At first glance, it’s hard to know who Mark Ling is aiming his new AffiloJetpack product at.

Mark is widely respected in the internet marketing industry for his direct, no-hype approach to teaching affiliate marketing. His previous products have been the highly-praised step-by-step AffiloBlueprint course (aimed squarely at beginner affiliates), while his Affilorama Premium product continues to draw more advanced subscribers to its monthly tools/tips/hosting package.

But I’m confused about AffiloJetpack.

On one hand it looks to be targeted at complete newcomers to affiliate marketing, but on the other hand it seems to be pressing hot-buttons for more experienced affiliates.

For people who are completely new to internet marketing, Mark has identified a number of hurdles that stand between the average Joe Newbie and affiliate riches, and he seems intent on smashing every one of them.

The first hurdle that he says trips people up is in choosing a niche to target. I can’t disagree with that. I’ve seen affiliates spend weeks deliberating over a niche. So for AffiloJetpack to come along with TEN niches hand-picked by Mark Ling himself and PROVEN to be winners… well, that’s certainly going to help some newbies out.

(And maybe even some more experienced affiliates who are looking for a niche to go into next.)

The second hurdle Mark identifies is in the actual building of a website, so he’s put together his very own WordPress theme designed to make it easy for even the most inexperienced web designer to tweak the layout and design of their site. It includes some other nifty functionality that only someone experienced in building affiliate sites would think of, such as a squeeze page generator that lets you use Mark’s most successful squeeze page layouts in your own promotions. Nice!

The theme also reflects Mark’s extensive background in tutoring inexperienced affiliates… he’s added things like image uploaders so that users don’t have to master an FTP program to get their header or background images online.

I have to say, this theme is PERFECT for web novices. And with AffiloJetpack, Mark has also thrown in free hosting with what they’ve called “Incubator Hosting“. I know from experience that it can take quite a few steps to install WordPress and a great theme on a hosting provider. Each step is something that can go wrong. So I really think a lot of newbies are going to appreciate this one-click setup.

On top of all this comes the content: Twenty articles of very high quality that you can either just plug into the site as-is, or re-word to get full SEO benefit.

So that’s pretty much a kitset website: Everything you need to build an affiliate site in a very short space of time. It’s a great start for newcomers to affiliate marketing who just want to get something up on the web quickly, without the long learning curve.

But here’s where it gets more advanced.

Whereas I would have considered all this content and functionality to be an OK product on it’s own… Mark says this is just the beginning. In other words, this isn’t even the main show.

The main show is what comes next: A 80-part autoresponder series that you can plug into a service like Aweber and use to start collecting email addresses and building a relationship with people who sign up.

Mark says that the thing that disappoints him the most is when affiliates don’t add an autoresponder series to their websites, because this is the thing that will earn them the most money.

And I admit… I’ve been guilty of that myself. Sometimes you just want to see a site making money before you invest even MORE money in building a follow-up series. Or sometimes you’re just so exhausted by the time you finish putting your site together that this goes on the back burner.

An autoresponder seems more like “extra credit” for an affiliate site, but Mark is adamant that it should be the main focus. To the extent that you might not even promote affiliate products on your website at all!

So this autoresponder series comes with about 65 “informational” emails, and about another 15 “hard sell” emails written by Mark himself. He also tells you WHEN you should be sending these out to get the best response from your list, since just emailing someone once a week in the first month or two isn’t really going to cut it.

I was quite surprised at the quality of these emails… they’re far beyond PLR quality. You could even put these on your website if you wanted an extra 60+ articles! They’re the kind of thing that’s going to get people on your list trusting your opinion… at which point you can promote products to them and watch the commissions roll in.

One other aspect that made me think that this maybe isn’t purely aimed at newbies is Mark’s view that while SEO is low-risk, the bigger risk that newbies face is that they’re not going to see results quickly enough, and they’ll give up.

Because of that, as part of AffiloJetpack he’s also offering training on a variety of other traffic generation methods. You can still do SEO… but he’s saying that if you want to see fast results (and faster cash) you should look at these other methods.

The final verdict? AffiloJetpack is great for newbies who can’t get past the nitty gritty of building a site. It really makes the whole process laughably easy compared to the weeks or months it might take a newbie to put together a site on their own.

More experienced affiliates are probably going to see the real benefit in the huge amount of high-quality content that Mark has put together. Even to put together ONE newsletter series of this quality is going to cost you at least double the cost of this entire product. And with AffiloJetpack you get FIVE of these niches and newsletter series’, so to my budget-conscious ears, thats ridiculously good value.

Whatever way you look at it, and whatever level of experience you have, this product is a winner. Even if you don’t want to follow Mark’s strategies… do yourself a favour and grab it just for the content.

Very highly recommended. Grab the AffiloJetPack here!

This isn’t true… not always, at least.

In online marketing, there is a way by which you could benefit from extending aid to your competition. Amazingly, you could even manage to grab some of his website’s page rank, as well as steal his traffic. And you could do these without being antagonistic at all. It’ll all be accomplished while helping him sell a product or two.

What is this strategy?

It’s called testimonials.

Every internet marketer is faced with the gargantuan task of having to overcome the lack of consumer confidence. It is the World Wide Web, after all. The anonymity in these virtual halls makes it difficult for any online businessman to win the trust of his prospective customers. Yes, the online businessman may pay thousands of dollars for a truly engaging and convincing sales page, but as often is the case, these words are not enough to win a sale. Why? Because these words will still be associated with the online businessman, and people do not expect him to badmouth his own products. That he will talk favorably about his offers is a given.

But what if a third party would share some favorable words about the online businessman and the product he is offering? Surely, his statement would bear more weight than the sales pitch of the businessman himself, right? After all, the third party has no stakes on the success of the campaign.

Such is the importance of testimonials for most sales pages. They greatly contribute to the conversion rate the sales copy would manage to pull off, essentially because of their seemingly objective nature.

Almost every online businessman – your competitors included – will be on the lookout for people who will be willing to provide for them some generously written testimonials. To gather these, online marketers even go to the extent of giving away free samples of their products for review purposes.

Now, here’s the trick.

One of the incentives to encourage favorable testimonials is the mention of the testimonial giver’s link on the sales page itself. There are many benefits to this.

* If your link can be found in your competitor’s sales page, then chances are, you will be targeting the same market. Since the people who will be reading your competitor’s sales page are already there, we could assume that they are highly targeted leads. Once they see your link, there is a great chance that they’d get transported to your own sales page, which would only work wonders for you.

* If your competitor’s sales page has a higher page rank (PR), having your link in the said copy would provide a boost to your own website’s PR.

* In any event, it is an additional back link for your website which would only increase your link popularity.

Yes, by giving a favorable testimonial for your competitor’s campaign, you’d be helping him bag more sales. But then again, internet marketing is not really a dog-eat-dog kind of business. His success can make the industry very healthy. And the fact that your link will be prominently displayed on his sales page could only mean that you could share his success, eventually.

So, the next time someone asks you for a testimonial, take some time to prepare for him a good one. You’ll gain immediate results for your own business. And who knows? Someday, he might even return the favor with a testimonial of his own.

So, what should be done? Should you give up on your grand idea just like that?

Hold your horses, dear friend. There is a way that you could avail of to have your idea see the light of day.

It’s called joint venturing, or JV as it has fondly been called in the online marketing scene. Joint ventures are partnerships between two or more online marketers, all of whom pool together their resources to ensure the success of a particular project. Once profit is realized, these partners employ a previously established profit-sharing scheme. Everyone who chipped in would be given his just share. And everyone would go home happy.

If you don’t have the resources for the idea you have in mind, you could seek out some online businessmen who would be willing to enter a joint venture with you. Why would they want to partner up with someone like you? Well, there are many benefits that can be had with joint ventures which they will find pretty hard to resist.

* Since several people will pool together their resources for a joint venture, the risks can be minimized. Assuming the worst scenario that the project would fail, the losses would be less since it will be borne by several individuals, compared to the losses that can be incurred by a sole endeavor.

* Joint ventures allow online marketers to compensate for missing components in their portfolios. Don’t have a big mailing list? Partner up with someone who has tens and thousands of subscribers. Don’t have the cash to fund production? Seek out someone who has some extra money to invest. Don’t have an idea that can be profitably pursued? Seek out a creative soul beaming with novel concepts that are begging to be exploited.

* Joint ventures help build your brand in the online marketing community. If you’re an intermediate marketer who manages to enter a joint venture with a renowned guru, you’d be able to enjoy an instant boost to your reputation in the industry.

* Joint ventures foster great relationships between marketers. The experience of having worked with each other can blossom into friendship and future partnerships.

There is no reason for an online marketer to refuse whatever helpful contribution you could provide for a project. He may be a well established personality in the industry, and you’re just a cub who’s starting out, but you may possess something that he does not have, and this would make you a valuable part of the team.

The trick, really, is in knowing where to seek out some joint venture partners. If you have a great idea backed up by an equally amazing business plan, then finding willing partners would be easy, if you’re looking for them in the right places.

Here’s a tip. Join online business forums and start posting significant messages. Be a helpful member of the community and build your reputation. Then publish a thread the calls for joint venture partners. Explain to your respondents what you have in mind, and chances are, they’ll be more than interested to get started at the soonest possible time.

Joint ventures prove that in internet marketing, there is no such thing as lack of resources. What can lead to failure in this field is lack of imagination.

So should you or shouldn’t you offer refunds?

Well, you should know this much. Offering refunds is the professional way of doing business. It’s your way of telling your customers that their patronage is valued and that their trust would never be compromised.

The trick is not in refusing to offer refunds. It’s in finding ways on how to reduce refund requests. For this purpose, let us enumerate six amazing ways that would help you limit the incidence of refund requests.

1. Provide quality products. This, of course, is very elementary. Refunds are borne out of customer dissatisfaction. If the customer is satisfied, there would be no reason for them to request for a refund. Providing excellent products truly worth their time and hard-earned money would remove from their minds any possibility of considering a chargeback.

2. Provide for an excellent customer support system. Many online businessmen believe that customer support is unnecessary for an online enterprise. This is a false notion. On the contrary, a customer support system would increase the value of your product and drastically reduce your refund rate. Knowing that their grievances can be coursed through a given channel would dissuade your customers from resorting to refunds.

3. Provide lifetime updates. You may have noticed the preponderance of offers with lifetime updates as of late. There is more psychology to this strategy than what is readily apparent. By providing lifetime updates, you will be giving your customers something to look forward to. In the event that your products would fail to meet their expectations, they would be hesitant to return the same because of the coming updates you have promised. Updates can enhance the value of existing products, and offering such, for a virtual eternity at that, would be too good an offer to pass up.

4. Provide bonuses. Bonuses have long been used as come-ons to sweeten the deal and make them easier to sell. Bonuses, however, would also serve as an anti-agent against possible refunds. By packaging your products with a bevy of other items, your customers would feel that they will get more than what they will pa for. The sheer variety offered by bonuses would make them think twice about requesting for a refund.

5. Give the best guarantee that you could muster. Guarantees are different from refunds, of course. The former is more concerned about customer satisfaction. The latter is focused on security of investment. Guarantees can range from the good word of respected people, or actual reparation of the products in the event that they are susceptible to breakdowns. A guarantee is promise to your customers that you have done your best to deliver to them a product that you truly believe is the best, and that you would be by their side whenever that very product fails them.

6. Offer loyalty rewards. Acknowledging loyal customers would go a long, long way in curtailing the rise of refund rates. Rewarding them would build lasting relationships that would make the need for refunds almost obsolete.

No businessman would want to receive a refund request. It’s both disappointing and downright demoralizing. But keep your spirits up. Refunds are a part of the game. They are something we have to live with. And fortunately, they are something we could actually control.

It is critical, therefore, to learn about the subtleties involved with article marketing so that you will be able to optimize your usage of this technique.

Now, you have most probably read about article marketing before, in numerous resources at that. This article isn’t about an introduction to article marketing. This article assumes that you already know the basics. In the following paragraphs, we will focus on the things that people do not know about the aforementioned strategy, as well as some tips to help you out when it comes to making the most out of this tactic.

Let’s proceed.

* Though it is tempting to submit two or more articles to the article directories in the World Wide Web, it is strongly recommended that you try to avoid doing the same in rapid succession. The search engines, and Google in particular, are quite sensitive about abnormal increases in a website’s link popularity. By submitting many articles at the same time, you could potentially gain 3,000 or so back links for your website. In theory, this is excellent. But since this will be accomplished quite fast, the search engines might categorize it as an abnormal increase, and they may momentarily de-index your website pending further study into the matter. You wouldn’t want this to happen. So you better play it safe. Try to submit articles every two weeks or so to avoid this danger.

* It isn’t wise to submit an article that is already included in your own website. As a policy against dupe content, search engines would consider the higher ranking website as the originator of the article. Hence, your website, having a lower rank, might be designated as harboring duplicate content. This will not bid well for your page rank.

* Whenever you’re writing articles, remember that most article directories would allow you to use hyperlinks. The trick is in hyperlinking your website to what we call as anchor texts. These anchor texts should pertain to the keywords you are targeting. Doing this would give a significant boost to your chances of getting a better position in the SERPs. For example, if the keyword you’re targeting is “mesothelioma,” make sure that you will hyperlink your website to every mention of the term in your article.

* Do not submit PLR articles as they are. Though PLR articles are great options for affordable content, they are not really meant for article marketing purposes. Duplicate articles submitted to the directories would just be rejected, or worse, can lead to the banning of your account. Instead, try to use the PLR articles as bases for the articles you will write for these directories. The information is already in these PLR articles, after all, hence you won’t need to spend time doing some necessary research. Write one, original article from the ground up, using your PLR articles as the foundation, and submit the same to the directories.

* Remember, people will be reading your articles. These are highly targeted folks. They will read your article because they are looking for information relevant to the subject of your work. If you could provide this information clearly, succinctly, and efficiently, they’ll regard you as an expert on the matter and they will grow to trust whatever you will put out. Hence, it is important to submit the best quality article you could come up with, as your online business’ credibility is on the line.