I know that tracking isn't something that you instantly think about when you get started in this business, but it should be.  I know….I know…..the main thing on your mind right now is how to make money, how to get traffic, how to build a site, etc……

Those things are obviously important, but eventually you figure out how to do all those things.  After you've figured out all that stuff, you eventually have to know which keywords are working for you and converting, and which are not.

You could have all the traffic in the world, but if it's not converting…..what's the point?

You could be having 99% of the traffic coming from keywords that don't convert, while it maybe only one keyword that is converting.  That's OK….There is nothing wrong with that.  But as long as you are tracking, you know that  you can focus on ranking higher for that keyword and/or use PPC for only that keyword.

The company/software that I use for my tracking is Prosper202.

It's free, and it has a ton of great tools in their arsenal.  It's perfect for setting up a PPC campaign or organic traffic.  With PPC, you can set up your tracking links by directly linking to the affiliate page or setting up a landing page.

You can download the software and self host through one of your domains or you can just use their online tracking 202 and don't have to worry about hosting.

There are some great paid tracking tools you can use, but chances are, for what you need right now, prosper202 should be good enough.

I am as big of an advocate for hard work, as anybody else, but I want you remember that this is just a business.  There is more to life than just making money.

I say this because I see a lot of times in forums, marketers talking about working 12-14 hours a day.  A part of me is happy hearing that, because I know they are going to make it, and have some serious success, if they haven't already.  I went through it, so I know what it's like putting in those kind of hours when you are starting out.

BUT, then you read about those marketers who just take it to far.  They talk about how working these hours have had a negative effect with their personal relationships, their marriages, etc….  You even hear about marketers who live such a stagnant life that they have had health problems, gained a lot of weight, etc…

Look….I know this can be an addictive business.  Goodness knows….the bug hit me, and hit me hard.  But it's not worth having a life.  After all….what good is money if you don't have the time to spend it with your loved ones?  What good is money if your health is going down the drain?

Make sure to take out your loved one for a nice meal every once in a while.  Make sure to get some exercise.  Not only will you feel a whole lot better, but you won't feel as sluggish, which will only help your business even further.

So, although I wish all of you a lot of success, and I encourage you to work hard for your goals, I don't want it to be your entire life, because you are going to short change yourself.

When you leap into the business of online marketing, you can't help but notice that there are seemingly infinite amount of ways to make money. The problem is that everybody is telling you which one works best.  You've always got somebody to tell you some technique that will unlock riches.

We all have our stories about how we got into this business.  I don't think mine is really that different from most.

I personally HATED every job I've ever had.  I don't know what it is about it.

I don't know if it was just that I hated my bosses or I hated the work itself or I hated getting up early in the morning or I hated the sterile environment of some of the white collar jobs I've worked or I hated that I was stuck in an office when I could have been surfing or maybe it was the combination of all those things.

I had some old textbooks that from my college days, and  instead of just letting them collect dust, I decided to sell them on Amazon.  After I sold them, a light bulb went off. Is there something I could sell online where I don't have to carry the merchandise and ship it?

Then….I started surfing online, and began to read about affiliate marketing.  I absolutely LOVED the idea of promoting somebody else's product and getting a cut from it.

I really had no idea how to start.  Since I sold on eBay, I figured it would be a good idea to become an affiliate for eBay.  Eventually I just became hooked on it.

I can't see myself doing anything else.  I can't imagine going back to the days of getting up by an alarm clock, fighting through rush hour traffic with all the other 9-5ers.

i love the idea that I can get up and travel anywhere on a lark, and as long as I've got an internet connection, I've got all I need for my business. I don't know of too many other jobs where you could that.  Getting involved with internet marketing was one of the best decision that I have ever made!

I know there are a bunch of you out there who are just starting out, and are still trying to get that first sale. I can't begin to tell you how important it is getting that first sale.  It really has nothing to do with the money.  It's much more important for your confidence.I know exactly what it's like when you are trying to make that first sale ever.  You log in to your account and all you ever see is $0 next to your balance.  You wish you could just see a different number.  It doesn't matter if it's just 50 cents. You'll take anything. You just want see that it works.  That you can make money online.

I went through it just like anybody else.

When I first started, my first venture was to try to make money as an affiliate of eBay.  This was during the day when eBay's affiliate program was run through Commission Junction.  (Now….it's run in-house).

I had built a little site that was about motorcycles, and I would write some articles on the site, but the majority of each page consisted of eBay listings on motorcycles.  When somebody would click on one of the listings and go to eBay and buy something, I would make a commission.

It was about a week after I had setup the website, and I was starting to get some traffic.  I remember checking my account on Commission like every hour on the hour. (I strongly recommend that you DO NOT do this, if you are a newbie. It can drive you crazy). I would constantly be seeing $0 next to my account balance.

Then one day…….YAHTZEE!!! I saw $25 on my balance. My reaction was somewhat akin to how people react when they win the lottery.  But that $25 felt like all the money in the world to me. The feeling was just incredible to know that you can put a website on something as massive on the internet and have people, not only find you, but they do what you want them to do. Words can't describe the feeling.

I remember the next day, I was so motivated that I created two more websites, and before I knew it I was on my way to make a living online.  The rest is, as they say, history.

I just wanted to write this post to let all the newbies know that we all start the same way.  All of us start with that first sale.  From that moment on, most of get hooked on this business.  I know that was the case with me.

Unless, you haven't been paying attention to the news out of Google in the last 6-8 months, Google Caffeine is supposed to be rolling out well……sometime.

Is this ever going to take place?? There are a lot of people asking this in the industry.  I don't work with Google, so I really couldn't tell you.

Matt Cuts, who has said in November that Google Caffeine was scheduled to go out after the holidays.  Well….here we are in April.  Still no caffeine.

He has been recently interviewed and said that Google is taking their time with the release of the "new and improved Google". They will be opening up the new search engine one data center at a time, most likely starting in Europe, and will gradually insert these month to month.

Some people have said that they think Google Caffeine is already live.  Frankly, I'll believe that when I see it for myself and/or hear about it from Google.

But the question remains should you be excited when Google Caffeine comes out? I can't speak for you, but I cannot wait until it comes out!!

How come?  Simple….a lot of my sites are showing significant increases in the search results.  I'm not going to go over it, and expose my niches, but I have seen really amazing differences between current Google results and the caffeine results.

For some keywords, I am currently ranking in the 80s and with the caffeine results, I'm in the top 5.

Google is obviously not going to tell me why that is, but I'm certainly not going to complain about it. You can check out your own sites and how they are ranking in the caffeine results at Compare Caffeine.

In fact, I've had a growing amount of people, emailing me about buying some of my sites.  The funny thing is that the sites they wanted to buy are currently not ranking very well for their main keywords, but when I check the caffeine results, they are ranking very well.

So, essentially these people are trying to buy these sites dirt cheap right now because they are ranking low, and they don't think that I'm aware of the caffeine results.

So, if you get some people asking to buy one of your sites, and it's a site that isn't getting a lot of traffic right now, make sure to check compare caffeine.  They might be trying to slip one past you.

There is some discussion among a lot of internet marketing gurus whether you should give out your phone number (hopefully your business number) on your website.

The answer is "it all depends".

First of all, if you are just going to be an affiliate marketer promoting other people's products, then there most likely is no reason to give out your number.  After all, you are not the one handling customer service, the seller of the product or service is.

So, this question really is for people that have their own products or services that they are offering.

So, is it a good idea to give your phone number to prospective and current customers?  Theoretically, yes.

It provides trust and a great outlet for potential and current customers to contact you.

If you are going to build a HUGE, massive website like an eBay or Amazon, then a phone number is critical, but that's really not going to be the case for most people.

However, this is probably not going to be the case for most people.  For most of us, (myself included) we are going to be selling products to a specific niche, and will most likely never become worldwide phenomenon.

In cases like this if you are planning on giving out your phone number, you better be prepared to have a decent amount of employees to answer the phone calls.  One person alone isn't going to get it done.

If you are planning on answering the phone all by yourself, get ready for your day to be wasted, because that's all you will be doing.  I don't know about you, but I've got a lot on my plate during the day, and I simply don't have the time to answer calls all day.

Also, if you are going to get employees to answer the phone for you, you better make sure that they are well trained.  After all, they are representing you.  As far as the customer who's calling in is concerned, YOU are answering their questions.

One untrained employee answering one question incorrectly, can not only cost you a sale, but any potential sales that the prospective buyer might have recommended.

Me, personally, I am still a big fan of using email as the primary contact information.  It allows me to answer the questions, at my own convenience, and through my own planning of the day.

Don't get me wrong.  If you can afford it, and you've got employees that you can rely on, which have good phone skills, then you might want to give it a try.

Unless you are in that kind of position, my vote says "stick with the email".

Ok….it's been 30 days.  How do you feel?  If you were completely brand new to creating websites and online marketing, I hope you've learned a lot.  

This post goes out to all of the people who have followed the step by step plan, and either have not had the kind of success that they had hoped for or they have had success and just simply don’t like the niche they have chosen and would rather focus all their time and effort on a new niche.

Flippa
Website Broker
http://www.webmaster-talk.com/websites-for-sale/
eBay

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You may not be ready for this quite yet, but once you’ve built up your PageRank, a good thing you can do is sell text links.  Webmasters are willing to pay big money for contextual links on high PR sites.

If you are really not sure what the value of your links would be, you can check out text link ads.  It’s a great way of selling a link without too many problems.  It’s very simple.  Text Link Ads will list your site on their marketplace, and people can check out your site and see if they would like to purchase a link. Text Link Ads gets 50% of the revenue, but if you are brand new to selling links, it’s worth it.

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After 27 days, I'm sure the idea of just paying for traffic has probably sprung in your brain.  Is this a good idea or not? Well…..it depends. If you have had a steady stream of traffic, what kind of sales are you getting?  If the conversion rate is strong, then starting a PPC campaign is a wonderful idea.

It's obvious you've got a sales page that people are reading and responding to.  There's absolutely no reason to at least try a PPC campaign and see if you can get some hands-free revenue.

I know when people think PPC, they instantly think Google Adwords.  How could you not?

If you are going to use PPC as part of your marketing repertoire, then Google Adwords is a must.

HOWEVER, that being said, if you are completely new to PPC, I really encourage you to try a program that is less intimidating and forgiving than Adwords.  Once you are comfortable, THEN you can try Adwords.  But you have to walk before you can run.

That's why I recommend that you start with a program like Yahoo's PPC Program, which is called Yahoo Marketing Solutions.

There is a few of things with Yahoo Marketing Solutions that are more beneficial for a beginner than Google Adwords.

1. For starters, it's cheaper.  Who doesn't like that?  Because there isn't as much advertiser competition with Yahoo as there is with Google, therefore the CPC are a lot lower.   So, you are getting cheaper traffic to your site.

2. The interface of Yahoo is a lot easier than Google's.  It took me a lot longer to get the grasp of the Adwords' interface than it did Yahoo's.

3. Google Adwords is a lot quicker to pull your account without any real notification.  There are reports all over the Internet that Google has closed a lot of people's accounts, because they violated TOS. The problem is they don't really go into detail as to what you violated.  There is not much gray area.

4. The dreaded Google Slap.  There's nothing quite like it.  You could be having a very profitable campaign, paying only 20 cents a click, then all of a sudden, Google pulls the rug from under you, and gives you a Google slap, raising your minimum bid to $5.00 a click. I've never had this problem with Yahoo, and quite frankly I've never heard too many other people having this problem with Yahoo.

So let's get started.

Go to Yahoo Marketing Solutions

Yesterday, I mentioned about building a review site for your niche, if you've experienced success with your site.

Another thing you can do, instead of moving onto another niche, is to create your own product.  Don't worry this isn't as complicated as you think it is.

I've already written a post on this subject.  You can read it here:

How To Create Your Own Product

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Ok….this is for all those people who have had success with their niches, and more importantly enjoy writing about the niche.

An alternative is to create a review site based on your niche.  You'd provide honest reviews of affiliate products.  In your review, you simply provide an affiliate link within your review.

This is really based on the Chris Rempel Conduit Method.  I'll lightly brush through it, but if you are really interested in it, I really encourage you to check it out.  I have a few conduit sites, and they are all money makers for me.

The basic concept is if there is a product being sold, there are going to be people who will be looking for a review of it.  They want to verify whether it's worth the purchase or not.

Your job would be to find out about as many affiliate products that are being promoted within your niche.  You can set them up in different categories. For instance, if you were in the acne niche, you can break that down into acne creams, acne home remedies, acne pills, etc…. Then within those categories, you create reviews on each of those affiliate products.

The key is to be honest.  You do the research on each of the products, and then provide an honest review.  The goal is provide a site that will be treated as a a leader in that particular niche. You can start with about 20 products, and then add about 5 products every month.

Once again, this is for people who have made money in their niche, and enjoy writing content on it.

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I touched on this in yesterday’s post. But for those that have started to make money with your site, it’s inevitable you want to start building on that.  The key is to grow your business.  Having one site is great for a start, but it’s only a start.

There are plenty of sites to for outsourcing.  These should get you started.

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Ok…..you've gotten some work done.  If you've followed along with the step by step plan, then you are light years ahead of most people in this business will ever be.  That is something that you should be proud of.

But it's time to dissect what you have done so far.

My guess is that what has brought the most traffic to your site is probably your articles on Ezine Articles.  That is if you have kept pace with writing 2 articles every day. As long as you've done that, I'd be very surprised if you haven't had any sales. 

But let's analyze what has happened.  What's your CTR (click through rate) on your articles?  Is it below 20%?  If it is, you need to do a little experimenting.  Change your resource box a little.  Try to see if it makes any difference on your next 4 or 5 articles.

Also, how do you feel about article marketing?  Do you hate writing two articles a day?  It took me a while to get used to it when I first started article marketing.  But after the second week, it was like second nature to me.   Has that been the case with you?

You're probably a lot faster writing your articles know than when you first started it.  You could probably write 2 articles in about 30 minutes.

If you have started to generate sales, and still HATE article marketing, then you can take some of the money from your sales and outsource the article writing.  (I'll talk more about outsourcing on another day). 

What about your SEO? How's your search engine rankings doing? If you don't know where you rank for your keyword, you can download the rank checker for firefox to be able to check where you rank.

If you are still not ranking well, and have generated sales, you might want to consider Unique Article Wizard or Linkvana to start to boost your backlinks and your rankings.

How about the social marketing aspect?  Has Yahoo Answers or MyBlogLog brought any targeted traffic to you?  If not, keep trying for a little longer, and if you still don't generate traffic using these services, then toss them aside.  Focus on using the tools that DO bring traffic to your site.  Some niches just won't bring traffic through social marketing.  That's just the way it is.  But there really is no way of knowing until you try it.

Have you kept up with your blog posts?  Don't fall behind.  They are really important for SEO.

What about Email marketing?  Have you opened an account with an autoresponder like GetResponse or Aweber, and started building a list?

You are basically going to be giving yourself a report card.  Analyze what has worked and what hasn't.  What you need to improve on and what you are doing well.

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If you chose a niche that also has a lot of physical products, it would be a good idea to promote it in your sidebar or perhaps even in of your blog posts.  You don’t have to actively promote.  You can just use a small banner.

First let’s visit Amazon Associates.

Click the button "Join Now For Free"

Complete the application.

You’ll be taken to a page where you can customize the banner, and get your HTML code.  Copy your code and paste it on your sidebar.  You’re all set!

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You may not be familiar with MyBlogLog, but it’s a great little website to get your blog noticed by other people.  It’s a great little widget that you can put on your site. I have it on mine.  It’s actually in my footer area. You can see who is stopping by your site.

I know it’s really simple, but doing something like tagging your profile, can add incoming traffic to your site.  It ensures that your site is going to show up in the appropriate tag categories.  So when somebody searches for your specific niche within MyBlogLog, your site will pop up in the search results.

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Well….today you are going to get a little break.  I’m sure you can use it.

I bet you learned something. If that’s the case, then it’s not really a failure is it?  You’ve gotten something useful out of it.

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Email marketing is the backbone of just about any of the biggest internet marketers around.  It's instant traffic.  The old adage is that for every subscriber on your list, that equals $1 a month. So, I'm sure you can do the math when you hear about certain marketers who have 50,000 subscribers on the list.  It must be nice to make $50,000 a month for just sending an email, no? 

Well, everybody starts the same way.  They have to build a list.  I've already written a 3 part strategy in building a list.  You can check them out here:

Part 1:  Why You Need A List

Part 2: How To Get Readers To Sign Up

Part 3: Setting Up The Messages

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If you haven’t heard of Yahoo Answers, it’s basically a place where people ask questions about certain topics, and Yahoo members answer questions.

So, in your first couple weeks, just answer 2 questions a day.  Then after a couple of weeks, you can begin to raise the amount of questions you’ll answer.  You’ll eventually start to build your numbers.

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On this day, I am going to lightly touch on video marketing.  I know video marketing may sound a little intimidating, but there are a lot of different ways to do it. 

What video capture software can you use?

Well….without question, the best video capture software that most internet marketers use is Camtasia.

Jing has a free video capture software.  The quality is really good.  The only problem is that you can’t edit the video, and it has a 5 minute time limit on each video you make.

Camstudio is another free option.  You can’t edit the software, and the video quality isn’t the greatest but there is no time limit on it.
 
If you want to try even a different option, there is a great program called Animoto.

If you want to mass submit your videos to the top video sites, you can also get a free account with Tube Mogul.  You can upload your video to dozens of sites at the click of a button.

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On day 10, I mentioned the power of RSS and how it can get you a lot of backlinks.

This RSS feed can now be sent to the RSS aggregators.  Just like that you’ve got more backlinks to your sites.

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Hubpages can make a pretty big difference in your traffic.

Then add another 2 or 3 paragraphs in your opening capsule.  Put a link to your website with the main keyword of your site as the anchor text. Move on to the next capsule and write another 2 or 3 paragraphs.
 
Once you are done with that, you can just hit the publish button and you’re all set.

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Today we are going to talk about building a squidoo lens to promote your site.  You are going to use one of your keywords from your list for the title of the lens as well as your URL.

Publish the lens and you’ve got yourself a link from a high PR website.

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