Home Business – Affiliate Marketing

The Intro Video To This Post Can Be Found: http://viralnetworks.com/view/e533m

You’ve probably seen the ads and the listings on job sites:  “Make Great Income From Home!  All You Need Is A Computer!”  Is there truth to these ads?  Yes and no.

If these people are paying for an advertisement, then they are expecting to make some sort of profit on the deal, so they may just be trying to sell you something.  Make sure to research these offers before committing to anything.  But, even though they may be trying to sell you something, these ads are truthful:  you can make money on the internet, and all you need is a computer (and a good work ethic).  The easiest way to start is with a home business using affiliate marketing.

What is affiliate marketing?

Essentially, it is selling someone else’s stuff.  A person will produce a product and register it with an online affiliate management site like Clickbank.  Affiliate marketers (you) will register with that site and promote the product online.  When somebody buys the product through you, they click a special link and part of the sale price goes to the person who developed the product, and part of it goes to you.  Depending on the affiliate offer this can be anything from 30% to 90% to the affiliate.

(Often the reason the product owner offers a huge commission is that the main reason they are selling the product is to build a client list for future marketing purposes.)

The beauty of this system is that once you have developed the marketing strategy to sell this product, it is there for as long as you keep the website active, so you can earn passive income for months after beginning a campaign.  Even after you’ve forgotten about it entirely and have already done three or four other projects, your bank account will keep growing.

Affiliate marketing requires you to be able to write good sales copy (or pay somebody else to do it), and drive web traffic to a website that features that sales copy (or pay somebody else to do it).  Depending on the profit margin, you may be able to subcontract some elements, but it is a good idea to learn every facet in the beginning.  This maximizes your profit and gives you a good grounding on all aspects of affiiliate marketing.

If you don’t have your own product to sell (yet!!), then affiiliate marketing is a great way to start making money online.

Good Affiliate Programs:

Good affiliate programs are programs that sell themselves because the service offered is of high quality, the sales pages have been split tested and proven to convert and there is a lot of social proof (testimonials from other happy customers)

My Suggestion:

Viralurl is the program I would suggest, as we have thousands of positive feedbacks and our offers are proven to convert at well over 5% from free to paid & we also often pay you just for getting free signups. I know that it is my program so you will be thinking, “of course you will suggest your stuff” and whilst I don’t claim that statement to be wrong, Viralurl meets all the criteria of a winning affiliate program and our top promoters have earned over $20,000 in affiliate commissions (And these commissions are recurring, either monthly or yearly). If you are not a member of Viralurl yet, it is worth a look 😉

Author:
Colin Klinkert
Membership Sites – Matt Bacak Has Them Mastered

Video Intro to this Post can be viewed: http://viralnetworks.com/view/hjPkL

At the World Internet Summit this month, one of the key speakers was Atlanta-based Matt Bacak. He first began investing his earnings at age 12, and in the following 15 years survived botched partnerships, failed businesses, credit card debt and bankruptcy. He must have learned a lot from these bad times, because now, 15 years later he is a multimillionaire (he made his first million at age 27).

With this knowledge setting the picture, and his introduction showing pictures of his home, his Hummer, and his private jet – the audience was immediately tuned in to what Matt had to say.

Matt’s forte is membership sites and making money from them was what he was there to talk about. Here are his tips:

1. Before you launch a membership site, work out your expenses – personal and business. Write them down and really understand that it costs you $x to live.

2. Determine how many memberships you need to meet expenses, e.g. if you need $5000 per month, that could be 500 memberships at $10 each per month.

3. Put things into perspective. What do you want? Imagine what it would be like to have an extra $5k, $10k etc per month.

To start a membership site you will need the following:
• An Opt In Page
• An Autoresponder
• A Front End Offer/Sales Letter
• A Membership Website and Software
• Traffic

Identify Your Market
Matt advises people to “think with the end in mind”. Sell something with a bigger product in mind down the line. Think “what’s next?” He believes a great way to find a market for membership sites is to look at monthly magazines on the news stands. The people who buy these magazines are already committed to paying a certain amount each month for this information – so it is likely that they will also pay for a membership to deliver similar material. This is a great tip!

Driving Traffic
Matt believes that the best ways to drive traffic to membership sites are PPC (pay per click), Joint Ventures, and Article Marketing. He is also getting great results from CPV (cost per view) advertising.

Matt is running 3 multimillion dollar companies, all of which were built online. His first company grew by 1057% in 2008 alone. Matt’s strategies saw him run one of the largest internet promotions ever, acquiring 14,897 customers in less than a week.

Want To Learn About Setting up Your Own Successful Membership Site?

Frank Bauer and I have created a course that is not for sale yet, but will be in a few months. Reason it is not for sale is because we are spending our time creating other membership sites. If you subscribe to my email updates, you will be alerted when it is available. Frank and I run multi million dollar membership sites and apply all the info we learn from all the best courses released into one program, so be sure to join my mailing list.

Author:
Colin Klinkert
Web 2.0 Marketing

Who hasn’t heard of MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, eHow, blogs and forums? The power of these social media platforms has been realized by companies, traditional news media, and individual marketers.

Internet marketers who don’t want to be left behind should have Web 2.0 strategies as part of their whole marketing push, and understanding how to use this platform properly could influence their bottom line dramatically.

With social marketing, people openly discuss products and services they have used or are interested in – and they are quick to condemn, slow to praise. And it’s no secret that your competitors could be lurking in forums quietly feeding negative comments about your products.

For those who have not yet embraced social media marketing – on sites such as ViralNetworks, YouTube, Facebook, Warrior Forum, MySpace, Twitter, and eHow, here are a few tips on its use:

  • Get educated: Understand what different platforms are out there, and see if there is one that is devoted to your niche.
  • Think strategically: Only target social media sites that are frequently used by your target audience. Don’t spend time on cat sites if you are selling a ‘how-to’ guide to making websites.
  • Get involved. You must give and take in social sites. Don’t pack your posts with sales links – you will be banned or ignored. Provide quality information in your poses, and where allowed, and a subtle website link in your signature. Join in conversations – don’t just write posts and forget them. See what others are talking about, and contribute. Valuable posts will be bookmarked and shared.
  • On your own blogs and static sites, make sure you have bookmark buttons – help your content to travel.
  • Search engines love multimedia, so use videos and podcasts as part of your Web 2.0 strategies. If you find someone asking a ‘how to’ question in a forum, reply with a video of exactly ‘how to’. Interviews are great to podcast, so why not have someone interview you about some new ‘technique’ you’ve developed?
  • As with all internet marketing strategies, measuring and monitoring is important with social media marketing too. You should be aware of how many people are reading your posts, becoming your ‘friends’ or ‘followers’, and whether comments on your products and services are negative or positive.

Social media marketing gives you the ability to convert visitors to fans to customers, and you need to allocate a certain time every day for social networking at your chosen sites. It could be as little as half an hour, but if done well, could grow your prospect and client base considerably.

If you are in Internet Marketing or any form of online business, ViralNetworks is a Business Social Network and as such is well targeted to your products and services. Follow the rules above, add value, make and share videos and watch your friends convert to fans and fans convert to buyers. If you haven’t yet, join and start networking with me today on ViralNetworks!

Author:
Colin Klinkert
Is The Warrior Forum An Internet Marketers Best Friend?

Video Intro To This Post: http://viralnetworks.com/view/jhD5L

The WarriorForum would have to be one of the best free resources for internet marketers anywhere. The forum is frequented by marketers from newbies to gurus, all with the common aim of making money online. It has been around for 10 years, and has over 100,000 members, some more active than the vast majority.

Sure, there is the occasional rant, the quick-to-be-squashed blatant advertiser, but these small annoyances aside, the amount of knowledge and advice available here is priceless. The fact that membership is free means there is no reason for any aspiring IMer to leech as much information from forum members as they can handle.

For newcomers, I would caution you to always use the Search feature before posting a question, and be specific. Questions like “How can I make money online?” will be either ignored or ridiculed. The members will not do the work for you, but show them that you have done your research and are giving it your all, and they will fall over themselves to help.

Aside from the different free “Rooms” there is a “War Room” which attracts a once-only charge for membership, and this is where the serious dudes hang out. There is also a “Warriors Special Offer” (WSO) section where you can pick up some useful tools at below regular price, or for free. Understand though that most free products will require you to ‘opt in’ to a members’ site. It is a not-quite-sneaky way for them to build their lists. And there is nothing to stop you from doing the same.

When you do have a product of your own to sell (i.e. not an affiliate product), for the princely sum of $20 you can list it as a WSO (read the rules first).

The Warrior Forum is an ideal place to get feedback on landing pages and sales copy, and a fantastic locale for finding JV partners, and outsourcing providers – writers, designers etc. Watching the popular threads and questions from members can also provide insight into what this niche might be looking for in the way of ‘how-to’ products.

So whether you are new to internet marketing or someone more experienced who wants to be sure to stay in the loop, the Warrior Forum is a cool place to hang out.

Some of our members say our forum is cooler then the WarriorForum, We leave that up to you: http://viralnetworks.com/view/Cww3Q I say, The More The Better. Come join me at ViralNetworks!

Author:
Colin Klinkert
Lead Generation Business – Dr Mike and Koz

48 second Video Intro to this post can be seen here: http://viralnetworks.com/view/KdPLl

Dr Mike Woo-Ming and Brian “Koz” Kosobucki have together developed an interesting lead generation software package, that they unveiled at the World Internet Summit in Australia this month.

Dr Mike has for years now been teaching people about the power of lead generation for internet marketing. There are thousands of businesses both online and offline who will pay for new leads, and some will pay thousands (think ‘real estate agents’).

Koz has made a living with niche sites and coupon marketing and has used some unconventional methods of traffic and lead generation. In fact he had developed a system of lead generation that didn’t even require you to have a website. When Dr Mike heard about this, he got on board and together have developed some (expensive – around $USD3,500) software that will generate leads in just about every niche.

By entering in keywords (e.g. baby strollers) and city (e.g. San Francisco), the software delivers the user a list of people who have entered search queries for the keyword. But that’s not all it delivers. It also gives you a transcription of their inquiry and their email address. The premise is that by ‘replying’ to their query with a product for sale you are not spamming. I think the jury will be out on this for a while though.

For big ticket items, like real estate sales, the potential is huge. Being able to provide a Realtor in Santa Monica with a list of everyone who has recently searched for a home in that town, could be worth a LOT of money.

On investigation, it seems that much of the data the system gathers comes from sites like Craigslist, though I’m not sure whether it is with the site’s permission or not. Also, the areas that the software covers is still limited, although the US seems to be very well catered for.

If setting up a lead generation business appeals to you, then this Lead Evolution product could be worth investigating. As the jury is still out on this software in terms of it’s ethical situation, you will see I am not using an affiliate link to the site, it is a direct link for your informational purpose only.

If you are promoting a product in the Internet Marketing niche, a site that allows you to market to 100% double optin, hungry buyers is Frank and My membership site: Viralurl Dot Com

Come Network with me at the Newest, Hottest Business Social Network… See You There!

Author:
Colin Klinkert
Internet Marketing Business – Beginners Tips

Watch The Video Into to this post here: http://viralnetworks.com/view/NJD56

When starting to set up your own internet marketing business, it’s important to recognize the enemies to your success:

• Being lazy – you do have to put some work into it. Don’t believe all the hype about waking up to finding more money in your account – unless you have put in the time and effort to set up your money making machine.

• Being negative – don’t put yourself down. Understand that even though you don’t know a lot about running an internet marketing business, use what you do know, and make a commitment to learn more.

• Afraid to take risks – you have to put yourself out there, tackle new concepts and embrace new learning opportunities.

Everyone will tell you that you need to find a niche to focus your energies on. Instead of looking for what you consider ‘sexy’ topics, take a look at things you know a lot about, or are passionate about. These could include sports, hobbies, cooking or health. If you have some knowledge in a particular area, chances are someone else is just learning about it, and will pay for your skills or techniques.

By starting with something about which you are passionate will make the marketing tasks, like blogs and forum posts, and writing articles, just that much easier.

Don’t expect to make millions first off – take the small profits because they will all add up. If you write an eBook about your hobby, you might only sell 4 a week at $20 each, but that’s $80 each week more than you had before, $240 a month, $2880 a year. Write another couple and watch the profits multiply. And with things like an eBook, you only need to write it once, and it can look after itself for years to come.

By collecting the contact information of your buyers, you have a ‘list’ of qualified customers who will be more open to buying another product on the same topic (yours or an affiliate product) in the future.

Join forums related to your niche, establish a presence there and be sure to contribute worthwhile posts (the ‘give’), while including a link to your site (the ‘take’) in your signature file.

A Good Place To Start is ViralNetworks – Join us in the forums and start learning & helping!

Author:
Colin Klinkert
Building an Information Marketing Empire

Watch a Video Intro To This Post Here: http://viralnetworks.com/view/hZM63

According to Information Marketing expert, Deborah Thompson-Roedl, there are seven keys to building this type of business. They are:

• Products
• Consulting
• Memberships
• Coaching
• Seminars
• Resources
• Affiliate Marketing

When creating your own Product, you need to identify your niche, find a problem within that niche and provide the solution. The packaging of that solution will become your product and it can take the form of an interview, eBook, software, video or a training program.

Once you have a product out there, you can grow your business by initially consulting to other organizations who need that information, and then by setting up your own paid membership site – which will give you residual income month after month, for as long as your provide members with valuable information.

As your reputation as an expert within the niche grows, there will be opportunities for one on one, or group, coaching sessions, and invitations to speak at seminars and conferences. At such events you should always have a product package to promote, taking clients one step further. Offering Resources such as videos, audios and memberships as a package is very attractive and because they are ‘warm’ prospects, already in the zone, they will be more inclined to buy on the spot. A strategy often used is the ‘limited availability’ or ‘for the first 10 purchasers’. It’s amazing how event organizers are able to count to 10 over and over and over again.

Even if you don’t yet have your own product, you can still build a strong information marketing business by promoting the products of others, in return for a commission (which can be as much as 75% of the sale price). Affiliate marketing such as this is possible to manage without even having a website. You can send prospects straight to the affiliate site through text or banner links.

So having a product is really just the first step if you want to grow a successful information marketing business – there are lots more opportunities to take your business to the next level.

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Author:
Colin Klinkert
World Internet Summit Overview

The World Internet Summit took place on the Gold Coast of Australia’s Queensland March 12-15 2009 and the impressive list of speakers delivered some real pearls.

There were lots of internet marketing newcomers, so the ‘Newbies Day’ at the beginning had speakers like Tom Hua, Brett McFall and Sean Roach talk about some of the basics. Hearing about the different and growing opportunities for making money online inspired the audience who seemed to hang on every word – obviously a lot of ‘a-ha’ moments.

‘Living the Dream’ was a common thread with all speakers – how internet marketing has made them rich, how they have generated systems for residual income, how they literally ‘earn money while they sleep’. This is hardly surprising as being successful with internet marketing has to be the main criteria for anyone hoping to convert their on-stage presentation to sales.

Author:
Colin Klinkert