You see, the fact is that .00001% of newcomers online will likely make that kind of money in a weekend. In fact, it will probably take them a minimum of a year to fully understand some of the basics principles of business and how to go about selling online. Making a lot of money online, whether it be through pay per click, search engine optimization, joint ventures, or other forms of advertising media, all takes time and effort.

Time is really a crucial factor when it comes to business. You learn as you go but even more importantly, you become wiser as you go. It’s one thing to teach someone HTML; it’s a completely different story to have that person go out and create their first website from a pure coding standpoint. Hopefully you can see the point I am trying to foster here. Time, patience, energy, and relationships are what make a great business.

Certainly all other factors play a role as well, like the advertising mediums previously mentioned; however it is important to point out that you should not be solely focused on “making the sale”. You should be focused on “making your business”. This is one of the many pitfalls people endure when trying to strike it rich online. I myself was included in this phenomenom of “need this to make that”. I bought into one program after another, sky-rocketed my debt, and was left feeling hopeless. Fast forward a few years and things have turned around but certainly not without some hard work.

If you want to make money online, I am not telling you to dis-regard marketing techniques, but instead to focus your mental attention on the website, business, or whatever item it is that you are working on. You cannot make a great website within a week’s time. Big time powerful websites are built up over many years. If you are focused on affiliate marketing, focus on giving the end user a unique perspective on what it is you are offering. Be creative and be honest. Let your website grow over time and think of ways to make it grow.

Perhaps you could add a community software section, or a discussion board. People love to become engaged in whatever it is they like to do. This is otherwise known as passion. Speaking of passion, everyone is able to tell when someone is making a website for the pure sake of money, or whether they want to help people as well. Don’t become a “thin” promoter, become a full time marketer.

• United States
• Canada
• New Zealand
• Australia
• UK
• Japan
• France
• Germany
• Ireland
• Sweden
• Spain
• Switzerland
• Italy
• and others…

When most folks are getting started in a marketing program for their business, whether it be online (it should) or not, they tend to look over some basic facts. Take a look at your sale stats right now (if you have any yet) and see where your sales are coming from. Granted you can’t sell your services to everyone in every country, but you may be missing out on a huge opportunity if you decide to stick just to your native country. Depending on what you are selling, you may not be able to ship goods around the world.

This is why offering a digital solution of your program (if feasible) is a great idea. By allowing the end user to purchase your program and have it right away via the internet or download, you are opening up your market share quite substantially. Most purchases made online are done in North America – no one will dispute that. What if you gained an extra 5% in sales from other countries though? How much would that add to your market revenue for the year?

A lot of people laugh and scoff at tiny numbers when it comes to sales but in reality, it’s the tiny numbers that when added together, produce those giant figures you see. So the next time you are thinking of doing a marketing campaign, look at the stats. Try advertising to some new areas and measure the return on investment from those countries. You may even see a greater conversion ratio than expected.

Do you know what you are doing when it comes to your online business? If you haven’t the slightest clue of how to run a profitable pay per click campaign, or rank for a keyphrase that doesn’t even exist, then you need to re-think your plan. The best way to learn the “ropes” of marketing is to get your feet wet at the start. By doing some of the basic tasks in the beginning, you will have at least some knowledge to help you instruct people who you plan to hire.

Do you really expect someone to work for you as a freelancer and turn your business into a multi-million dollar campaign? Of course not… or at least I hope not. Outsourcing is the perfect way to scale up your business, only AFTER you know what to do – in order to succeed. If you know you need to rank for a bunch of long-tail phrases, then get writers to give you quality, original content. Hire another set of people to focus on attaining quality backlinks, through link-bait, press releases, or any of the various forms. Just make sure your site is actually worth linking to.

If you rather spend money on a quicker pace, hire people to research hundreds of keyphrases for you. You could then plug these into one campaign after another and split-test the results. The problem with outsourcing, is that many people feel the work will not be up to par – if they don’t do it themselves. The bad thing about this, is that you are shooting yourself in the foot. How can you expect to have hundreds of sales a day, unless you have thousands of pages of content, links, promotions, and strategies in place?

Before I was earning a consistent few thousand dollars every month from my online efforts, I had spent years focusing on the wrong aspects of the business. Now while focusing on the financial freedom is a good thing in retrospect, it can distort your business perception. What I mean by this is to not let it captivate you.

When you are worried about how many dollars you earned today in the business, you begin to act strange and sway away from your business operations. You know you have a problem when you check your Clickbank account 30 times a day. Logging into your account 1-2 times a day is all that should be needed. Besides, logging into your account doesn’t earn you money. If that were the case, I’d be logging in all day!

That is time wasted, lost, never to be regained. You could of been focusing your time and energy writing another article, submitting it for publication, or adding it to your newsletter. Always try to think creatively and just add one new “thing” to your business each day. Whether it is some more keyword research, a new article to a website, another newsletter, or a new video for your members – make sure it is SOMETHING.

These are the actions that add value to your online “empire”. I put empire in quotes because no one person can really have an empire over the markets of the net. It is just too vast. You should however be concentrating on mini-empires. Build quality websites in niche markets and try to establish yourself as an authority within those markets. This is how you gain a reputation. This is how success is built.

Like I’ve said many times in the past, building a business online will not happen overnight but it can certainly happen. Once you are able to rid yourself of the “I want it now” attitude and just focus on what works, you will start to see things fall in place. Grab that marketing plan you had, set aside the distractions that you see daily, and just start building. The more you build the more you earn. Here’s one last tip too – keep building on what you already have. Each time you set off on a new venture, you are shooting yourself in the foot if you don’t know what you are doing.

Why? If it takes 6-9 months to really get something going, and you keep re-starting every 4-5 months, then you will never see success. So just build and build on what you have (making sure of course the market is profitable). Once you do this – you will see things in a new light.

The most successful home based business are the “mom and pop” shops, run by people who apply themselves and stick to their plan. Yup, take it for what’s it’s worth, but there are many more successful business people online, who are not the “experts”… as opposed to people who know a great deal and SHOULD be the ones doing well. Why is this and why is this so backward? Well to look at the cause of this, we first have to get into the mind of each person.

Person “A” for this example will be the average guy or girl. Person “B” will be the 4.0 university graduate who knows all the skills for every program he or she works with. Now at first glance, one would assume that person “B” is obviously the better candidate for starting a home business. After all, they were dedicated enough to finish school, had amazing grades, and holds the knowledge of many technical programs. Person “A” is… well just average? I mean, what do they have against this graduate?

Now, person “A” might be your run o’ the mill Jack or Jill, but they just do what they are told and stick to the game-plan. They didn’t finish college. Heck they had to go to remedial school after they graduated from high school. They work at the local restaurant, and have no hope of being the next big CEO. “Ouch!” you say… that is a pretty bleak picture you just painted… ah but it gets better.

When it comes to creating an online business for yourself, there are two main factors behind the wheel of success. Those would include:

• Focus on the “plan”
• Having the “plan” to follow

The major difference between these two imaginary people is…. their outlook. Ok, you say… what the heck are you getting at? I’m getting at this…

For the average person, following a plan seems simple. All you have to do is check off the items as you follow them. For the graduate, they have to think things through, discuss them, try to work in their own angle, and the list goes on. It isnt’ their fault. This is the way we are taught.

Many “average” people seem to make it big, because they can simply follow a formula for online success without debating it and arguing with it. They don’t try to know every single thing there is to know. They just get their feet wet and start “getting in there”.

It’s kind of like popping a balloon with a hunting knife. Sure a pin would have worked fine, but no matter what you use, it will eventually pop. The same principle applies to online businesses. If you keep at it and follow the plans you have obtained, you will get there one day. No it won’t be overnight. That is a common misconception with the populace today – everything must be instantaneous because it’s the Internet. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

So for all you people who want to “know it all”. Except the fact that you are wasting your time. Just start “doing” and stop “thinking”. You will be amazed at what it can do for you…

Newbies as you may commonly know is a word referring to beginners. It can be a beginner in anything, not just online marketing. Now what I want you people to understand is this. Setting out on a “journey” to make money online, will not yield results within your first week. Please let this information sink into your head folks. Far too often I see people saying that they are so confused on how to get started with their own business. The reason? There is too much information, too many courses, too many “angles” to tackle the problem. This is also called information overload.

This I agree with. So what we have to do is break it down into a manageable format for your “newbs” to follow. First things first here. Just because someone is having success or failure with one particular method of marketing, does not in any way mean that you too will experience the same result. I am sure you have heard of a “launch” before. Product launches may seem like a phenomenon related solely to the IM niche, but they are nothing new. Everytime a product is added to a company’s catalog in the real world, it is a product “launch”.

Now with these launches come “hype” and I say it in quotes, because it really isn’t bad hype, but rather a means of getting the customer base excited about a particular product. It happens everyday all around you, each day of the year. From restaurants to stores to friends – everyone is triggering an emotion inside of you, whether you realize it or not.

This I feel, is one of the main reasons why so many newcomers to online marketing simply call it quits. Their emotions are being stretched thin from every angle and every newsletter. They say to build a list, the next week they claim to use pay per click, and yet another week claims that social media is the way of the future. For someone just starting, how are you supposed to know who or what to believe? The answer is rather astonishing…

Believe yourself. Look at the core principles of business to see what works. In order to sell something you have to have 1) a product and 2) a market. It really isn’t complicated at all. All of these so called methods and ways of the “future” are just a new way of grabbing hold of visitors. People have been buying and selling for thousands of years and the internet is just another medium in which to do so.

So if you are scratching your head in doubt wondering which option works… the answer is they all do. So stop worrying and start focusing on your business. Build those websites, get those rankings, create those ads, and watch the rest fall nicely in order.

An internet business is like any other kind of business, except that it is digital by nature. This means that your advertising mediums must be via the web for the best results (traditional advertising mediums such as newspapers can also be effective). They could be in the format of video, text, audio, or a combination of all three. With the sudden rise and popularity of video on the web, my vote goes towards video as the one item you should be using on your sales page. Even if it is just a welcome message with someone saying “hello”, it needs to be there. People feel an interaction and a connection with someone when they get to see them, hear them, and listen to them.

So, now that you know you must use video to market your web business properly in 2009, how do you get visitors to actually see the sales page you have? This question requires some thought and it would be best if you sit down for a while and begin to think of the target market that your business “talks” to. What kind of people are most likely to purchase your products or services? Are they teenagers, middle-aged, or elderly people? What is the average income (estimate) of someone who buys your products?

All of these kinds of questions are vital when you are forming your business blueprint. From the answers you write down, you can then formulate a plan that meets the needs of your target market in terms of:

• website design
• advertising strategy
• “lingo” of the market
• proper price to charge
• emotional “triggers” to use
• and more…

Website Design

Website design is an obvious one. If you view any childrens’ websites, you will see that they are colorful and full of fun shapes. They include talking characters, animations, and everything that attracts a young person’s eye. Now go ahead and do a search for luxury yachts. Are you going to see an animated duck talking about the specifications of the twin-engine diesel yacht? No, absolutely not. This is what I mean by the website design cooperating with the target market.

Advertising Strategies

The next point is advertising strategy. This is where you decide how you are going to get those visitors to your website. With all due respect to the other types of advertising, there are only two or three main ways of driving traffic on the web. They include:

• Pay Per Click
• Search Engine Optimization
• Social Media

You can pay for each individual visitor that comes to your site, by placing relevant ads on search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN. You set the price you want to pay per click and then measure your adspend vs sales. This type of advertising is quite effective, fast, and a great way to “test the waters” of any potential market, IF you have the money to spend. I say “IF”, because many people burn a hole in their wallet before they even have a chance to log into their pay per click account the next day. So tread carefully if you are new to PPC.

Second on the plate is search engine optimization or “SEO”. Now I don’t care who you are, what your budget is, or what your level of skill is in regards to marketing online. You SHOULD be using search engine strategies for your website promotion. This method is a long and patient one, but well worth it. Essentially, you are trading your time for money by utilizing the process of structuring your website, so that in a few months it can appear in the results of searches on the web. The payoff is loads of free, targeted traffic.

Last but not least we have video. Now at the present time, there is very limited knowledge in the way of ranking your videos on the search engines, so millions of people can see them, BUT you can still create useful videos and post them to sites such as YouTube and MetaCafe. These sites are viewed by millions of people a day and in turn, offer a great way for you to get the word out there about your business.

Market Lingo

The lingo of the market is also very important. What is this lingo you speak of Marcus? Well what I mean by this, is the common language used by the people that are involved in your market. For example, let’s look at  the saltwater fish hobby. I am involved with this hobby so I can assure you there is an “in-market lingo” used that is not used elsewhere. You will have terms being used such as calcium reactor, sump, siphon hole, live rock, aragonite, phosphorous, and other things that may confuse the average person. However, to an avid hobbyist, these words make perfect sense. So it’s all about getting the right “words” out there and making yourself an authority within the market.

Proper Price

Although somewhat obvious, this may be an overlooked item on the checklist for success. I can’t tell you how many people have a product or service they are promoting, and create a price for it out of thin air. At the very least, you should be doing SOME competition browsing and taking notes of what other people are charging for a similar service. If all of the used car dealers in your area were selling 1996 used vans for $6,000 dollars, would you go out then and sell your 1996 van for $15,000 dollars?

Emotional Triggers

This is a very important step when selling or pre-selling your product. Depending on whether or not you are an affiliate or a merchant, this may vary a bit but the principles are the same. Visitors that come to your site are not statistics, they are human beings with needs and wants. They have problems and they want a solution to their problem. As long as you offer a moral viable solution to their issue, you can effectively use known emotional triggers to help get a response out of them, such as buying your product or signing up to your membership or whatever it is that you do.

Hopefully these tips can help you focus your marketing strategies a bit more, and as always, if you want some free lessons like the one offered here, make sure you sign up to my free lessons via email.

Data entry has been so obscured and twisted in the past few years that it has become nothing but a scam. Data entry itself originally was involved with secretarial work and writing forms, letters, and this sort of thing, and then it got switched over to the internet and data entry became a popular way for spammers to really confuse beginners into purchasing their product and this sort of thing. Data entry is ppc advertising. Nine out of ten times when you see a program that promises that all you have to do is write an ad for 5 minutes a day and you make $250 bucks, that is just screaming fraud, you know? There is no other way to put it.

Think of it this way. You are new to the whole online marketing thing and the economy is rough and you are trying to look for a way to put a few extra dollars in the bank to help out your family; you then see this site that offers a program and they say they are going to show you how to make $500 a day. All you will have to do is write an ad in Google. With this ad you will be able to make it big. I can’t tell you how many people fall for this trap. The trap itself is promising people the world simply by writing an ad.

It is true that you can make $200-$500-$5000 a day if you really wanted to, by using advertising services through Google (ie: Adwords). So it is true that you can make a great deal of money with the ppc advertising method. Essentially, you have a website and on that website you have a product you promote. Maybe you are simply directing visitors and traffic from your website directly to another company’s site, and you earn commissions on any sales generated through you.

You do this through Pay Per Click advertising. So if someone was searching for a way to stop their anxiety problem and you offered a product which taught people how to cope with anxiety, you could place an ad on Google and Yahoo. You could rack up $20 in advertising but you would make a sale (hopefully) and make $10 to $20 profit. So if you keep multiplying that formula, you can keep generating a substantial income for yourself.

Pay per click is no fraud. It is a basic fact of business on the internet and everyone uses it. But I want to make sure that you understand that data entry and pay per click have been mistakenly mixed together and there is a big difference between how you should approach the subject. In a nutshell, don’t keep searching for data entry programs ok? Stop believing that you are going to get paid for putting an ad online. You are only going to get paid when people come through to your website and end up buying a product. That is where most people get confused. So hopefully this lesson cleared up any confusion you may have had in regards to this way of making money online and working from home.

The reason for this is simple. Being an affiliate is simply that. An affiliate is someone that sells the products of another person or another company and they end up making a commission on any sales that are tracked through their account. You can think of affiliate marketing almost as digital real estate. A real estate agent earns a commission when they sell a house. They earn maybe 5-10% percent. With affiliate marketing you typically see commission rates anywhere between 30-75%.

I have even heard of products that pay back a 200% commission rate. That is crazy stuff folks. That means if the product itself costs $100 – you are getting $200 per sale. The company or person doing this can only afford to do so because they must be making a lot of money on the back-end of their product with other promotions and offers but that is besides the point.

So in a nutshell, affiliate marketing works like this. You have a website and on that website you have a whole ton of useful articles and visitors come to your website by simply searching on the search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN. When they come to your website they read your articles and may end up buying a product.

Let’s say that someone was searching for ways to tune their guitar. Well if your website was all about guitar and you had an article that taught them how to tune that guitar; then at the end of that article, you have a link that goes off to another website. Well, that other website has a product that teaches people how to play the guitar, tune their instrument, play songs, and so on.

If that person ended up buying, you would get a commission because they went through your own personalized affiliate link. You get the credit for the sale and you would earn “$xx.xx” amount. So essentially, affiliate marketing is a groundwork for traffic brokering. You are driving traffic as a middle man through to a parent company or website and you earn money on all sales made through you.

Now affiliate marketing has a good deal of substance to it. It actually has a lot of substance to it. There are different ways to go about promoting products. You can have a blog, you can have your own website, you can go through pay per click marketing, you can do search engine optimization, you can advertise on other sites in your particular niche or industry and ask to advertise on their sites. More often than not, many website owners would be happy to receive a payment to place an ad for relevant material on their site if it is useful to their visitors.

You could grow a member base by using subscription software and get yourself a large list of subscribers which with whom you can communicate to and promote to them down the line. You could ask family and friends if they would be interested in one of the products you have to offer and simply let them know you get the commission. It could be a way to get you started and earn some pocket change too. There definately isn’t a shrotage of markets to promote too. You are only limited by the amount of time you have and the amount of work you put into your own business.

So what are these principles of business that an affiliate entrepreneur needs in order to be a success? Well the first one is patience. Without patience you are likely going to fail, especially in a market where relying on your own business ideas will take time and perhaps it may not work the first time around.

Consider the light bulb for a moment. The light bulb took many thousands of tries in order to finally be a success. Now what if you took that same example and applied it to your own business. Can you imagine how many people would give up before, even the 20th attempt at their own business? So patience is definitely a virtue but it is also a quality which many successful business owners attain. So it is important to keep that in mind when you are going about your daily business.

The second principle which is extremely important to have is something in the way of business versus emotion. You should never allow your emotions to rule your business decisions. Many people don’t even realize that they are being governed by their own inner self. Consider for a moment someone who is starting a new business and they decide to look around the internet for new ideas and ways in which they can expand their sales. On top of that it just so happens this week was a bad week for them.

Yet they just so happen to come across a product that promises to expand their sales. This person becomes feverish and suddenly decides to buy. Now without even knowing it, this person allowed their emotions to rule them, to judge them and to ultimately effect their purchasing power. This is a trait which successful entrepreneurs have mastered and overcome. They can separate their emotion from regular business decisions.

You see, when you are able to separate your emotions from your decisions, then you are effectively able to maintain your personal life from your business life. The point I am trying to make here is that your emotions may be able to negatively work against you within your business. Sometimes they may work for the better but a lot of the time it works for the worse.

This is how success is made on the internet. It does not come easy. It can come in time with patience and it doesn’t have to be difficult, but it isn’t easy. Far too many people believe that by simply having a website you can be a success. In order to be a success on the internet you have to focus, have a plan, do your market research, and you have to have the desire to work from home. Understanding marketing concepts will also help your cause. If you attack a market with no research, your chances for success are extremely low.

Making money online is not as simply as some people make it out to be. It is possible though as long as you stick with a game plan and keep building upon your business instead of jumping around from product to product like a fly on poop. If you want your own home business, you are going to have to get motivated. Without motivation, you have nothing.