Tip of the Day

January 3, 2010 by affiliate starting line · Comment
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing Tips, Affiliate Marketing for Beginners

: Image via Wikipedia

Affiliate Marketing for Beginners

When I first started my business, I attended a class at the Small Business Administration on “Starting a Business”. The instructor, a professor from a nearby business school, came into the room, introduced himself, and then told us we would begin with a little exercise.

He asked the first two rows of the class to remain seated. He then asked for the remainder of the class to stand up. That was about two thirds of the people in attendance.

He then went to tell us that those standing represented the number of businesses that would fail in their first year.

With that sobering point well illustrated, he went on to discuss the importance of developing a business plan. Get all the information you can possibly think of and put it all on paper. The most important being your market research.

As the saying goes a failure to plan is a plan for failure.

So before you go to all that trouble of designing and loading up your Web site. Do your keyword research, set up a test blog, and see if there is any interest. You will be glad you did.

May Your Travels Be Prosperous

Tags: affiliate marketing for beginners, Business plan, Small business

Online Home Based Business

November 25, 2009 by affiliate starting line · Comment
Filed under: Affiliate Starting Line, Internet Marketing

Is A Home Based Business Right for You?

Are you thinking of starting a home based business on line? Attracted by all the claims of fortunes made?

Starting your own home business can bring a lot of benefits with it; being your own boss is one is one of them. Deciding when to work and when to play is another. And the upside in income is unlimited depending on how much time and effort you want to put in.

So where do you start?

1) Decide what really drives your interest and passion. It could be the experience and knowledge you have acquired from your current job. Stick with what you know; only this time you make all the revenue.

2) Develop a budget. It is going to take some investment to get started so do some research and develop with a plan with some numbers. How much can you afford and how much are you willing to invest? There are options that are free and may offer the prospect of starting with no investment. While they are helpful in learning some of the techniques of marketing a product online, they are not always very effective at driving revenue.

3) Join some online forums and just cruise to see what people are asking about and see what some of the answers are. They generally have sections for newbies and they are very helpful at teaching you what you should be looking for in setting up your affiliate marketing or Intenet business.

4) Set some goals for what you want to achieve with dates and benchmarks. What potential revenue targets can you set that are reasonable to achieve? Do some research on the market sector you have chosen. Again, here forums and blogs are a great source of information. Check out the sites of the star affiliate marketers in the product area you are interested in. Google the keywords and see who pops up.

5) Network with people who have already established a successful online venture and see if you can learn from their experiences. You are not alone in going through the experience of starting an Internet business and there are plenty of people who will help out if you ask.
6) Come up with a final business plan or action outline to carry out. Review it and make adjustments based on an assessment by an independent third party. Try coming up with a list of 3-4 products you would like to market.

Then the fun begins! Take action; get online and begin to set yourself up. Remember a plan has to be flexible. It will change and adjust as you make your way through the marketplace. It will time and persistence and some help along the way. Once again, forums are a great place to turn to for assistance.

Make sure you understand your online market and your customer. That will be vital to your success.

Good luck and may your travels be prosperous!

Tags: affiliate marketing, blog, business, Business plan, google, Home business, Internet forum, marketing, online home based business, Small business

Review of the Day

May 31, 2009 by affiliate starting line · 1 Comment
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing Reviews, Affiliate Marketing for Beginners, Affiliate Starting Line, Internet Marketing

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Thought I’d review the Internet Marketing process I learned from the 30 Day Challenge. It is an approach that makes sense and applies to a product or service offering that you may have in mind. It also addresses the fact that most online (and offline for that matter) business start ups fail for the following reason. They have the process wrong from the beginning.

A lot of people pick a product or develop a technology and then try to find a market for it. That is putting the cart before the horse and is why lots of money and effort go to waste.

The 30 Day Challenge process does not do that. It is as follows: market research, traffic, conversion, product.

Market Research

Market research involves taking an idea and doing some serious keyword research at the outset. That means finding out what people are actually using as search terms when looking for a product or service. What terms are they using? How often are those terms being used in a 24 hour period? In short what are they looking for specifically. You want to mine your research to find a niche that allows you to start a small business under the radar. You don’t want to pick an area where the big guys will crush you in a minute.

There are tools and methods to help you do that. Google adwords, Wordtracker and one that I like Market Samurai.

Once you have developed your keyword list, you are ready to test for traffic with a test product or service.

Traffic

Traffic is one of the critirea of keyword selection. You need to pick keywords that have a minimum volume of use in order to assure that enough traffic (better known as customer demand) is there for your product or service. That demand has to be qualified demand, people who want to buy, not customers who are just browsing.

How do you create traffic? One way is to write content, ie articles, and post on different sites and article directories. The other way involves buying your traffic through Pay Per Click on Google Adwords. The latter involves an investment of anywhere from $100 to $500 in the early stages.

Conversion

Once you have traffic coming in, you want to measure the volume that is visiting your site. 200 visits per day is the minimum volume the 30 Day Challenge looks for. If you have a 1% conversion rate you would get 2 buyers per day. That is considered low. If you get a 5% conversion rate, or 10 buyers per day, that is considered great and you have a winner site.

Product selection

Product selection occurs after you have passed the keyword selection, traffic and conversion testing and you know you have a site that will convert. If it does not convert, drop the test site and start over.

If you have a site that tests well, then you go and search for a series of products or services that will build on the product or service concept you just tested. You are now on your way to building your Internet Marketing business.

This in short is the 30 Day Challenge process. It is one that I have found makes far more sense to me than the get rich quick schemes that proliferate the Web. This is not a short and easy path to riches. It is a methodical approach to starting an Internet Marketing business whether you try the 30 Day Challenge or chose to go your own way.

Take a look for your self and see if it makes sense for you. I think you will find it does.

May Your Travels Be Prosperous