Online Business: Location! Location! Location!

One of the first rules that any businessman knows about being successful is the old phrase “Location, Location, Location!” But how does that relate to the internet?

Just recently, my wife and I decided to take a break from our lives and the kids and decided to head 5000 feet into the clouds to the Southern California resort town of Arrowhead Lake. Our whole goal of the trip was to cleanse our minds from the commitments of life and focus more on relaxation, clean air and each other. I did not even bring up my laptop and went days without checking any affiliate sales or emails. But through all of this, my online marketing mind could not be turned off.

It only took me about 4 hours up in the mountains before I really started to realize this state of online business nirvana. The enlightenment was not very spectacular, but it made a lot of sense to me. It started when I walked into a Christmas themed store in a little village of boutique shops located along the lake. Personally, I really had very little interest in holiday novelties, so I sat in the corner while my wife browsed around. I noticed the store currently had about 12 customers in it. Of those 12, two ended up buying a couple of gifts (valued at about $30 a piece). There was a girl working the counter and another younger guy re-stocking the shelf. The store overlooked this beautiful lake and in my mind, I felt that the business was running very smoothly; I would consider it “successful” during the 15 minutes I sat there. The store had a great location and fit a good niche for people visiting the center.

The following day, we drove up to Bear Valley Lake and again, I found myself in another boutique store, selling Christmas and holiday stuff. This store was not on the lake and in an area when 2 out of every 3 stores seemed to be boarded up. An older woman worked here. We were the only ones in the store. We did not buy anything. Same niche, similar area, poor location. Still, this little hole-in-the-wall probably supports this woman’s lifestyle, but from a business stand-point, probably does not bring in much money.

In either case, I got to thinking about what it took to get these stores to where they are today. The first boutique made much more than the second and seemed to get a steady stream of visitors. Still, I think about all of the work and money that was required to build this moderately successful storefront. The location is probably where most of their profits go. The staffing and the stocking are the next major space and money guzzlers. And at the end of the day, this “prestigious” location probably averaged about 20 visitors per hour.

This is when it hit me! If you add in the leasing, the presentation and the up-keep of this store, your cost per visitor must be enormous! Not only that, your target visitors is geographically constrained to the locals and visitors who just find themselves to be right there at the right place and the right time.

I actually felt guilty about my online ventures (especially since my part-time campaigns probably make a comparable earning at the end of the day)! First, let’s put aside the fact that owning an online business removes the store-front costs, much of the staffing costs and possibly some of the stocking costs. When I got into online business, I knew that and it was extremely appealing in both a business as well as a risk standpoint. My main discovery here is LOCATION, LOCATION, and LOCATION! This store probably pays thousands of dollars per month to lease this relatively high traffic location. And again, unless you happen to find yourself in front of this store during an hour of operation, you will not ever buy anything from them, ever.

Now think about the world wide web. This is the ULTIMATE location! Sure, you do not have the luxury and satisfaction of holding the product and buying it on the spot, but your reach is almost immeasurable. Anyone in the city, state, country or (or even world) can visit your store (at all hours of the day). Instead of 20 visitors per hour, you can have 1000s! It is almost unreal when you think about it (my local Costco probably only has a few hundred customers at any given time). This is why making money online is SO profitable. It is a numbers game without much of the overhead: A win-win situation.

At the end of the day, I am sure there is a lot of pride with owning your own store-front business. But if it is truly just “money” that you are looking for, online selling is an ideal opportunity for anyone with the “be-your-own-boss” mentality. Not only is it a low risk opportunity, it may carry the biggest rewards of them all…and this is because the world wide web is truly what Location, Location, Location is all about!

- Matthew Bredel

Visit http://www.TheWebReviewer.com for more money making articles, resources and reviews on today’s hottest online money making ventures.

Data Entry Scams and Clickbank...

The data entry world came to a gigantic hault last week when Clickbank decided to pull all of its "data entry" and "type-at-home" eBooks and programs off of its electronic shelf. What happened?

Being a reviewer of online money making programs for TheWebReviewer.com, I was a bit shocked at the discovery that Clickbank had mysteriously removed all of its data entry products without warning. I am sure that to many affiliate marketers, this unannounced removal not only was a shock, but cost this niche a whole lot of money. First understand this: Data Entry and Type at Home programs were some of the highest converting products of the Clickbank line-up. So why would Clickbank pull the plug on these lucrative products?

One theory is the change of management and vision of Clickbank itself. In the last month, Clickbank has redeveloped their website and in doing so, may have chosen to revisit the types of products they sell. But again, why would a company drop such a high money making group of products?

Another more telling tale of the whole type-at-home and data entry program is it is estimated that over 25% of those who purchase the product return the product. Clickbank does offer a 60-day money back guarentee on all of their products. Getting a refund is a fairly simple thing to do. This high return rate not only hurts the revenue of the product, but type-classes the Clickbank product selection as sketchy.

So what is the problem with Data Entry programs and why are they being classified as scams and being returned at such a high rate? Recently, I have spent a lot of time reading up on a few "Data Entry" programs (such as DataEntryBank.com and Type-at-Home.com) and the answer is very simple: The name is very misleading! These data entry programs are nothing more than affiliate marketing programs (just like TheRichJerk, Wealthy Affiliate and Affiliate Cash Vault). These programs themselves are actually pretty good for affiliate marketing programs, but you would not tell that from their ad-copy. It describes "Just fill out a few Google Ads and make money today..." I suppose you are "entering data", but there is a whole lot more to this to be successful. (The eBooks go into the "more", as well, but this is not what the ad-copy told you!).

I think people go into Data Entry programs and Type-At-Home programs with the thinking that they will just need to "type" or "enter data" and presto!, I will make money. When they finally join the program and learn that it is a lot more than that, they become frustrated or disappointed. This leads to high returns and the word "Scam" labelled all over the product.

Data Entry Programs themselves are not scams. The way they are presented is what the scam is all about. These "Type-at-home" programs can profitable, but understand that they are affiliate marketing programs, not simple data entry. If you are truly looking for "data entry" kinds of programs, Paid Surveys are one option (Survey Scout, for example). There are
also "true" data entry programs that fit the criteria of typing data in for a price (the biggest and best site for this is: Freelance Work Exchange.

At the end of the day, it is kind of a shame that these so called "data entry" and "type-at-home" programs have marketed themself into the "Scam" stigma; not because of the quality of their product, but because of the way they represent and sell their product to the public.

- Matthew Bredel

To learn more about "Data Entry" Programs, Affiliate Marketing, and Paid Surveys, visit TheWebReviewer for reviews, articles, resources and more!

Bad Internet Traffic - Does this Exist?

eCommerce and online business focus generally around one thing: Website Traffic. But is there such a thing as "bad traffic"?

During my last 8 months of being an affiliate marketer, I have learned a lot of about making money online and I have become moderately successful at it, too. One of the most important lessons that I learned is that traffic equals sales! There are many fundamental rules about internet selling and one of those general rules of thumbs is that it is very likely that any respectable website can make 1-2 sales (at least) per 100 visitors. My visitor counts started off small, and I made a little bit of money. My visitor count is now "respectable" and I now make a "respectable" amount of money. But how far does this theory go and when does good traffic go bad?

Annecdote #1: About 3 months ago, I got an email from a very anger person stating that my website was nothing but a fraud due to the fact that they got my link from an adult website (why they were on this site in the first place is left to be seen!). I did some research on why my link was found on a certain website and I found that one of my content ads from Google had the line "Get Off Your Fanny..." I later learned that this rather tame word "fanny" has different meanings in other countries (we are talking about a global economy here!). This triggered an Adsense ad on an adult website. So my first point here is that you do not have control at times where your ad may appear in the world wide web! Secondly, do I care? In this case, I do to some degree. I do not really care that it came from an adult website. Traffic is traffic (even if someone may be upset with this). What I do care about is that I PAID for this click.

This is when good traffic goes bad! I did some careful research on the statistics of those who visited my website from this adult website. Sure enough, I received about 30 clicks at $0.10 a piece (a total of $3). Out of that $3, I received zero sales and additionally, 29 of those people "bounced" (meaning they stayed on my website for less than 5 seconds). This is not a good investment and I made sure that this site would no longer post my ad (and I did change the wording to remove "fanny" from the equation!).

Annecote #2: One common and highly publicized way of attracting traffic to one's website is through free classified ads. The first time I did this, I was kind of shocked what I saw. My visitors to my website jumped to an additional 150 unique visitors per day (after the initial postings.) WOW! I then went and checked my sales: Zero additional sales. I went and researched my classified ad statistics and sure enough, about 145 of those visitors bounced. Does this make classified ads "bad traffic".

It can, but not really! Remember this: these ads are free. And out of the 5 visitors that did stay on my website, I got two of them to sign-up for my opt-in letter. Ultimately, that means I paid zero dollars for each lead. That is definitely worth something. The biggest question here is time. How much is your time worth? To post classified ads requires time and (if you are strapped in time like I am), time is money. Further, this additional traffic hurts my visitors per sales statistics, but who cares! It is ROI (return on investment) that truly matters. The investment in this case is time, not money.

Traffic is currently king on the internet when it come to making sales. In my opinion, though, traffic only goes bad when you pay for it and it does not produce sales. All free traffic is good (no matter where it comes from). But beware, free traffic sometimes come at the cost of time. Is an hour of posting classified ads worth more than a new blog entry or a review of another product? That is a decision that you, the online marketer, must make yourself!

- Matthew Bredel

Visit http://www.TheWebReviewer.com for more money making articles, resources and reviews on today’s hottest online money making ventures.

The Backlash Against Online Marketing eBooks

Making money online programs and the eBooks that teach these methods have been going strong for the past couple of years. Just recently, though, a backlash of the product is making people think of it as a scam, not a money making venture.

For some strange reason, over the last 3 weeks, I have read and seen about a half of a dozen articles, blogs, emails, etc. focusing on the topic of how online marketing eBooks are nothing but a scam. Sure, there are always going to be critics, but is this sudden rise in awareness justified, or is it just a coincidence?

I have a interesting intrepretation of this situation from two stand-points:

1) I got into the online money making business using one of these eBooks.

2) I run a review site (http://www.thewebreviewer.com) that focuses on reviewing these exact programs.

In the early part of this year, I did what most of you have done: I needed extra money so I typed something like "Make Money Online", "Extra Cash", or "Get Rich Quick" into a search engine like Google or Yahoo. At that time, I knew nothing about affiliate marketing, paid surveys, wholesaling, data entry programs, etc. I spent a few nights researching it and finally found a program that I wanted to try out.

This eBook has changed my life. I spent the first 3 months making no money, spending a tons on advertising and getting little traffic to my products. I was learning. The last six months, I have created a number of websites and campaigns and earn steady income as a supplement to my 9-5 job. (This was exactly what I wanted to do). The point is that I would have never made it to this point without the guidance of an online marketing eBook. It taught me the fundamentals:

1) What it is.
2) Where to find products.
3) Where to sell products.
4) How to promote products.
5) How to maximize my earning potential.

Understanding the fundamentals is KEY before you can actually start making money. Again, the first three months were spent learning the system, the last six months have been reaping the rewards. At the end of the day, it was ME that made this system work (through hard-work, education and trial & error), but I needed this eBook to get the ball rolling in the first place. (How do you ask a question, if you don't know which questions to ask!?)

Secondly, I have an insight that not many have on these online money making eBooks: I review them! I post on my website about a half-dozen different programs, but I have read about twice that over the past year. I have learned a few things from this:

1) About 75% of all Online Money Making eBooks are the same: They have the same chapter headings and the same content. Some go over the "what" a little bit more; others go over the "how".

2) The last 25% is usually some "innovative" or "unique" marketing or product idea that this specific get rich program specializes in. In most cases, these ideas are a bit far-fetched for most, but are always worth a read.

3) It is usually the "bonuses" that distinguish these programs from one another. Some may offer personal counselling. Others may offer a free website or a paid surveys list. Some do not offer much of anything.

At the end of the day, the content is there to get you an idea of what you need to do to make money online.

So, does this really work? Of course, my answer has to be yes. The reason? I would not be here today writing this article if this did not work for me. So why the backlink against these Affiliate Marketing or Money Making eBooks? I am guessing it could be a few reasons:

1) Speaking out against such eBooks can be controversial (which can be an effective marketing tool to promote your own product...or "anti-product" for that matter!)

2) A lot of people try these programs and a lot of people fail. Not everyone will be successful doing this and those who are not are surely going to consider this a scam.

3) More competion means more work and less sales. Some may bad-mouth the programs just to prevent more people from trying. (The internet is a very big place, though, and there is plenty of ways to still make money!)

At the end of the day, I find these articles that bad-mouth online marketing eBooks a bit silly. Sure, some of them are pretty bad (and pretty short!). But some will provide you with tools to begin making money online in no time.

- Matthew Bredel

Visit http://www.TheWebReviewer.com for more money making articles, resources and reviews on today’s hottest online money making ventures.

Website Sales: Promotion is Only Half the Battle

In the world of affiliate marketing, promotion is critical. But marketing either your own product or another person’s product is only half the battle…you still need to generate a sale!

I recently received an email from a visitor of TheWebReviewer.com who was in the dropshipping business. He created a fairly nice website with tons of products on it and followed the next rule of online business: Get Traffic! Logically, if you have no traffic to your website or no one is aware that it is there, you are not going to be selling anything. If you have the greatest website in the history of the internet, what good is it? This person then took the concept of Search Engine Optimization and truly embraced it. Within 3 months, he had a Page Rank of 5, over 5000 backlinks, 1000s of pages of articles and an Alexa ranking of less than 100,000. Very impressive!

And this work definitely paid off! The traffic started to consistently flow. But the question was: “I have the traffic, the page rank, the backlinks, etc, but I do not have a profitable website!” What happened? I’ve read a lot of eBooks about this and most of them stress: “If you bring them, they will buy!”

This is not entirely true. Half of the journey is getting people to your website and the other half is to convince them to buy. This person had a very nice looking website, but it did not give me any real reason to buy from them. One of the good (and sometimes) bad aspects of affiliate marketing is that the ad-copy (the website sales pitch) is already done for you. Products that are successful are usually that way because of their ad-copy. When choosing affiliate marketing products, be sure to view their sales statistics. Again, they may have a great product, but if they do not sell it well on their website, they won’t make many sales and you won’t get many commissions. Of course, this is one of the major downsides of affiliate marketing: you have no control over how the seller will present and sell their product. Then again, many of these websites have experience above and beyond most of us in the realm of marketing that can ultimately benefit you, the affiliate marketer, in the long run.

As an affiliate marketer, I spend a lot of time not only choosing the products that I plan to promote, but I look very closely at their conversion statistics as well as study their ad-copy. You should always ask yourself a few questions:

1) Would I buy from this website?

2) What does this website or product offer me above and beyond everyone else?

3) Does the website look professional and secure to make purchases on?

4) Do they provide contact details or offer refunds on the products?

And these questions not only apply to me, the affiliate marketer, but the seller who is creating their own ad-copy, too. Traffic is a very important and essential aspect of making money online, but just because you have a lot of visitors does not mean that people are going to buy from you at the end of the day. A good ad-copy campaign can easily be the difference between monthly losses and huge earnings!

- Matthew Bredel

Visit http://www.TheWebReviewer.com for more money making articles, resources and reviews on today’s hottest online money making ventures.

In Defense of Doba...

In the past couple of weeks, I have gotten a few "disgruntled" emails accusing me of promoting the dropshipping program "DOBA" and that it is nothing but a scam that I supposed mislead them about. Further, there are a few reviews out their (such as on eBay: http://search.reviews.ebay.com/Doba) where people are really bagging the program...and here I am praising it making it one of my "5-Star" choices.

First of all, the main complaint by my emails and the comments on eBay are the fact that they were paying a membership fee but were not making money. Now don't be mislead by this...first of all, I have signed up for the 7-day trial and cancelled, no problem. I read their conditions about it (the cancellation must be done during the business week) and did it. The customer service rep was very nice and asked no further questions. It seems like a lot of people are just really P-O'ed because they did not cancel in time and got dinged with a membership charge.

The other main thing about Doba is that it does not provide the true bargains that a general wholesaler might offer. Again, I spell this out in my review. And this is true. My suggestion to all is to go into the trial of Doba knowing which products you plan to sell and see if it is going to be profitable for you. If it is not, you will know pretty fast and you can cancel. If it works (even for a little bit extra money), the service and simplicity that Doba offers is unparalleled to any program I have seen to date.

This is why I rate it so high:

1) You can join it and see what it is all about for 7-days for free.

2) If they have what you are looking for, they are a superb program to join. It doesn't get much easier and it is more organized than any other program.

3) If they don't have what you are looking for or the price is to high, give them a call and cancel...it is very easy.

4) Great customer service, instructionals and personal phone assistance for your money making venture.

I do not work for Doba, but I do feel an obligation to provide my visitors of TheWebReviewer with my honest opinion about this and other programs (as well as address those who are upset!). Take it as you will, but at the end of the day, those who poo-poo this site in most cases do so because they joined, did not like the program, forgot to cancel, and got a $40 ding on their credit card. Yes, that sucks, but if you are not careful, it will happen.

To read my full Doba Review, visit TheWebReviewer.com.

Paid Surveys and SPAM

I wanted to address really quickly the topic of Paid Surveys and spam. To re-iterate some of my blogs and reviews of the past, I am not the biggest fan of paid survey programs for one reason: they really don't pay enough money, in my opinion. If you are looking for an extra $50-$100 per week, then yes, this is a pretty simple way of doing it. I did this in the past, and I was not satisfied with this amount. That is what lead me into other programs like affiliate marketing and wholesaling. Both of these require a much larger initial commitment and a bit of persistance to be successful, but if you can get to the top of the mountain, the stroll down the hill is rather nice and profitable.

But this is not about affiliate marketing or wholesaling. Paid surveys do work! If you want to spend the time to fill out surveys or mystery shop or read emails, you will get paid for it. But be prepared! The way paid surveys works is that you must sign up on a lot of sites to get the 5-10 surveys per week. Signing up on a lot of websites means one thing: You are exposing yourself to a lot of sites, some of which don't have great intentions! If you plan on doing this, protect yourself! Here are a few suggestions:

1) Use a new email address (like a hotmail or gmail account) to conduct all of your paid survey business on. Some of these sites WILL sell your email address or use it to try to sell you stuff (as spam). Mixing this with your personal email is a mistake!

2) You should still use your real name and address, since they may be sending checks or confirming a PayPal account.

3) You should not need to supply your social security number. You will not be making enough money. If they require it, look into the site a bit more and make sure it is legitimate (if it is something like "Yahoo", it is probably pretty safe...if it is something like "PaidSurveyBonanza", I would be a be skeptical!)

4) Only give your phone number if you are planning on taking part in phone surveys or focus panels.

5) Create usernames and passwords that will be specific to this paid survey venture.

Unfortunately with systems like paid surveys, you are required to expose yourself a bit. Be conscious of what information your are giving them. If you protect yourself with the data you give out, the worst that can happen is a bit of annoying spam organized in a way that will not interfere with your normal life.

If you want to learn more about Paid Surveys and Top Paid Survey Sites, visit TheWebReviewer.com

Is This Affiliate Marketer Getting Lazy?

Yes, I know! It seems that I have been slacking at my blog in that past week or so. But I do have an excuse. Most of you now realize that this blog is currently tied to my website TheWebReviewer.com. What you don't know is that I am currently in the process of giving it a whole new renovation! Everyone's continued support of the site has encouraged me to rebuild it a bit and add a bunch more stuff. Version 2 is about a week or so away, but here are a few of the new things I am currently working on:

1) New, more professional look!
2) User Forum! (read more below on this!)
3) FREE members area which will include eBooks, Web Design Resources and much more!
4) More about me and my successes with affiliate marketing

and Coming Soon (after the next release):

MORE REVIEWS on money making programs such as Data Entry, HYIPs, and the mysterious Forex programs.

I am really excited about all of the new things going on. If you have not joined TheWebReviewer newsletter, do it today and receive updates to the website when it becomes released.

Now, as for the forum, this is very new to me, but I think it is up and running! Since this is the first time that I have announced it, I don't have any posts yet! I guess you can call this my "beta" release. But before I formally release it, I would love to receive some posts and replies from you, my loyal followers! First, check it out at:

http://www.thewebreviewer.com/forum

And please, if you are having any problems with the forum, let me know!

So, again, I am really excited about the new and improved website and I am sorry for neglecting my blog during this time, but sacrafices must be made! I'll keep you posted to the final release date (and again POST YOUR QUESTIONS!, no matter how silly they may seem to be!). This forum was made for you!

- Matthew Bredel

Making Money Online: I Don't Want To Do Anything!

Here is a common question that people have been asking a lot of late:

"I really want to make money online but I don't want to do web design...or spend any additional money...or write articles or blogs...or learn PPCs...or spend any time doing it...etc...etc...etc..."

Now, I am not going to laugh or make fun of these people or this question. Common sense kind of tells us that this job doesn't really exist (unless you are Paris Hilton). But the question is kind of legitimate considering some of the ad-copy that I see for some money making programs online. In fact, some of the affiliate programs that I even promote sell the product this way. I wouldn't go as far as saying it is dishonest...more like misleading. Believe it or not, there are a very (VERY) small select few who have gotten into affiliate marketing and hit it big without doing much. This is more luck than anything, though.

No matter what program you enter into (and this includes wholesaling and dropshipping as well), there are a few things you are going to have to do to make it work!

1) You need to know how to use a computer. The more you know, the better...it's that simple! People can be very successful, however, without knowing any HTML coding or hosting a website. You can pay for web design services or even use free blogs which are very easy to learn and understand.

2) You will need to invest in some things such as advertising. Dropshipping and Wholesaling make this much easier with the presense of eBay and Amazon Stores, but still, you need to put money up front or pay for their services or dropshipping fees.

3) Everything good in the world usually takes time. Don't expect to be making $100s/day in the first month. It may take a few months to get up to $20 or $50 per day. A little patience and hard-work go a long way. Wholesaling and dropshipping does not have the initial legwork, but it does require sustained work and attention.

4) The best and cheapest way of promotion is through writing articles and blogs. CONTENT! CONTENT! CONTENT! is the king of making money online. If you are afraid to do a bit of writing, you may want to stick with the eBay selling methods of making money. And you do not need to be a literary genius, either. I got a 380 in verbal on my SAT and was diagnosed with dyslexia at a young age...and I am now an "Expert Author" on a few article websites. Kind of ironic!

Despite what you read on the ad-copy of many affiliate marketing websites, making money online does require a bit of commitment on your part. Some sites offer "free websites" to make you money immediately, but really, these are not going to bring you any sustainable income. Once you discover the tricks of the system and begin to develop your website and products more, you will find that affiliate marketing IS as easy as they say it is.

Visit http://www.TheWebReviewer.com for more money making articles, resources and reviews on today’s hottest online money making ventures.

The Power of the Opt-In Newsletter (Article)

I do not care if you are an affiliate marketer, a wholesaler, a dropshipper, or even selling a product, if you do not have an opt-in sign-up on your website, I think you are missing out on a whole lot of sales! In most cases, this is an expense. But in the world that we live in, it sometimes takes money to make money. The $15 per month is very trivial in the whole scheme of things. If you are satisfied with $10-$20 per day in sales, then may not want to spend the money and that is fine. I assume, though, that if you are doing any of the above money making programs, you intentions are probably to make more than this. Believe it or not, $15 per month is probably a cheaper and more effective than spending $15 on PPC’s, classified ads, etc.

Why are opt-in’s so important? The average number of times a person will look into a product to purchase it online is roughly 6 times. Let’s assume that you were interested on making money online and entered “make money online” into a search engine (something most of us have done at one point or another). You see an ad on the right that says “Make $500/day Easy”. You click it and there are 3 reviews of different affiliate marketing programs. If you were me, you probably did not buy the first thing you saw. You decide at this point to look up: “what is affiliate marketing”, “is affiliate marketing a scam”, “Rick Jerk Review”, etc. etc. etc. So if you were the first, second, third… site this person visited, they probably just passed right over the affiliate link for your sale. Now you may be that 6th site and just happen to be the prompting force to cause the sale, but you just missed 5 other opportunities with others. The opt-in, in this case, keeps the customer interested in your site. And usually, people don’t buy products on the first day. It may be a week or month later. The opt-in provides an invited reminder to the customer that you exist and that they should go through your website to make the purchase.

And this is not SPAM, either! The point of the opt-in is that the customer chooses (“opt’s in”) to receive your emails. When I first starting affiliate marketing, someone recommended spamming to me so I tried it and what a disaster! I become very hated and I spent months rebuilding my image. Remember, spamming is un-invited solicitation. Opt-ins are invited solicitations.

How do you make an opt-in successful?

1) First, you need to convince people that by joining your newsletter or opt-in, they will receive something in return. Offering free eCourses, free eBooks, free software or free exclusive accesses are just few ideas to do this. If you do plan on offering free services, be sure to follow through on your promise.
2) I mention above that the point of an opt-in is for solicitation. In reality, this is true, but you should hide this fact as much as possible. Offer your subscribers good content, but subtly blend in your products or websites. If you email looks like a big advertisement or spam, they will immediately opt-out of your newsletter.
3) Allow your subscribers to opt-out of your newsletters very easily. Also, do not sell your lists to anyone (and be sure to place a note on your opt-in sign that states will not sell them either). The opt-in letter is more than sales, it is developing trust.
4) Don’t overwhelm your subscribers with emails. I once joined a newsletter that sent me an email twice a day for two months. At first, I was annoyed, but I was curious to see how long it would go on for. Further, this person started repeating the same letters once every two weeks. A few letters in the first few days in fine with a weekly or monthly follow-up. But again, your content should be related to what they signed of for. Once you start advertising un-related products, the newsletter starts approaching spam.

Adding an opt-in to your website these days is very trivial. There are programs called autoresponders (both browser based as well as server based) that makes running an opt-in letter virtually no work. They provide the code to create the web form. Then all you do is create the content and newsletters and when each subscriber will receive them. The emails are automatically sent out for you. Once the initial set-up is complete, the program essential runs on auto-pilot. You may get hundreds of subscribers per day that are self-managed.

Because opt-in letters are critical to sales, affordable and so easy to use, there are no excuses for anyone who is even moderately serious about making money online not to use one today.

- Matthew Bredel
Visit http://www.TheWebReviewer.com for more money making articles, resources and reviews on today’s hottest online money making ventures.

Google Adsense Everywhere!

For those of you who do not use Google Adsense, I must first ask: why? Most of my articles focus around affiliate marketing, wholesaling and paid surveys. I don't touch upon Adsense very often, though...and I should!

I am sure most of you know this already, but Google Adsense is a compliment to Google Adwords. In Google Adwords, you bid of keywords to display your ads at a per-click price. But Adwords has two dimensions:

1) Search Ads - These are the ads that appear either at the top or right column of a Google Search (or MSN search or Altavista search...etc.). '

2) Content Ads - These are the ads that can appear on relevant websites.

Which brings me back to Adsense. How do these ads appear on other people's websites? These people are a part of the Adsense network. Basically, you sign up for an Adsense account (free) and then you add a piece of html code to your website (written by Google). Google will then place ads (at their discretion) on your website based on the content it contains. You choose the size and the type of ad (whether it be text, a banner, a video, etc.) and they choose the content. Now, whenever anyone clicks onto your ad, you will receive a portion of the "click-price". It is that simple.

When I first heard about Google Adsense and set it up, I thought: "This is lame...I made $0.60 today on 5 clicks". But it is not always like that. Some clicks pay in the dollars. Also, what happens if your visitor count goes from 10 visitors per day to 1000 visitors per day? That is what happened to me. I now make over $10 per day on one of my websites due to Google Adsense. It virtually pays for my daily Adwords expenditures. And when it really gets down to it...MONEY IS MONEY!

Let's extend this beyond my money-making campaigns for a bit. Last year, I decided to run a fantasy football league with some friends. I was a commissioner and every week I wrote a group email describing the happening of the week. This year, I have my "affiliate marketing cap" on and the first thing I think of is: "How can I make something I already do profitable?" The answer is simple! Adsense! So, this year, instead of a weekly email, I have created a new blog on Blogger devoted to my fantasy football league and splatter it with not only ads, but links to my current websites. By doing this, I create the following:

1) A website that can generate money through Adsense clicks
2) A public forum for my group (and anyone else) to read.
3) Weekly Content to keep the search bots happy.
4) Good Content + Consistant Updates = Page Rank!
5) One-way backlinks to my current websites = Page Rank!

Yes, I know, I won't be making much money on Adsense and my Page Rank will only be a 2, maybe a 3 in a month or so, but who cares! I was going to have to do this anyway. The amount of time to set up my blog is virtually 30 minutes. And even though it is a little, any free publicity and money should never be turned down.

The moral of this story is to change the way you think about doing things in life. If you run a children's playgroup, why not make it into a blog or website? If you want to start a list of all of the MP3s you have, why not post it on MySpace? If you are going to have to do it anyways, why not get something out of it! This is what making money online is all about!

Check out my Fantasy Football Blog at: http://bredel-football.blogspot.com/

Also, to learn more about Adsense, click the logo on the right column of this page!

Affiliate Marketing MADNESS!

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!

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

Visit http://www.TheWebReviewer.com for more money making articles, resources and reviews on today’s hottest online money making ventures.

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.

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

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!!

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

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.

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.

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!