An Idea Is Born

We were having dinner at my relatives the other night, and their kid appears to have a huge potential in affiliate marketing. Though he knows nothing about this field, all the dots are in place, you just have to connect everything. I mean, he’s smart, business oriented, practically lives inside his PC. Why let him waste this potential?

Several times I thought that I should just push him in the right direction. But it is not as easy as it sounds.

If I just tell him about affiliate marketing and send him to the internet to find answers, he’s going to waste a year going through all the crap that’s going to be thrown at his direction.

If I give him a good ebook to read, he’s going to learn one, maybe two aspects of affiliate marketing, not getting the whole picture.

And I sure didn’t know how to start teaching him myself. Heck, where do you start? “Hey dude, I make money online.. wanna learn how?”. HAHA…

Eureka!

Anyway, not knowing how to start telling people about it got me thinking. What if I come up with an ebook (!!!) that would teach people affiliate marketing. Crazy idea, I know. But wait, what if it’s a series of ebooks, or even a newsletter that you join and get weekly lessons.

Yea I know, people have done that and probably this as well. But, their main purpose was to make money off the newcomers, right?

What if I create a truly educational piece of information that is going to start at the basics? Treat it as a study guide for someone close, someone that I DON’T want to make money off…

Anyway, the wheels are turning, I’m not a guy to put away ideas without trying. Let’s see how this works out over time.

I’ll keep you posted.

- Alex

Happily posting useful content at Net-Entrepreneur.com
Current post was originally posted on:

Affiliate Marketing Study Guide

Luckily, although I knew nothing about making money online, I knew enough about the Internet to dig deeper than that. I started reading blogs, sifting out splogs of course, read a few forum discussions and basically got the feeling of this niche.

Like any of you probably did, I followed the gurus and opted-in to all kinds of mailing lists to receive free ebooks and how-to’s. I was swamped with information and the many money-making techniques. I was dreaming of multiple income streams and was ecstatic…

…during exactly one month.

After that moth, I started to suspect that with all those offers, methods, techniques, and way to make money online, it is probably a big bubble to get beginners to pay for info products.

Obviously enough, I ended up doing exactly nothing of what I’ve read as ways to make money online. I made a pledge not to buy another ebook ever again and, as a general rule, not to pay for anything again.

It’s human nature to choose the easiest path and stay in the comfort zone and, so I did. I was blogging and hoping to monetize the blog at some point. The “wonderful” and very promising ways to make money online I discovered in my initial research were long forgotten.

This is the point where most people would just forget about making money online and Internet Marketing altogether.

Make Money With Affiliate Programs: A Year Later

The comfort zone for me was not to spend too much money, and not to go where I was new. I had WordPress skills naturally I chose to go the blog way. A full year has past before I realized I needed to change my strategy, making minimal sales that wouldn’t even pay for my grocery bill. A full year!

Fortunately, I had the brains to realize that a huge change is needed, and enough persistence to make myself go into new online ventures.

I have chosen to pay for PPC coaching, and bought a really outstanding Internet Marketing ebook: One Week Marketing.

It’s been a few months since, and those two have provided me with the needed insights to dominate niches using both SEO and Pay Per Click, and for the first time in a long time I started to see sales coming in.

Summary and Insights

So what did I learn from all that?
Let me give the beginners a piece of advice:

1. Try to join a community of like minded people. That way you will have a way to easily find out what works and what doesn’t. What program is a scam and which is a true money maker. Find a paid forum or a paid coaching program, this automatically weeds out spammers and freeloaders.
2. Keep in mind that work is required to achieve results online. Nothing is easy, and your initial efforts will be tough.
3. If you feel that you “need” or “must” pay for another ebook or tool, refer to Advice No.1 above. Consult others. It is very probable that someone has already bought that and has a solid opinion, which is not biased like the opinions you’d find on a blog or a sales page.
4. This one could possibly be the best advice. Go at it.
   If you just read about a wonderful way to make money, and don’t give it a go, you might as well forget about Internet Marketing and watch Youtube videos all day. You can’t possibly expect to catch fish without throwing in the line, can you?

- Alex

Happily posting useful content at Net-Entrepreneur.com
Current post was originally posted on:

Make Money With Affiliate Programs – Why 90% Fail Miserably When Doing Affiliate Marketing?

A lot of the things are not secrets at all, and are available if you know what to look for. Knowing what to look for comes with experience, or if you have someone point you in the right direction.

It’s like when I was starting out over a year ago. I was thrown from one way to make money online to another. I was so thrilled by the fact that there are so many way to make money online, at first, that I was pretty much sure that I was going to be stinkin’ rich in two months. Three months at best.

I’m not stinkin’ rich and many months have passed since. What went wrong?

Simple, Not Easy

Most of the ways to make money online are simple. But there’s a big difference between the simplicity of the method and the ease of making it work for you.

The major obstacle that rises in front of a beginner when he realizes that he’s going to have to pay for stuff. Most think that everything is free on the internet, and those who pay for services are suckers.

Well, most beginners are ok with paying for hosting (which would also give them a free domain name). But that’s where it ends… They would try to get everything for free and are going to spend 6 months threading water. Most will quit not too long after.

Let’s take mailing lists for example. The simplest of schemes.

You get people to opt in to your list by offering them something in return, that had to do with a certain niche. That way you will have a list of people who are interested in a particular subject.

The next step would be to take suitable CPA offers and gently pitch them to your list, while trying to establish a strong relationship with the subscribers.

Simple? YES! Easy? NO!

First of all, enter our major obstacle; a beginner would probably not sign up with Aweber, or any other autoresponder service in the first place because there’s a monthly fee involved.

“What’s the point of singing up and paying monthly fee if I’m just starting out?”
Sounds familiar? How about:

“I can’t justify the cost of the autoresponder because I’m not yet making money…”
Duh!

Drum roll please… The secret of part 2 is:

Have a Plan

A beginner would not have a plan. He would typically go on and try a new technique every once in a short while. Is that because of the lack of a plan or the other way around? Who cares…

You have to have a plan. You have to know what you are going to do today, tomorrow, next week, next month.

You better sit down and write:

1. I want to reach 2,000 subscribers on my mailing-list in the red widgets niche within the next mont. I will do that by doing a, b, c, etc…
2. I will make profit by mailing to that list the following offers: a,b,c etc…
3. The expense is going to be X, but the potential profit is going to be Y.

Now ask yourself a question:

Am I prepared to take a risk and enter this venture?

You see, this is a beginning of an online business in affiliate marketing.
Having a detailed plan will show you how to start making money today, even before you spent a penny.

- Alex

Happily posting useful content at Net-Entrepreneur.com
Current post was originally posted on:

The Big Secret of Affiliate Marketing, Part 2

Sell products? Sell services?
What are we selling exactly?

See, that’s when I stopped and had an “AHA!” moment. I suddenly realized that we are not supposed to sell at all.

I used to work as a project manager in marketing agency once, and I don’t remember any of us selling anything to the customer. Why should online marketing be different?

We are not online sales reps. Marketing has a different purpose.

We are to inform a potential customer that a product he wants or needs is available for him at a certain location. That’s it. No selling!

The customer you want to grab is already holding his credit card in his hand. He wants to buy. He’s online to see whether or not he’s being suckered into something, and to know if there isn’t a better deal for him.

So, you don’t go: “Can I interest you in a great Red Widget? Only $27… All your friends would be jealous! Buy NOW!”

You should be more in this direction:

“I have a Red Widget that is making a lot of people happy. All their friends are jealous because this red widget has this and that advantage over the other red widgets. You can find out more here…”

You see the difference? Why sell anything to someone who’s already a minute from signing the deal? You just need to nudge him in the right direction…

Of course, you can choose to target a different audience. Let’s take those who are looking to compare stuff first and have not yet decided. But, it’s all the same…

Don’t sell. Be of service to them and they will appreciate your treating them like people instead of like a herd of sheep.

Have a different perspective? My comments are open for you

- Alex

Happily posting useful content at Net-Entrepreneur.com
Current post was originally posted on:

The Big Secret of Affiliate Marketing

First, a definition:

“In computer networks, a proxy server is a server […] that services the requests of its clients by forwarding requests to other servers. A client connects to the proxy server, requesting some service, such as a file, connection, web page, or other resource, available from a different server. The proxy server provides the resource by connecting to the specified server and requesting the service on behalf of the client.” (Wikipedia)

Still sounds like gibberish? Read on…

Proxies in the service of an affiliate marketer

Instance 1:

There are affiliate offers that would only accept traffic from a certain region or country.

When you’re not from the country of the target traffic of the offer you sometimes would not be able to visit that offer’s page to check it out. The webpage would simply redirect you to another offer. That’s when a proxy from that country comes in handy.

When you use a proxy located in the UK, for example, you will be able to see those offers that restrict traffic to UK traffic only.

Instance 2:

When you’re doing market research on that offer that is limited to UK traffic, you’ll want to check out what the competition is doing.

Simply going to Google and searching for suitable keywords will come up with no competition. Great, you’d think, I will run this offer on Adwords and be the only one on the results with no competition in sight.

But, what is happening is that the the campaigns were set to show only to searchers coming from the UK. That’s why you get nothing showing up.

What do you do? Simple, run Google through a UK proxy. That way you’ll have all the campaigns showing up since you’re now a UK searcher.

So, what do we have in stock to tackle this?

1st alternative:

There’s the browser settings that would make it possible to set up browsing through a proxy. But this option is very limited and you don’t want to use it. You have to go to the tools menu every time you want to disable or enable the proxy, or change to another proxy in a different country.

2nd alternative:

There’s what I use most because of the simplicity and the user friendliness. WorldProxy202 will offer you what you want when you want it without installing anything or messing with IP’s and port addresses.

It has the 4 major countries often seen on affiliate offers restriction lists and you don’t have to know anything else but browsing the web. Seriously, no tech knowledge is required. Go to the url, enter the offer address and there you go. You see the page as if you were browsing from that country.

3rd alternative:

For the more advanced and tech savvy affiliates, there’s a cool free FireFox addon called Foxy Proxy. (btw, I don’t want to sound like a jerk, but if you’re among those 20% and not using FireFox yet, you should go to your local supply shop, buy a sledge hammer, come back home and take a few swings at your work station).
Anyway, this addon has many options and allows you to change different proxy servers with a click of a mouse button.

Feel free to ask questions… That’s what I’m here for.

- Alex

Happily posting useful content at Net-Entrepreneur.com
Current post was originally posted on:

Why Would You Use a Proxy Server?

Surprisingly enough, it was John Chow’s blog that got me to look at PPC-Coach. He was pitching a rather overpriced coaching program started by one of the reigning “super affiliates”, and in one of the comments I saw a suggestion to check out PPC-Coach since it was cheap and offered loads of value – only $49CAD.

Since I knew this commentator from other blogs, and I knew he was not into pitching sleazy offers (hell, he didn’t even put his affiliate link up there even though I asked for it), I went on to check out this PPC-Coach.

A simple recap of everything on PPC-Coach

PPC-Coach stands on three pillars (omg, I’m a poet):

1. Videos and tutorials bringing you up to date on what this program is all about.
2. An active forum where the Coach himself helps out other members. Very unlike other coaching program forums where the “founder” is nowhere to be seen.
3. A set of tools (see below) that you will need to do PPC. This set of tools is a must for every PPC marketer, and I saw similar tools sold separately elsewhere for big bucks.

Basically what’s going to happen when you sign up is that you watch the videos, go to the section of the forum called Month1. There you will be told the exact technique, offers and tools you’re going to use during that first month.

You will actually know what and how to promote. Trying to decide this alone is what makes many quit even before starting. I know, because I spent two months searching for offers and thinking about how to sell them, lol…

Then you actually start working and use the forum as your support network, which IMO is the most value for your buck (yes, there’s the tools, but tools without knowing how to use them don’t worth a penny). Having the people on the forum to back you up and answer the stupidest of your questions is worth a world to me.

Did you ever try asking anything (that is trivial to others) on WickedFire or the WarriorForum? No? You will have 30 replies convincing you that you’re a noob, that they are all better than you, and eventually you don’t get anything.

Everyone in PPC-Coach were noobs once (although there are a few that are making over $2,000 a day, but they are there for, like, a year..), and it’s based on helping each other not on bragging how good one is and how crappy is the other.

What’s Next?

Every month you’re introduced to a new technique and another market/merchant/offer. It is usually a more advanced method and you should really move on when you’re comfortable with the previous month. And here is another great thing about it – It drives you forward. You stop working, you stop making money. As simple as that.

What would you probably not like about PPC-Coach?

You have to be prepared that there’s a massive amount of information revealed to you once you sign up. The videos, the text guides and the forum threads that you cannot miss… You will spend the first week reading, digesting info and trying to go insane.

The other thing is that the Coach assumes you have some basic technical skill, i.e.: setting up a hosting account, buying domains, creating subdomains, ftp clients. Although it’s not usually a problem, because the other members are eager to help, I would dedicate a special “completely clueless” tutorial to give an overview of everything basic.

My Sumary

If you want to stop dreaming and start doing you need a mentor or a coach to drive your forward, offer you a helping hand, criticize and praise your work. There are a few programs out there that offer you PPC coaching, but most are all hype and don’t live up to expectations.

PPC-Coach will offer you this set of tools:

• Keyword Tracker – a very cool tracker software with lots of automation that keeps track of your campaigns, adgroups, keywords and ads in realtime. There are members using Prosper202 now switching to this one, because of how fast you can setup a campaign with it. (a campaign with rotating landing pages and rotating offers takes minutes. Did you ever try doing this with Prosper? Could take a good hour and a half…)
• Campaign Generators – these will let you build large campaigns in a minute. Ever hear of Speed PPC?
• URL Scrapers
• Iframe Scripts
• Landing Site Generators
• Keyword Wrappers
• Budget Calculators
• Offers Database

You will have the help of the members of the program and the help of the coach himself.

For a this price it is a bargain. For 49CAD you should give it a try for at least a month and then decide. Don’t be with a “Did I miss an opportunity” feeling this time.

Oh yea, wait for my next post – I might me able to give you a further discount.

- Alex

Happily posting useful content at Net-Entrepreneur.com
Current post was originally posted on:

A Review of PPC-Coach – Is It Really For You?

I’m going through a series of aha-moments in my efforts to master PPC marketing. Every day that passes I feel as though I’m becoming more experienced and fluent in some part of the Process.

It’s not easy on your psyche though. Hemorrhaging money as you learn from your mistakes, which often are so stupid that you ought’a kick yourself in the head.

But this is something that you cannot skip, you have to be prepared and ready for loosing money.

On the other hand, don’t call it “loosing money”. Consider it an investment in your education, an expense that is a given for everyone. The difference is whether it’s a big expense or a moderate one.

There are several ways for you to make this expense a moderate one. You can read everything you possibly find on PPC marketing (see if it’s from a reliable source, though – someone who knows what he’s doing / has proven record in PPC marketing), process it into a working plan, and and start working. This one is better than nothing, but not perfect, to say the least.

Why is it not perfect? Well, you can fairly easily enter an endless loop of reading, planning, dreaming and NOT DOING. This is dangerous as you can also loose your motivation, and finally get your mind trick you into thinking that this business is for a-list gurus only. This almost happened to me once.

…Anyway, I’m babbling. This is not a how-to and I’m not a guru.

My Success

I was able to generate income. Yes, I know this is not much (hold on, you don’t know how much exactly yet), but it is a big thing for me because the most annoying thing for me in my “reading research” stage was that I didn’t have anything to show for it.

I mean, I was always asking myself “ok people are making money, but did you ever had even one sale”? I finally broke that barrier, and now I feel that I’m in business.

- So, how much income?

- $159 US.

- What were my expenses?

- $240 US.

So, basically I lost $81.

But then again, I don’t think I lost. Those $81 enabled me to learn important lessons and come to very helpful conclusions. I know now, for example, that I could have finished the month with only $20 loss, if only I didn’t make one silly mistake (that had to do with operating the Adword Editor), that I eventually fixed after one day (could’ve been worse). Rest assured that I’m not going to make this mistake in the future.

The Better News

I participated in Tyler Cruz’ Affiliate Challenge 6 during December, and won an iPod Nano 8GB! This sweetens the $80 “loss”, as it retails at $150.

Woohoo!!

By the way, Tyler is running yet another challenge during January, this time sponsored by XY7. So, if you couldn’t participate in the past 6 challenges becuase you were already signed up with Market Leverage – this might be your chance.

- Alex

Happily posting useful content at Net-Entrepreneur.com
Current post was originally posted on:

First Success with PPC

So, yesterday was bad. Minimal impressions in Adwords and only two sales early in the morning. That’s it.

Nothing happened during all yesterday. Could you believe that? I was amazed.
Me ego was smudged in dirt, but what can you do but to dust yourself off and move on? So I did.

But then, after building a different campaign, I thought to myself: What if I raised the bids a bit? Maybe someone is bullying me?

Of course, in order to bully me to such extent for me to have zero traffic, someone should have known the whole keyword list I was using, which is almost impossible. Nevertheless, the morning after, I raised my bids and voila – impressions were mounting and clicks were abundant!!

So, what’s going on here? I simply don’t know.

My experience is to little to have anything to say to that. Chances of someone bullying my whole campaign are similar to chances of being struck by lightning.

So what do I have to say about today’s traffic?

Although it had a great CTR, and clicks were many, the conversion rate was smaller than the day before yesterday.

First of all, I didn’t have a chance to optimize my campaign because of being smudged in dirt. And there’s a lesson to learn here – when they do that to you, don’t cooperate. Instead of that I should have sat down and thoroughly looked through the data to find duds and misfires.

In addition, today is Christmas!!! Happy time, right? Not if you’re trying to earn money as an affiliate marketer.

Basically they say that November-December is the worst time of the year for affiliate marketing. But the day before Christmas, Christmas eve, the day after… you’d be better off eating that turkey, or whatever.

So I hope that in a day or two, after a sift through the campaign and people feel the urge to buy again, my story would turn the right way.

- Alex

Happily posting useful content at Net-Entrepreneur.com
Current post was originally posted on:

A Quick Update and Merry Christmas to Everyone