Everyone knows traffic = money, so here’s 50 ways you can get traffic to your website, affiliate offers, CPA campaigns etc. and hopefully make more money online

1. Write and submit articles to the article directories.

2. Leave comments on other people�s blogs with a backlink to your site.

3. Answer people�s questions on www.answers.yahoo.com.

4. Post in forums and have a link to your site in your signature.

5. Write a press release and submit it to www.PRWeb.com.

6. Advertise your website in the appropriate category on www.CraigsList.com.

7. Give an unbiased testimonial on a product/service that you have used in exchange for a backlink to your site.

8. Start a blog and submit it to the 100�s of free blog directories.

9. Manually submit your website to the major search engines.

10. Optimize each page of your website for a particular keyword or search phrase.

11. Add a link in your email signature to your website. It�s a free and easy way to get a little more traffic.

12. Make a custom 404 error page for your website redirecting people to your home page.

13. Use PPC search engine advertising.

14. Add a �bookmark this site� link to your webpages.

15. Have a tell-a-friend form on your site.

16. Send articles to ezine publishers that includes a link to your website.

17. Hold a crazy content and make it go viral.

18. Give away a freebie (ebook, report, e-course) to keep people coming back to your site.

19. Add an RSS feed to your blog.

20. Submit your site to any related niche directories on the net.

21. Participate in a banner or link exchange program.

22. Create a software program and give it away for free.

23. Purchase the misspellings or variations of your domain name, or those of your competitors.

24. Buy a domain name related to your niche that is already receiving traffic and forward it to your site.

25. Pass out business cards with your domain on them everywhere you go.

26. Start and affiliate program and let your affiliates send you visitors.

27. Start a page on social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter.

28. Submit a viral video to www.YouTube.com

29. Conduct and publish surveys to your website.

30. Find joint venture partners that will send you traffic.

31. Start your own newsletter or ezine.

32. Use a autoresponder or email campaign to keep people coming back to your site.

33. Purchase ads on other sites.

34. Send a free copy of your product to other site owners in exchange for a product review.

35. Sell or place classified ads on www.eBay.com with a link to your site.

36. Post free classified ads on any of the sites that allow them with a link to your site.

37. Exchange reciprocal links with other related websites.

38. Network with other people at seminars or other live events.

39. Purchase advertising in popular newsletters or ezines.

40. Advertise on other product�s �thank you� pages.

41. Create a free ebook and list in on the �free ebook� sites.

42. Buy and use a memorable domain name.

43. Do something controversial.

44. Create an Amazon profile and submit reviews for books and other products that you have read.

45. Start a lens on www.Squidoo.com.

46. Use a traffic exchange (low quality traffic, but can sometimes be worthwhile).

47. Get referrals form similar but non-competing sites.

48. Create and sell a product with resell or giveaway rights and include a link to your site in it o others pass it around for you.

49. Email your list. If you don�t have one, get one.

50. Buy a pair of sandals; get your website engraved on the bottom and walk on the beach, stomp in the mud or play in the snow.

What other traffic generation tips do you have? Leave me a comment and let me know – I’ll give the person with the best answer a $100.

Congrats To Doug Barger – the $100 WINNER!

By the way, here’s a report I wrote a few years back that’s got 247 ways you can get traffic to your websites. It usually sells for $7, but you can grab a copy free from here: http://www.traffictipsreport.com/free.
ХудожникОткъде да купя иконаидея за подаръкгеоложки проучваниясондажиикони

After all, the goal of all internet marketers (according to all the sales pages you see) is to sit on the beach sipping margaritas while you’re raking in tons of cash, right?

Well, maybe not quite, but we could all use some extra free time.

Luckily, when you work online you can outsource almost everything to people all over the world.

The hardest part of outsourcing though (at least for me) is to let someone else do stuff for you when you could certainly almost always do a better job if you did it yourself.

That brings me back to one of the first marketing seminars I attended, where someone said “It doesn’t have to be perfect � it just has to be good enough.”

It took a little while to sink in, but I adopted it for my business with a small change – “It doesn’t have to be perfect � it just has to be better than good enough.”

If you create a course that promises people they’ll be able to get 10,000 visitors to their website, it better do that, but should really show them how to get 15,000 or 20,000 visitors.

You should always try to under promise and over deliver, but that doesn’t mean it has to be perfect.

You could spend forever trying to get something perfect and never get there… or take so long, it’s too late and the opportunity passes you by.

It makes sense to get that new product or training course finished up and get it out into the market as fast as possible, rather then to take forever and never finish, help no one and not make any money.

The beauty of internet marketing (like accounting) is that you can outsource almost anything, like writing, design, programming, product creation, research, support, traffic generation, email marketing, copywriting, web design, editing, marketing, advertising and more.

Some things like info product creation, I don’t think I could ever totally outsource because it’s based on my knowledge, skills and experience � and no matter how hard I try, there’s no better expert on me than me. But I can outsource all the research, proofreading, formatting and other things that need to be done and that saves a ton of time.

Another easy way to deal with outsourcing is to hire people who are better than you.

If I need graphics, I hire a top designer. If I need sales copy, I’ll hire an expert. Since that’s what they do for a living and they’re top experts in their field, they’re going to do a fantastic job and you and your business will be more successful because of it.

The only real downside to outsourcing is the cost. So, outsource what you can afford to and aren’t good at and work only on the things you like doing and are good at. As your business grows, continue to outsource as much as you can � even things like housekeeping, cooking, yard work and pool maintenance can be outsourced. You’ll be a lot more successful and have a lot more free time!

What do you outsource? And what else could you, or should you be outsourcing?

1. Just Answer

Just Answer is a site that connects a person with a question with an expert in that particular field to answer the question.

In order to earn money from the site, you do have to have a certain amount of expertise in a particular field, and Just Answer will ask you to verify your expertise, before you are accepted as an expert.

Experts are from all walks of life, but mainly Doctors, Attorneys, Mechanics, Veterinarians and other professionals.

However you do not need to have a degree in your chosen area of expertise, there are also pet experts, homework experts, relationship experts etc, who are earning good money with Just Answer because they have a lot of experience in that area.

New experts will be paid 25% of the question asker�s fee, and established experts will earn 50%. Questions can cost anywhere between, $10 and $50, and as most questions wouldn�t take long to answer if it is your field of expertise, earnings can become quite substantial.

2. Live Person

Liveperson.com is similar to JustAnswer.com, in that users will go to the site when they want urgent answers to their questions.

Instead of answering questions, at Live Person the expert will connect with the customer using a chat client, and the customer will be charged per minute.

Needless to say, fast typing is a must, you will not get very good reviews if you can only type 20 words per minute, as the client will be paying for your time.

However, it is far easier to become an expert at live person, and experts are accepted in many categories where �expertise� cannot be proven such as Dream Analysis and Fortune Telling.

There are also categories for more concrete areas of expertise, such as Computer Programming and Health Related issues.

Everyone should be able to find a category on LivePerson they are qualified to join � if the statistics are anything to go by, a psychic with good feedback can charge almost $20 per minute, which is over $1,000 per hour. The Liveperson site will take their cut, which is around 45% for psychics, and around 30% for other subjects.

3. Global Test Market

A popular method to earn a bit of extra cash is by completing surveys. There are many survey companies out there, but like everything else, they are not all created equal.

Global Test market is a well established survey site that will pay you by check when your earnings have reached $50. For every survey you complete, you are awarded market points, the points awarded vary, but usually a survey will pay between 5 and 50 points. 1,000 market points are the equivalent of $50, so each survey pays on average a dollar or two.

The downside of Global Test Market is you cannot request payment until you have accumulated earnings of $50 and after requesting a payment this typically takes around 6-8 weeks to reach you.

Most survey companies will only send you around 1 survey per week. As you can expect to receive the equivalent of between $1 and $4 for surveys you complete. Many times you may start a survey, only to be told after a few questions that you do not qualify � therefore to make any kind of money with surveys, you really need to join several programs. Serious survey takers report they earn around $100 per month.

4. Focus Group

Join FocusGroup.com to be sent invitations when a company needs the opinions of consumers, of which you meet the criteria. Like Surveys, if you participate in a Focus Group you will be paid for your thoughts and opinions. A focus group will usually consist of 8 to 10 people who join in a discussion led by a moderator. The participants in each group will have common traits, for example a group may require that you are the parent of a teenager between the ages of 14 and 17.

Sometimes the focus group will require that you go to an offline location. Participants will then obviously be chosen from the corresponding area.

Participating in a focus group will usually take around 2 hours, but because the group will be focused on an area you are familiar with you are likely to find the discussion interesting. Most companies will pay between $50 and $100 for your time.

5. Xomba

Xomba is a site where users can post articles or simply bookmarks and make money from Google AdSense.

You can write about just about anything � the only rules are your articles should be at least 150 words long and must not contain anything related to pornography, racial hate, illegal drugs, etc.

You will need to insert your AdSense publisher ID into your profile settings, and the Xomba system will rotate your ads with its own, so anytime a visitor lands on your article page and clicks the ad, if it is your AdSense ID that is showing at the time, you will be paid into your AdSense account.

You can also post bookmarks, just insert the URL of a bookmark, and a brief description. Google AdSense is also displayed on the bookmark pages, plus it is a useful way to get a link back to your own sites.

You certainly won�t make a fortune with Xomba, but if you post enough articles or, Xombites as the Xomba users (Xombies) call them, you might make enough to pay a few bills each month. What you earn really depends on how many articles you can write and the keywords you choose.

In order to make Xomba worth your time, you should be prepared to upload A LOT of keyword rich content. If you are planning on writing the odd article here and there, you would certainly be better off selling your articles.

6. Triond

Triond allows you to upload any type of content, pictures, articles, video, audio etc, which it will then approve, and publish on a relevant site that is part of its network.

Revenue is generated mainly from Adbrite, and Triond will pay you 50% of the revenue generated by your content. This is calculated by the page views your content receives. Payment is made monthly with a minimum payout of just 50 cents if you chose to be paid by Paypal.

Be warned, like Xomba you are not likely make any significant income with Triond unless you are prepared to upload hundreds of keyword researched pieces of content!

7. IM Report Card

Internet Marketing Report Card is a site where members get paid to publish their experiences with anything to do with Internet Marketing. This includes IM products, services and people, aka Gurus.

Writing an approved review for this site will earn you 50 points- not all reviews are approved, for example, “I bought XYZ product and liked it” is not enough, you should be able to give a detailed review of what the product did for you and why you liked it – or indeed, did not like it.

In order to get paid you must accumulate 2,000 points, which will earn you $20 paid by Paypal. Apart from writing reviews on Internet Marketing products you can earn extra points by commenting on other�s reviews, or suggesting a product or service to be reviewed.

The site used to pay for referrals, but this has been discontinued.

8. Review Stream

Review Stream currently pays $2.50 per review, IF your review reaches the required standard, which is a little bit of a ‘secret.’ If your review does not come up to scratch, you will only be paid 20% of the current review price, so at the moment that would be just 0.50 cents per review.

If your review is voted on, you will receive an extra 10 cents per vote.

Reviews take about 3 days to be approved and they must be original – duplicate content will not be approved.

While the rate of pay is pretty low, the good news about ReviewStream is you can write a review on just about anything imaginable, this could be a movie review, a review of a vacuum cleaner or even the new pizza place that has just opened at the end of your street.

9. Gather

Gather.com is commonly known as a social networking site for grown-ups. Although the payment algorithm is undisclosed, members are awarded points for all original content submitted.

Each gather point currently has a value of around $0.02. At the moment only members in the US can redeem points for cash or gifts � however, International members can donate their points to charity.

10. Associated Content

If you are a native English speaker, residing in the US, you can earn a realistic income by submitting quality content to Associated Content. AC will pay you upfront for quality articles – they will make you an offer per article, usually between $2 and $15.

If your article is not accepted for upfront payment, AC will pay you a ‘performance payout’ which is around $1.50 per 1000 views.

Payments for accepted articles are made every day, apart from weekends and holidays. The downside to AC is that you must be a US resident to get paid.

11. ExpertBee

Expert Bee is a site that pays you to answer questions. Information seekers will ask a question, and if you are qualified to provide an intelligent answer, you give a price that you would charge to answer the question. If you are chosen, you will be paid the agreed amount to answer the question.

Obviously you have to have some expertise in the area if you are to be chosen and get paid.

12. Get Paid To

Getpaidto.com members get paid to receive emails, click on advertiser links and to complete surveys.

It is not very likely that you will be able to give up your day job by participating on the above sites, with perhaps the exception of Associated Content, or the “paid to answer questions” sites. However, if you have time on your hands and are looking to earn a bit of extra cash to pay a few bills, these are some mostly easy, viable methods that do not require too much thought or effort!

If you know of any other sites that pay you to do stuff, or have an opinion you want to share, your comments are always appreciated

For a short time, I’m giving away free PDF copies of my internet marketing book, Street Smart Internet Marketing.

Here’s the link to download a copy:

Just leave a comment that answers the following question and you’ll get a shot at winning one of three $100 cash prizes:

“What’s your favorite traffic getting technique?”

I’ll give out a prize for the best answer, one for the most creative and another for the funniest – so have some fun with it and give details

Also, be sure to check back in a few days – I’m sure they’ll be some great traffic generation techniques you can apply to your business.

I’ll pick the winners in a week… GOOD LUCK!

Update:

Congrats to our 3 winners:

• Daiva
• Elisabeth Kuhn
• Lapeer county

Please keep an eye on your inbox – we’ll get in contact with you shortly so we can get you over your $100 cash prize.

Thanks to everyone else who participated � we’ll probably do some more of these, so keep posted

It’s also nice that you don’t need to worry about being paid, or even keeping track of when you should be paid for everything you promote, which makes life a little easier.

I love to promote them every now and again when something really good comes out that’s worth sharing� and the nice thing is, is that they’re usually low priced products packed full of good info.

Anyways, a couple of weeks ago, I got one of my assistants to put together a list of some of the better looking instant commission affiliate programs and I’d like to share that with you.

Here’s the download link: Instant Commission Affiliate Programs

There’s no opt-in required� but if you like it, you can click on any of the little icons at the bottom of this post to Digg it or something.

By the way, if you’ve got an instant commission affiliate program that’s not listed in there, feel free to leave me a link to it as a comment and we’ll get it in there for the next update.

Of course, feel free to leave a comment for any other reason as well… unless you want to complain – I’ve got a support desk for that

Originally called �Back Rub� they worked on a project based on the idea that the links pointing to a document on the World Wide Web could be relevant to how important the document was.

They created an algorithm and called it PageRank after Larry Page. PageRank took into account the number of links pointing to a site and the number of links pointing to each of the linking sites.

This is of course a basic view of how events occurred, but eventually they had a system where more popular sites would rise to the top of their lists, and the less popular sites would drop to the bottom.

They named their new tool Google, after googol, which is the number equal to number 1 followed by 100 zeros. The first version of Google was revealed on the Stanford University website in August 1996 – just a year after they had first met.

Google has since become a HUGE private technology company employing over 20,000 employees located in Mountain View, California. Larry Page and Sergey Brin still act as key executives on the board of directors.

These days Google is way more than an effective tool to help you find a relevant page on the internet. As 2009 draws to a close, surfers are able to use the world�s biggest search engine in a bunch of different ways.

The company�s products for users include, but are not limited to:

Google Web, Image, Book or Blog Search, iGoogle and Personalized Search, Google Product Search, Google Custom Search, Google Chrome, Google Base, Google Webmaster Tools, Google Toolbar, Google Adsense, Google Adwords, Google Scholar, Google Finance, Google News, Google Video, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Gmail, Google Talk, Google Groups, Google Reader, Orkut, Blogger, YouTube, Google Pack, Picasa, Google Desktop for users, Google Display Advertising Program, Google GEO product line comprising Google Earth, Google Maps, and Google Sketchup, Google Checkout, Google Mobile Product Line, Google index, Google Maps and Satellite imagery; and Google Labs, a test-bed for engineers and Google users.

Google Wave is currently in Beta testing mode that will combine many of these services including e-mail, instant messaging, wikis, and social networking.

Most internet users will be familiar with at least half of these services, and a huge percentage of the global population are using them on a daily basis, giving Google the opportunity to know more about us than we probably consciously know about ourselves.

So What Exactly Does Google Know about YOU?

1. Have you ever had an embarrassing health problem that you preferred was not recorded on your medical history? Instead of going to visit your doctor you decided to google your symptoms and maybe even buy some medication online?

Perhaps this happened years ago and you had forgotten all about it?

Google hasn�t.

2. Google Docs allows users to create and save documents in a variety of formats, to share or save to your computer. If you create a document that you later delete because it might contain sensitive information – beware.

Google has a back up.

3. Did you ever use Gmail to write a drunken email to your ex? Something you have tried to forget?

Google remembers – that one and all the other private emails you have sent are safely stored in Google�s databases.

Maybe you don’t have a Gmail account? Well that�s OK; Google still has copies of your private messages because your friends and business partners use Gmail.

4. Google knows what you family and friends look like, where you went on your holidays and if you have skinny legs and look like a dork on the beach. If you use Picasa, Google probably even knows how many pets you have.

5. If you have a thing for watching teenagers messing around playing air guitars in their bedrooms, don�t think it is your little secret.

Google knows and records your searches and preferences and which videos you have watched on YouTube and Google Video.

6. If you have ever used Google Earth, one of the first places you would have looked at will naturally be your own home.

Now Google has a picture of where you live, not that they didn�t know anyway – if you use Google Adsense, Adwords, or Google Checkout they have all your financial details which include your address.

7. Have you or somebody living in your house, ever done a search on how to grow your own marijuana? Have you ever been worried about an alcohol or other addiction within your family? Do you search online for solutions to your rising debt or marriage problems?

It�s all there – just between you and Google.

8. Do you use Google Desktop?

A very handy application that will organize all the files on your PC, also gives Google access to them.

9. Google Reader is an aggregator, capable of reading Atom and RSS feeds online or offline, which is a very practical tool for keeping up to date with your favorite bloggers.

It also lets Google know which blogs you follow regularly, therefore revealing even more of your personal interests and passions, not that they didn�t have enough information on you already!

10. Did you have a terrible time a few months ago when you found out your partner was having an affair and decide to chuck all of their belongings out on the street in a mindless rage?

Oh there they are! A nice constant reminder on Google Street Maps. Hopefully that Google Street Car will be along soon and update the picture of your house.

Should You Really Care?

Most of us probably don�t have much too much to hide� and luckily for those who do, there are enough privacy laws in place for the most part to keep it stored safely on Google’s servers.

Personally I don’t care that Google knows how big my house is or that I sleep in the buff – if it remains private between me an Google. And that’s a big IF. Who knows when your friendly neighborhood hacker or disgruntled Google employee could know more about you… then you?

What do you think? Does Google know too much about you

How would you answer this question?

“You know you’re an internet marketer when…”

Here’s a few to get you started:

• You send your kids their allowance by Paypal.




• Your Mom asks you to email her your children’s Christmas gift wishlist and you embed it with affiliate links.




• You check domain name availability before naming your kids.




• You go to work in your underwear.




• You have trouble explaining to your friends what “you do.”

Let’s let it run for a week and then I’ll pick some winners and announce them here.

First place gets $100 to their Paypal account, second gets $50 and third $25.

Leave a comment and let’s see what ya got!

UPDATE:

Wow! Thanks for all your responses – we’re at just over 400 and counting.

It took well over an hour to go through them – but it was well worth it. There were some great… and very funny responses.

Here’s the winners:

First Place – Ruth H. ($100):

You know you�re an internet marketer when everybody else is looking for a job and you�re trying to get rid of yours

Second Place – Tim ($50):

…when the neighbors think you�re into something illegal when they observe you not going to work but having all the trappings of success.

3 Way Tie For 3rd Place – $25 Each:

Mitch – …every item at your garage sale ends with a �7.�

Flo – …when you add three ps�s to an email to your mother.

Preben – …your wife accuse you to be cheating on her with Alexa.

We’ll send an email to all the winners today so we can get them their prizes.

For more great contests (and content), you can sign up here for my RSS feed.

But, before I get more into it, I should mention that no part of this post should be considered legal advice and that you should consult your own legal counsel before taking any action.

Anyways, starting December 1, 2009 website owners who promote or endorse products as an affiliate can no longer do so without stating, in a clearly visible location, that they will be compensated financially should the visitor decide to buy the product after reading their endorsement.

Product sellers will also have to use extreme caution when using customer testimonials on their sales pages. For example, a testimonial like “I lost 27lbs in 10 days with the XYZ diet” or “My Uncle’s Grandma made $935 in just 48 hours using the ABC’s system” because even if the testimonial is 100% truthful and a grandmother did make $935 (and you have proof to back it up) the marketer must emphasize what the �average user� can expect.

Therefore after the $935 claim, the product seller must state “Results not typical. The average user will never follow this system and the 5% who do, can expect to earn $1.43.”

Of course it is extremely difficult, meaning almost impossible to know what results the average user can expect – it is a fact that many people will buy a product and forget all about it a few hours later, and start using it as a coaster left to gather dust and spilled coffee.

Many other buyers will download, read, but fail to take action, therefore a product seller will never truly be able to demonstrate �typical� results… leaving it safer not to use testimonials at all – if you are to comply with the new FTC Internet Marketing rulings. (If you cannot back up your testimonials with documented proof that the alleged success story did indeed use your product, don�t even think about using them).

This leaves many marketers with quite a dilemma – after all, some sales pages are little more than a long list of customer testimonials – and really, real world proof is one of the best ways to get people to buy.

What About Non-US Marketers?

I’ve always felt that US based marketers have had a tiny advantage over those of us who live in other countries… and now thanks to the FTC, it’s time to take that back.

All kidding aside, given that the FTC is a US Government body and cannot make laws for those residing outside the United States, everyone else can go on using testimonials till their heart’s content. I know I’ll keep using them and won�t be making any changes – except that maybe, I’ll throw in a few extra just to rub it in a little

Though, on the other hand, if you have affiliates, US based customers, web hosting, or shopping cart services that are based in the US, it might be wiser to consider complying with the new regulations, since theoretically, a website hosted by a US hosting company etc. could still be shut down.

To be completely safe and avoid your operation being targeted by the FTC a product owner would have to reside in a non US country, not sell to US residents, and have a merchant account or shopping cart based in his own country.

But really, I’m not going to worry too much about it. As long as your testimonials and proof and 100% legit and you have actual proof to back that up, I’m gonna keep it business as usual.

So How Can We, As Marketers Find a Way Around This?

There are a number of ways we can demonstrate our products to be of good value without claims from our friends or past customers that they made $XXX dollars or experienced XXX results in a remarkably short time.

Here are a few options we can use in the space where those testimonial boxes used to reside and keep away from the unwanted attentions of the FTC.

• A �character based� testimonial is one way of filling up those testimonial boxes. I have received emails from clients thanking me for my follow-up support – they may have had trouble downloading the product or understanding a certain aspect of the system, and later kindly send an email thanking me for the fast support they received to solve their particular problem.

This will give you credibility as a vendor, and build confidence in your buyer, but I don�t recommend using too many of these – one or two would suffice as visitors will likely find it boring to read again and again how fantastic the vendor is- and therefore click away from the sales page.

Another idea that can work just as well as testimonials, is to use quotes, research or scientific studies to back up what you’re saying. If there’s a scientific study that proves that skinnier people live longer, more enjoyable lives, use that. Or if there’s a quote about the recession and how it’s worse than ever before, use that when selling your ‘how to make money’ product.

Here’s a few other ideas:

• Run cheap trial offers giving the user a taste of what he will get when he buys the full version. This is a good method of boosting sales – your sales copy does not have to be so long or involved when you are only asking the buyer to part with a few dollars for a trial period.

• Be absolutely sure your customer support is top notch. The standard way the FTC would monitor webmasters is through consumer complaints for deceptive advertising. If you respond to client�s queries quickly and ensure you resolve any issues they may have they are far less likely to make a formal complaint.

• Make your offer absolutely totally irresistible – when you are selling a first class item for a realistic price your sales letter can concentrate on the huge benefits the reader will receive when using your product, without you having to depend so heavily on testimonials to sell your amazing creation!

• If you are an affiliate endorsing products on your site or blog, be transparent. Simply state that although you do have a vested interest in endorsing the product, there are tens of thousands of similar companies also paying commissions but you chose to endorse that particular company because in your opinion, they sell the superior product. More importantly, buy and try the product.

Some bloggers and webmasters already use the following approach:

“If you like my site, please buy through my affiliate link.” and “If you don�t, here�s the direct link.”

Many have described excellent results using this method and people dig honesty.

And the Bottom Line?

The bottom line is “Don’t Worry!”

A quick scan through the ClickBank marketplace reveals many of the best selling products do not, and have never used customer testimonials.

Of the current 20 best selling products, at least 5 of them do not have any customer testimonials and concentrate on the benefits of the product itself, rather than what other customers are saying about it.

The �Fatloss 4 Idiots� program which has consistently been at the top of the diet category since it�s launch does not have one customer testimonial on the page, and it is rumored the product has made well over $20 million for it�s owners in 2008 alone!

Transparency is never a bad thing, and the new policy could even improve sales in the long term as people feel less likely they are about to be scammed when buying online.

No matter how you look at it, it’s not the end of IM, but a slightly new beginning and I’ll for one be looking forward to the new marketing practices and techniques that will come out because of it.
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One of the big advantages of this technique is that there is little competition � unlike competing for top spot in Google, it�s much easier to achieve top spot on YouTube.

Here’s how it works:

When someone watches a video on YouTube, when it’s over, often they’ll watch a similar related video.

So what you need to do to take advantage of this is to latch on to a new, but very popular ‘viral’ video in your niche market as a related video. By being one of the top responses or related videos to a really popular video that�s getting tons of views and is going viral, you�ll basically feed off their traffic to generate your own which in turn means website visitors.

There are some videos on YouTube with over 30,000,000 (that’s 30 million) views. Just think – if 5% of those people clicked over to your video and then 2% of those clicked through to your website, you’d get 30,000 new visitors to your website, which when monetized properly can mean hardcore profits.

I know most popular videos don’t get that many views, but even if they only manage 3 or 5 million and you hitch on for a ride at the right time, you could still end up with several thousand new visitors.

So, to take advantage of this technique, all you need to do is go to YouTube and find a video in your niche that’s new and on it’s way to becoming popular and getting a lot of views. Since you want a popular, but new video, go to the advanced search options and sort the results by ‘View Count’ and under ‘Uploaded’ choose ‘Today’ or ‘This Week’ and look for a video that’s gotten thousands or 10′s of thousands of views that you can tag along with.

Under the video, you see ‘Video Responses’ � click on that, then the ‘Post a Video Response’ link. Then create a video as a response to the popular one you found, and post it as a video response to feed off its traffic.

This way if / when that popular video you posted a response to goes viral, your video is going to show up as a ‘Video Response’ to that one and often as a ‘Related Video’ as well (if you copy the other videos� tags and make them similar to your own).

So, when someone finishes watching that video, there’s a good chance they’ll click on yours as a response or related video and watch it next, which can make your video popular and drive a lot of traffic to your website.

While the quality of the video you post does matter and should be good, it doesn�t have to look like a fancy studio production and it doesn�t have to be very long either. As long as you have good content and provide either useful information or entertainment, that�s what really matters. Think along the lines of article marketing content. Make a video that gives them interesting, useful information in your niche in an entertaining style� or even a video that’s pure entertainment.

If you’re stuck on ideas, check out some other popular videos in your niche (or even a different one) and see what people are doing and what seems to be popular.

Hardly anyone uses this technique (I’ve seen videos with over 10 million views and no video responses), yet it can be insanely effective. Though� it can be a little hit or miss – but even if you miss, you’re still way ahead of the game.

If you happen to tag along with a video that ends up getting a million views or more, you can still get thousands of visitors to your website. If the video only ends up with 50 or 100 thousands views, you still can squeeze a few hundred visitors out of it and if you’re good at creating a video, that’s not bad for an hour or two’s work.

Just remember to put in a link to your website with your video and in your profile!

You can download it here: www.InternetMarketingGoneWild.com

If you want a little more info, here’s the teaser video:

Eddie wanted desperately to have sex with this really cute, really hot girl in his office…

But she was dating someone else.

One day Eddie got so frustrated that he went to her and said, ‘I’ll give you $100 if you let me have sex with you…

The girl looked at him, and then said, ‘NO!’

Eddie said, ‘I’ll be real fast. I’ll throw the money on the floor, you bend down and I’ll finish by the time you’ve picked it up. ‘

She thought for a moment and said that she would consult with her boyfriend…So she called him and explained the situation.

Her boyfriend says, ‘Ask him for $200, and pick up the money really fast. He won’t even be able to get his pants down.’

She agreed and accepts the proposal.

Over half an hour goes by and the boyfriend is still waiting for his girlfriend’s call.

Finally, after 45 minutes the boyfriend calls and asks, ‘What happened…?’

Still breathing hard, she managed to reply, ‘The bastard had all dimes!’

Lesson: Always consider all potential outcomes of a business proposition before agreeing to it, or you may get screwed.

Where are you now… and where do you want to be? What do you want to achieve in the next year? What are your goals for 2009?

Write them down somewhere specific where you’ll see them everyday. I know it might sound silly, but it works because it gets you thinking about how you’re going to achieve them and what it’s going to take to make it work.

Besides, goal setting is something that’s used by top performers all over the place. Top athletes create them. Million dollar CEO’s create them. And soccer moms create them too because they work and help to get more done and ultimately make you more successful.

Here’s the 3 steps to setting goals:

1. Define your goals.
2. Set mini subgoals.
3. Create an action plan on how you’re going to achieve them.

Always set performance type goals that are measurable and realistic to achieve. Don’t make them too easy, but you also don’t want them to be nearly impossible to achieve.

If you’re new to goal setting, you can use the SMART mnemonic to get help get you started. SMART stands for:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Relevant
• Time-bound

Because internet marketing is still a relatively new technology that’s constantly changing, I don’t like to plan too long term. In this business, you can’t. But you can set goals for what you want to accomplish in the next month. In the next 3 months, 6 months or even 12 months.

You might want to quit your job.

You might want to create your own product.

You might want to earn some extra income for a vacation.

You might want to become a recognized expert in your niche.

You might want to form a mastermind group.

You might want to find a JV partner for a new project

What do you want to do in 2009?

Here are a few of my goals for the New Year:

• To do $100,000 or more in online sales in February.
• To outsource more, work smarter and be able to take an extra day off each week by the end of the year.
• To add a minimum of an extra 25,000 opt-in subscribers to my list this year.
• To rewrite and republish my Street Smart Internet Marketing book as a hardcover (textbook style).
• To set up my business in such a way that I can spend 75% of my time working on the things that I enjoy doing most.

Goals are important, but what’s more important is how you’re going to achieve them. What’s it going to take to make them happen? What do you need to do to achieve them? Write that down as well and then work on setting it in motion.

Goal setting just doesn’t need to be limited to your business life, but can be done for your personal life as well. Maybe you want to pay off your mortgage or get married to a special someone or spend more time with your kids. How are you going to make that happen this year?

If you’re not a believer yet, goal setting and achieving is also an incredible motivational tool and in this business when many people are working from home, often by themselves, it’ll help keep you motivated, focused and on track. People who are laser focused and stay on track are often much more successful than those that aren’t.

So what are your goals for 2009?

Feel free to share some of them below- maybe you’ll inspire someone else and help to change their life.

Savvy business people used to make a fortune buying and selling stocks, then buying and selling real estate (flipping). Now website flipping of virtual real estate is quickly becoming one of the new things that will make many smart people very wealthy. Here�s an overview of website flipping and you can become a flipper.

The concept is pretty simple: Website flipping involves creating websites that make money with then selling them for a large profit (6-12 months worth of income). Websites of all kinds and in all niches can be flipped, the results of course vary from site to site and will also depend on the uniqueness of the site and if there’s any custom programming, graphics or other things.

As in all types of flipping the main idea is to get in, improve it, and get out as quickly as possible.

There are two ways to obtain a website to flip. Either buy an existing site and then imprve the design, content, SEO and ultimately traffic and income. Or start from scratch and buy a domain, then set to work on all the items I just mentioned. Doing all these things will up the PageRank, improve the site�s traffic, income and its appeal to a buyer.

To decide what kind of site you want to create to flip a bit of research is in order. It�s important to find a site that will be marketable. The easiest way to decide what to make is to see what people are buying. Check out sites like Sitepoint.com where websites are sold and see what types are popular.

Some keyword research will also help you narrow down the latest popular niches. As always, look for keywords with lots of searches but low competition. Looking at the ads in Google search results vs. organic results can be a great indicator of popularity and competition.

If you can get the keywords you choose into the domain name that you buy you�re well on your way. Also, make sure the domain you get for your flip is a .com as it will have a much higher selling value than any of the other options.

Another thing you might want to consider, is if you can create an authority site in a popular niche, it can often sell for several years worth or monthly income.

Once you have your domain set up on a hosting account, you want to get to work making it a great as you can, as quickly and easily as you can. This includes putting up a nice site design, adding content and monetizing it as best you can.

There are tons of free website templates floating around so in the beginning you won�t need to pay for this, but once you start earning an income and before you flip it, you’ll want something custom.

Then you want to let the world know about it. The quicker you can get it indexed in Google and linked to on the net, the quicker you can sell it for good money. It�s also a good idea to drive traffic to the page, be it by free or paid methods.

Before you sell your site, make sure you�re getting a price that is worth the effort and investment you put into creating the site. This includes all your costs (domain name, hosting, any parts that you outsourced such as article writing, driving traffic to the page, etc) and your time.

A good way to decide if a site is worth selling at the price you�ve been offered is to deduct all your costs, then divide the amount left by the amount of hours you put into it. If this hourly wage is too low, you�re not getting enough for the site to make it worthwhile. At this point you might want to try improving the site, or just scrapping it al together.

Once you�ve got some content on a nice looking site (i.e. clean Web 2.0 style.) and it’s getting traffic and making money, you can put it up for sale. There are plenty of sites where you can list it for sale. A good one is SitePoint.com as I mentioned earlier where it will cost less than $20. You can also go to eBay, or even approach private parties who might be interested.

Here are a few flipping tips:

Website flipping is really not all that hard to get started in and with a little practice, it can make you a lot of money. Happy flipping!

(Now would also be a good time to sign up for the RSS feed)

Anyways, I recently ran a promo where I gave my Traffic Tips Report for free as a list building promotion.

It’s been over for a couple of weeks, but I’ve still been getting a lot of questions about it. So I’ve decided to write this post, not only to show you how it went, but to show you how you or anyone else could run a similar promo with similar success.

I’ve written a lot of other blog entries, articles and emails on the importance of building your list over the last couple of years, but never really set out on a monumental effort to build my own.

I’d done the normal ad swaps, opt-in pages, article marketing, free giveaways and so on, but nothing big like this. So here’s what I did:

To save time, I took a report which I had previously written and sold for $7 and decided to give it away for free.

Instead of lining up a ton of partners to help me promote it, or spending a lot of time and money on marketing, I decided to try and make it go viral.

Viral marketing can be hit and miss, so I needed a sure fire way to make sure it was successful, so I decided to pay people $1 for everyone they referred who signed up.

I’d seen several big name marketers like Mike Filsaime or Russell Brunson who had done similar things in the past and it seemed to have worked well for them and sounded like a good way to go.

The goal was get a dozen or so marketing friends and business partners to help me by promoting it to their lists, then have it continue under its own power.

So, everyone that signed up to download the report also had the opportunity to sign up as an affiliate and promote the report to earn $1 per referral. Then everyone they signed up under them could do the same thing and so on, thus making the marketing / report viral.

The benefits for affiliates to promote the report was twofold- they could promote a useful resource to their lists or website visitors that was free and earn a commission for doing so. Their subscribers would be happy with the valuable traffic generation information and they’d earn cash for their efforts making it a win / win situation and a no-brainer for most people to promote.

Affiliates also like the fact that they can make money by giving away something and not selling anything which was a huge plus.

The reason I wanted to have affiliates promote something instead of doing it myself was pretty simple. An army of affiliates can cover a lot more ground than I can and they can each use their expertises in their specific marketing techniques to promote the report.

I had affiliates doing everything from emailing their lists, to posting to their websites and blogs, to submitting articles and press releases to posting ads on forums, Craiglist, eBay and so on. There were even a few people that setup PPC campaigns or ads on traffic networks.

In fact, so many people promoted it, that near the end of the two week campaign, there were over 17,000 hits on Google for the report:

After people signed up, they were presented with three one time offers. Some people gave me a little grief over this, but they were there for a couple of reasons.

1. Not everyone could afford the more expensive offers, so I had a cheaper alternative available to them.
2. When I tested everything, having three one time offers generated the highest profits by a long shot.

I had debated having one time offers at all, but got to thinking if things went insanely well and 25k or more people signed up, it would be kind of foolish to be out $25k in affiliate commissions and have not earned anything on the back end, so one time offers it was. They were just your standard OTO’s, nothing really special about them except that they were a killer deal.

Anyways, after signing up, going though the one time offers and confirming their email address, people were brought to a download page that also encouraged them the promote the report. A little over 1 in 5 people who downloaded the report signed up as an affiliate.

Autoresponder / Affiliate Software

To do this yourself you’ll want a complete shopping cart system and a good affiliate program that will track leads (signups) as well as make it easy for people to signup as an affiliate and access the promo material such as 1StartCart.com.

As far as promo material, I provided banners, articles, reviews, text links and emails that people could use to promote the report. That way there was something for everyone and it made it really quick and easy for anyone to post an article or review (with their affiliate link) on their blog or setup a broadcast email for their list etc.

How Well Did It Go – Some Stats

I’m not going to bore you with all the details, so I’ll just give it to you straight up:

In the 2 weeks the promo ran, I had just over 10,000 people signup for the free report – about 2,000 of those signed up to be an affiliate and about 450 of the affiliates referred more than 5 unique people.

The average conversion rate ended up being 51%. It started out at about 57%, then slowly dropped as the promo went on, likely because the quality of traffic was dropping.

The highest affiliate had a conversion rate of 88% and the lowest active affiliate had a conversion rate of 1% – so the quality of traffic definitely had a large impact on the signups generated.

Testing

Before I sign off, one thing I should mention is the importance of testing. Before running something like this, you need to test your opt-in page like crazy. Test the headlines, the graphics, the opt-in form, the bullets, the testimonials, the colors- test everything you can in the time you have.

It’s pretty easy to double or triple your conversion rate by testing a few key things and that cam mean the difference between 2,000 signups or 10,000 signups.

By the way, if you want to see the final tested opt-in page I used, it’s at www.LemonadeHere.com.

I tested everything with PPC, mostly because it was easy to do, cost effective and offered a good random sample of visitors.

I also did a little testing with one of those traffic generation pay per click sites which had such a low conversion rate, it was really just a waste of time and money.

Besides getting a lot of opt-ins, I wanted to try and earn back the $1 commission I was paying to affiliates from the one time offers, so I tested them with PPC as well until they were providing a good ROI.

I also did some live testing of the OTO’s simply because you need a certain number of sales to get decently accurate results and that can take a lot of time and money and go on forever with PPC.

In the end, everything worked out pretty well, I added an extra 10k people to my list, met a lot of new people and as luck would have it, earned back $1 and change per signup.

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave them as a comment and I’ll get back to you.

I just took my Traffic Tips Report from www.TrafficTipsReport.com and put it up for free at: www.LemonadeHere.com

If you have a website, blog, Squidoo lens, Hub page or ever plan on putting one up, make sure you grab a copy before I pull it off the market at the end of the month.

Here’s the link: www.LemonadeHere.com

There’s also a special bonus in there that will allow you to start profiting from it almost instantly!

By the way, I’m working on a complete redesign of this blog / website which I hope to have ready soon- that’s why it hasn’t been updated in a while

Here�s the gist of it: Work on your business, not in it. That�s it.

Here�s an example:

Let�s say that you�re a painter by profession. If you�re working in your business, that means you�re going out everyday and painting whatever it is that you paint and when you return home, you�re working on things like book keeping and equipment cleaning That hardly leaves any time for marketing, hiring, firing, training and in general, getting more business to earn more profits.

But, if you�re a painter and working on your business, that means that you�re taking some of the time you could spend painting, to work on drumming up new business or increasing the profit margin from the business you�re already receiving, thereby, increasing your overall profits.

Then, once you have full-time round the clock business, you hire and train someone to paint for you and work on getting more business. Rinse and repeat.

Though I can�t remember the exact study, at a seminar some time ago, the speaker quoted a study that found if you take just 2-3 hours a week, and work on your business, not in it, your sales will effectively double. From my experience, that�s 100% reality.

Even though we�ve been talking about painting, the same holds true to internet marketing.

If you spend all your time on tasks like bookkeeping, customer service, article and content writing, web design, copyrighting and so on, how much time is left for marketing and selling?

Not enough!

That�s why the rich will always get richer.

The concept is so simple. They can afford to hire people to do things for them that most people would need to do for themselves.

Think about it. If you had a full time housekeeper, nanny, cook, gardener, driver, pilot, personal assistant etc. how much more could you get done in a day? A lot!

In your online business, you need to outsource, outsource, outsource. You can�t do everything yourself!

I don�t write my own copy, do my own web design, programming, accounting, paperwork, article writing, search engine submission, article submission, editing or anything else that I can sufficiently outsource to someone else.

When it comes to my business, there are only 3 things I do each day; they are:

1. Managing my outsourcing- 1 hr

2. Responding to emails and coaching clients- 2 hrs

3. Marketing, improving on and growing my business, products and services- 2+ hrs

Now, not everyone will want to outsource everything right away. If you�re just starting out, you�ll want to do most of it yourself, but as you and your business grow, you�ll want to start outsourcing some of the everyday tasks that keep your business going.

The more you outsource, the more that you can accomplish and the more successful you�ll be.

Figure out what your time�s worth, and hire someone to do everything that�s not worth your time, or who can do it better than you.

Their answer was, “What the hell is _______? I�ve never heard of it! I replied, surely you�ve heard of _______? It�s been out for months and is a wildly successful technique used by many marketers.

In a sentence, their answer was that they don�t pay attention new fads or trends and stick to the tried and true online marketing techniques.

Now, I�ve never considered myself a person that jumps on the new best thing the second it comes out. I don�t own an iPhone, I don�t have an active MySpace page or a bazillion corny videos on YouTube. I don�t rush to the store to wait in line for days to pick up a brand spankin� new Play Station or xBox.

Why?

Because every new fad you jump on requires time, effort, money and a whole new learning curve. Although learning is a big key to success in IM, excessive learning, AKA information overload, is not.

In my coaching program I have people ask all the time, Maybe I should try this, it�s all the rage or Maybe I should do that, everyone else is doing it.

I usually ask them if they�ve done it before, have any experience with it or know how it works. Their answer is a collective and resounding sounding “no! So why try it when you have a less than equal chance of failing vs. succeeding? Why not stick with something that�s practically guaranteed to work?

Don�t get me wrong – a lot of money can be made chasing fads and new trends, but a lot of money and time can also be lost chasing them.

Let me explain. Look at how wildly successful YouTube was and is. In a little of a year, it sold for a Billion (with a capital B) dollars. You might think that things like this happen all the time because you�re always hearing about it on the news.

There�s a reason it�s on the news because it�s extremely rare and not something that happens very often. It�s an extremely extreme example which makes it newsworthy.

To continue using YouTube as an example, there are videos on YouTube that get millions of views and make the producer a lot of money or give them a lot or recognition, but do you know how many videos there are that only get 100 or 200 views, total? Millions.

Same thing goes for people that chase fads. Some will be successful beyond their wildest dreams, but for every person who makes it, there will be hundreds, millions or more who fail.

If you can afford (with time and money) to chase after the best, newest thing, more power to you. But if you�re just starting out and are looking to make some money in your spare time, use the methods that are guaranteed to work:

Pick a niche. Find a problem. Create a product / service that solves it. Let people know about it. Make money.

Just something to think about before you jump on the band wagon for the next hottest thing.
ikoni

The following is a partial list of some of the websites, services and more which I use or visit on a regular basis. I have hundreds of sites bookmarked and will sort through them and update this list on a semi-regular basis, so bookmark this page and check back often.

I hope you find it helpful

Domain Name Registration

www.godaddy.com #1 domain name registrar on the net. Offers many other services including email, web hosting, merchant accounts, fax through email etc.

www.namecheap.com great place for online marketers to register domains as they don’t have some of the pitfalls / problems other registrars do when conducting online business.

www.1and1.com offers cheap domains as well as many other services (email, web hosting etc.)


Web Hosting

www.startlogic.com cheap quality hosting

www.lunarpages.com huge provider, good customer service

www.hostgator.com cheap; popular amount IM newbies

www.ipowerweb.com good all round host


Autoresponders

www.1startcart.com free trial, also offers tons of other available features like an integrated shopping cart, affiliate management and more.

www.aweber.com free trial; one of the most popular online.

www.mailloop.com installs on your own server.


Shopping Cart Software

www.1startcart.com free trial. This is the service I use which offers tons of other integrated features including autoresponders, affiliate management software, ad trackers, email broadcasting, payment processing and more for a low monthly price.


Stat Trackers

www.webstat.com free trial and/or free basic account.

www.statcounter.com 100% free; paid features also available


Affiliate Management Software

www.1startcart.com offers tons of other integrated features including autoresponders, ad trackers, email broadcasting, payment processing and more for a low monthly price.

www.assoctrac.com advanced software installs on your own server.


Ebook Compilers

www.ebookpro.com creates .exe files and offers real time protection

www.ebookmaestro.com free trial; creates “exe” ebook files from .html web pages.


Fax Thru Email

www.godaddy.com simple, easy, cheap and what I use.

www.myfax.com free trial


Business / Legal

www.corpcenter.ca Canada (trademarks, corporations, merchant accounts etc.)

www.legalzoom.com - United States (trademarks, corporations, LLC’s, copyrights, patents etc.)


Continuing Education

www.internetmarketingbook.com my new 300 page internet marketing book, Street Smart Internet Marketing, a must have if you are serious about internet marketing; only $20 + S/H.

www.marketingtips.com – the most popular internet marketing course on the net from the Internet Marketing Center

www.bigseminar.com self proclaimed biggest and best internet marketing seminar worldwide by Armand Morin.

www.buttcamp.com Internet Marketing Butt Camp with Tom Antion

www.millionairemind.com life changing money seminar by Harv Eker, a must for any business people, currently offers free tickets a $2,590 value. Many other seminars also available- this one is the introductory seminar.


Search Engine Information

www.searchenginewatch.com more info on search engine optimization

www.payperclicksearchengines.com pay per click search engine directory


Article Submission Directories

http://www.ezinearticles.com biggest / best online article directory.

http://www.goarticles.com 2 best online article directory.

http://www.articlealley.com


Affiliate Directories

www.clickbank.com largest, most popular affiliate directory online.

www.cj.com affiliate directory for larger online sites like eBay, Dell and Apple.

www.paydotcom.com Mike Filsaime’s affiliate directory / site

www.linkshare.com

www.affiliatesdirectory.com

www.associateprograms.com

www.affiliatescout.com

www.affiliatefirst.com


Blogging Software

www.wordpress.org installs on your server; my recommended best software for blogging.

www.wordpress.com hosted using WordPress.

www.typepad.com hosted on your own server.

www.blogger.com hosted by Blogger.


Auction Sites

www.ebay.com

www.pulse.ebay.com

www.ubid.com

www.bidz.com


Classified Sites

www.craigslist.org largest online site.

www.gumtree.com big in London

www.kijiji.com Canadian site.

www.buysell.com

www.classifieds.yahoo.com

As promised, I’ll be sending a signed copy of my book, Street Smart Internet Marketing, to a randomly chosen winner.

I’ve used Random.org to randomly pick a winner… And the winner is…

… Linda C.

Congratulations Linda, you’ll be receiving an email from me shortly.

Remember, every comment left is eligible for a single entry into the free Street Smart Internet Marketing book giveaway and there are no strings attached.

I’ll try and do this every month or two… so keep those comments coming
икони

But is the money really in the list? Everyone’s going to have their own opinions on opt-in email lists, but check this out:

An average internet marketer with an averagely responsive list should be able to earn somewhere around $1 per opt-in subscriber

People like John Reese, Mike Filsaime, Russell Brunson, Armand Morin, Derek Gehl and anyone else pulling in multiples of 7 figures a year online owe a big portion of it to an email list.

It might not always be their own email list that’s earning them money, but you can be sure that a good (meaning high) percentage of their income arrives from sales to their list or another’s.

Look at all the major product launches that are always fluttering about.

The sales pages aren’t getting the kind of traffic that takes servers offline from seo, article marketing, blog posting, PPC, banner ads or any other kind of traffic generation technique.

The bulk, sometimes all of the visitors to these sites get there through an email they received because they’re on an email list somewhere.

Sure, you can work on seo, viral marketing and other traffic generation methods, but why bother when you can spend 10 minutes, write an email and generate thousands, 10′s of thousands or 100′s of thousands of visitors in the next 24 hours.

The point is, if you’re trying to, planning to, wanting to, or are involved in internet marketing, or making money in any form on the internet, you absolutely need to have an email list.

If you’re just starting out, before you purchase an ebook, put up a website, invest in PPC, create a product or put effort into anything, put it into a list.

Not working on growing a list the day before I started in IM was one of the biggest mistakes I’ve made online. I went almost a whole year before I really put in any kind of serious effort into growing an email list – BIG MISTAKE.

If I had just signed up an extra 10 people per day in that time, I would be making an extra $3,650 per month and a staggering $43,800 a year, without much more than a smidge of extra effort. It doesn’t take any more time to write an email to 1,000 vs. 100 people, or 100,000 vs. 1,000 people, so why not do it?

If you haven’t started putting in double effort into building, growing, nurturing and spreading love to your very opt-in email list, think seriously about it.

Next time you sit down at your computer to surf the WWW, look for good deals on eBay or shoot the shit in a forum or through an instant messenger, take that time and put it into something that will actually help you secure your financial future.

PS: While we’re talking about lists, why not opt-in to my new newsletter on the right sidebar and get

PPS: With the summer having been in full swing, it’s been more than a while since I’ve posted anything to this blog. Anyone who leaves a comment for this post will be entered into a draw to win a signed copy of my book, Street Smart Internet Marketing, absolutely free – just let me know where to send it.

If there are 10, comments, you’ll have a 1 in 10 chance of winning. Random drawing will be held on Oct. 26 and the winner will be announced here.

Why do you need a coach (or mentor used interchangeably)? That’s a fair question and there are many important reasons to have one. A coach has usually been through what you are going through and can see things that you can’t see. A mentor understands what you are experiencing right now and knows what you will experience if you continue to do what you are doing.

He or she can also recommend great products and services for you to use because they have tried most of them and know which ones are quality products and services and which ones aren’t. A mentor guides you through obstacles in your path and helps you to quickly and easily move closer and closer to your goal. A coach provides a support system that advises, steers, and cheers you on to success.

How do you find a coach or mentor? To find a mentor, you need to go where they are, whether it’s a live conference, an internet forum, their personal web site, or, if you’re on their mailing list, replying to an email they sent you. If you don’t have a particular person in mind and are just searching for someone that is knowledgeable about your niche, then you should go to forums where the kind of person that you want to mentor you will be.

Go to where the experts of your niche are and ask questions to people there to see if anyone is offering any mentoring programs. If you have any contacts or friends in your niche, ask them if they know of anyone that can be a mentor to you. Ask if they have been helped by anyone and if that person is available to help you as well.

Most mentors will have a set of guidelines that you must meet in order for them to mentor you. And they charge for their services. Why, you ask? This is an investment in your business, in your future, and showing that you are serious about going to the next level in your business and your life, and that you value their time as well as yours, is a key component to a successful coaching relationship. If you aren’t able to pay a mentor, some will allow you to use your skills in exchange for their help, but if they do, be ready to work and to work hard.

Entering into a mentoring relationship is a great decision for your career, regardless of what field it may be. You may actually find that you end up with several mentors and this may be necessary as you learn and grow. Just remember to be a good listener and to prove that you are serious about your decision to be a mentee. It’ll be the best decision for your future that you have ever made.

Most people agree that driving qualified, targeted traffic to your website isn�t always easy, but it is doable – and you don�t want to waste the traffic you do get. For some traffic generation ideas, you can see my article on 50 Tips On Getting More Traffic To Your Website.

No matter whether you�re selling a product or service, you want to make the most of the traffic you do get, and that involves increasing your websites conversion rate. While there are hundreds of things you can do to increase the percentage of visitors that transfer into customers, the following list is what I consider 50 of the most influential elements. If there�s something monumental that I left out and you feel it should be on the list, please feel free to post it as a comment. Here you go:

1. Hire a professional copyrighter.

2. Make sure your product or service has a USP (unique selling proposition) and it�s clearly identified on your sales page.

3. Appeal to your customers emotions and wants, not needs or logic.

4. Put all pertinent product information above the fold if possible.

5. Have someone who is new to the internet navigate the order process. Watch vigilantly and correct any shortfalls.

6. Change the headline and test the results.

7. Offer multiple payment options including PayPal, Visa, MasterCard, AmEx and Discover.

8. Revise / test your offer including pricing, packaging and content.

9. Provide a list of FAQ.

10. Have a contact form, phone number or email address prominently displayed for questions.

11. Don�t make your visitors choose between options or packages. Make it so there is only one choice.

12. Be clear, open and 100% honest.

13. Don�t waste your visitor�s time with meaningless BS.

14. Make the checkout process easy and less than 2 clicks from start to finish. Many times sales are abandoned on the order form.

15. Only ask for necessary customer info and use auto-filling whenever possible.

16. Add an audio introduction to your site.

17. If possible, add a video product demonstration.

18. Make sure you page loads fast – 30 seconds or less on dialup – 3-5 seconds on high speed.

19. Include your physical or mailing address on the order page.

20. Take orders by phone, fax or snail mail.

21. Have more than one strategically order button and prominently display them.

22. Use strong calls t action.

23. Add VeriSign, HackerSafe, SSL or other security seal to the sales / order page.

24. If you�re a member of the Better Business Bureau, display their membership logo.

25. Add a live chat option to the sales page.

26. Offer payment options for big ticket items.

27. Offer free shipping on physical products or automatic downloading of electronic products,

28. Use simple graphics that enhance the products and/or services, not take away from them.

29. Write in a conversational tone and don�t use complicated language – 5th or 6th grade English is best.

30. Use easy to read �common� fonts such as Tahoma (headlines), Verdana (text), Arial, Time New Roman and/or Comic Sans MS.

31. Attract targeted, quality traffic.

32. Have an unconditional, 100% money back guarantee. The longer the stronger.

33. Identify and define your return policy.

34. Be upfront with pricing including shipping/handling and any other related charges.

35. Post customer testimonials. Better yet, post testimonials and reviews from industry experts.

36. Give away a freebie, free trial or demo, then follow up with an autoresponder sequence.

37. Find out what works for your competition, add and improve on it for your site.

38. Remove clutter.

39. View your site at different screen resolutions and in different browsers to make sure its looking best at all times.

40. Consider removing any unnecessary external/internal links.

41. Have an �About Us� page and use it to build credibility and trust.

42. Use simple and friendly navigation.

43. Use your sales copy to build trust.

44. Target your market, not everyone.

45. Add a picture of yourself.

46. Add your signature to the bottom of the sales copy.

47. Use at least one P.S. but not more than three.

48. Stay away from flash, animated graphics and loud annoying music.

49. Test and track absolutely everything you do. Know your numbers like the back of your hand.

50. One last quick thing – this might seem blatantly obvious, but don�t sell crappy products.

Permission marketing, at its roots, stems from an earlier marketing movement known as relationship marketing. Relationship marketing views the merchant-customer relationship as just that – a relationship, and not merely as a sale or transaction.

One of the primary forms of permission-based marketing is opt-in email. Opt-in email is an email marketing strategy that focuses on a highly-targeted customer. Typically a form is placed on the merchant�s website, providing the customer with an opportunity to sign up for a free newsletter, report, ebook, or the like, allowing the merchant to build a highly-targeted (and hopefully highly-responsive) mailing list. The customer “opts-in” of his or her own accord. This demonstrates a consumer interest in a given merchant�s products and/or services. This marketing tactic is clearly distinct from bulk mailings and spam mailings, which tend to be untargeted (not to mention, typically ineffective and perhaps even illegal!).

Of course, simply because a visitor to a website signs up for a newsletter or report, it doesn�t automatically mean that they are customers eager to buy product. On the contrary, some people will just be interested in the free information and nothing more. This is just a fact of marketing.

The process should not stop upon the visitor filling out the form requesting the free information. The first email contact that the merchant has with the consumer should provide another opportunity to confirm the opt-in (the potential customer should be provided with an opportunity to opt-out at this point before communications and the business relationship progresses to the next level). This is referred to as a double opt-in, and helps ensure the highest quality list possible. That is, a list of people most likely to buy from you and become long-term customers.

Such permission-based marketing tactics are integral to targeted marketing and conversion. Such a strategy is easy to implement as well. Provide your customers with the opportunity to opt-in and opt-out with every communication that you share with them. The conversions and profits will attest to this marketing strategy�s effectiveness.

There are numerous types of spam, the most prominent of which (and most costly) is that of email spam. Other types of spam include: Usenet spam, search engine spamming (e.g., keyword spamming), instant messaging spam, mobile phone spamming (text spamming), forum spamming, and fax spamming.

The term “spam” itself emerged in the 80′s and referred to techniques utilized by unscrupulous users of the bulletin board systems and multi-user domains (BSSs and MUDs) to prevent other users from utilizing the system by entering “SPAM” an innumerable number of times so that the other users were scrolled off screen. This then evolved into raids on “competing” chatrooms whereby the users of one chatroom would apply the above technique until the users of another chatroom until the authorized users would exit due to the interference.

Spamming continued to evolve into bulk repetitive postings on the Usenet systems and then, in 1993, the word took on its present connotation and usage. Though, it wasn’t until 1995 that commercial bulk spamming by means of email would begin in earnest as it continues today.

Spamming is a very costly enterprise, however, not so much so for the spammer himself but, ultimately, for the end users and the ISPs. Spam uses up system resources that are designated for a specific amount of data transfer. For example, if a server is designated to handle 10,000 messages per hour and the ISP must process 10,000 legitimate messages plus 10,000 spam messages, then another server must be utilized. In this example, the costs of operating as an ISP would double and thus the end user’s service fees would no doubt increase as well. Spam drives up market service prices substantially.

Not only is spam costly in the economic sense but in the temporal as well. It takes time for the end user to sift through bulk mailings to determine just what is solicited and what is unsolicited. Not to mention the time spent in concocting spam countermeasures (along with the significant costs involved in this as well).

As an Internet marketer, you should avoid spamming and even the appearance of spamming at all costs. Spamming is, ultimately, very bad for business. We all know how annoying it can be to sit down with your morning coffee to check your email, only to open up an inbox full of annoying, junk, and unsolicited advertisements. Think about how inconvenient it is for you to have to read through these bulk mailings to make sure that no legitimate messages are among them and then having to delete them all- not very pleasant. You never want your contact with your customers to be an annoyance to them. If you are in communication with them, it should only be because they have requested it (and preferably more than once).

Today there are organizations that keep up with email tagged as “spam” and place the senders of these spam messages on blacklists. You never want to find yourself on one of these blacklists or it will severely limit your marketing. Severely.

There are ways to avoid such blacklisting and to keep your contact with your customers above par. The absolute best way is to utilize permission-based marketing, most specifically, opt-in (preferably double opt-in) marketing. For example, with opt-in email, your customers sign-up or confirm that they wish to receive mailings from you.

Similarly, an opt-out (or “unsubscribe”) provides the customer with the opportunity to be removed from your mailing list if they should so desire. An opt-in and opt-out should be provided with each communication shared with your customers.

As well, when a customer subscribes to, say, a free newsletter, it is imperative that all content sent to that particular customer pertain to the subject that the customer subscribed to initially. Any other content may be viewed as spam.

Not only should the white hat Internet marketer avoid spam because it is ultimately bad for business, in certain cases, it is also illegal. For example, much of spam is related to pornographic materials. If such a spam email were to be delivered to the email account of a child, the spammer could face stiff penalties. Of course white hat Internet marketers don’t stoop to such tactics to begin with, but this is something to be aware of. The laws related to communications of all type, especially spam, are changing daily. Marketer, beware!

In December of 2003, the President of the United States signed into law the nation’s first set of standards regarding email marketing (read: spam) referred to as the Can-Spam Act. Can-Spam stands for Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act. Essentially, this law allows unsolicited email marketing within certain parameters. The parameters being that each marketing email contains: an opportunity for opting out of future mailings; a legitimate subject heading; the physical mailing address of the sender; and, for adult marketing, a clear label that the content refers to such.

The Can-Spam Act was not embraced by anti-spammers, on the contrary and for obvious reasons. In fact, it was instantly dubbed by opponents as the “Yes, You Can Spam Act.” Though there have been lawsuits regarding violations of the Act, it has overall been difficult to enforce and unscrupulous “marketers” have managed to work around it. This has frustrated anti-spam proponents and the average end user, to say the least.

There are several things that you, as an internet marketer, can (and should) do to minimize the possibility of your electronic contact with your customers being misconstrued as spam. First of all, use a real email address (one issued by your ISP) and not a disposable one. This will help you to avoid being blacklisted (though it isn’t foolproof as some domain names are abused by spammers more than others and the domains themselves may be placed on a list). You should always use a reputable service provider.

As well, if you utilize an autoresponder in your marketing, it would be prudent to check up on the reputation of the company providing the service as it is often the case that autoresponders utilize only one to a couple of IP addresses. If the autoresponder is flagged for spamming (advertently or not), your communications with your customers will be flagged and likely blacklisted as well. As with your ISP, always use a reputable autoresponder service.

It is recommended, before going with a new ISP or autoresponder service that you check them out with one of the many online spam tracking services.

Spam is a serious problem and a costly one at that. With no sign of slowing down, spammers will continue to bombard end users of the various digital communications media, always seemingly one step ahead of the safeguards implemented to prevent and deter spam. This makes things more difficult for the white hat Internet marketer, but not impossible. Wear your white hat with pride and market utilizing an anti-spam marketing strategy such as permission-based marketing discussed above. Your customers will thank you for it and your credibility (and profits!) will soar.