People, stop the insanity!  Stop buying ebook after ebook; course after course; jumping from one to another and GETTING NOWHERE.  NO, that new, over-hyped, gotta-have-it-at-all-cost product is NOT the system that is finally going to make you rich.  You are chasing yet another quick little fish while the other fish you had an opportunity to eat are getting away, and as a result you are still STARVING (not making any money).

People who tend to be more analytical, more impulsive, or lazy (want to get rich quick with little effort) are the ones who suffer from this affliction the most.   If you find yourself frustrated after months or even years of tinkering in internet marketing because you only made enough money to buy a nice shirt, time to rehabilitate yourself.

Here’s the GOLDEN RULE to internet marketing success:

You are much more likely to have success working on just one internet marketing campaign at a time, and engaging in no more than three (3) different internet marketing vehicles.

What I mean here is  once you start on a particular campaign, FINISH it before you start on the next one.  In this context, “finish” means to the point where you are making steady income from the campaign.

Limit yourself to no more than three (3)  internet marketing vehicles.  This is huge.  A vehicle, or ”specialty” takes a lot of time to master, especially with the constantly changing nature of the internet.  Examples of internet marketing strategies:

• PPC-ClickBank
• PPC-CPA Offers
• Blogging
• Social Media Marketing
• List Building and Marketing
• Membership Sites
• Website Flipping

Now, if your thing is affiliate marketing using Wordpress blogs, pick one niche (like Persian rugs) and focus on that.  That one niche is enough to keep you busy all day:  setting up your blog(s), adding content, adding to directories, tweeting about it, FaceBooking about it, forum posting, finding good affiliate programs for it, contacting other sites to link to you, setting up your PPC campaigns and tweaking them… and so on.

If you get tempted to start ANOTHER campaign at the same time, well, your chances of generating revenue just dropped 50%.   What winds up happening is both of these campaigns are done half-assed because you spread yourself too thin.  Your site’s content will suck because you won”t have time to write frequent, good content, and as a result your sites won’t make it to the first page of Google, and/or they won’t convert.

The only way around this is to leverage your time by OUTSOURCING the SEO.  There are content writers in India and the Philippines who can crank out content for you at reasonable prices, but you need to get over the urge of doing everything yourself.

Example 1. If your main strategy is selling ClickBank products, do ONE PRODUCT AT A TIME.  What I mean by this is, do everything you need to do to get your campaign producing a steady stream of income before you even think about starting a second one.  If you are driving traffic through PPC and direct linking, well, make sure your campaign is tweaked and making you money before you abandon it and jump to another product.  Otherwise you’ll be like a dog chasing its tail.

Example 2.  If you plan to create a comparison site for several Clickbank products and don’t plan to use PPC, then put all your energy in making the best site you can in terms of keyword targeting and search engine optimization.  Then, hit the off-site SEO hard.  Stay focused until you see the dollars rolling in.

A third guideline can be to limit yourself to no more than 2 or 3 niches; two preferably.  Remember, as you take on more niches, you are diluting yourself.  It’s like biting off more than you can chew, and you will LOSE.

Ok, here’s a simple task you can do as part of you rehabilitation.  When you are in the mood to take a stab making money online, write down your niche, campaign, and vehicle.  Turn off all other distractions (email, forums, blogs, web surfing) and implement the Golden Rule.  Examples below:

Niche:  Persian Rugs

Campaign: Persian Rug CPA Offers in CJ and PepperJam

Vehicle:  WordPress SEO optimized blog

————————-

Niche:  Weight Loss

Campaign:  ClickBank product FatLoss4 Idiots

Vehicle:  PPC

Remember, DO NOT change or start a new niche, campaign or vehicle until you FINISH what you started by seeing the MONEY rolling in.  Be disciplined!  Do whatever it takes to keep you focused.

Now, go for it.

Affiliate Classroom is the premier, all-in-one “learning platform” on affiliate marketing.  Members enjoy access to a comprehensive library of training modules, case studies, special tools, videos, and webinars that cover every aspect of affiliate marketing.  You’ll learn things like:

• how to do research to find a good niche
• how to build a website optimized for affiliate marketing
• how to drive traffic to your website:  free and paid (PPC)
• how to get into CPA networks
• monetization models
• and much, much more

Affiliate Classroom has three levels of courses, designated Level 100, Level 200 and Level 300.  As of the writing of this post, Levels 100 and 200 have 29 courses each on various topics; and Level 300 has seven (7) courses.    Members are free to go through as many as they like.  Since Affiliate Classroom members have varying levels of expertise in affiliate marketing, some may choose to skip certain lessons that they are already proficient in.  The most basic beginners should go through all the courses.  As members go through the training, they attain an affiliate marketing proficiency rating between 1 – 10.

The Affiliate Classroom Rating is based on successfully completing courses and reaching set milestones.  You move from one class to the next by completing three courses for each level (Levels 100, 200, and 300) and achieving certain success milestones as an affiliate:

AC members can reference their Affiliate Classroom rating on applications to affiliate programs, with a link to the AC site.  This tells the affiliate manager that you are serious about your business as you are undertaking formal training in affiliate marketing, and may be helpful in getting accepted into the program.

There are other online affiliate marketing courses out there, but I believe that this is the one you want to go with.   The material is well written, it is presented in a logical sequence; “learning reinforcement” elements such as quizzes, case studies, and related articles are available to ensure students master the concepts; members can participate in a user forum to get more insight into affiliate marketing from their peers, and the customer support is great.

One word of caution; though:  when you sign up for the free trial, be prepared for a series of upsells during the checkout process.  Live bootcamps and mentorships are offered at extra cost.  It’s up to you if you want to buy in; they do seem like great value.

I am going through a course called Profit Loophole by an internet marketer named Dave Kelly.  Dave insists that this particular business model, when done correctly (per his experience) has long-term profit potential compared to other, popular internet marketing models.

Dave insists that there is a market of people who buy websites, dress them up a bit, and sell them at a higher price (just like house flipping).  Some of them even keep the website and try to monetize it with AdSense ads, affiliate offers, and their own products.  It all depends on the website’s niche and how much traffic it generates.

Here are the minimum requirements of a website that has the potential to be sold:

1) Indexed in Google, even if just 1 page indexed
2) Has a current Page Rank of at least 2 on the Google toolbar
3) Is a non hyphenated .com, .net, or .org domain
4) Has at least 1 link pointing to the site when using the link:domain.com operator in Google
5) The sites can be of any type, static HTML or Blog, it is not important as the potential buyer would not use your existing content.

But the two things that gives websites the most value are:

1) the amount of monthly hits to the site (traffic)
2) the amount of email subscribers to the site

So, if you can build up a website property that has these two features, chances are someone is willing to buy it from you.  Afterall, these are the two main reasons why Google purchased YouTube for over a billion dollars (YouTube as a business line does not make much money for Google to this day, and may even be losing money.  Google is still figuring out ways to monetize its traffic).

Just another avenue to throw into the mix.  Remember, don’t get caught in the internet marketing spiderweb.   You can try more than one model, but don’t spread yourself too thin; otherwise you’ll get nowhere.