requires a little more work throughout the existence of the campaign. The per-sale-action ultimately requires more work in the long run. Both work very well, but it is up to you to choose which one works best…maybe it is both!
- Matthew Bredel
Visit http://www.TheWebReviewer.com for more money making articles, resources and reviews on today’s hottest online money making ventures.
For more details on Dropshipping programs, visit http://Dropshipping.TheWebReviewer.com
Monday, July 24, 2006
The Highs and Lows of Day-Trading and Affiliate Marketing
My wife always criticizes me for making analogies about everything that I do in life. Unfortunately for you poor readers of my blog, this is not an exception!
Back in the late 90s, I (like many) started to get swept into the whole “day-trading” phenomenon. At this time, making a few bucks in a day was not too difficult. (Simply because everything seemed to go up.) Now I was in no way a day-trading expert and most of my transactions were less than $1000. It was fun, though: Researching a stock, picking its buy price, then picking its sell price and watch it go! I would literally be watching the stock-market on a minute-by-minute basis. The highs and rush of a big gain, the sadness and frustration of a big fall. Of course, at the beginning there were plenty of highs, but when the stock market finally crashed, the lows set in hard…I have not done day trading since 2001.
Just recently, I picked up a Wall Street Journal and checked out some of my old stocks that worked well for me. Mind you, if I stuck with that, I would be very poor now. It did bring back the excitement a bit. The funny thing is that the feeling I was having was a familiar one. When it really gets down to it, affiliate marketing and online money making is very much the same thing. The highs of a big day of sales or high traffic to your website. The lows of getting no sales or having your Adwords position drop out of the first page.
But this is better! The risks are much lower now! On my high days, I earn over $200. On my low days, I spend $10 in advertising. And just like the stock-market, there is an instant gratification to your traffic and sales due to instantaneous internet reporting. Now I may not watch my statistics on a minute-by-minute basis, but I do check it out throughout the day. And just like stocks, once I have exhausted one concept, I move on to the next (while the first one keeps bringing in the dough!). As you develop more campaigns and more knowledge about the industry, you find that your high days become plentiful while your low days fall to virtually nothing.
Back in the late 90s, I (like many) started to get swept into the whole “day-trading” phenomenon. At this time, making a few bucks in a day was not too difficult. (Simply because everything seemed to go up.) Now I was in no way a day-trading expert and most of my transactions were less than $1000. It was fun, though: Researching a stock, picking its buy price, then picking its sell price and watch it go! I would literally be watching the stock-market on a minute-by-minute basis. The highs and rush of a big gain, the sadness and frustration of a big fall. Of course, at the beginning there were plenty of highs, but when the stock market finally crashed, the lows set in hard…I have not done day trading since 2001.
Just recently, I picked up a Wall Street Journal and checked out some of my old stocks that worked well for me. Mind you, if I stuck with that, I would be very poor now. It did bring back the excitement a bit. The funny thing is that the feeling I was having was a familiar one. When it really gets down to it, affiliate marketing and online money making is very much the same thing. The highs of a big day of sales or high traffic to your website. The lows of getting no sales or having your Adwords position drop out of the first page.
But this is better! The risks are much lower now! On my high days, I earn over $200. On my low days, I spend $10 in advertising. And just like the stock-market, there is an instant gratification to your traffic and sales due to instantaneous internet reporting. Now I may not watch my statistics on a minute-by-minute basis, but I do check it out throughout the day. And just like stocks, once I have exhausted one concept, I move on to the next (while the first one keeps bringing in the dough!). As you develop more campaigns and more knowledge about the industry, you find that your high days become plentiful while your low days fall to virtually nothing.
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Page Rank, Alexa Ranking, SEO and YOU! (Article)
Page Rank and Alexa Ranking are two well respected figures of merit currently on the web to assess the success of your website. What do they really mean and how do they affect you?
Since I began my online money making adventures about 6 months, I have spent a lot of time trying to understand how the world wide web actually works. One of the biggest keys to being successful on the internet is how to get people to actually come to your website. Naturally, the more traffic that you get to your site, the higher potential for sales you will have. Of course, there are artificial ways of doing this such as advertising, classifieds and pay-per-click programs. While these are very important and can provide you with a lot of high quality visitors, they can be rather costly and limited in exposure. So how do you attract traffic the natural way? How do I get those top positions in the “free” search engine results? How do I expand my exposure beyond my hometown, state and even country? The trick to achieving these goals is called “Search Engine Optimization” or SEO.
Unfortunately, SEO is not a defined formula or process. It is a bit of a secret. Trial and error is what drives this process, not a straight-forward formula. Even worse, this formula is constantly changing. So what can you do? First, there are a few “figures of merit” for a website. Now understand, these merits do not directly relate to getting top spot on Google, but they are factored in to some degree.
One figure of merit is called Page Rank. Again, Page Rank is another unknown formula which only the search engine gods know about. Page rank generally provides a number (between 0 and 10) on how well linked your website is. If you are a sole entity in the world wide web with no links being directed to you, your exposure to the world and ability to find your website is rather low. Cases like this earn ratings of 0 and 1. If many websites, also with high page ranks, are linked to your site, the probability of people finding your website is much higher and deserves much higher page ranks such as 5 and 6’s. The upper numbers like 8, 9, and 10 are rare and found mostly on the real big sites (such as google.com, yahoo.com, etc.). So page rank provides a figure of merit on how people can get to your site naturally. It is believed that page rank has a lot to do with search position on Google, MSN, Yahoo, etc. Each one of these search engines have their own page rank system, but the Google one is the most respected.
The other figure of merit that I see praised a lot is the Alexa Ranking. Some people think this number and the Page Rank are similar, but they really are quite different. The Alexa Ranking focuses more on the AMOUNT of traffic that your site receives, not the linkage. Of course, the two are related, but the merits tell different tales. Now, as much as traffic is a good thing for sales, it has a lower effect on search engine rankings and SEO. Alexa Ranking numbers work in reverse, as well. The lower the number, the higher the ranking. Most websites start off in the millions. Websites below 100,000 usually means heavy traffic.
I currently have a friend who runs a fairly respectable website which has an Alexa Ranking of 65,000 (gets close to 500,000 visitors per day) but only has a page rank of 2/10. I have a website that has an Alexa Ranking of 1,000,000 but a page rank of 4/10. What does this mean? Most of his traffic is coming from places other than highly page ranked websites. My site has a lot of high quality links, but little traffic. For me, I need quality visitors, for him, he just needs visitors. At the end of the day, it all evens out and our income is approximately the same at this time.
From all of this, I have drawn a few conclusions:
1) Figures of merit for your website can help you understand your place in the world wide web.
2) Depending on your website goals, your figures of merit should be optimized according.
3) Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is used to improve your free search engine position and is dependant more on your Page Rank and less on your Alexa Ranking.
4) Alexa Rankings are a good indicator of traffic, but does not necessarily reflect the importance of your website on the web (particularly to search engines)
5) One of the best ways to improve your Page Rank is to get your website link on other people’s high Page Ranked websites
6) Finally, no matter what type of website you run, high search engine placement (Page Rank) AND high traffic (Alexa Ranking) is the goal for all financial success.
- Matthew Bredel
Visit http://www.TheWebReviewer.com for more money making articles, resources and reviews on today’s hottest online money making ventures.
Since I began my online money making adventures about 6 months, I have spent a lot of time trying to understand how the world wide web actually works. One of the biggest keys to being successful on the internet is how to get people to actually come to your website. Naturally, the more traffic that you get to your site, the higher potential for sales you will have. Of course, there are artificial ways of doing this such as advertising, classifieds and pay-per-click programs. While these are very important and can provide you with a lot of high quality visitors, they can be rather costly and limited in exposure. So how do you attract traffic the natural way? How do I get those top positions in the “free” search engine results? How do I expand my exposure beyond my hometown, state and even country? The trick to achieving these goals is called “Search Engine Optimization” or SEO.
Unfortunately, SEO is not a defined formula or process. It is a bit of a secret. Trial and error is what drives this process, not a straight-forward formula. Even worse, this formula is constantly changing. So what can you do? First, there are a few “figures of merit” for a website. Now understand, these merits do not directly relate to getting top spot on Google, but they are factored in to some degree.
One figure of merit is called Page Rank. Again, Page Rank is another unknown formula which only the search engine gods know about. Page rank generally provides a number (between 0 and 10) on how well linked your website is. If you are a sole entity in the world wide web with no links being directed to you, your exposure to the world and ability to find your website is rather low. Cases like this earn ratings of 0 and 1. If many websites, also with high page ranks, are linked to your site, the probability of people finding your website is much higher and deserves much higher page ranks such as 5 and 6’s. The upper numbers like 8, 9, and 10 are rare and found mostly on the real big sites (such as google.com, yahoo.com, etc.). So page rank provides a figure of merit on how people can get to your site naturally. It is believed that page rank has a lot to do with search position on Google, MSN, Yahoo, etc. Each one of these search engines have their own page rank system, but the Google one is the most respected.
The other figure of merit that I see praised a lot is the Alexa Ranking. Some people think this number and the Page Rank are similar, but they really are quite different. The Alexa Ranking focuses more on the AMOUNT of traffic that your site receives, not the linkage. Of course, the two are related, but the merits tell different tales. Now, as much as traffic is a good thing for sales, it has a lower effect on search engine rankings and SEO. Alexa Ranking numbers work in reverse, as well. The lower the number, the higher the ranking. Most websites start off in the millions. Websites below 100,000 usually means heavy traffic.
I currently have a friend who runs a fairly respectable website which has an Alexa Ranking of 65,000 (gets close to 500,000 visitors per day) but only has a page rank of 2/10. I have a website that has an Alexa Ranking of 1,000,000 but a page rank of 4/10. What does this mean? Most of his traffic is coming from places other than highly page ranked websites. My site has a lot of high quality links, but little traffic. For me, I need quality visitors, for him, he just needs visitors. At the end of the day, it all evens out and our income is approximately the same at this time.
From all of this, I have drawn a few conclusions:
1) Figures of merit for your website can help you understand your place in the world wide web.
2) Depending on your website goals, your figures of merit should be optimized according.
3) Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is used to improve your free search engine position and is dependant more on your Page Rank and less on your Alexa Ranking.
4) Alexa Rankings are a good indicator of traffic, but does not necessarily reflect the importance of your website on the web (particularly to search engines)
5) One of the best ways to improve your Page Rank is to get your website link on other people’s high Page Ranked websites
6) Finally, no matter what type of website you run, high search engine placement (Page Rank) AND high traffic (Alexa Ranking) is the goal for all financial success.
- Matthew Bredel
Visit http://www.TheWebReviewer.com for more money making articles, resources and reviews on today’s hottest online money making ventures.
Monday, July 17, 2006
The Affiliate Marketing Inventor?
I hate to admit it, but I've always been a bit of a geek all of my life. I was reminded by this fact from my mother this past weekend. She said to me: "I haven't heard about any of your 'invention' ideas of late." She made a good point! In my quest to quitting my day job and making millions of dollars while sitting on a beach sipping pina coladas, I have spend countless hours throughout my life thinking about that "invention to make me rich". I've seen the Oprah shows that shows some funny looking person who came up with some silly idea that is making them millions right now. That should be me! And over time, I have come up with some pretty good ideas (at least, I think I did!).
But really, let's get real! Was I really going to make and sell these products? There is a lot of overhead involved in creating your own product:
1) Thinking it up!
2) Researching the marketplace (does it exist?)
3) Protecting your idea (patent? $)
4) Prototyping your product ($)
5) Testing your product ($$)
6) Producing your product ($$$)
7) Marketing and selling your product ($$$$)
Boy, there are a lot of dollar signs above. I have also looked into "invention" companies, but they usually want a decent amount of money up front (if they are reputable) and, if the product ever becomes a hit, they usually take a fair chunk of the profit. What is the old saying: "You've got to spend money to make money!". Creating your own investment is a fairly large financial risk and time commitment, but the pay-offs can be HUGE!
When I discovered online money making opportunities, much of my "invention-thinking" energy was re-directed. I realized a fair way back that my ideas were good, but really, I was not prepared to sacriface my career and the stability of my household to test them out. Affiliate marketing provides me the opportunity to:
1) Make a lot of money! (maybe not as much of inventing your own product, but enough to fulfill my pina-colada drinking dreams)
2) Invest little money and time…I do not sacriface much at this time.
3) Make money without working (once on auto-pilot, can you say pina-colada again?)
4) *VERY IMPORTANT: Allows me to be creative and inventive in a very productive way!
That was the answer to my mother's question! I find myself thinking and pondering different products to promote, how to promote them, to whom to promote them, the design of the website or blog, etc. Affiliate marketing has given me a positive and prosperous outlet for this inventive mind of mine. What I now dream up becomes a reality. And ironically, if I ever DID want to invent products, my knowledge of the internet and its resources (which I have learned through my online ventures) have given me the tools to effectively promote and sell my own inventive product.
I am still not drinking my pina-colada quite yet, but every few days or so, I get a little sip and boy, does it taste good!
But really, let's get real! Was I really going to make and sell these products? There is a lot of overhead involved in creating your own product:
1) Thinking it up!
2) Researching the marketplace (does it exist?)
3) Protecting your idea (patent? $)
4) Prototyping your product ($)
5) Testing your product ($$)
6) Producing your product ($$$)
7) Marketing and selling your product ($$$$)
Boy, there are a lot of dollar signs above. I have also looked into "invention" companies, but they usually want a decent amount of money up front (if they are reputable) and, if the product ever becomes a hit, they usually take a fair chunk of the profit. What is the old saying: "You've got to spend money to make money!". Creating your own investment is a fairly large financial risk and time commitment, but the pay-offs can be HUGE!
When I discovered online money making opportunities, much of my "invention-thinking" energy was re-directed. I realized a fair way back that my ideas were good, but really, I was not prepared to sacriface my career and the stability of my household to test them out. Affiliate marketing provides me the opportunity to:
1) Make a lot of money! (maybe not as much of inventing your own product, but enough to fulfill my pina-colada drinking dreams)
2) Invest little money and time…I do not sacriface much at this time.
3) Make money without working (once on auto-pilot, can you say pina-colada again?)
4) *VERY IMPORTANT: Allows me to be creative and inventive in a very productive way!
That was the answer to my mother's question! I find myself thinking and pondering different products to promote, how to promote them, to whom to promote them, the design of the website or blog, etc. Affiliate marketing has given me a positive and prosperous outlet for this inventive mind of mine. What I now dream up becomes a reality. And ironically, if I ever DID want to invent products, my knowledge of the internet and its resources (which I have learned through my online ventures) have given me the tools to effectively promote and sell my own inventive product.
I am still not drinking my pina-colada quite yet, but every few days or so, I get a little sip and boy, does it taste good!
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
To Blog or Not to Blog: Making Money (Article)
To Blog or Not To Blog: While Making Money Online
Making money online through blogs has been a very popular venture of late. While blogs are free and very appealing, are they just as good as designing your own website?
One of the biggest crazes associated with making money online these days centers around blogs. Only in the last year or so has web-logging or “blogging” (a fancy way of referring to an internet diary which can be make public) really been a major way of communication on the world wide web. Its initial intensions were to provide internet users a place to share their feelings, opinions and ideas. Of course, everything in the world these days that starts out simple with good intensions becomes tarnished by the desire to make money. I hate to admit it, but I am not an exception to this rule, either.
I became an internet marketer about 7 months ago and like most affiliate marketers, my roots began through reading eBooks. Many of the recent “updates” to these money-making programs focuses on using blogs as a means of an inexpensive (free) place to create landing pages (pages which you link your potential customers to in order to promote your product).
There are three main ways to promote products:
1) Promote products by directly linking to the seller’s website. This is fairly competitive these days.
2) Create your own landing page by having your own website.
3) Create your own landing page by having a blog or using a free website.
I have tried direct promotion with little luck in the past. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is irrelevant and Pay-Per-Click (PPC) services (like Yahoo Overture and Google Adwords) is very competitive. This is because services like Adwords will only allow one sponsored URL per search. High niche keywords and unique keywords are required to even compete (and be seen) if you plan on having a modest advertising budget. A landing page is much more successful and easy to promote, in my opinion.
Do you create your own website or use a free website, like a blog? Let’s review the pros and cons of creating a blog (versus your own site).
Blog Benefits:
1) Cheap: They are free! Creating your own website requires you to pay for domain names and monthly hosting fees.
2) Little to no web design experience required. Excellent templates and designs already available. Creating your own website requires some technical expertise or additional fees in paying someone to do it for you.
3) Flexibility to create your own unique, content and ad-copy. Same with creating your own website, just broader.
4) Excellent for Search Engine Optimization. Blog sites such as Blogspot are linked with Google, which improves your probability of high, free search results.
Blog Cons:
1) Lack of flexibility of design. You are usually constrained to the templates and designs that are offered by the site.
2) Possible sponsored ads on your site that you do not get paid for. Blogspot allows you to add your own advertising, such as Adwords, but most require that they place their own ads.
3) Some free sites and blogs disallow your own domain name. This creates ugly, non-memorable website URL names. The free sites that allow unique domains names usually delay its activation by months.
4) Not professional looking. This may not be a bad thing, depending on the type of product you are promoting.
5) Lack of vistor track-ability. Being able to trace links, clicks and visitor statistics can be very critical to a successful campaign. Blog and free sites may not provide the accessibility to install tracking code.
The Verdict:
I have done both free blog and creating my own website in the past and I have found much more success with your own website versus a blog or free website. Being able to track my visitors can be extremely useful. I spent the time to learn web design and now, adding new content to my site can take LESS time now than with a blog. Price-wise, a domain and host can cost less than $10 per month. While I was able to make money through my blog, sales almost TRIPLED with my own site.
While I promote making your own website, there are definitely benefits to having a commercial blog. Specifically, the SEO of a blog can be rather powerful! Ideally, my best suggestion is to create your own website that sells your product while creating and maintaining a good-content blog that links two-way links to your site.
- Matthew Bredel
Visit http://www.TheWebReviewer.com for more money making articles, resources and reviews on today’s hottest online money making ventures.
Making money online through blogs has been a very popular venture of late. While blogs are free and very appealing, are they just as good as designing your own website?
One of the biggest crazes associated with making money online these days centers around blogs. Only in the last year or so has web-logging or “blogging” (a fancy way of referring to an internet diary which can be make public) really been a major way of communication on the world wide web. Its initial intensions were to provide internet users a place to share their feelings, opinions and ideas. Of course, everything in the world these days that starts out simple with good intensions becomes tarnished by the desire to make money. I hate to admit it, but I am not an exception to this rule, either.
I became an internet marketer about 7 months ago and like most affiliate marketers, my roots began through reading eBooks. Many of the recent “updates” to these money-making programs focuses on using blogs as a means of an inexpensive (free) place to create landing pages (pages which you link your potential customers to in order to promote your product).
There are three main ways to promote products:
1) Promote products by directly linking to the seller’s website. This is fairly competitive these days.
2) Create your own landing page by having your own website.
3) Create your own landing page by having a blog or using a free website.
I have tried direct promotion with little luck in the past. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is irrelevant and Pay-Per-Click (PPC) services (like Yahoo Overture and Google Adwords) is very competitive. This is because services like Adwords will only allow one sponsored URL per search. High niche keywords and unique keywords are required to even compete (and be seen) if you plan on having a modest advertising budget. A landing page is much more successful and easy to promote, in my opinion.
Do you create your own website or use a free website, like a blog? Let’s review the pros and cons of creating a blog (versus your own site).
Blog Benefits:
1) Cheap: They are free! Creating your own website requires you to pay for domain names and monthly hosting fees.
2) Little to no web design experience required. Excellent templates and designs already available. Creating your own website requires some technical expertise or additional fees in paying someone to do it for you.
3) Flexibility to create your own unique, content and ad-copy. Same with creating your own website, just broader.
4) Excellent for Search Engine Optimization. Blog sites such as Blogspot are linked with Google, which improves your probability of high, free search results.
Blog Cons:
1) Lack of flexibility of design. You are usually constrained to the templates and designs that are offered by the site.
2) Possible sponsored ads on your site that you do not get paid for. Blogspot allows you to add your own advertising, such as Adwords, but most require that they place their own ads.
3) Some free sites and blogs disallow your own domain name. This creates ugly, non-memorable website URL names. The free sites that allow unique domains names usually delay its activation by months.
4) Not professional looking. This may not be a bad thing, depending on the type of product you are promoting.
5) Lack of vistor track-ability. Being able to trace links, clicks and visitor statistics can be very critical to a successful campaign. Blog and free sites may not provide the accessibility to install tracking code.
The Verdict:
I have done both free blog and creating my own website in the past and I have found much more success with your own website versus a blog or free website. Being able to track my visitors can be extremely useful. I spent the time to learn web design and now, adding new content to my site can take LESS time now than with a blog. Price-wise, a domain and host can cost less than $10 per month. While I was able to make money through my blog, sales almost TRIPLED with my own site.
While I promote making your own website, there are definitely benefits to having a commercial blog. Specifically, the SEO of a blog can be rather powerful! Ideally, my best suggestion is to create your own website that sells your product while creating and maintaining a good-content blog that links two-way links to your site.
- Matthew Bredel
Visit http://www.TheWebReviewer.com for more money making articles, resources and reviews on today’s hottest online money making ventures.
Monday, July 10, 2006
Making Money...While On Vacation!
Well, it is truly NOT great to be back! I wish life was a vacation all of the time, but that is our goal, right? Leave the 9-to-5 job behind and find that golden ticket to leisure and fun. This vacation was my first true "test" of having my affiliate marketing campaigns put on auto-pilot. I went up to the mountains for 10 days...no internet, 3 TV channels and a LAN telephone. (As much as I miss those things, it was great to go without it for awhile!). But as you can imagine, I was so itching to find out how my affiliate websites and blogs were going. Did my Adwords ads need fixing? Was Overture going to replenish my funds if they went dry? Were people going to come looking for my blogs and find no new posts?
As much as I was tempted to find an internet cafe, I held back. When I got home last night, I was literally scared what I was going to find concerning my affiliate sales, click statistics and livlihood of my websites. I have put a lot of effort over the last few months to create these things to let them go to pots. The moment of truth came...I first checked my Clickbank sales and...
...I couldn't believe it! I had some of the BIGGEST sales days of my online money making career! There were even some over $100 days, which is really good for me at this time! I was so excited not only to have all of the sales, but to find that everything had been working to clock-work! GoogleAds continued to get me my predicted clicks! Overture DID replenish my funds. A few more articles had been approved and released. All was well in my world of blogs and websites...and I wasn't even here!
This is encouraging me to do one thing right now...TAKE MORE VACATIONS!
As much as I was tempted to find an internet cafe, I held back. When I got home last night, I was literally scared what I was going to find concerning my affiliate sales, click statistics and livlihood of my websites. I have put a lot of effort over the last few months to create these things to let them go to pots. The moment of truth came...I first checked my Clickbank sales and...
...I couldn't believe it! I had some of the BIGGEST sales days of my online money making career! There were even some over $100 days, which is really good for me at this time! I was so excited not only to have all of the sales, but to find that everything had been working to clock-work! GoogleAds continued to get me my predicted clicks! Overture DID replenish my funds. A few more articles had been approved and released. All was well in my world of blogs and websites...and I wasn't even here!
This is encouraging me to do one thing right now...TAKE MORE VACATIONS!
Monday, June 26, 2006
Affiliate Marketing, My Website and the Firefox Incident!
So I am just about ready to go on vacation for about 2 weeks (sorry, no computer access for the trip, therefore, no posts for a couple of weeks) and I was at my dad's house wanting to show him my website: TheWebReviewer.com. Being an old geezer that he is (sorry dad!), he has his fonts on Internet Explorer set to large. To my shock (and HORROR!) I saw my website overwriting itself all over the place! This can't be? I have checked it out a hundred times with no problems. Further, my cool fonts were no longer visible. What happened???
We'll, it is simple: I did not do a good job making my website very robust I am afraid. My mistakes:
1) The CSS style sheets that I created where all "absolute" positions. This is fine as long as everyone else is using your settings, but this was not the case.
2) Avoid using non-standard Fonts and even "point" font sizes. Stick with simple, standard fonts (like Ariel and Times New Roman) or even the "default font". Defining 12 and 14 point font sizes seem to confuse some browsers, too. Use simpler font styles such as small, medium, large, etc.
I have now fixed this little mess (at probably the cost of many potentials buyers...If you website is not organized well, and in this case a mess, no one is going to stick around!). When designing your website, be sure to keep it simple, but also test it in multiple environments! Most people have Microsoft Internet Explorer pre-installed on their machines. A lot of people use Firefox as well, and at times, they format out differently. In general, I recommend Firefox over IE anyway.
1) IT'S FREE! To download it, just click the link in the right bar.
2) It seems to be more stable than IE (less crashing)
3) It is supposed to be less vulnerable to viruses and spyware.
4) It is fully integrated with all of the good Google tools (you should also install these on IE as well. Click the link in the right bar).
5) It isn't Microsoft (I know a lot of people who use Firefox just to spite Microsoft!).
My point? Be sure to use robust formatting and font types and sizes on your website and remember that just because it looks good on your browser does not mean that it will look good on everyones! Test it both in different browsers and viewing settings!
See ya in a couple of weeks!
We'll, it is simple: I did not do a good job making my website very robust I am afraid. My mistakes:
1) The CSS style sheets that I created where all "absolute" positions. This is fine as long as everyone else is using your settings, but this was not the case.
2) Avoid using non-standard Fonts and even "point" font sizes. Stick with simple, standard fonts (like Ariel and Times New Roman) or even the "default font". Defining 12 and 14 point font sizes seem to confuse some browsers, too. Use simpler font styles such as small, medium, large, etc.
I have now fixed this little mess (at probably the cost of many potentials buyers...If you website is not organized well, and in this case a mess, no one is going to stick around!). When designing your website, be sure to keep it simple, but also test it in multiple environments! Most people have Microsoft Internet Explorer pre-installed on their machines. A lot of people use Firefox as well, and at times, they format out differently. In general, I recommend Firefox over IE anyway.
1) IT'S FREE! To download it, just click the link in the right bar.
2) It seems to be more stable than IE (less crashing)
3) It is supposed to be less vulnerable to viruses and spyware.
4) It is fully integrated with all of the good Google tools (you should also install these on IE as well. Click the link in the right bar).
5) It isn't Microsoft (I know a lot of people who use Firefox just to spite Microsoft!).
My point? Be sure to use robust formatting and font types and sizes on your website and remember that just because it looks good on your browser does not mean that it will look good on everyones! Test it both in different browsers and viewing settings!
See ya in a couple of weeks!
Friday, June 23, 2006
Online Money Making Battle: Paid Surveys Vs. Affiliate Marketing
Paid Surveys Vs. Affiliate Marketing: Which is for you?
As you start learning about money making programs online, you will usually come across two legitimate ways of making money: Paid Surveys and Affiliate Marketing. I have tried them both and they are quite different!
I have spend a lot of time over the past 6 to 8 months researching and trying out different ways of making money online. Some of them work, but a lot of them are basically scams or pyramid schemes. The two that stand out as both legitimate as well as popular are paid surveys and affiliate marketing. You may see them called a variety of different names such as "focus groups", "paid to read emails", and "mystery shopping" for paid surveys and "data entry", "Clickbank money", even "forex" (even though the real forex deals with foreign exchange of currency) for affiliate marketing. A sub-catagory of affiliate marketing includes "Adsense" money-makers. Whatever you want to call, they are really just two different ways of making money online.
Paid surveys are simple. You sign up on a whole bunch of survey sites and over time, you will receive invitations to take part in filling out a marketing (or other) type of survey. This includes online surveys, phone surveys, focus groups, mystery shopping, etc. Now you will not be receiving dozens per day, by maybe a dozen or so per week. These surveys can range between $5 each to $75. Making $100 per week is definitely achievable!
Affiliate marketing is totally different. Throughout the world of the internet, there is a marketplace based on referrals. Almost anything you buy on the internet has some type of referal or affiliate program. If you can send a buyer to a vendor's website and they buy something, you (as the affiliate marketer) will receive a commission. These commissions can be percentages or straight values for the sales (or for that matter, leads or even clicks!). To promote another person's product, you usually need to create a website or blog and advertise.
Both of these online money making programs work and they do work as they are described above. But, of course, it is easier to explain it in 3 sentences than to actually do it. So what one do you choose? Let's compare the realities of these two work-at-home programs and find out!
1) Potential to Make Money
Paid Surveys: Making $500 per month is very doable, but that is pretty much the maximum in most cases.
Affiliate Marketing: The top affiliate marketers in the world make millions! But realize that only about 5% of those trying to make money through affiliate ventures are actually making money. (read on!) A solid affiliate marketer can bring in about $5000 per month.
2) Time Commitment
Paid Surveys: The initial start-up to sign up for the survey sites may take a few hours, but after that, your time will paid with the surveys or focus groups, etc. are you taking part in. You get paid for the time you put into paid surveys.
Affiliate Marketing: The actual "setting up" of an affiliate marketing campaign really does not take too long. But affiliate marketing requires a real commitment to learn the trade, research the products, advertise, and ultimately, become technically savvy enough to use the internet resources available to you (read #3). Once you develop the proper skills to do this, things become much simplier, your time commitment goes down and your earnings grow substantially!
3) Computer Know-How
Paid Surveys: Your computer skills only need to be average at best. Once you figure out how to create accounts on the survey sites, everything is fairly spoon-fed to you. As long as you have basic email knowledge, paid surveys requires very minimal technical knowledge.
Affiliate Marketing: A lot of the well written eBooks about affiliate marketing do a good job walking you through many of the technical steps. To get started requires very minimal computer knowledge. However, if you really want to make a considerable amount of money, it usually requires you to learn how to do some website design, host management and manipulation of code. You do not need to be a computer coder to be successful, but you should feel confident enough to edit a website.
4) Difficulty to Make Money
Paid Surveys: If you are willing to put in the initial time to sign up for most or all of the sites provided and you are willing to spend the time actually doing the surveys, then making money with paid surveys is easy.
Affiliate Marketing: If making a million dollars was easy, we would all do it, right? Not many people can read an affiliate marketing eBook and start making a solid income immediately. Some people do not make a cent in the first few MONTHS (I was one of them!). A lot of people quit, but if you are determined and willing to learn the trade, the initial up-hill battle will flatten out! It may start off at $10-$20 per day, but once it rains, it seems to pour!
5) Start-up Fees
Paid Surveys: You really need to join a paid survey site program to be successful. Most charge a one-time fee of $30-$40. No other fees occur after this.
Affiliate Marketing: You should really buy an eBook to teach you how affiliate marketing works. This usually costs between $30 and $50. There are usually advertising costs (which can be fairly minimum, but not required). If you have your own website, you will have monthly hosting and domain fees. Websites are not required, though. Blogs are a free way of promotion these days. Of course, it is entirely up you how much you will spend.
What it really gets down to is what you are willing to give. Paid surveys is a conservative, yet honest way of supplementing your monthly income by a few hundred days (and believe me, a few hundrd dollars can go a long way!). Affiliate marketing can be an initial uphill battle, which for some, leads to nothing. But the rewards can be very high and result in more than just a supplement of income, rather a career! Either way, if you try them out and it does not work for you, the other is always available and at the end of the day!
Matthew Bredel
As you start learning about money making programs online, you will usually come across two legitimate ways of making money: Paid Surveys and Affiliate Marketing. I have tried them both and they are quite different!
I have spend a lot of time over the past 6 to 8 months researching and trying out different ways of making money online. Some of them work, but a lot of them are basically scams or pyramid schemes. The two that stand out as both legitimate as well as popular are paid surveys and affiliate marketing. You may see them called a variety of different names such as "focus groups", "paid to read emails", and "mystery shopping" for paid surveys and "data entry", "Clickbank money", even "forex" (even though the real forex deals with foreign exchange of currency) for affiliate marketing. A sub-catagory of affiliate marketing includes "Adsense" money-makers. Whatever you want to call, they are really just two different ways of making money online.
Paid surveys are simple. You sign up on a whole bunch of survey sites and over time, you will receive invitations to take part in filling out a marketing (or other) type of survey. This includes online surveys, phone surveys, focus groups, mystery shopping, etc. Now you will not be receiving dozens per day, by maybe a dozen or so per week. These surveys can range between $5 each to $75. Making $100 per week is definitely achievable!
Affiliate marketing is totally different. Throughout the world of the internet, there is a marketplace based on referrals. Almost anything you buy on the internet has some type of referal or affiliate program. If you can send a buyer to a vendor's website and they buy something, you (as the affiliate marketer) will receive a commission. These commissions can be percentages or straight values for the sales (or for that matter, leads or even clicks!). To promote another person's product, you usually need to create a website or blog and advertise.
Both of these online money making programs work and they do work as they are described above. But, of course, it is easier to explain it in 3 sentences than to actually do it. So what one do you choose? Let's compare the realities of these two work-at-home programs and find out!
1) Potential to Make Money
Paid Surveys: Making $500 per month is very doable, but that is pretty much the maximum in most cases.
Affiliate Marketing: The top affiliate marketers in the world make millions! But realize that only about 5% of those trying to make money through affiliate ventures are actually making money. (read on!) A solid affiliate marketer can bring in about $5000 per month.
2) Time Commitment
Paid Surveys: The initial start-up to sign up for the survey sites may take a few hours, but after that, your time will paid with the surveys or focus groups, etc. are you taking part in. You get paid for the time you put into paid surveys.
Affiliate Marketing: The actual "setting up" of an affiliate marketing campaign really does not take too long. But affiliate marketing requires a real commitment to learn the trade, research the products, advertise, and ultimately, become technically savvy enough to use the internet resources available to you (read #3). Once you develop the proper skills to do this, things become much simplier, your time commitment goes down and your earnings grow substantially!
3) Computer Know-How
Paid Surveys: Your computer skills only need to be average at best. Once you figure out how to create accounts on the survey sites, everything is fairly spoon-fed to you. As long as you have basic email knowledge, paid surveys requires very minimal technical knowledge.
Affiliate Marketing: A lot of the well written eBooks about affiliate marketing do a good job walking you through many of the technical steps. To get started requires very minimal computer knowledge. However, if you really want to make a considerable amount of money, it usually requires you to learn how to do some website design, host management and manipulation of code. You do not need to be a computer coder to be successful, but you should feel confident enough to edit a website.
4) Difficulty to Make Money
Paid Surveys: If you are willing to put in the initial time to sign up for most or all of the sites provided and you are willing to spend the time actually doing the surveys, then making money with paid surveys is easy.
Affiliate Marketing: If making a million dollars was easy, we would all do it, right? Not many people can read an affiliate marketing eBook and start making a solid income immediately. Some people do not make a cent in the first few MONTHS (I was one of them!). A lot of people quit, but if you are determined and willing to learn the trade, the initial up-hill battle will flatten out! It may start off at $10-$20 per day, but once it rains, it seems to pour!
5) Start-up Fees
Paid Surveys: You really need to join a paid survey site program to be successful. Most charge a one-time fee of $30-$40. No other fees occur after this.
Affiliate Marketing: You should really buy an eBook to teach you how affiliate marketing works. This usually costs between $30 and $50. There are usually advertising costs (which can be fairly minimum, but not required). If you have your own website, you will have monthly hosting and domain fees. Websites are not required, though. Blogs are a free way of promotion these days. Of course, it is entirely up you how much you will spend.
What it really gets down to is what you are willing to give. Paid surveys is a conservative, yet honest way of supplementing your monthly income by a few hundred days (and believe me, a few hundrd dollars can go a long way!). Affiliate marketing can be an initial uphill battle, which for some, leads to nothing. But the rewards can be very high and result in more than just a supplement of income, rather a career! Either way, if you try them out and it does not work for you, the other is always available and at the end of the day!
Matthew Bredel
Visit http://www.TheWebReviewer.com for more money making articles, resources and reviews on today’s hottest online money making ventures.
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Google Analytics - Great Free Tracking
About a month ago, I was curious and clicked on the "Analytics" tab in my Google Adwords account. When I got there, I was a bit disappointed that I need to be "invited" to join the program. I said "what the hay!" and signed up for it anyway. Who cares, right? Well, last week I got my official invitation to join and being curious, I logged on and set up an account.
For anyone looking for a quick and easy way of tracking your website statistics, this is a GREAT and EASY way of doing it! I was quite impressed and now I almost rely on it! It provides me with such a good overview of my site as well as who my visitors are and what they are doing. It isn't perfect, nor does it provide all of the information you need, but it gives me enough to make quick judgments on what is going on. And again, IT'S FREE!
I have tried a handful of counter sites to do the same thing and most want your money in order to provide you with any meaning information (a counter tool at the bottom of your site is clearly not enough). The one counter site that I do like and still frequent is StatCounter. Its free version provides you will all of the good details that you want to see, but only for the last 100 visitors. For me right now, that is enough to get an idea what is going on. It provides a little bit more "raw" information than Analytics, which I like.
In either case, you SHOULD be tracking your visitors quite regularly to learn what is working and what is not. I'll get into more details on this in later blogs. Happy hump day!
For anyone looking for a quick and easy way of tracking your website statistics, this is a GREAT and EASY way of doing it! I was quite impressed and now I almost rely on it! It provides me with such a good overview of my site as well as who my visitors are and what they are doing. It isn't perfect, nor does it provide all of the information you need, but it gives me enough to make quick judgments on what is going on. And again, IT'S FREE!
I have tried a handful of counter sites to do the same thing and most want your money in order to provide you with any meaning information (a counter tool at the bottom of your site is clearly not enough). The one counter site that I do like and still frequent is StatCounter. Its free version provides you will all of the good details that you want to see, but only for the last 100 visitors. For me right now, that is enough to get an idea what is going on. It provides a little bit more "raw" information than Analytics, which I like.
In either case, you SHOULD be tracking your visitors quite regularly to learn what is working and what is not. I'll get into more details on this in later blogs. Happy hump day!
Monday, June 19, 2006
Make Money Online: The Small Business Side (Article 2)
What can I say? I'm getting lazy about creating separate blogs about my articles. Here is my new article in its entirety:
Affiliate Marketing: The Risk-free Business
Trying to get into the world of small business can be a very risky, high cost and time consumer venture...until now. Affiliate marketing and other online money making programs can produce the same successes with virtually no risk at all.
We all have dreams about running our own business at some point in our life. It can be for the personal satisfaction, the freedom of bosses or the big financial rewards. But we know at some level that in order to get to this point requires either a lot of time, a lot of money or a even a lot of luck. Being an engineer in everyday life, I find myself between a rock and a hard place: Is it worth it for me to give up a fair paying job with reasonable hours to a high risk job which will require a lot more hours and probably, at least for the first 3-5 years, pay me less money? Working a 9-to-5 job can be fairly mundane and the self-satisfaction and financial rewards are adequate, but, in my opinion not acceptable.
Some Benefits of Owning Your Own Business:
1) Personal satisfaction
2) No bosses
3) Potential for big financial rewards
4) You set your own work hours
5) Potential to financial freedom without much work.
Some Drawbacks of Owning Your Own Business
1) Large up-front financial investment
2) Large up-front time commitment
3) High risk of failure
4) Little direction
5) Employ management (in some cases)
What do you do, then? I have been to the trade shows and the franchise shows and wholesaler shows. I have to admit that I do have quite a bit of excitement about them, but really, I am not prepared to make the sacrifices; at least at this time in my life. I have a wife, a mortgage, a car payment and two very young children.
About six months ago, I stumbled across some money making opportunities on the internet. I first started with Paid Surveys, but this was not meant to solve my small business desires, rather, to earn a little bit of extra cash each month (and it did that!, a couple of hundred dollars is nice, but I am not retiring with this any time soon!). This led me into the world of affiliate marketing.
Making money online through affiliate marketing has been an interesting and great experience. I was a bit skeptical at first, but the more research I did, the more it made sense to me. As an affiliate marketer, you promote products on the internet. If people find your link and/or website which lead them to a sale, you get a certain percentage of the sale. These earnings can be a few dollars, tens of dollars, even hundreds of dollars each! The process to be successful in doing this is not necessarily simple, but it is rather straight-forward. If you approach a venture like this from a small business point of view, you can be very successful in affiliate marketing.
This was the niche that I was looking for. Affiliate marketing has allowed me to receive many of the benefits of being in a small business for myself with little or none of the drawbacks:
* Minimal up-front investment: About a hundred dollars or so.
* Minimal time commitment: I work on it when I have time. There is no time limit on making this succeed.
* Low risk: If you put the effort into it, you can and will be successful. If it does not work for you, you are out very little (unlike buying a business).
*Lots of Direction: There are a vast number of quality eBooks on the subject and the support networks in newsgroups are outstanding.
* No Employees: Unless you really make it big, which this does have the potential of doing!
I have not yet quit my day-job by any means. I work on affiliate marketing about 2 hours per day, 5 days per week. I am not making tens of thousands per month yet, but everyday my affiliate marketing business grows and it does make a steady stream of income. By slowly building my online money making business now, I open the doors for the future to truly leave my 9-5 job behind and achieve the goals of self-employment that I have always desired. All of this was done at little to no risk to my family, life-style or current career path.
- Matthew Bredel
Visit http://www.TheWebReviewer.com for more money making articles, resources and reviews on today’s hottest online money making ventures.
Friday, June 16, 2006
Make Money Online: The Small Business Side (Part II)
I always find it a bit laughable about how some "make money online" ad pages try to portray affiliate marketing or ebay powerselling or paid surveys as "just follow these three steps and you'll be making money out of your behind!". Yes, you can make money and good money from these ventures, but it requires a bit more than flipping three switches. The funny thing is that it does not require much more effort than three little steps for any of these programs.
Remember, THIS IS A BUSINESS! For an example, let's look at a affiliate marketing and the "three steps" required to make our fortune:
1) Finding a Product to Promote
The Wrong Way: Going to an affiliate site and picking either a random product, the most popular product or a product you like and going with it.
The Business Way: Researching the products! Which products are popular and selling well and why? Can you market these products? Is the market saturated? How much money will each sale make you? How many visitors per sale do you expect? How much will it cost you per visitor?
2) Creating Your Landing Page
The Wrong Way: Taking the products ad page and regurgiting the content or adding no content at all! Also creating a content landing page that is not targeting true buyers.
The Business Way: Research and understanding your product! Buy the product if you have to. An honest sales pitch has a lot more value than regurgitated ad text. People can see through it! Study the competition's websites or blogs and make yours BETTER! Also, you need to understand who the target buyers are and cater to them. For example, trying to sell diet pill to someone looking to lose 5 pounds is probably not the best idea. In this case, focusing on people looking to lose 50 pounds may make more sense.
3) Promoting Your Site
The Wrong Way: Creating a GoogleAds Adword or Overture account and bidding $0.50 for the top 20 keywords related to your product.
The Business Way: Research out more targeted and obscure keywords that relate to your product. (Don't bid on "free diet pills" if they are not truly free!) You must make budgets for your Pay-Per-Click accounts and stick with them. Budget out how much you make per lead and vary your bid price according this. You should also go beyond PPC's to not only increase your traffic, but to get free traffic as well.
When I first started affiliate marketing, I did all three steps "The Wrong Way". That made me virtually no money. Actually, it cost me a small amount! Now I focus on "The Business Way" of affiliate marketing and sure enough, I make a fairly steady stream of income. Affiliate marketing (as well as other online ventures) are actually pretty straight-forward ways of making money and the eBooks that teach this do show you how to successfully do it. It is how you interpret this information and use it which separates the winners from the, well, no so successful!
Remember, THIS IS A BUSINESS! For an example, let's look at a affiliate marketing and the "three steps" required to make our fortune:
1) Finding a Product to Promote
The Wrong Way: Going to an affiliate site and picking either a random product, the most popular product or a product you like and going with it.
The Business Way: Researching the products! Which products are popular and selling well and why? Can you market these products? Is the market saturated? How much money will each sale make you? How many visitors per sale do you expect? How much will it cost you per visitor?
2) Creating Your Landing Page
The Wrong Way: Taking the products ad page and regurgiting the content or adding no content at all! Also creating a content landing page that is not targeting true buyers.
The Business Way: Research and understanding your product! Buy the product if you have to. An honest sales pitch has a lot more value than regurgitated ad text. People can see through it! Study the competition's websites or blogs and make yours BETTER! Also, you need to understand who the target buyers are and cater to them. For example, trying to sell diet pill to someone looking to lose 5 pounds is probably not the best idea. In this case, focusing on people looking to lose 50 pounds may make more sense.
3) Promoting Your Site
The Wrong Way: Creating a GoogleAds Adword or Overture account and bidding $0.50 for the top 20 keywords related to your product.
The Business Way: Research out more targeted and obscure keywords that relate to your product. (Don't bid on "free diet pills" if they are not truly free!) You must make budgets for your Pay-Per-Click accounts and stick with them. Budget out how much you make per lead and vary your bid price according this. You should also go beyond PPC's to not only increase your traffic, but to get free traffic as well.
When I first started affiliate marketing, I did all three steps "The Wrong Way". That made me virtually no money. Actually, it cost me a small amount! Now I focus on "The Business Way" of affiliate marketing and sure enough, I make a fairly steady stream of income. Affiliate marketing (as well as other online ventures) are actually pretty straight-forward ways of making money and the eBooks that teach this do show you how to successfully do it. It is how you interpret this information and use it which separates the winners from the, well, no so successful!
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Make Money Online: The Small Business Side (Article 1)
In my series of how affiliate marketing relates to small business, I am planning on writing a series of articles to complement the topic. I've written my first article called:
Check it out! I still cannot reiterate more to "newbies" the importance of not only how affiliate marketing works, but how to effectively implement it as well! Enjoy the article!
Check it out! I still cannot reiterate more to "newbies" the importance of not only how affiliate marketing works, but how to effectively implement it as well! Enjoy the article!
Monday, June 12, 2006
Make Money Online: The Small Business Side (Part I)
Blogspot royally annoyed me last week! For some stupid reason, the website would be down or it would come up with a bunch of broken links or it would just freeze on me! By Thursday, I gave up with posts for the week. I'm back now!...
One big point that everyone seems to miss about making money online is that is really and truly is, by definition, a small business. When I first started doing paid surveys, I approached it as a "hobby". Then I got more adventageous and started making money through affiliate marketing and Adsense. At the beginning, I continued to approach it as a "hobby", like the paid surveys. I was not willing to invest the time or money into building my affiliate marketing campaigns. Not much really came from it, either. I did not know what I was doing nor was I ready to put any money into it. I became frustrated and finally bought my first eBook on how to do it. That cost about $40.
This taught me to focus on Blogging and SEO at first (because they were CHEAP!). Believe it or not, I actually DID get some sales. Not many and nothing reliable at all, but it was something. That prompted me to start spending money all over the place: PPC's, Domain Names, Web Hosting, Autoresponders, Ads, more eBooks, etc. Now here is where my warning to everyone comes into place:
I started throwing money around (a few $100 in this case) and it gained me absolutely NOTHING!
But the problem was not what I was buying, but rather, what I was trying to do. All of the things listed above, in my opinion, ARE NEEDED if you really want to play this game. The problem was that I did not have a good PLAN. And this ties back into the original point of the article:
Affiliate Marketing IS a small business that requires both resources and planning to be successful.
Once I figured this out, things began falling into place and my negative income was slowly becoming positive once again. You do not need a marketing or economics degree to figure this out, either. How much are you willing to pay per Sale? Per Click? Per Lead? And prior to even figuring this out, are you really ready and educated on affiliate marketing and Adsense to play this game? My first recommendation is to buy an eBook to learn the ropes and play with blogging and free traffic until you understand how online marketing works. We'll talk about planning and resources another day!
One big point that everyone seems to miss about making money online is that is really and truly is, by definition, a small business. When I first started doing paid surveys, I approached it as a "hobby". Then I got more adventageous and started making money through affiliate marketing and Adsense. At the beginning, I continued to approach it as a "hobby", like the paid surveys. I was not willing to invest the time or money into building my affiliate marketing campaigns. Not much really came from it, either. I did not know what I was doing nor was I ready to put any money into it. I became frustrated and finally bought my first eBook on how to do it. That cost about $40.
This taught me to focus on Blogging and SEO at first (because they were CHEAP!). Believe it or not, I actually DID get some sales. Not many and nothing reliable at all, but it was something. That prompted me to start spending money all over the place: PPC's, Domain Names, Web Hosting, Autoresponders, Ads, more eBooks, etc. Now here is where my warning to everyone comes into place:
I started throwing money around (a few $100 in this case) and it gained me absolutely NOTHING!
But the problem was not what I was buying, but rather, what I was trying to do. All of the things listed above, in my opinion, ARE NEEDED if you really want to play this game. The problem was that I did not have a good PLAN. And this ties back into the original point of the article:
Affiliate Marketing IS a small business that requires both resources and planning to be successful.
Once I figured this out, things began falling into place and my negative income was slowly becoming positive once again. You do not need a marketing or economics degree to figure this out, either. How much are you willing to pay per Sale? Per Click? Per Lead? And prior to even figuring this out, are you really ready and educated on affiliate marketing and Adsense to play this game? My first recommendation is to buy an eBook to learn the ropes and play with blogging and free traffic until you understand how online marketing works. We'll talk about planning and resources another day!
Monday, June 05, 2006
Affiliate Marketing eBooks: Part II - Which One to Buy?
So you are ready to give affiliate marketing (or any type of money making program) a shot! So you type in a few good keywords into Google like "Make money from home" or "Get Rich Quick" and you get eBooks and programs being thrown at you at all directions! Again, I have read my share of internet eBooks (especially on this topic) and most are really quite similar. At this point, you need to step back and figure out what YOU need in a program:
1) Are you fairly internet savvy or did you just figure out how to turn on a computer yesterday?
2) Do you just want the details on what to do or do you want to know why you are doing it?
3) Are you looking for all the details up front, or would you prefer them in small doses?
4) Are you dedicated to making this work or are you looking for a quick way to make some money?
Believe it or not, but there is an eBook or program for any of the cases listed above. Some programs really walk you through it providing excellent examples and really defining the basics. Other eBooks throw everything at your up front and let you figure it out yourself. Both have their pluses and minuses, but it is the reader than needs to choose which is best for them. The best way to learn which eBook is right for you is to read reviews on products themselves. You will probably find that a few eBooks really stand out (TheRichJerk or AffiliateCashVault, for example). These are popular because they have been around awhile and have provided good results. This doesn't mean that newer eBooks are not better, just not as easy to find reviews. I still like the LifeEmpowered System a lot (for its ease of use and great support). BecomeHated is a newbie which is great for the technical savvy user looking for tons of information and fast! But whatever you choose, make sure it is right for you...
(Reviews for the above eBooks can be found at: http://www.TheWebReviewer.com)
1) Are you fairly internet savvy or did you just figure out how to turn on a computer yesterday?
2) Do you just want the details on what to do or do you want to know why you are doing it?
3) Are you looking for all the details up front, or would you prefer them in small doses?
4) Are you dedicated to making this work or are you looking for a quick way to make some money?
Believe it or not, but there is an eBook or program for any of the cases listed above. Some programs really walk you through it providing excellent examples and really defining the basics. Other eBooks throw everything at your up front and let you figure it out yourself. Both have their pluses and minuses, but it is the reader than needs to choose which is best for them. The best way to learn which eBook is right for you is to read reviews on products themselves. You will probably find that a few eBooks really stand out (TheRichJerk or AffiliateCashVault, for example). These are popular because they have been around awhile and have provided good results. This doesn't mean that newer eBooks are not better, just not as easy to find reviews. I still like the LifeEmpowered System a lot (for its ease of use and great support). BecomeHated is a newbie which is great for the technical savvy user looking for tons of information and fast! But whatever you choose, make sure it is right for you...
(Reviews for the above eBooks can be found at: http://www.TheWebReviewer.com)
Thursday, June 01, 2006
The Intimidation of Internet Marketing
I seem to spend a lot of time these days checking out what other people are doing in the form of online marketing and advertisement. At first glance, I was quite overwhelmed and impressed with what I was seeing! Some of these sites were HUGE! They may have hundreds of articles. The have dozens of reviews and commentary over a large wealth of products. Page Ranks around 5 and 6. Hundreds of thousands, if not MILLIONS, of visitors per day.
And then there is my website...a handful of reviews, a few articles, some nice commentary and quite a few useful tips on making money (http://www.thewebreviewer.com). But nothing in the league of these others. So should I just quit? HELL NO!
First of all, the internet is a VERY BIG PLACE and there are plenty of web surfers to share the wealth. If you look closely at these sites, they were not created yesterday, either. They have been around for years. Content takes time. And what about the few thousand visitors a get per month? That is MORE than enough to make affiliate sales or earn some advertising revenue. Remember that the big players fill a certain void while the little players (like us, at least for right now!) fill another void. I know that when I initially started to research the web for money making opportunities, it was the smaller sites that made more of an impression on me. The big sites rely more on quantity and advertising.
So remember, don't get discouraged if your website or blog is not as fancy, or big, or as popular as the others...it really doesn't matter! You WILL still make money if its content is good and in time, it can easily grow into the power-house that currently intimidates us online!
And then there is my website...a handful of reviews, a few articles, some nice commentary and quite a few useful tips on making money (http://www.thewebreviewer.com). But nothing in the league of these others. So should I just quit? HELL NO!
First of all, the internet is a VERY BIG PLACE and there are plenty of web surfers to share the wealth. If you look closely at these sites, they were not created yesterday, either. They have been around for years. Content takes time. And what about the few thousand visitors a get per month? That is MORE than enough to make affiliate sales or earn some advertising revenue. Remember that the big players fill a certain void while the little players (like us, at least for right now!) fill another void. I know that when I initially started to research the web for money making opportunities, it was the smaller sites that made more of an impression on me. The big sites rely more on quantity and advertising.
So remember, don't get discouraged if your website or blog is not as fancy, or big, or as popular as the others...it really doesn't matter! You WILL still make money if its content is good and in time, it can easily grow into the power-house that currently intimidates us online!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)