3 weeks in to the year have you actually made progress towards your targets? You have set target haven’t you? If you have well done , if you haven’t come on get with the program!

Internet marketing is a business if you want to make money online then you need to think like a businessman (or business woman!). Take responsibility for your actions, get a business plan together, play to your strengths and outsource your weaknesses. By doing this you will maximise your chances of succeeding. If you fail there is no one else to blame but yourself. However there is no reason why you should fail if you take a systematic approach to things and don’t expect to be buying that yacht in a few months time.

While you are doing this don’t lose site of the big picture… you’ve developed a very valuable talent. A talent that you can use to make money from areas you wouldn’t normally expect.

If you’ve been in internet marketing for more than a month you should know how to build a site that will sell. You also know how to promote it what it takes to get it to the top of the rankings. You now know more than 95% of the people you meet every day!. Use this to your advantage, I regularly get asked if i can help people with their websites, one thing that is abundantly clear is that these people know nothing and i mean absolutely zero about website promotion. If they do any promotion what so ever it’s throwing a few dollars a day at an Adwords campaign.

I’ve mention this before but one of the members of Wordpress Goldmine has become very successful by applying what he has learned to the “Real World”, and has so much business he has to turn work down. Several other members have followed his advice and are also making money from this area.. I was talking to one today who is currently working on a deal that could bring in seriously big bucks.

If you want to create a real business from what you already know then I seriously recommend that you check out Chris’s Crossroads Methodology. If you are a forum member check out the thread where you’ll get a big discount.

Anyway I sort of went a bit off track there a bit but If you read his book I am sure you’ll thank me!! Right back to business….

Here are a few simple rules that will help you to become more successful this year…

1. Concentrate on what you do well.

We all have things we are good at and things we hate doing, I love keyword research and writing but hate the promotion side of things.. so i outsource my promotion for a few dollars and hour and concentrate on the bits I like.

If you are just starting out and you feel you can’t afford to hire outsourced staff, then why not do what you like doing, writing 2 articles will probably pay for 5 hours of outsourced backlink building.

2. The 80/20 Rule (Thanks Heather!)

You should spend 20% of your time researching and building your business and 80% promoting it. This is a bit of a pain if like me you hate promotion but it’s got to be done. This way you drastically increase your chances of success.

3. Spread the Load

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. try to give yourself 3 or 4 streams of income then if one dies you have others that can be built up to fill in the gap. I would always recommend starting with AdSense as your first stream, it’s easy and you learn a hell of a lot that will be useful when you start to build up your other income streams.

Finally, 2 bits of information for you…

Firstly if you got the Leverage Your Articles report I did a few months back (it’s included as a bonus if you sign up to my mailing list using the form in the sidebar) then you really should check out Jonathan ledgers The Best Spinner. I tested this a few months back and thought it was one of the worst spinners I had ever tried. But I now hapilly take all that back. He worked on it and developed it into a really awesome tool. It’s currently free while it’s in beta so you can see if it’s something you would use before it becomes a paid tool on February 1st.

Secondly I am going to be offering a limited Wordpress Goldmine Special Offer You can get in on a $1 Trial so if you want to check out the forum now is the time. Affiliate Promotion is only open to current members so if you are a member grab your links from the members area and check out the videos I’ll be adding to the forum giving you ideas how to promote the offer.

Recently in the Wordpress Goldmine we’ve been looking at a tool which lets you know which pages are indexed, this works for your own sites and also articles you may have distributed.

Having checked lots of EzineArticles author feeds i was surprised at the low level of indexing. Watch the video below and I am sure you’ll also be surprised. You’ll also learn which article directory had 100% indexing for the articles I checked.

If you really want to find out which of your articles are indexed get Andy Blacks Index Checker

Then submit the unindexed urls to www.hostmyrss.com

You can then distribute the feed either manually to Feed aggregators or by using a tool like RSSbot

I am currently testing other methods of getting the unindexed articles indexed. I should be able to release a report about the best way of doing this later in the week , if you would like to receive this report then please sign up to my mailing list using the form on the right

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 birth of the Internet and the mass availability of personal Computers in the late 80’s changed peoples life forever, Everyone now has had the potential to be their own boss whether you are mother at home looking after your children or a manual laborer there are opportunities in abundance . Just a search on Google for business opportunities will bring up more offers than your parents would have had in their whole life. So it must be easy to make a living from the internet right?  Wrong!  No it’s not, you need a firm business plan and you need to work hard at it.

Lets make it clear from the start: To Make Money Online You Need To Work.

Setting up and running an online business does have several advantages over setting up a “normal” business. You can usually run it in conjunction with your current job, your potential market is bigger your initial overheads are usually smaller and you can operate it from the comfort of your own home. Once you decided that you want to enter into the world of E-commerce you then need to take a lesson from main stream business and create a business plan.

The very first thing you need to decide is what type of business is right for you and then research the market. Possible businesses open to you are.
Adsense Sites

Affiliate Sites

Selling Products

Creating Info Products

With an Affiliate Program you are paid a commission for selling a companies products. You have no contact with the customer, all you do is provide sales leads to the company of whom you are an affiliate.

An Adsense site is where you take an existing website of yours about a particular subject and add contextual Adverts from Google’s Adsense program. When a person clicks on an advert you then receive anything from a few a few cents to several dollars. There are 2 approaches to Adsense programs, build a well respected Niche site with lots of traffic the more traffic you get the higher the Click Through Rate (CTR) and thus the higher the income. The second method is sometimes referred to as the shotgun method, build lots of sites with less traffic but earning a smaller amount from each site. A $1 a day income from each of 50 sites is better than $40 from 1 site.

The final E-commerce method we will look at is the most similar to mainstream business, selling a product. You build a web site with a shopping cart and give as many details about the products as possible. The products can be something you make yourself, or a product you buy in bulk or a product from a drop shipper. With drop shipping you sell products which are then dispatched from a location elsewhere by a 3rd party.

Creating and selling Info products can be very profitable, whether you create your own or buy PLR products and make them unique this method can lead to a very good income in a short amount of time especially if you get lots of affiliate selling your products.

If all this sounds too easy it’s not. Setting up the business is just the start of it, the hard work needs to start now. You need to get traffic, the more traffic you get the higher your sales will be. In addition you need to look at the performance of your site and tweak the layout so you make more sales. You need to get your site onto the first page of Google and other search engines. You may need to write adverts and operate a Pay Per Click program or create multiple articles. In short you need to become an expert in many new subjects.

If you have the drive and dedication then it is possible to make a good income from E-commerce but don’t expect to spend an hour a day at the computer and the rest of your time on your Yacht.

I really don’t want to put anyone off starting an online business but there is work involved and if you are happy to work or outsource the work you don’t want to do then you can create a great lifestyle for yourself a few years down the line.

If Hard and a steep learning curve  doesn’t put you off and if you want a place where hundreds of like minded people hang out and help each other achieve their goals then we’d love to have you visit Wordpress Goldmine

Internet Marketing On The Front Line

Internet marketing is easy. There I said it, the genie is out of the bottle. It’s not complicated, you find a keyword, create some content and then drive traffic to that content where some people will buy from your site or click a link. What is complicated is all the layers and layers of complication marketers add to it so that you need to buy their products to decode it.

It’s not just internet marketers who do this , How do you lose weight?, it’s obvious isn’t it eat less and exercise more. Thats all there is to it so why is there thousands of lose weight products released every year.

Almost any aspect of internet marketing can be explained in a few sentances. For example list building, set up your autoresponeder, add some free products, send regular good quality emails.There is probably no need for any listbuilding product to be longer than 15 pages or a 30 minute video…but then it wouldn’t have perceived value and would have to sell for $17 and not the $97 a 200 page manual and 8 hours of video would sell for. The content is the same but you are paying an extra $80 for the fluff!

What can take time to explain is the technical aspect of things thats where products can prove their worth. A good product that shows you how to do something can be very valuable so before buying a product make sure that the technical aspect is well covered and there is support for any questions.

This brings me on to the real reason for todays post. The 2 types of internet marketers you will find. The First is the internent marketers who are actually doing what they teach, building sites, creating products, etc. There are what I call frontline marketers. I consider myself to be one of these. After I write this I’ll be getting backlinks for my blogs and researching new sites.

The 2nd type is the marketers who just create products for the sake of having something to sell. You’ll recognise them because you’ll be getting emails throughout the year where X promotes Y’s product and Y promotes z’s product then z promotes x’s product etc etc. The product will be big ticket items and be incredibly professional.

These guys have teams of writers and designers creating products out of thin air , it’s amazing to watch how they can turn a simple idea written on the back of an envelope into a multimedia $997 exstravaganza. They truly are the Alcamists of the 21st century.

It’s easy to be dazzled by their presentation skills you will believe that you need their products to succeed. But remember thousands of people buy these products…how many have you ever seen succeed? Also remember most of these guys profit comes from selling each others products NOT by implementing what they teach!

So next time before you buy anything make sure that the creator is practicing what he preaches!

2 things before I go.

I sat down yesterday afternoon with 2 of my online friends Paul Forcey and Peter Coughlin and we recorded a call. It was supposed to be a shortish chat about internet marketing but It stretched to over 2 hours. We covered loads of aspects about working in the IM field and you’ll find a few real gems of information in there. it’s also quite funny in places.

I’ve uploaded it as a podcast to http://wpgoldmine.podomatic.com/ where you can listen online or download it

Finally, I have bitten the bullet and decided to build a subscribers list (no it won’t be constant emails saying “buy this”!) I’ll be using it to send out regular tips , advice and updates and release various research reports I have planned. You’ll see the sign up box on the right hand side of this post and as a blatant bribe you’ll get a copy of my Resource Box Report.