So you've decided on how you want to make your money online? Then the next thing you need to do is get an Internet Marketing Education. "Wow wow what a minute," you yell, "I thought this was going to be an easy click and laugh to the bank operation"? Well that is what some would have you believe, but the truth of the matter is Internet Marketing is no different from being a lawyer, doctor or entrepreneur, each one has to go to school and learn, be it via a college degree or school of experience and life. We all go through this and the internet is no different.
You can decide to go the hard route and not listen to me right now, continue clicking and buying all those marketing systems that promise you millions, thousands or even moderate hundreds of dollars, none of this will come about though if you do not know how to market on the internet. You need to get an education and these are 4 ways I know of to go about doing this.
1. Forums: This is my favorite way of gathering information. You should google "internet marketing forums" and join some top ones that appeal to you. There is no two ways about it, just spend time reading to start with and very soon you will be able to join in the conversations, obviously internet marketing is very vast and my advice to you is once you've decided on what aspects you want to concentrate on zero on these and ganer as much infomation as you can. Below is a list of a few of my favourite public forums.
Warrior Forums
Internet Marketing Forum
Net Marketing Forum
2. EBooks: Now these are popular and unpopular as a lot of substandard information are being slapped together and called ebooks. There are still some very good EBooks out there that provide very useful information. Here is a short list to start you off.
How to Develop Money Making Niche Sites With Wordpress By Caroline Middlebrook
How To Break Into The Make Money On-Line Niche By Sara Brown
Inernet Business Manifesto By Richard Schefren
Ask around the forums and use good judgement, but there are a lot of ebooks out there with great useful material. I will probably post a list of ebooks that I have found useful some time soon.
3. Internet Marketing Training Courses and Sites: Some are free and some are not, those that are not may cost a few bucks and some may cost the earth. You will have to do some research and decide on what's best for you. Below are a few sites I have used and am still using.These are very helpful if you know what you want and want to find an honest provider.
Thirty Day Challenge
Purple Cowboy Marketing
Veretekk
4. Training Seminars: Now these could put you back several thousands of dollars a piece. I've never been to one but I understand that they could really make a big difference to your online business.
Now, let me clarify something, these are not the only ways you can get an Internet Marketing education and make money online, you can decide to combine them or ignore all and find your own way, but what ever you do, whats most important is that you get educated.
Tuesday, 27 May 2008
Thursday, 22 May 2008
5 Basic Ways of Making Money or A Living Online
There are 5 basic ways I know of for a person to make money or a living online. We shall explore those briefly today.
1. Affiliate Marketing: Most of the new people online (popularly known as newbies) and some seasoned online marketers make their living or try to make their living via this method. So what is Affiliate Marketing? An affiliate marketer is some-one who helps promote and sell a product of service for someone else of another company. The product or service is therefore not theirs, they bring in the contact who buys and pays the other person or company and at the end of the month usually the affiliate gets paid a commision for their effort.
Now there are a lot of people who are making a handsome amount of money as affiliate marketers all over the internet, but the truth is for every successful affiliate there are probably a thousand or more poor affiliates tearing their hair out because nothing seems to be working.
I remember as a newbie, I'ld signup for one programe after another and didn't know what to do with my sites. I guess I was too unschooled, didn't know that much about designing a website, or hosting for that matter not to talk about getting traffic to my site.
If you are new to internet marketing and are wondering what on earth I'm talking about, or you're agreeing with me because you've signed up to one too many sites and have not made a dime from your efforts then listen up dear friend you need some Internet Marketing Training. We'll talk about that a bit later but first lets get the 4 other money making online methods listed.
2. Creating A Product or Service: This is another very common route taken by some inovative online marketers. But I would also like to note that some marketers have made and created some sub-standard products which they sell at ridiculously high-end prices taking the unsuspecting newbies hard earned dollar. That though is really a story for another day.
Let us concentrate on those that create value for the Internet community. Most of these products are informational based items, including ebooks which could cover any subject under the sun both free and the not so free, cd's and dvd's are sometimes used as a format for these informational products.
Other items created for sale by online businesses include software, if you have a technical knowledge of programming and can create then the sky is the limit as there are so many areas that people are looking for an automated script to get on or two things done if you can provide a solution through software, then you've sure got a winner.
Services are another creative way to make money on the internet, following on from the software idea, online entrepruneurs have created many membership sites where people sign up as members either:
a. As a member, affiliate who is helping to sell and promote the goods and services of the parent company, this is usually free or comes with a small minimal set-up fee.
b. As a person in need of the services offered by the parent company and would probably pay a high lifetime membership or a monthly membership fee. These services include autoresponder services, lead generation sites for mlm and direct sales projects, safelists, marketing programs and internet training sites to mention just a few, as there are membership sites to cover very many hobbies, proffesions and even motivational and personal developement options out there.
3. Freelancing: There are a lot of people who freelance offline and there are more and more opportunities for people to freelance on-line now-a-days you've just got to know what and where and how.
Freelancing online could include jobs such as copywriting, web-design, graphic artist, multi-media consulting for web interfaces, just to name the technical side of things. These job require a high skill and knowledge and it takes a while to build a reputable portfolio to get you those high paying jobs that freelancing can bring. This kind of online activity brings a lot of flexiblility and freedom to the table once one has mastered the basics and some of the particular technical side one is involved in.
Another great way of freelancing which is becoming very popular is blogging. I am a blogger and blogging can make you money if you know what you are doing, some bloggers are paid to blog, some promote a lot of affiliate products , others sell ad space, some write quality content and then add adsense ads which bring in the revenue for some who know how to effectively do this.
4. MLM Programs: Years ago when I was really actively involved in MLM it was a off-line face to face, telephone based business, well it is no longer so. MLM is on-line and very much an important part of internet business operations. The multi-media aspect of the web has made it very easy for these programs to come on-line and dominate the niche of making money online. Having said this I am not advocating that you must join one of these to make money online but I will say this, once you know the ropes, that is the basics about internet marketing then joining and promoting one or two of these MLM programs will be a progression to ensuring that you can keep building several income streams which will lead you to the goal of making a living online.
5. Get paid to surf and read sites: I must say from the onset that I am not a great fan of this particular method, but it does exist and therefore has to be mentioned. Some sites pay you some minuscue amount of money for surfing the net through them and reading emails. The problem is this is so time consuming for a job that pays out in small tiny bits and then so of these sites wont even pay. Having said this there are people who actually sign-up and participate in these kind of activites. If you want to make a serious living on-line though this is not the best route to follow.
So if you are a beginner the first thing is to decide on one way follow that one method, learn all you can start making some money and then you can build on this. Now is it ever so simple as that no it isn't and most people wont see profit for a while, but persistence wins the day.
What ever you decide if you need training on how to make a living online let me know and I'll do whatever I can to help. Leave me a comment and I'll get back to you.
Talk to you later.
1. Affiliate Marketing: Most of the new people online (popularly known as newbies) and some seasoned online marketers make their living or try to make their living via this method. So what is Affiliate Marketing? An affiliate marketer is some-one who helps promote and sell a product of service for someone else of another company. The product or service is therefore not theirs, they bring in the contact who buys and pays the other person or company and at the end of the month usually the affiliate gets paid a commision for their effort.
Now there are a lot of people who are making a handsome amount of money as affiliate marketers all over the internet, but the truth is for every successful affiliate there are probably a thousand or more poor affiliates tearing their hair out because nothing seems to be working.
I remember as a newbie, I'ld signup for one programe after another and didn't know what to do with my sites. I guess I was too unschooled, didn't know that much about designing a website, or hosting for that matter not to talk about getting traffic to my site.
If you are new to internet marketing and are wondering what on earth I'm talking about, or you're agreeing with me because you've signed up to one too many sites and have not made a dime from your efforts then listen up dear friend you need some Internet Marketing Training. We'll talk about that a bit later but first lets get the 4 other money making online methods listed.
2. Creating A Product or Service: This is another very common route taken by some inovative online marketers. But I would also like to note that some marketers have made and created some sub-standard products which they sell at ridiculously high-end prices taking the unsuspecting newbies hard earned dollar. That though is really a story for another day.
Let us concentrate on those that create value for the Internet community. Most of these products are informational based items, including ebooks which could cover any subject under the sun both free and the not so free, cd's and dvd's are sometimes used as a format for these informational products.
Other items created for sale by online businesses include software, if you have a technical knowledge of programming and can create then the sky is the limit as there are so many areas that people are looking for an automated script to get on or two things done if you can provide a solution through software, then you've sure got a winner.
Services are another creative way to make money on the internet, following on from the software idea, online entrepruneurs have created many membership sites where people sign up as members either:
a. As a member, affiliate who is helping to sell and promote the goods and services of the parent company, this is usually free or comes with a small minimal set-up fee.
b. As a person in need of the services offered by the parent company and would probably pay a high lifetime membership or a monthly membership fee. These services include autoresponder services, lead generation sites for mlm and direct sales projects, safelists, marketing programs and internet training sites to mention just a few, as there are membership sites to cover very many hobbies, proffesions and even motivational and personal developement options out there.
3. Freelancing: There are a lot of people who freelance offline and there are more and more opportunities for people to freelance on-line now-a-days you've just got to know what and where and how.
Freelancing online could include jobs such as copywriting, web-design, graphic artist, multi-media consulting for web interfaces, just to name the technical side of things. These job require a high skill and knowledge and it takes a while to build a reputable portfolio to get you those high paying jobs that freelancing can bring. This kind of online activity brings a lot of flexiblility and freedom to the table once one has mastered the basics and some of the particular technical side one is involved in.
Another great way of freelancing which is becoming very popular is blogging. I am a blogger and blogging can make you money if you know what you are doing, some bloggers are paid to blog, some promote a lot of affiliate products , others sell ad space, some write quality content and then add adsense ads which bring in the revenue for some who know how to effectively do this.
4. MLM Programs: Years ago when I was really actively involved in MLM it was a off-line face to face, telephone based business, well it is no longer so. MLM is on-line and very much an important part of internet business operations. The multi-media aspect of the web has made it very easy for these programs to come on-line and dominate the niche of making money online. Having said this I am not advocating that you must join one of these to make money online but I will say this, once you know the ropes, that is the basics about internet marketing then joining and promoting one or two of these MLM programs will be a progression to ensuring that you can keep building several income streams which will lead you to the goal of making a living online.
5. Get paid to surf and read sites: I must say from the onset that I am not a great fan of this particular method, but it does exist and therefore has to be mentioned. Some sites pay you some minuscue amount of money for surfing the net through them and reading emails. The problem is this is so time consuming for a job that pays out in small tiny bits and then so of these sites wont even pay. Having said this there are people who actually sign-up and participate in these kind of activites. If you want to make a serious living on-line though this is not the best route to follow.
So if you are a beginner the first thing is to decide on one way follow that one method, learn all you can start making some money and then you can build on this. Now is it ever so simple as that no it isn't and most people wont see profit for a while, but persistence wins the day.
What ever you decide if you need training on how to make a living online let me know and I'll do whatever I can to help. Leave me a comment and I'll get back to you.
Talk to you later.
Wednesday, 14 May 2008
Are You Making Any Money From Your Internet Marketing Programs?
As I've said previously I've been on the net for 10 years and I'm yet to become a millionaire or guru. I have joined numerous Internet Programs and spent so much time and money doing this. The thing is most of these programs are free, and even when they are not they usually cost the earth. So many ways of making money, various promises of "laughing to the bank" with this new revealed "secret or system". Yet my bank account is not showing the results. Why is this? Maybe I just can't get the knack of what it will take to conquer this part of the Internet! Or is there another reason for this lack of success. (Now don't get me wrong money has been made on some of the projects I've undertaken on the internet eg. The safe-list ventures, eBay and Google ad sense but when it comes to joining internet business opportunity programs or internet systems I've not done so well.)
I had actually taken a break from my efforts for a while and concentrated on blogging, eBay and AdSense in order to see if this would yield fruit and it has. The thing is I've always wanted to write so even if my blogging didn't yield much income, I would still be fulfilling a life long ambition which therefore made the whole process worthwhile.
When I decided to give it another try I promised myself to document and watch the way I went about things so that I could learn from my mistakes and successes.
Lessons I've learnt so far:
1. Don't hop from one program to the other. Research well before you sign-up. Most of this programs try and get you to sign up based on your emotions. They promise to show you a secret or a system that will solve your financial problems. They mostly don't.
2. Nothing comes for Free, even the freest of programs expects you to put your hand into your pocket at one stage or the other. And you should as no business off-line can be run free of expenses so is the one on-line. It will be cheaper for most but it is still going to cost you some money!
3.If you can't help yourself and you are one of those ones who keep joining most of the programs you come across, then to help yourself get a note book and make sure you record name of program, user id, password, and any other specific information that will come in handy in the future, eg. the sign-up email address.
4. You do not need to buy the cheap back-end product, which is usually the Special Offer made that you are told will never see again if you do not buy it now. If you don't need it don't get it. I have several 47, 58, 101 such products bought, gathering dust on my bookmark pages not downloaded or used in anyway. I have plans for them though, hope I get down to sorting them out eventually.
5. You will need to spend some money on advertising, think through and plan for this don't just jump in head first before taking into account what you need to do to get the best return for each dollar spent.
6. Joining a program will not bring the money in, you will have to market the program or its services in order to make the money. It is important that you follow the instructions given, especially if the program owners know what they are doing and have been able to achieve great success.
There are 3 programs I know of that can help you learn the ropes. Once you've done this then you can use the knowledge gathered to run any business successfully.
Internet Marketing Program 1. This one takes you Step by Step. A good foundation.
Internet Marketing Program 2. Social Networking for Internet Marketers with Training.
Internet Marketing Program 3. A Massive Marketing System with Great Training.
You don't need to join all three, you don't even need to join any of them. Just look for programs that will give you similar results and stick with it. If you find that they are not working though come back here and give these a try.
One very important thing I've learnt about making money on the internet is that if you are determined, hardworking, willing to learn, able to help others and persistent in your efforts you will eventually get it right. The solutions to marketing effectively on-line do not need to cost the earth, but they will cost you. Take a good look at your on-line businesses today and work to put these programs in their proper place, to help you build income.
I had actually taken a break from my efforts for a while and concentrated on blogging, eBay and AdSense in order to see if this would yield fruit and it has. The thing is I've always wanted to write so even if my blogging didn't yield much income, I would still be fulfilling a life long ambition which therefore made the whole process worthwhile.
When I decided to give it another try I promised myself to document and watch the way I went about things so that I could learn from my mistakes and successes.
Lessons I've learnt so far:
1. Don't hop from one program to the other. Research well before you sign-up. Most of this programs try and get you to sign up based on your emotions. They promise to show you a secret or a system that will solve your financial problems. They mostly don't.
2. Nothing comes for Free, even the freest of programs expects you to put your hand into your pocket at one stage or the other. And you should as no business off-line can be run free of expenses so is the one on-line. It will be cheaper for most but it is still going to cost you some money!
3.If you can't help yourself and you are one of those ones who keep joining most of the programs you come across, then to help yourself get a note book and make sure you record name of program, user id, password, and any other specific information that will come in handy in the future, eg. the sign-up email address.
4. You do not need to buy the cheap back-end product, which is usually the Special Offer made that you are told will never see again if you do not buy it now. If you don't need it don't get it. I have several 47, 58, 101 such products bought, gathering dust on my bookmark pages not downloaded or used in anyway. I have plans for them though, hope I get down to sorting them out eventually.
5. You will need to spend some money on advertising, think through and plan for this don't just jump in head first before taking into account what you need to do to get the best return for each dollar spent.
6. Joining a program will not bring the money in, you will have to market the program or its services in order to make the money. It is important that you follow the instructions given, especially if the program owners know what they are doing and have been able to achieve great success.
There are 3 programs I know of that can help you learn the ropes. Once you've done this then you can use the knowledge gathered to run any business successfully.
Internet Marketing Program 1. This one takes you Step by Step. A good foundation.
Internet Marketing Program 2. Social Networking for Internet Marketers with Training.
Internet Marketing Program 3. A Massive Marketing System with Great Training.
You don't need to join all three, you don't even need to join any of them. Just look for programs that will give you similar results and stick with it. If you find that they are not working though come back here and give these a try.
One very important thing I've learnt about making money on the internet is that if you are determined, hardworking, willing to learn, able to help others and persistent in your efforts you will eventually get it right. The solutions to marketing effectively on-line do not need to cost the earth, but they will cost you. Take a good look at your on-line businesses today and work to put these programs in their proper place, to help you build income.
Friday, 9 May 2008
How To Make Money From Ebay The Smart Way
First up, I need to apologize for not posting this three days ago as promised, life has been so busy and then for some unknown reason the phone lines are down at home, I'm using another internet provider from another line to connect to the internet to post this, so I'm glad that I've finally found a way to settled down to write and post my take on marketing on and with eBay as promised.
The Internet is the new gold mine of th 20th and 21st Century. Though the dotcoms have come and gone, and crashed like Humpty Dumpty, you have to admit that in every way the internet has made a couple of people very rich, it has helped to create successful businesses where many are failing and even the big company's like Walmart, Asda, Tesco, Littlewoods, PC World and lots others are actually making a large percentage of their sales on-line now rather than in stores. eBay's success on the other hand is even a bigger story. This auction based platform has one thing that makes it unique, instead of selling to your neighborhood, it opens up a wider arena and sells to the world! You can't beat that. eBay has captured a large percentage of the worlds regions and peoples as registered users and lots of money can be made off of this traffic
So about 5 years ago I decided to take some time off direct MLM and safelist hosting, to concentrate on building an eBay presence. I started with opening an account, exploring the site and buying some cheap stationary items I had run out of at home.
After a while I realised that a lot of people were selling their old items from their cellars and attics so I started doing the same. Once I mastered how to write the eBay ads and felt comfortable with it I started looking for other items to sell.
I can tell you one thing, with a lot of research, hard work and persistence I made quite a bit of money, which actually came in handy as we lost one of our parents during this time and the money made helped towards the funeral costs. ( If you have any Nigerian friends and know our culture well you would appreciate that things can get very tight when it comes to paying for things like this.)
I had to stop selling when I lost my mum and went back to Nigeria with the kids for eleven months. By the time I returned things had changed a bit I wasn't the same person, and running eBay at that level again would have meant so much hard work, which I knew I couldn't cope with. We had moved house and the post office was no longer 5 minutes walk it was 15 mins run and carring heavy items to post daily in their 10's or 20's was no longer appealing.
This lead me to spend my time researching about internet marketing all over again. I decided to make a go at it and discovered that my dear internet had evolved beyond recognition, but its all for the best. Now we have Web2.0 and you better believe it that Digg, Stumble Upon and Twitter, Facebook and MySpace, YouTube and Flickr are all here to stay. They all play a big part in leveraging your efforts to drive traffic to your webpages. I've been learning for the last year and have now narrowed my internet marketing efforts to a couple of core businesses and eBay is still one of them. The only difference is I think I'm doing it a bit smarter this time. I'll explain...
One of my favorite things to do is collecting paper money, so I started blogging about this about eight months ago at Paper Money Collecting considering that the idea of blogging was completely new to me, I think I've done pretty well as I am now No.2 in Google for my chosen keywords (blowing my own horn! was actually No. 1 for a while!) Anyway I now decided to search for a software I had come across over a year ago but didn't need then, I desperately needed it now. This easy to use script has made it possible for me to build a paper money store from eBay and I am able to send very targeted traffic to the site via the blog and viola, sales are made. Thus I spend time writing about something I enjoy and I'm able to make some money from my effort via eBay. I don't have to spend time ordering, packing and posting stuff, someone else does this.
The good thing about the Build A Niche Store script is that you can use it once bought to build 100's of stores if you so wish. The support is great and it also has a very vibrant community of users. I am now building more stores and using the same model of content bringing traffic which equals sales to build this business.
More about Build A Niche Store and eBay to follow shortly.
Monday, 5 May 2008
My Internet Marketing Projects in 2008
This Blog is going to be a working progress of my internet marketing projects in 2008. As I've said before I have been on the Online business scene for about 10 years to date, on and off. I've learnt a lot. Lost a lot of money in the process and I have made some money too. Now don't get me wrong I am not a guru, I intend to docuement the little bit of lessons I've found useful in this blog so that my readers who maybe looking into starting an internet business may find something to help them along on the right path.
Now what I intend to do is to give an indepth picture of how my different internet businesses are taking shape. We shall be looking at the several income streams I am involved in, why I've made certain choices and the marketing strategies I use to make money online. I will try to be as open as possible so that people can learn. I've heard a lot about keeping your niches a secret and I can understand why, so I may reveal a few but I'm sure there will be others I might decide to keep to myself.
So today I will simply outline the different Income Streams I am working on and then we shall take it from there.
1. The eBay Project: I've bought and sold on ebay for years now. It is an interesting and sometimes profitable way to make money online. There are right way and the wrong way to go about things. All these we shall look at in detail. But I believe now I've found a smarter way to make money on Ebay and this is what we shall be looking at in full detail shortly.
2. The Spider Web Marketing System: I love this project because it does quite a number of things at one go. You learn about marketing, social networking and you have about 12 streams of income to make money from all at the same time. This is a free to sign-up system. The thing with internet marketing is that you must have a system to market your program. If you don't have a lot of money to pay for it you must have a lot of time to get the job done yourself in such a way that you can start making some money. Anyway there's lots to say about this later.
3. The Marketing Tools: These are the marketing tools I use to get the work done. There are several, some are free but there are others that come with a fee. We will look into all these and I am planning to get a site up with all the useful resorces both free and otherwise that you definitely need to look into inorder to get your business online and successfull.
So stick with me and we shall start my internet marketing projects in 2008, tomorrow with The eBay Project.
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