Selling Ad Space on Your Sites

Selling ad space on your website will usually be an option once you get your traffic flowing in on a regular basis. Ad buyers will want to see stats of your site – and you can usually prove this by using a free tool called Google Analytics.

You can sell ad space in your sidebar, for example. You’ll do the very same thing in order to place the ad that you did with AdSense, only you’ll have the customer give you the code.

They may want a text hyperlink or an image ad.

Don’t let them have control over exactly what’s in the ad – set a few parameters. For example, you may restrict racy images for a dating site ad if you have an innocent parental site.

And don’t let them include text on the ad that makes it look as if it’s a personal recommendation coming from you.

What do you charge?

For this question, it’s going to depends on many factors – not just traffic. You’re going to want to see how competitive pricing is for ads in your niche. You might even contact some competitors of yours and ask them what they would charge for ad space.

Because traffic is what ties all business models in the Internet marketing world together, it’s important that you learn as much as possible about pulling in the right kind of visitors, so let’s move on to that topic now.

Brand your online business

We see it all the time with celebrities – branding that looks like a cute nickname, when it’s really a whole lot more than that.

The Barefoot Contessa from the Food Network is a good example of branding. You instantly get the image of a beautiful Italian woman leisurely cooking a delicious homemade meal in the comfort of her own home.

30-Minute Meals is a brand that isn’t instantly connected to a person’s name, but immediately, you grasp the concept – simple and easy. This would appeal to very busy people.

Paula Deen used to be “The Lady and Sons” when she was starting out and had her sons as part of her main business. She became so popular that her name overshadowed her starting business brand. 

Prepare your family to work from home

When you first tell friends and family that you’re going to pursue a work at home career, be prepared for some less than enthusiastic responses. This is normal and understandable so try not to get defensive about it.

The key is to learn how to best handle their reactions and assuage their fears. You’re going to have to plan your business out a little so that you can present them with the facts and let them see that you’re serious and you know what you’re doing. 

Are you sure you want to work online

You might be rolling your eyes thinking mindset isn’t an issue, but you’d be surprised. It can cripple you before you even start becoming financially successful online. 

There’s No Room for Desperation

Many people reading this are here because they’re desperate for money. It’s a trap that can cause you to make poor business decisions and it may even put you further in debt.

People are desperate for money for a variety of reasons:

·         They just got laid off and can’t find a job.

·         They’re employed fulltime, but unable to make ends meet.

·         They make ends meet but have zero money left over for luxuries.

·         They’re retired but their income doesn’t afford them the lifestyle they want.

·         They want to be a contributing member of the household.

If you’re unemployed and desperate for money, it might be faster to take a job below your normal income offline to take the pressure off with bill collectors. Building an online business takes time. 

That doesn’t mean you can’t start earning right away, but consider these details:

·         If you’re an affiliate for a site like Amazon, you’re going to be waiting 60 days to get paid for today’s earnings.

·         If you get hired for a long-term project like the creation of an eBook, for example, the funds will sit in escrow while you do the work and you won’t get the money until it’s delivered.

·         If you’re selling digital products, you may have to wait for the site to pick up in traffic before you start making significant sales.

You may only be able to work on your online business part time, and that’s okay! But it’ll take a bit longer to see formidable earnings.

Desperation is a cancer on your business growth, so don’t give in to it. If you need to, get an offline job to cover the bills and take baby steps as you grow this online business into something that eventually takes over your need to be employed elsewhere. 

Test the Waters Before You Commit

Keeping desperation at bay, you want to take time to evaluate which business model you want to pursue. This guide is going to cover the main ones (and there are micro models too).

You want to look at each one to see where you wish to begin. But I want you to keep this in mind: you never want all your eggs in one basket.

You’re going to choose one model to build the foundation with and then add the others to your online marketing strategy. For example, you might:

·         Start with the offer of ghostwriting services.

·         Add an info product of your own.

·         Begin promoting other people’s products as an affiliate.

·         Include some ads and start collecting revenue.

Do some online searches and learn as much as you can for free about the various ways to make money online. Do this before you pay money for any products.

If you see that a system just isn’t for you – meaning it’s not personally satisfying and you’re dreading working on it each day, then drop it and move on to something that you enjoy.

After all, why choose a work at home career if you’re not in charge of your destination? This should be profitable, but it should also be enjoyable! 

Fail Your Way to Success

Did you start an affiliate site and not make any sales? Launch a product and no one bought it? Don’t give up! Just find out the reasons why your business model didn’t perform and tweak them for success. The great thing about working at home online is that your content and strategies can be altered quickly and you’re continually learning new things.

Succeed as an internet entrepreneur

For you to have the courage and desire in you to succeed as an entrepreneur is a unique and exciting thing. Not many people have the guts to leave the corporate world and make something of themselves on their own – much less online.

That may be because it’s a viable business opportunity that very few people understand. They know there are websites online and they see people making money, but they have no idea how to get from step A to step B.

Fear often keeps us rooted to a career that we can’t stand.

It doesn’t matter what your reasons are for pursuing this path. Maybe you are out of work and looking for a job in an economy that has none to offer. Perhaps you’re a stay at home parent who would like to contribute to the household finances. Or maybe you’re retired but just not yet ready to quit being productive!

Make money with Squidoo

Squidoo Lens Building Project for Amazon Associates.

Before You Build a Lens, You Must Certain Things.

There are some initial steps you’re going to take before you start building lenses. But I want you to finish reading this guide first so that you’ll know what you’re going to be doing. It doesn’t make sense to register for a blog name when you don’t know what products you’ll be promoting, does it?

Once you read through this entire eBook first, come back and complete these important steps:

1.) Register for a FREE Squidoo account here:
http://www.squidoo.com/lensmaster/referral/bihar
You can see one of my Squidoo lens here
http://www.squidoo.com/building-your-outsourcing-team-using-fiverr

The cool thing about referrals is, when you sign up and earn your first $15 on Squidoo, Squidoo pays me $5 for sending you there – but it’s not taken from your earnings. So refer your friends!

2.) Register for a FREE WordPress blog here:
http://wordpress.com

Now when you do this, you’ll want to have some keywords in the blog URL. It’s even better if you register for your own domain with hosting (this will cost you though, so feel free to keep it 100% free by using WordPress.org). (I am not teaching blogging in this course but you can go to IdiotProofBlogging.com and download a free guide about it.)

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