Monday, January 11, 2010

Planting an Internet Marketing Seed

It is vital to create a product that will allow you to eventually expand into other markets. The goal is for the people who initiallly buy your product to also buy your next products. Since you have proven that you can be trusted by delivering a product to your clients they love it should be much easier to obtain their business when your new item hits the online marketplace. We need to understand a seed is truly important indeed. You need to see your first product as that seed.


You see this is about creating an Internet marketing kingdom, a virtual empire of products that all start with one tiny seed that is planted in the fertile soil of those hearts that are eager for your particular product. For example, I am in the process of creating a set of onlline videos where I teach students the various techniques needed to speak English. My area of expertise lies in the field of ESL(English as a second language) of which I have been blessed to have over 10 years of experience teaching to adult learners. My target market would be foreign adults who wish to learn English via video.

I realize though that if I wish to branch out and sell different yet similar products later I will have to pick a product that these learners would also enjoy. This led me to recall the great end of the semester food parties in the classes that I taught where both myself and my students brought in dishes from other countries that many enjoyed. Now I know that my second product launched will be an esl cookbook with recipes submitted from actual students. The cookbook will be sold to other esl students online. Branching out even further, a cooking forum would be established as well as an online cooking class with graduates of my esl video courses eventually teaching the course. It is amazing to see how all this began from the planting of one little seed. The online esl videos seed grew to become a cookbook, an online cooking school and a cooking forum. As we all know marketing is a numbers game and the bigger number of people you have on your marketing list the better your chance of survival and dominance.


Think about your online marketing seed before you plant it. You want to plant something that will grow into something huge. When you look into the jungle you see an incredible array of trees. That is what you should want your seed to turn into. The trees in your Internet jungle will be represented by the vast amount of names on your email list who want your first and additional products. The product you create should also appeal to as many people as possible. I know those who may not be interested in esl may be interested in cooking and vice versa. I could use the cooking bait to reel in the esl fish and use the esl bait to reel in those who love cooking.

When your Internet marketing seed is sown you will reap the harvest of personal freedom. This translates into having the freedom to spend time doing what is really important. Even though I am blessed to be doing well working from my home right now, my goal is to create an online marketing kingdom. God is of course the king, I am the king, my wife is the queen and my daughter is the princess. I plan to give my little girl the choice to attend college or as the princess of the family become the boss while the queen and I enjoy our travels. It all starts with that tiny Internet marketing seed. The Bible talks about having the faith of a mustard seed and what can happen if we have just a bit of faith. We have to have dreams, big dreams and seeing those dreams become realities is quite inspirational and shows that this Internet marketing thing is real. No one in your circle of naysayers can argue with your results unless they choose to be up against the truth of your success.

Monday, January 4, 2010

3 Simple Steps For Newbies To Start In Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is an arrangement between an online merchant and affiliate, in which the affiliate earns a commission for generating sales, leads and/or clicks for the merchant's web site.

Affiliate marketing works in a win-win situation for the merchant and the affiliate. The merchant gains opportunities to advertise his products for free to a larger market which will increase his sales. The more hard-working affiliates he gets, the more sales he can expect. By getting affiliates to market his products and services, he is saving himself time, effort and money in looking for possible markets and customers. When a client clicks on the link in the affiliate website and purchases the product, recommends it to others who look for the same item or buys it again, this way the merchant leverage his chances of earning. On the other hand, the affiliate marketer benefits from each customer who clicks on the link in his website and who actually purchases the product or avails of the service provided by the merchant. Usually the affiliate gets commission per sale, which can be fixed percentage or fixed amount. The best is that it won't cost a single dime to join an affiliate program.

If you want to be an affiliate marketer and make money out of the Internet, you may follow these three most basic steps to start your effective affiliate marketing campaign.

Your first step is to identify a particular niche you are interested in or passionate about so you won’t be bored and forced to develop your affiliate web site later on. Focusing on a specific area you known well, it will help you bring out your best. Here are a few places you can research on - ClickBank Marketplace, AssociatePrograms.com, LinkShare.com, CJ.com etc

Secondly is to look for good paying merchants and high converting products. Make a list of good paying and high converting affiliate programs for your chosen niche and create a website. In choosing the products, you must also consider the support they are giving - Marketing materials may include articles, text links, banner ads, classified ads, reports, etc.

There are many affiliate networks and affiliate solution providers that can give you info on the most profitable products and best paying merchants. So be wise enough to choose the right affiliate program.

Now that you have decided which products to promote and the merchant you are supporting and have created your own web site with a domain name and reliable hosting, you are ready to promote. This is the toughest part, since it is through this that you would be able to increase traffic to the business website, sales and of course, profit. In affiliate marketing, it is possible to earn large sums of money in a short span of time if you use the right strategies and methods.

How to promote the products would need a separate discussion. You must continue to educate yourself by reading books, courses or other articles online about the best and proven advertising techniques.

Remember, there is no quick path towards success. Affiliate marketing may seem very tempting due to numerous encouraging testimonies of merchants and affiliate marketers alike who have benefited from it, but it really involves in a great deal of hard work and persistence. You also need to be creative and flexible.

Most affiliate marketers don’t understand this, so when they don’t make sales, they quit, look for other programs and carry on the same mistake. In the end, they said that affiliate marketing is just one of those scams in the Internet. You can work your way to great success if you employ the right strategies in affiliate marketing. You can make money as an affiliate marketer if you willing to do what it takes.