Internet marketing SEO

Traffic is the holy grail of Internet marketing – if you know how to get it, then you can probably find a way to succeed in Internet Marketing. Problem is, everyone wants it to just “happen” and no one wants to work for it.

We’re going to go over a great plan of attack for your traffic needs. You can pick and choose from methods you prefer and combine whatever you want. The only thing I ask is, try to test each method at least once – just so you know what worked and what didn’t with your niche needs.

Get a Traffic Strategy in Place

Keywords are extremely important for getting traffic to your site. This is how you pull traffic into your site. When Googlebots come to index your site, they’re going to be analyzing it for keyword usage.

Affiliate marketing programs

When looking to the Internet for ways to make money online, it doesn’t take too long before you realize what a vast array of choices there are.  Blogging for profit, pay per click advertising, article marketing as an affiliate, and CPA offers are only just a few business models out there for you to choose from. 

How do you sort through it all?  Where do you begin?  It’s overwhelming - even for the most focused individual. 

Yet for those who are determined and have an entrepreneurial spirit, the Internet is wide open.  All you really need is a product to promote in a niche with a demographic that’s willing to pay for their consumables.  The great thing is that you don’t need to have your own product to make a very nice living online. 

You do this through affiliate marketing programs.  With affiliate marketing, you can choose from a vast array of products to promote online - all with a sales page already set up for you.  All you need to do is find a way to drive traffic to that site using a specific hyperlink that gives you credit for a commission. 

Learn Forex Fast and Easy

If you can read with some level of skill, you can do anything - even learn how to trade Forex - and you don’t have to be an expert to do it, but you do need to know that like any market, you have to watch out for pitfalls. But once you know what the pitfalls are, you can get involved with Forex trading with relative peace of mind.

Let’s start with the basics. The word Forex commonly refers to Foreign Exchange Currency, which means you’re buying one particular currency while at the same time selling another.

Learning about Forex Trading and how it works isn’t difficult and you can learn what you need to know online. How quickly you learn depends on how fast you can absorb the material you need to know.  But once you do know how to handle Forex, you’re on your way.

Understand that each market has its own buzzwords and important facts to know and Forex isn’t any different. To start with, you should understand that there are six major currencies (these are the currencies most commonly used) when dealing with Forex.

Those currencies are the United States dollar (USD), the Japanese yen (JPY), the Euro (EUR), the British pound (GBP), the Swiss franc (CHF) and the Australian dollar (AUD). There are also minor currencies but more than likely, you’ll be dealing with the currencies used most often.

A very important buzzword in the field of Forex is the term Pips. You need to learn all you can possibly learn about Pips. Pips are units (much like a quarter is a unit of money) and the name refers to the price interest point. However, these are also sometimes called percentages in point.

In Forex trading, a Pip is used to figure what profit you earned on the currency or what amount of money you lost. With Forex, you trade the most commonly used currencies as a pair.

For example: you could trade the United States dollar with the Japanese yen and it would be written like this: USD/JPY. What this means is you buy one currency for a set amount and you believe you can sell it for more. This is called long position. The opposite is the remaining currency - the short. You would sell a currency if you thought it was going down in value.

Every currency pair has an exchange rate and that’s where a Pip comes into play. Pip is the fourth decimal place in the quote. If you’ve decided you want to learn about Forex, you can learn on your own and you can also take advantage of step-by-step tutorials such as are offered online.

Common Questions About the Forex Market

Getting started with Forex trading can be both exciting and a bit scary. There are a lot of questions to answer, and it's your money on the line, so you want to make sure you understand just what’s going on. Let's look at some common questions about Forex trading and the Forex market to help you get a better understanding.

What is Forex? Forex is an abbreviation for foreign exchange market and is also called FX. This is the market where world currencies are exchanged. Most traders are large banks, investors and governments, but small businesses and even individuals can participate in Forex trading.

How exactly is Forex traded? Forex is traded over-the-counter. This means that there are multiple prices for each different currency and these prices depend on who is doing the trading. Forex trading goes on around the clock the world over.

So, am I really trading money? You're not given a stack of cash in trade for another stack of cash exactly, no. But you're predicting how the value of different currencies will shift over time, and then buying and selling currencies based on those predictions. Your Forex account balance will go up and down, depending on the success of your predictions and trades.

What tools should I use for Forex trading? You need to be able to take advantage of software that will track your position in the market, software that will carry out your trade orders, called expert advisor systems, and Forex signaling software that will automatically signal you about market conditions. If you use a broker, he or she will use software for these purposes and may give you access to the same software.

Is Forex trading risky? Yes. Before you get started, you should take time to learn about Forex and develop a strong trading plan to help minimize the risks.

Do I need a broker to trade Forex? Not necessarily. Some people feel much more comfortable using a broker, but some feel that once they have properly educated themselves and gotten the right tools, they can trade without the help of a broker.

What is a currency pair? A currency pair is the currency you are buying and the currency you are selling. For example, if you might purchase Euros with US dollars. That's a currency pair.

What is a PIP? PIP stands for percentage in point. It is the smallest amount that a currency pair can change.

As you delve further and further into the Forex trading world, you'll have more questions. Your best bet is to arm yourself with knowledge about how the system works and how you can minimize your risks and maximize your profits. Forex trading is exciting and holds great promise for making money, but you must know how to do it. Take time to thoroughly research Forex trading and learn all you can, before jumping in.

Content for websites

You’re going to need two types of content – first for your autoresponders, which is either the promise of an email course that spans over a few weeks or days or a PDF report that gets your visitors to fork over their name and email address, and your email communications that will get plugged into your autoresponder systems:

You can find PLR content easy by going to Google and typing in your niche keyword and then the acronym PLR. So in this case you’d type in “dog training PLR” without the quotes. So here’s what Google unveils to me for the first five results.

Mistakes in affiliate marketing

There are three big mistakes low level affiliates are making on a routine basis that keep them from succeeding at the level they want to operate on.

Mistake #1: Don’t Invest in a Good Autoresponder Tool

Affiliate Marketing to the Next Level

Now that it’s set up, you want to make it work wonders for your bank account. Know how to do it? Build an even bigger list.

First of all, you want to learn how to clone your customers’ subscriptions. This isn’t some high-tech science experiment. All you’re doing is finding a new niche the same people on list A will like and have them sign up to list B.

Now you’ve doubled your selling potential and you didn’t have to go out and try to find and secure a single new customers. This is known as cross-promotional sign-ups.

So for our dog training list, you might occasionally mention that they may want to take a look at a great dog grooming site. Even though list A (dog training) is only signed up to get information for training, chances are they’re also interested in the grooming aspect of being a dog owner – but not everyone will bite.

Some dog owners want to learn how to make Fido stop barking, but for grooming, they’ll just head down to the local pet groomers instead. However, a portion of your list will be interested, and they’ll be buying both dog training and dog grooming information from your affiliate links.

Other cross-promotional sign up examples:

·         Promote an exercise list to a golf list

·         Promote a diet list to an exercise list

·         Promote an anti-aging list to a Baby Boomer dating list

…and so on. 

If you have to, sit down and brainstorm a demographic for your lists and then see what characteristics they share. For instance, singles are interested in dating – but they also want to learn how to make more money, how to stave off the aging process, and get free beauty tips.

It doesn’t have to be a hard push to get your subscribers from one list to another – just mention it in passing as something they may want to check out. After all, your second list will have another valuable freebie for them, so there’s nothing they have to pay out of pocket to get information that might interest them up front.

Another thing you can do to increase your list building effectiveness is to add on the other marketing methods you already know. Anything to drive traffic to your subscription pages such as social bookmarking, article marketing, and forum marketing with a signature file will help build your list and ultimately – your affiliate paychecks.

They’re not a necessity if you’re blogging regularly and attracting search engine spiders, but every little bit helps, so whatever you can accomplish with your time or budget, do the tasks that help you get more traffic.

Read more: All about affiliate Marketing
Introduction to Affiliate Marketing 

Setting Up Your Affiliate Marketing Simple System
Choose a More Narrow Niche
Find Affiliate Products to Promote
Set Up Your Home on the Web
Content For Your AutoResponders 
Affiliate Marketing Autopilot 
Taking Your Affiliate Marketing Simple System to the Next Level
Don’t Make These Three Critical Mistakes

Affiliate marketing on autopilot

Once your emails are set up and each one has an affiliate link in it, you’re free to move on to another niche – or another portion of the niche. In this example, we’ve used dog training, so now you might head into the dog grooming sub-niche.

Or, choose a different evergreen niche like health, golf, or dating and use the same method to set up another autopilot sales system.

Over the coming days, weeks, and months, you’ll see your subscription list grow. You’ll see new sales popping up on your radar, and it will increase as new people join your list and word spreads of the great free, valuable information you give away.

In the meantime, after it’s set up (or after you outsource it to someone else), you’re free to go about your business managing other online business ventures or even just enjoying the money you’re earning on a regular basis.

Don’t get bogged down in one on one relationships with your list subscribers or worrying about what your subscribers will think when you blast a message out to promote another product.

If you want to work on your own newsletter and personal branding system, go for it – but that’s not what this system is intended to do. This affiliate money machine serves one sole purpose – to generate autopilot income and nothing else.

Also you need to grab your visitors email address so that you can target them with tips and affiliate links.  Let’s look at someone who’s already using the weekly promotional system. This site gives visitors the option of signing up for a weekly tip email.

That’s all you need to do – set up a simple site, stick an autoresponder opt in box up, and begin building a list that will receive weekly tips (with an affiliate link) in the email communications.

This site does a great job of giving away a lot of free information up front in the form of categorical articles – from dog biting to potty training. Some marketers mistakenly think they can save their good stuff for paid content, but you first have to build trust with your visitor and impress them enough to sign up to your list.

With a similar site in your niche, you’ll be able to command the respect of other sites that will link to you as a great resource, helping you build your list even more. 

The more your list grows, and the more sites you set up in this fashion, the more money you’ll make, period.

Notice how this compares to the hunt and peck method of article marketing where many affiliates are sticking a single article with a bio box up and hoping to cash in every day of the week?

It’s just not going to work without massive content creation, but with an autoresponder system, you can use plug-in PLR and not have to worry about:

1.)  Unique content

2.)  Acceptance by article directory reviewers

3.)  Link rules (like no affiliate links, number of links, etc.)

Instead, your content will be housed in private – delivered directly to their inbox and you can position whatever links you want wherever you want them in the body of the email.

“But what about people who get offended when you try to sell to them in every email you send out?”

Look – this system is meant to run on autopilot. Let it weed out those who are offended. You’ll keep plenty of subscribers who are content with the promotions as long as they keep getting decent tips in their emails, which you’ll do, of course.

Don’t sweat the unsubscribed list. Just accept it as part of the system and keep doing what you’re doing. Your earnings will reflect that you’re doing something right.

Read more: All about affiliate Marketing
Introduction to Affiliate Marketing 

Setting Up Your Affiliate Marketing Simple System
Choose a More Narrow Niche
Find Affiliate Products to Promote
Set Up Your Home on the Web
Content For Your AutoResponders 
Affiliate Marketing Autopilot 
Taking Your Affiliate Marketing Simple System to the Next Level
Don’t Make These Three Critical Mistakes

How to make a website for affiliate marketing

It can be a WordPress blog on your own domain or a minisite with a squeeze page on it or a full-on content site with hundreds of articles – it doesn’t matter which one.

I’m going to buy a dot info domain – because I believe in them. Also, this is random and funny to see through a non marketer’s eye, but I asked several of my non-marketing friends about domain extensions.

I said, “You know how there are dot coms and dot nets and dot govs? What do you think of when you hear about a dot info domain? What initial thing would you consider that site to be?”

All of them said they’d consider it an information website - an authority site. They wouldn’t expect to see a sales letter there (consumers avoid sites they think will do nothing but sell to them if they’re just searching for information). They would expect to find valuable information there that’s not biased.

So let’s think about that, then. If you, as an affiliate, have a dot info domain and you construct it PROPERLY with good information so that when they land, they see value and get freebies (via an opt in), they’re going to have a good first impression of your site.

Find Affiliate Products to Promote

Head to my two favorite places – ClickBank and PayDotCom. Those aren’t the only two affiliate communities available – you also have the chance to market tangible items through sites like Amazon, for example.

In ClickBank, I can instantly see a whole list of affiliate options when I type in (in quotes) “dog training.” The ClickBank products you see almost all pay out at over $20.00 per sale. 

You want to go through and review each sales letter to see if you feel it will convert well. Then use the Create Hoplink to create a file of your affiliate links. You’ll want to cloak them, of course – but have the raw link on file for your own records. There are 30 products listed on ClickBank at the time of this writing specifically for dog training.

Next head to PayDotCom and check out what’s there. 

Now you can go with smaller, more niche specific products to promote, or go with a more broad dog training product that has a higher price tag (and ultimately more commission for you).

In the PayDotCom system, you see products specific to each breed, but you also see a $97 product with a 50% payout that covers dog training in general. You’ll want to pick and choose among the pages of product possibilities based on how you set up your email capture system to promote your free report.

If you have a site specifically for Pekingese dog owners, then go with that eBook. But mix it up and see if the higher priced product converts better with the same crowd. You want to give them many choices on what they buy. 

If you decide you do want to promote tangibles, go to Amazon and see what types of things are available in your niche. Conducting a quick scan for dog training, I find print books, dog training collars, DVDs, whistles, clickers and more.

Read more: All about affiliate Marketing
Introduction to Affiliate Marketing 

Setting Up Your Affiliate Marketing Simple System
Choose a More Narrow Niche
Find Affiliate Products to Promote
Set Up Your Home on the Web
Content For Your AutoResponders 
Affiliate Marketing Autopilot 
Taking Your Affiliate Marketing Simple System to the Next Level
Don’t Make These Three Critical Mistakes

Choose a More Narrow Niche

So you want to see how it would all work in a real niche? Let’s use dogs as our example.  Dog owners are almost fanatical about investing in knowledge for their four-legged friends – they buy everything from what breed to choose to grooming and training materials.

As an affiliate for the dog niche, here’s how you’re going to make this system work for you:

Choose a More Narrow Niche

Let’s not start out with “dogs” in general. Let’s drill down a bit and go with “dog training.”

You’ll need to drill down yourself. And yeah, gurus will promote all sorts of complex and expensive tools to help you find a narrow niche but let’s keep things cheap, shall we?

Go to the free Google keyword tool and type in the broadest keyword for the niche that you can think of. In our case, it’ll be “dog.”

When I type that word in, the very first result that comes up is dog training. There are also a lot of dog health topics, which would be another good drilled down niche.

I also like to then do a search for that narrow keyword phrase – dog training – and see what comes up. I’m looking for a couple of things. I want to know there will be info products I can promote and possible tangible products I can promote via Amazon.

On the tangible front, I see lots of searches for dog training collars, books, and DVDs. And aside from  the dog training books also working for info products, I see lots of searches for dog training classes, dog training advice, etc.

I could take it even narrower, focusing on puppies or an aspect of training like potty training or obedience training. But for right now, I’m not. I’m going to stick with dog training and branch out from there.

I clicked the download link to save this data in an excel spreadsheet – all 800 keyword phrases of it. I put it in a folder on my desktop.

Read more: All about affiliate Marketing
Introduction to Affiliate Marketing 

Setting Up Your Affiliate Marketing Simple System
Choose a More Narrow Niche
Find Affiliate Products to Promote
Set Up Your Home on the Web
Content For Your AutoResponders 
Affiliate Marketing Autopilot 
Taking Your Affiliate Marketing Simple System to the Next Level
Don’t Make These Three Critical Mistakes

Setting Up Your Affiliate Marketing Simple System

I think the best way to learn a system is to see it in action, so in the next chapter, I’m going to walk you through it with a live case study that you can see as you implement each step on your own.

But let’s first go over the basics of how you’re going to pull this system together.

First, you’re going to want to choose your niche carefully.  Like I said before – go with something that delivers ample opportunity, like the dog niche, health niche, dating, or golf to name a few examples.

What makes a good niche?  When I search for a niche I ask myself these questions:

The 4 Layers of an Affiliate Marketing Simple System

You don’t need a ton of expensive memberships or fancy tools with a lengthy learning curve to make money as an affiliate online.  All you need are four basic concepts and systems to pull together.

1.) Ample Affiliate Opportunities

Don’t assume there’s an affiliate program for every niche topic out there. You want abundant opportunities to choose from, not a single half-baked product to promote that doesn’t convert well or barely pays you what your time is worth.

If you go to ClickBank or PayDotCom or a CPA network and find only 1 or 2 things to promote, then it might be wise to pick a different niche OR choose a different path – one that has you creating your own info product since competition is minimal.

Conduct this research prior to buying a domain or investing in content (with either time or money).

2.) A Home on the Web

Every good affiliate needs a hot spot to post their content and links. Everyone will tell you to stick with free web 2.0 sites like Squidoo or Hub Pages, but I’m telling your right now – you want your own domain.

Web 2.0 sites are great for backlinks and traffic but when you want to set the rules for yourself and ensure that one day you don’t wake up to find your whole site deleted without warning, then owning a domain is a necessity – not a luxury.

Some people will tell you to only buy dot com domains. I have a different opinion. I own dot info domains that do just fine in the SERPs. I’ve read other people’s posts on forums who have had the same experience as me.

3.) Authority Content

Your goal as an affiliate who prospers is to get them into your system for repeat sales, not one-time commissions.  To hook your audience for the long-haul, you need to learn how to provide a bit of authority and expertise that keeps them tuned in to what you have to say – even if someone else wrote it and you’re simply the middle man.

You get positioned as the expert without having to create a product and possibly without having to write a single word of content or conduct any research on the topic other than basic keyword volume and competition.

4.) A Communication System

Your communication with online customers comes in the form of an automated system that leaves you with a primarily hands-off business to run.

Autoresponders are the method of choice for most marketers because you can queue up over a years’ worth of emails to go out on autopilot and do the dirty work for you.

Those 4 elements above are all it’s going to take to build a financially secure affiliate empire. Now how you use these four components is where the difference between success and failure lies.

Read more: All about affiliate Marketing
Introduction to Affiliate Marketing 

Setting Up Your Affiliate Marketing Simple System
Choose a More Narrow Niche
Find Affiliate Products to Promote
Set Up Your Home on the Web
Content For Your AutoResponders 
Affiliate Marketing Autopilot 
Taking Your Affiliate Marketing Simple System to the Next Level
Don’t Make These Three Critical Mistakes

Introduction to affiliate marketing

There are far too many affiliates spinning their wheels and wondering where the money lies and not enough people putting a simplistic plan into operation that will provide them with passive residual income for months (or even years) to come.

You see it every day – posts in Internet marketing forums from people who can’t “get it” or someone who finally made their first sale (after months of trying with no luck).

They have no idea how to repeat that single sale, so eventually they’ll quit – like 99% of the other affiliates who can’t figure out what the Super Affiliates already know.

There are a million ideas you can tack onto this simple affiliate strategy. But what I’m going to divulge to you in the coming pages is all you need to succeed and generate profits for your online empire.