Getting Started in Internet Marketing - Do You Have What it Takes to Succeed?
By Cynthia Mosher.

It is estimated that at about 80% of those starting out in internet marketing are not successful. The countless ads and hyped up success stories - and even the legitimate stories of success - don’t tell you that. Instead many offer up screen shots of their Paypal reports to prove daily earnings showing $100, $500, $1000 and even more. And they promise riches in 3 days or less if only you will do what they do and pay them to tell you how to do it.

I believe that the biggest part of winning is a matter of believing you can. Soon after starting an online business, those with common senses and good business sense - realize the need to dig in for the long haul. The fact is it usually takes time to build a business or perhaps more crucially, it takes time to achieve credibility. So forget about making it in a few days or weeks. It just isn’t going to happen for 99.9% of people.

Always remember that there are thousands out there doing the same thing you are and the only way to stand out is through creativity and unique ideas. Once you are a creator it will set you apart from your competition. It helps to be known as someone who writes his own articles, ads, press releases and blog posts. Even if you use the work of others for research you will stand out by doing so creatively and by adding your personal touch.

Internet marketing is a relatively new field, the new Wild West, and this causes many people to be enthusiastic and skeptical at the same time. Countless sales pages display pictures of houses, cars and checks to try to convince themselves and countless others that it is possible ! The reality is that it won’t happen overnight.

In today’s “instant gratification” society, most are not ready to commit the next few years of their lives to build a business, a business that would take them past their retirement age. For all of those who come to internet marketing with $$$$$ signs in front of their eyes, the reality soon bites hard! There is a long hard road ahead, of struggles and sacrifices. Once that sets in it brings out the best in everyone with a drive and commitment to success.

But still, success is entirely within the grasp of those who are willing to commit themselves to the pain of growth, hardship and learning. Knowing the reality of internet marketing with the hype removed and the facts in front of you are you prepared to give what it takes?

Cynthia Mosher has been working online since 1998. She shares her advice and experience on working at home and internet and affiliate marketing at her website Wahm Daily.

Related Article: Internet Marketing Guide For Newbies.

Getting your site to rank well in Google was used to be easy. Trick such as keyword stuffing worked very well because competition for any given keyword was very low. But the good old days are long gone.

Nowadays stuffing keywords will get your site banned. The search engine’s technology (particularly Google) has evolved to a point that they can read a web page just like a human would.

Therefore, today’s search engines place 90% or more of their ranking priorities on CONTENT and LINKS. This is the secret of making Google love your site.

How to write great CONTENT?

Write as if you’re talking to a person. Keywords are still important in certain places such as the title tag and post title, but more importantly they should be used in a natural way in the body text. Do not worry too much about how and where to place your targeted keywords in the beginning. Just write your article as if you’re having a conversation with a human being.

After you finish writing an article, go through it again and this time try to fit your targeted keywords as close to the beginning of the first sentence as possible. Make sure to use keyword synonyms frequently throughout your entire article. Writing your article this way is appealing to real human beings and optimized for the search engines as well.

If you want to learn how to write high-quality articles for both the human readers and search engines, check out this book: “Turn Words Into Traffic“.

How to get LINKS to your site?

Having quality inbound links with your main keywords as anchor texts is a crucial step to get top ranking and in maintaining the position. There are many ways to get inbound links depending on how much time you have. For me, I use the following three methods…

1. Writing and submitting articles to article directories. The four article directories I use are:

- EzineArticles.com
- GoArticles.com
- ArticleDashBoard.com
- IdeaMarketers.com

Two more sites I often use to get extra links and traffic are: Squidoo and HubPages.

2. Bookmarking. I use SocialMarker.com to bookmark my web pages. You can use this free utility to bookmark your page to more than 40 sites on the fly. It takes me about 20-25 minutes to bookmark a page to 40 sites.

3. 3WayLinks. This is an automated link-building tool created by Jonathan Leger. It’s a set and forget link-building tool, it has a very advanced technology and it takes care of all the important linking-factors needed for quality links. For more info, read this article: 3WayLinks Network.

Writing quality content and building backlinks are time-intensive and on-going process, this is how a successful web site was built.

Related Article: The Power Of LINKS For Your Website.

Related Article: How To Turn Words Into Traffic.

how to get top ranking, search engine optimization tips, seo optimization tips

When it comes to building a profitable niche site, most guides fail to tell you the full story. This is not the case with “Chris Rempel’s Confessions of a Lazy Super-Affiliate“. It’s the only guide I’ve ever seen that actually lays out exactly what it promised on the sales page.

Confessions of a Lazy Super-Affiliate lays out step-by-step the exact method used by the author to build profitable and long term niche sites. In this review, I will tell you what are the steps discussed in the book. Of course I will only outline the steps in a nutshell. All the detailed instructions are in the guide.

Start with a Marketplace. Go to Clickbank, Commission Junction or eBay. Look for products that sell well but select only ONE product to focus on. Don’t worry about the competition at this point. Just select one best-seller, this will ensure that you’re targeting the right product which already has high demand. NOTE: you can also pick a product that you know nothing about. You need to think like a businessman, not only selecting product based on your liking but based on demands in the market. If you know nothing about the product then you need to be willing to learn until you know. That’s a businessman’s mindset.

After you select a product, visit and read the sales page. Focus and jot down TWO things here: the sales process and the BENEFITS of the product. Decide whether to purchase the product or not. Of course it’s better if you can buy the product. But if you can’t afford it, you will need to do more study, research and reading. Google the product name and start your research.

If you follow the instructions in “Confessions of a Lazy Super-Affiliate”, you will be able to identify some functional keywords of the product (functional keywords describe the functions and benefits of the product). Just select one keyword that best describe the function of the product. There is no right or wrong choice here. Just pick one and plug it in Google Keyword Tool. Google will spit out many related keywords or phrases for you. You can plug in another functional keyword if you want to get more. My advice is to focus on ONE at a time.

From the list of keywords churned out by Google, select 4-5 clustered keywords or phrases. Clustered keywords mean keywords that are related to each other. For example, aromatherapy mint, aromatherapy chamomile, aromatherapy jasmine, aromatherapy cinnamon are clustered keywords. Remember: only focus on 4 or 5 clustered keywords first. You will need to write a 500 words article for each. So don’t focus on too many at first. Once you’ve got 5 articles or pages for your niche site. You can look for another 4 or 5 clustered keywords and produce more pages as your site grows. This way, you’re making sure that all the pages/articles are tightly related to the theme of your niche site. This is very important in order to rank well in the search engines. NOTE: if you don’t know much about the product you’re promoting, you MUST do more study and research until you’re capable of writing 500 words article for each keyword you selected.

Once you’ve written the 5 articles, you can now start building your niche site. Chris Rempel also provides a live example video that shows you how to build a mini-site to the exact specifications of the niche example he discussed in the ebook. You will learn how to physically build a profitable mini-site mentioned in the book. What they should look like, the most effective layout, what programs to use, etc. etc.

And last but not least, Confessions of a Lazy Super-Affiliate covers many unique traffic-generation techniques such as viral marketing, SEO, reciprocal & one-way linking, affiliate program, etc. etc. If you’re serious about building a profitable niche site, you should check out “Confessions of a Lazy Super-Affiliate“. Nothing is left out in this book.

NOTE: The author is a creator of Online Business Journey. For more internet marketing and online business tips, please visit his site at Online Business Journey. Copyright © 2008 Leon Lioe. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

I am sure you have heard this many times already… “Internet Marketing is easy”, “Making money on the internet is easy”, even “newbies can make tons of money on the internet”, etc.. etc… Perhaps you are already sick and tired of all these wild claims.

Well, the fact is that it is very easy to get started but not easy to make money. Those people who tell you that making money on the internet is easy are actually lying to you. It may be easy for them but it doesn’t mean it will be easy for you too.

Those people who say it is easy have forgotten to tell you something. They have forgotten to tell you what does it actually take to make money. It may have taken them years to be what they are today but most of them will not tell you exactly what they did to make money, they are just interested to sell you their latest products.

If you are a newbie, you should be very careful of those “wild claims” that promise to reveal the secret to instant riches online. The internet marketing world is full of hype and outrageous claims.

So if you are a newbie, how should you approach internet marketing? For newbies, the safe and smart route to start is through a proper education. Equip yourself with the right knowledge. Education is the key to internet marketing success for newbies.

Without a proper education, newbies will most likely fall for the internet marketing hype. They may lose thousands of dollars buying one product after another that doesn’t deliver. Most newbies will go through the wrong path when they first get started.

I hope by reading this article, you will be able to avoid the wrong path and save yourself thousands of dollars. With the right education, it will guide you to the right path.

Get the right education today, check out: Internet Marketing Guide For Newbies.

Related Article: Internet Marketing For Newbies or Beginners.

NOTE: The author is a creator of Online Business Journey. For more internet marketing and online business tips, please visit his site at Online Business Journey. Copyright © 2008 Leon Lioe. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

I recently picked up a very unique book that caught my curiosity… “Desperate Buyers Only“.

As its name suggests, this book is about teaching you the process of finding a PROBLEM that bugs people… these people are willing to pay for anything that can help them to get rid of the problem. The process then continues to show you how to find and create a subject or solution in the form of information or ebook that you can sell online.

This process is certainly easier said than done. Well, if you already know how to do this then you don’t need this book. BUT if you want to learn how to write an ebook that sells… and the process of researching a problem area and brainstorm a solution… then “Desperate Buyers Only” is definitely worth checking out.

Besides walking you through the process step-by-step, Alexis Dawes (the author of Desperate Buyers Only) also teaches you the techniques she uses to write a sales letter that converts like crazy. This sales letter has a very high conversion rate simply because it focuses on the customer’s problem. The technique used by Alexis is to continously hit the customer’s hot buttons until it triggers them to take out their credit card to buy your offer.

The section I like best in Desperate Buyers Only is called “The Anatomy Of A $200 A Day Site”. If you read the book, make sure you read this section because the information here is easily worth 10 times the price of the book. Alexis will teach you step-by-step the process of creating a site that can rake in $200 a day for you. The idea is to create a passive income of $200 a day using the proven techniques. These are the core techniques used by Alexis to create her financial success online.

In summary… “Desperate Buyers Only” is definitely useful for people who are keen to create their own informational products and sell them online.

You can find out more information here: Desperate Buyers Only.

I am sure you have heard this thousand times… Without TRAFFIC, you can’t make any money with your website. Traffic is the lifeline of any internet business.

Traffic is one of the most CRITICAL things that you need in order to generate revenue with your web sites.

If you have the most pretty site in the world… without traffic, you’ve got a pretty site that is dead.

You can have the most quality content in the world… without traffic, you may as well be creating content for nothing.

And if you have the fanciest animations on your site… without traffic, it’s nothing more than a fancy light and sound show!

Traffic is the one thing that always get asked again and again by online marketers.

“How do we get TRAFFIC to our site?”

The answers can be found in Kelvin Hui’s Traffic Manuscript.

But who is Kelvin Hui and why should we listen to him?

Perhaps you have never heard of Kelvin Hui. He is a very low profile Web Publishing expert. In October 2006, he created a mega website that grew so fast that has attracted a multi-year partnership contract with Yahoo! Inc. in December 2006.

Why Yahoo! was interested to partner with Kelvin?

It’s because Kelvin has figured out the secrets to generating HUGE amounts of traffic to his web site. We’re talking over 2.5 MILLION visitors to his sites each and every month!

You can see the PROOF here!

Excited? Kelvin is FINALLY sharing his secrets in his Traffic Manuscript with the rest of the world. Traffic Manuscript is now available for download, and I can assure you that it is a valuable read for anyone who wants to learn how to get more traffic to their web site.

When you download this report, you’ll get the following:
- the full Traffic manuscript
- a complete case study of the site that got Yahoo’s attention
- a backlink video course
- a newbie kickstart guide
- Premier access to the Traffic Manuscript private club!

On top of this, Kelvin is offering 100% readership satisfaction with an unconditional money-back guarantee.

I’ve read the Traffic Manuscript and personally will vouch for his material.

If you download Traffic Manuscript, please make sure you read the case study because the information there is PRICELESS. Kelvin will share with you how he created the mega website from scratch and every single steps he took from brainstorming an idea until final construction.

Also pay close attention on the main volume of Traffic Manuscript starting on page 57 (section 5) when he talked about Traffic Generation Strategies, Traffic Management and Traffic Leveraging. The materials there are simply breathtaking! Nobody has shared about Traffic Management and Traffic Leveraging before. And these are the keys to convert traffic into REVENUE.

Go check out Traffic Manuscript now and learn an insider’s secrets for generating massive amounts of traffic to your web sites! Don’t miss out this goldmine.

NOTE: The author is a creator of Online Business Journey. For more internet marketing and online business tips, please visit his site at Online Business Journey. Copyright © 2008 Leon Lioe. This article may be freely distributed if all the hyperlinks stay attached.

Related article: Web Traffic Generation.

Writing for the web is different from writing for print. Therefore in order to write an effective web content that gets traffic and sales, you must first understand how people read on the web. Recent studies reveal that most people merely scan the web content instead of reading them word by word.

So what does this tell us? For a start, it means that we need to be concise and precise! Short and to the point, with one idea per paragraph.

Secondly, write objectively with the attention to SHARE information rather than PROMOTE a product. Of course you can promote a product you love but make sure you have something VALUABLE to share first. Make your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) and benefits as clear and concise as possible.

It’s Words That Sell…

“Words are. of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.”
– Rudyard Kipling.

Your content is made out of words. So in order to write content that sells, you must make the most productive use of words, words that address the NEEDS and WANTS of your readers. If you can do that, you will have no shortage of traffic because your visitors will keep coming back to your site. This is the SECRET of turning words into traffic.

Use of the right words can instantly persuade your visitors to become customers. But use of the wrong words can instantly destroy even the most professional-looking site.

Of course powerful words alone won’t make a sale. It’s a combination of powerful and motivational words that address the needs and wants of your readers that make sales. How do you know the needs and wants of your customers?

The answer is simple… Ask and LISTEN to your customers. I once read a quote that I never forget. But I can’t remember where I read it. If you know the author name, please email me his/her name at leonlioe(at)gmail.com

Here is the quote I never forget…

“You don’t need to have great ideas if you can hear great ideas.”
– sorry I forget the author name.

If you only remember one thing about selling and converting web traffic into sales, it’s this…

Understand and Become Your Customer

You may know your products inside out and upside down but if you don’t feel your customer’s needs and wants, they won’t buy from you. To feel your customer, you need to become your customer!

So when you have a chance to communicate with your customers, don’t just talk about your wonderful product but also ask your customers what are the particular features or benefits they would like to see in your product.

The one most powerful reference I’ve ever read on how to turn words into traffic and get sales on the Net is “Turn Words Into Traffic” by Jim & Dallas Edwards.

If you’re serious about learning how to convert your words into web traffic and sales, I highly recommend you to check it out.

If you want to make money online, the surest and fastest way is to build niche business. A niche is defined as a specialized target segment of a market. For example - “home fitness” is a niche in the health and fitness market. Another example, “training Labrador dogs” is a niche of the dog training market. You can easily find many niches within the more general markets if you do a little research.

Focusing on niches and build niche businesses are the best way to make money online because there are demands in any niche and the competition is low. Finding niches is easy but how do you go about developing a niche business?

Building a niche business invovels 5 major stages:

1. Identify A Niche - the most important thing to remember here is to find a niche that is profitable. To know whether a niche is profitable or not, you need to do a thorough market research.

2. Keyword Research - this is a process of identifying profitable keywords in that niche. Keywords are words used by the users when they are searching for something online. Profitable keywords are keywords that have high searches and low supplies. If you want to know more about keyword research, you can read this Keyword Elite Review.

3. Find Affiliate Programs - this is a process of finding reputable affiliate programs or products that match your chosen niche.

4. Build Website - this stage involves building website, writing quality contents and seach engine optimization. The most difficult task here is “writing quality contents”. You need to spend a lot of time and effort to write contents that have great value for your visitors and optimized for the search engine.

5. Promote Your Website - this is the process of using both paid and free methods of promoting and attracting web traffic to your website. Some examples are pay-per-click advertising (paid), article marketing (free), and Web 2.0 (free).

As you can see, a lot of time and effort are required to build a niche business. If you have thousands of dollars a month to spare, you can hire people to do all these tasks for you. BUT most people when started out in online business don’t have the money.

Therefore the BEST solution for people who don’t have thousands of dollars to spare is to use a solution called “Niche Business In A Box”. As its name suggests, Niche Business In A Box basically gives you an almost pre-built niche business, it has done most of the tasks in the 5 major stages of building a niche business discussed above.

The best Niche Business In A Box product I have used is called “Niches-In-A-Box“, below are some of the benefits provided by Niches-In-A-Box:

* EIGHT different income streams.

* A high-value product where you can promote & sell online and keep 100% profit.

* FREE Autoresponder.

* Professional Squeeze page and FREE report to help you build your list.

* FIFTEEN (15) Sub-sections. These are sub-folders that contain the site’s articles. Each sub-folder contains 20 keyword-optimized articles. So in total, you get 300 articles, all ready to help you attract visitors to your niche site.

* Audio and video content.

* Complete blog template and blog posts.

* Complete video tutorials.

A good niche business in a box can save 90% or more of your time. With minimum cost or charges, you can build one or more profitable niche business every month. If you do the market research, keyword research and affiliate programs yourself, perhaps it will take you 3-6 or more months (depending on your skillset) to build just one niche business.

Click here for more information about Niches-In-A-Box.

The guaranteed formula for failure in Internet Marketing or online business is buying one product after another. If you’ve been doing internet marketing for a while now and are in the email list of some gurus, I’m sure you’ve received tons of emails from them raving about a particular product. Sometimes it’s very difficult to stay focused when everyone is raving about products after products.

If you can’t stay focused on the basics, buying one product after another is not going to help. In fact it will derail you further away from success instead. What do I mean by “the basics”?

Well, it means you should already have a website or blog targeting on a certain niche market. For example, let’s say you’re targeting a niche market in “stress management”. You should already have a professional-looking site with a squeeze page and a free special report for people to download. You should also have pre-sell pages that promote or recommend some stress management related products. And you also have a traffic generation in place (such as blog, links-building strategy and article marketing).

Until you’ve got the basics in place, there’s no reason to keep buying new product. It’s not going to help until you have the basic plan in place and make a commitment to work the plan.

However, finding a niche market that has good profit potential is not so easy. You’ve to spend lots of time doing market and keyword research. Please remember that traffic generation actually starts from the very beginning (not after you’ve built your site). Therefore, you need to focus on the RIGHT niche (the one that is not too competitive yet still has high demands). That’s why market and keyword research are crucial. If you do it wrong from the beginning, your site simply won’t survive.

As mentioned, market and keyword research is crucial to your success. You have to know what you’re doing in order to find the profitable niche market. Finding profitable niche is easier said than done… a lot of TIME and EFFORT are involved!

The solution I use to save time and effort in doing market and keyword research is called “Niches-In-A-Box (or NIAB)“.

In a nutshell, NIAB is like a “niche business in a box”. They have literally done 95% of the works for you. They’ve done the market and keyword research for you, they’ve done the website design for you, they’ve written all the articles for you, they’ve written a special report for you, they’ve created a quality product for you to sell, they’ve created squeeze pages for you, and they also have provided an Auturesponder for you.

For a complete review of NIAB, go here: Fastest Way To Build Niche Websites And Make Money Online.

Earning money online is not as difficult as you think as there are many good resources available nowadays. You’ll most likely succeed if you focus and apply the right methods and put in consistent effort. However, the statistics show that there are more people who fail online rather than success. In fact, more than 95% fail and only 3-4% actually make money online.

Here are the reasons why so many people fail online and how you can avoid it:

1. They believe in get-rich-quick schemes.

The Internet provides some great opportunities to earn money but it’s also full of BIG hype and scams. One good advice to always remember when you’re venturing online is this… “earning money online requires patience and consistent works”. You can’t get rich overnight. Get-rich-quick schemes are SCAMS period. How to avoid it? Simple, do not believe that it exists!

2. They have the wrong mindset.

They think that you just need to create a website and money will flow in. WRONG! In fact, creating a website is just a small part of the whole make-money-online process. The process start with a market research to find out and evaluate if there are demands in the topic/product you want to promote. It only makes sense to start designing and creating your website after you’ve research a market. Once you’ve your website up and running, your works aren’t finished yet, you now need to promote and drive traffic to your site. Therefore, earning money online is a process. And the process is not much different from building a brick-and-mortar or traditional kind of business. You do need to have a businessman’s mindset, think and act like an entrepreneur (not website designer).

3 They don’t have FOCUS.

There are thousands and thousands of products claiming and promising to reveal the SECRETS of making tons of money online. And many people are falling for these kinds of traps and nonsense. They will buy one product after another hoping to find the SECRETS, and they never did. After they’ve spent thousand of dollars and still haven’t found the secret, they crashed and burnt. R.I.P.

The SECRET of success online is FOCUS. You need to focus on ONE niche market at a time. Once you’ve achieved good success on one site, then and only then you move on to the next. Most people fail because they’re doing too many things at the same time. They register domain after domain and build website after website but failed to learn how to promote them properly. So those websites just disappear after a while. This approach is a waste of time and money.

If you want to learn how to focus and how to build a real online business using a proven process, watch the video below. This video is not about a product or ebook, it’s about showing you how a real internet or online business is actually built for success right from the very beginning. You will discover a complete online business development platform with a proven process.

About the Author:
The author is a creator of Online Business Journey and Ebuzz Zone. For more internet marketing and online business tips, please visit his site/blog at Online Business Journey and Ebuzz Zone. Copyright © 2008 Leon Lioe. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

Source: http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/showa.cgi?C=776298