Internet Marketing should always be about building a long term sustainable business not short term profits. Following these 7 Rules should help you achieve that long term sustainable business.

Firstly I have to admit that there aren’t just 7 rules of Internet marketing, Internet marketing is relatively new and as such you should discard all the rules and find what works for you. When I say discard the rules obviously stay within the law! So this is 7 guidelines that will help you succeed at Internet marketing but that title sucked!

Many of these guidelines are closely linked, for example building a business and controlling costs could be included in the same guideline but wheres the fun in that, this article would end up being a business manual with more content than an MBA.
If you are bored already and would like the next 450 words condensed into 1 word it is… Commonsense  (or is that actually 2 words?)

Right assuming you are still reading this let’s get started with rule 1.

1. Build a Business

Internet marketing shouldn’t be a hobby or a pastime it should be treated as a business. That means having a business plan and a long term objective. Build income streams, adsense, Amazon and eBay are great but you can’t build a stable business on them.

2. Focus on the task in hand.

Set aside a time for work and stick with it. Turn off all distractions such as e-mail, messaging software and twitter and concentrate on what you are working on. I find I can build a site in about 2 hours with no distractions or 2 days if I don’t focus on it.

3. Control Your Spending

Every cent you spend on new tools and software is a cent more you need to earn before you are in profit. Before you buy the latest product being promoted ask yourself do you really need it and how much extra will you need to earn to cover the cost.

4. Know your topic.

I’ve known internet marketers who bring out products on PPC one week, fish care the next and then a few weeks later launch a new product on selling via eBay. It’s obvious that they can’t be experts in all these areas so why would anyone want to buy the products. Learn everything you can about your niche and become an expert.

5.  Residual Income is the key.

One of the keys to being a successful Internet marketer is to generate residual income. Knowing that you are going to be having a regular income coming in from various sites or affiliate programs each month frees you up to try more speculative and potentially more financially rewarding ventures.

6. Provide Value.

No matter what you do try to provide value to your clients and customers if you produce an eBook don’t release a version 2 after 6 months update the current version and send it to all you existing customers. The more value you provide them the more they’ll be inclined to buy from you later on.

7. Be a Leader not a Follower

Don’t just follow the herd seek out the untapped markets and design your own unique products. Aim to have people copying what you are doing after all imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Keeping only a few of those rules in mind when you are working in the internet marketing field should help you to become more successful.

The recent Article Marketing Video Series I did For WordPress Goldmine stretched to over 3 hours. However one of the most enjoyable ones for me was when I wrote an article in under 10 minutes. I have decided to repeat the feat here and write another article in under 10 minutes. In fact it is 8 minutes 25 seconds.

The secret to writing these articles is to start with the main body and afterwards write the first and last paragraphs. You’ll see what i mean in the Video below. Another keypoint is to keep your articles at around 300 words.

Any more than 300 words and most peple start to lose attention and switch off. Don’t believe it? next time you are talking to someone record what you are saying then stop when they start to lose attention then go back and count the words you spoke.

Anyway on with the video…

Since creating this post I have written book on article marketing called Article Dominance you can grab a copy for free at http://articledominance.com/freereport.html

or you can pay for it at http://articledominance.com

Here we are with another Monday Tips posts.  These aren’t strictly tips today but 3 things you should know that might change the way you do business. As with all good things I’ll save the best until last and trust me you will want to see that.

The first thing you need to know is that Amazon have changed their TOS and they are now stopping anyone from using PPC to drive traffic to Amazon sales pages.  In the space of a few minutes people who have built their business on this model are without an income unless they have been sensible and diversified.

On the other hand those of us who use article marketing are possibily looking at an increase in income over the coming months.

The email they sent out says…

“After careful review of how we are investing our advertising resources, we have made the decision to no longer pay referral fees to Associates who send users to www.amazon.com, www.amazon.ca, or www.endless.com through keyword bidding and other paid search on Google, Yahoo, MSN, and other search engines, and their extended search networks. If you’re not sure if this change affects you, please visit this page for FAQs.”

The second this thats worth know is all about Twollars 

Twollars is an online currency set up for twitter users , the idea is to help charities raise income. How it works is as follows. If someone makes an interesting tweet or makes a useful tweet, you can give them some of your twollars  (50 free with every account) . They can then pass these on to companies who will sponsor a charity and match Twollars for Dollars.  So for example if Sony wanted to attract twitter users they could agree to give $1 for ever twollar donated at their site.  Everyone wins.  The Company, The Charity and Twitter users.

Twollars is the idea of a very good friend of mine  Eiso Kant who I’ve know for as long as I’ve been marketing online. He was the programmer behind RSSG and several of my early sites.  At 18 years of age he is one of the most farsighted internet Entrprenures that i’ve ever met.  Check out twollars and send me some if you like it!!

Now for the big one.

One of the problems we all have is keeping people on our sites long enough, with google measuring how long people stay on your site as one indicator of the value of your site the longer people stay the better.

Let me now introduct Apture to you.  Apture is a plugin that does some awesome stuff That will keep people on your site. I am still working out a way to monetize it , videos will be one method and i am sure that I can think of some more over the next few days. So lets have a quick look at apture in action. 

In front of the highlighted words below you’ll see some symbols click on them to see what i’ve linked to..You can then click on related links within the boxes that come up for more info.

My Name Is Mark Thompson and I am The Author of WordPress Goldmine 

Now imagine the potential of this at the moment you can link to videos, documents, sites like techcrunch twitter scribd etc with no doubt more to come…lets hope ezinearticles are one such addition. Using Videos and sales pages and you could have a great way to make money online.

As With Twollars this really could herald the start of something big.

Check out apture today at www.apture.com

This Isn’t some sort of Aprils fools joke, I am deadly serious. We are all trying to be too clever with out Internet Marketing Businesses. I want to make April the month where we all get back to basics and use the methods we know work.

This has all been brought on by the February Step by Step I did in The WordPress Goldmine Forum. Over 14 days I researched a niche and built a site and did some very simple promotion. I created the videos over 14 days but the actual time taken to research build and promote the site was under 3 hours.  Yes a whole 3 hours of my life.

I did nothing fancy just kept it simple. At the end of february In the last video I monetized the site. 1 month later the site has earned me over $200.  I’ll repeat that again $200 for a site that took me 3 hours.

I have several clickbank accounts which I  use to target different niches. At the beginning of March one account was averaging about $90 per week. During the month I wrote or oursourced about 20 articles which have been submitted. The result is that account has earned almost $700 this week and $600 last week.

Once again there was nothing fancy involved just keeping to the basics and keeping it simple.

No one is ever going to write an ebook that contains the secret to internet marketing as it wouldn’t even fill up one line of an ebook….  Traffic + Monetization = Income.   (That noise is the sound of me shooting myself in the Foot)

If you look at the list of recent ezine articles I have published (see the list in the sidebar) you’ll see one titled “WordPress Blogs and Articles – The Quickest and Cheapest Way to Make Money Online”

It contains a 5 step process to making your first $100 online why not try it this month (then obviously take the money you earned and spend some of it on buying WordPress Goldmine!!  )

So come on try something simple, you’ll save time, make money and prove to yourself that internet marketing really does work.

If you have been keeping up with the latest IM promotions you could well be forgiven for thinking that The definition of free has changed.

To me A Free product means exactly that it’s free, it costs nothing , there is no payment needed. If you tried to access the Free Butterfly marketing promotion yesterday you would no doubt have seen that Free means different things to Guru’s as it does to us humbler marketers.

In the case of BFM 2.0 free meant a $29.95 postage and packing fee.. Wow How expensive is postage in the US?? I got a router and an Ipod fedexed over night from New York To Spain for about the same price. On top of that you signed up for a forced continuity program for a Newsletter which costs $40 a month .. (forgive me if I am wrong with the price I was laughing too much at this stage!).

Good Luck cancelling

I also loved all the email’s that came out about how you are getting agreat piece of $2000 software for free. I hope it’s improved from the buggy program that was released 2 years ago. I am sure I have seen it offered a few times since them for much less.

I hope you asked the guys promoting it if they use this “awesome”  (irony!!) piece of software.

So What am I going to do to try to redress the balance and show you that there are some great marketers out there who actually care about the people who read our blogs and buy our products.

How does this sound.

My favorite fellow marketer goes by the name of Potpiegirl like me she actually cares about people and above all wants people to succeed. So I am going to include a link to an excellent free guide she has released about creating an income from Squidoo. It is well worth a read.

I am also going to show you how to find a sucessful business model that you can copy and improve on.

So first off lets look at the video , it’s just over 8 minutes long but if you follow what I am doing I guarantee that it can change your life. There are loads of successful business models out there so just find the one that suits your circumstances.

Hope you enjoyed that. To grab Potpiegirl’s free book Click Here

Finally I am running an experiment with twitter so if you enjoyed this post please use the link at the top of the post to retweet about it. I’ll reveal my results in a few weeks.

As always comments are welcome.