If you’ve been engaging in IM over the years, you are probably used to the hype and constant bombardment of internet marketing products from all the people whose list you signed up for.  It gets mind numbing sometimes.

Listen, I’m here to help inject some sanity.  You can say I’m a hardened IM– I’ve reached a point where I can ignore the hype of some re-hashed worthless launch, but can also recognized something with true utility.

Anyways, I am going to be posting a series of my IM Journal entries.  Yes, I use my Outlook Journal to write down my thoughts before I forget them, and to add clarity and direction to my efforts.  Hope you can learn from these.  You can think of them as the filtered, concentrated knowledge from pages and pages of IM info.  Here’s the first one.

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Date:  4/29/2008

The path to internet marketing success has two basic pillars:

• Keyword research
• Affiliate program research:  Amazon, eBay, etc.
• CPA research
• Website construction
• Blog construction
• AdSense set up
• E-Book creation
• Video Product creation
• Audio/ podcast Product creation
• Webinar creation

Major B Functions:

E-Book publishing for Amazon Kindle store
- Internet Riches for the Little Guy?
-Blogging

Ok, that’s the first entry in my IM journal.  I recommend you start one, too, because you will come across some “a-ha” moments that you’ll need to write down (don’t trust yourself to remember it, because you will be distracted by the next big IM launch and all those promo emails.  So…. get to work!

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

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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.

Clickbank has an easy-to-follow process to create a Payment Link– the HTML code one puts on his sales page that takes the purchaser to Clickbank’s payment processing system– beats the heck of having to buy an expensive shopping cart system.

But the true power comes from CB’s affiliate link system:  all an affiliate has to do to sell a vendor’s product and get paid a commission is to create a link in this format:

http://AFFILIATE.VENDOR.hop.clickbank.net,

where AFFILIATE is the CB nickname of the affiliate, and VENDOR is the CB nickname of the vendor.   Affiliates promote CB products (they can sell an unlimited amount) using their special link on websites, on forums, on internet bulletin boards and classifieds like Craigslist, and by emailing to friends– basically anywhere on the internet where you can include your affiliate link.

When a prospect clicks the affiliate’s link, he is taken to the vendor’s sales page and a “cookie” is placed on his computer– a script that tells Clickbank (if he buys is) that he was referred by that particular affiliate.  If he winds up buying the product, CB tracks the purchase and the affiliate gets a commission.  Commissions are set by the vendor and can range between 25-75% of the product price.  CB deducts 7.5% of the sale price + $1.00 per sale.

Let me tell you that there are some people who are making 5-figures each MONTH selling Clickbank products.  The name of the game is to get a lot of clicks to your affiliate links.   The most popular approaches are PPC, blogs, using Social Media like Facebook and Twitter, natural search, and email spamming (don’t do this!)

As with many opportunities to make money online, it has gotten a bit more challenging making a lot of money through Clickbank due to increased competition and a general decline in appeal of the long-copy sales page approach.  But since there are new people coming online evey day, the opportunity to make it big still persists.

The ancient way to make a website was to write the code in HTML yourself and upload the .html files to a server.  You purchased a domain name from Network Solutions, and assigned it to your web host’s server.

Then HTML editors came along.  The most popular one is Adobe (formerly Macromedia) Dreamweaver CS3, which at the time of this writing sells for $399.   HTML editors are designed to enable website creation without having to deal directly with code.  They have a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) interface.  They allow you to type text, create tables, insert videos, insert hyperlinks, and change fonts and colors by using buttons/links on the editor’s control panels.   There is still a learning curve to use editors like Dreamweaver, but it’s nothing like having to learn a programming language.  People love it because of its simplicity of use.

Now there are free html editors that you can download to your computer.   They aren’t as comprehensive and versatile as Dreamweaver, but they can still get the job done.  Examples include Kompozer and Trellian.

One particularly interesting free website creator is Blinkweb.   It allows you to drag and drop commonly used website elements such as text boxes, image boxes, forms, and columns onto a working page.  Blinkweb is perhaps the fastest and most “dummy-proof” free website creator and creates surprisingly good looking websites.  However, if you absolutely need to have more control over colors, fonts, and layout it doesn’t give you the versatility to make these changes.  But if you want to put up a decent website really fast, Blinkweb may be the answer.

A website creator that is in a category all by itself  is Sitebuildit, or SBI.  SBI is an all-in-one, web-based “internet business creation” system that takes you from your idea to a full-blown, income producing website.  It has various modules with integrated tools that teach you how to handle common challenges each step of the way.  For example, it even helps you choose a subject/niche to base your website on using the Brainstormit module.  SBI also helps with search engine optimization and shopping carts.  It’s got thousands of loyal followers who help each other out on the forums.

graphic representation of the internet

In 2009, what we have is a larger, highly efficient internet:  faster servers, huge bandwidth, faster routers.  Also, hi-speed internet(cable/DSL)  is the norm now; not ancient dial up (remember that scratchy, high-pitched sound?).   Phone companies continue to lay down internet cables and now pretty much all of the U.S. except for the remote regions are covered.  Add in wireless towers, and the reach is greater.

But the other phenomenon that is occurring is that the internet no longer seen as a “technical activity.”  People who otherwise avoid technical things are as comfortable using the internet as they are using a telephone.  It is finding its way into more and more peoples’ lives, from 10 year olds to 115 year olds.  These people are joining the bandwagon and are realizing what everyone else has for quite some time:  that the internet is essentially a “window to the world.”

As more people spend time surfing the internet, they expose themselves to various kinds of websites:  news, ecommerce, entertainment, and…websites that sells something (an eBook, a program or course, or merchandise) to improve a weak area in their lives:  financial, relationship, sex, health.  And this is where it all begins.

Here’s the evolution:  Joe Newbie runs into one of these websites, joins its email list, and gets emailed “the next greatest thing” to make more money/attract more women/build more muscle….etc.  He buys one product, joins its mailing list, and gets even more emails hailing the next best thing to make more money/attract more women/build more muscle….etc.  And after a while, Joe Newbie himself gets into the fray and sets up his own system to make more money/attract more women/build more muscle, etc. and the beast keeps growing exponentially.

This phenomenon is especially bad in the internet marketing field:   there are hundreds of seductive programs out there, with professionally-written ad copy that make it hard to leave without making a purchase.

To summarize:

Anyone with a heartbeat, a computer, and internet connection can offer to sell something online, and there are a lot of anyones!

Getting into the internet marketing field is like getting caught in a huge spider web (funny how the graphic of the internet at the beginning of this post resembles a spiderweb!).  It’s very seductive (strong suggestions of getting ridiculously wealthy) and those who are not “in the know” are prone to getting mired in a sea of information that saps your valuable time and money.  I recently freed myself from this spiderweb and can now share my story.

Keep visiting this blog, and I will help you decide where to focus your energies in your internet marketing ventures.

Cheers,

Dan

If you are one of these people, listen up:  as a person who has dabbled in and out of internet marketing since 1997, let me tell you what you’re about to get into.

But first, a little background:

The internet is a massive array of computers all over the world connected by cables.  There are two basic kinds, servers, which store the websites (files)  found on the internet; and PCs, which “read” the websites.  Browsers, like Internet Explorer and Firefox, are software applications pre-installed on most PCs that translate a website page’s code into a visual, usable display consisting of text, graphics, multimedia, and links.   You type in a website’s address into your browser, and presto– you’re “on the internet.”

Think deeper, and it becomes apparent that anyone in the WORLD who has an internet connection can see what you see online (with the exception of those whose governments restrict access).   So, if a person in China and a person in Mobile, Alabama types in www.youtube.com, they will see the same page.

Way back in the mid 1990s when the internet was getting off the ground, entrepreneurial minds smelled something big.  As they dabbled on the internet, they saw the future and “CHA-CHING!”  –the new Gold Rush was on.  These opportunistic people immediately realized that the internet was a very cheap way to reach consumer markets.  They correctly predicted that in a typical home, the personal computer would be as popular as a television set, and internet connection would be as popular as a phone line.   But the most exciting part of it all was that selling things via the internet was essentially FREE in that, aside from the internet service provider, there was no entity to charge for having your website appear for all to see.

One of the eariliest of this select group is Amazon.com.  For those who recall the days of pre-Windows, Amazon had its advertisement for its online bookstore back in the days of black screens and light-blue text.  To this day Amazon does not have a “brick and mortar” store, sticking with the philosophy that it was possible to have an entirely on-line business model.  They proved it was possible, and the rest is history.

Next– a Zoo is born…