Has it ever occurred to you that each time you send traffic to someone’s affiliate website or landing page, you could possibly lose this potential customer for yourself. What makes it worst is that not all the visitors you sent to the affiliate web page turns into sales and therefore affiliate commission.

This is a beginner’s tutorial to using Cpanel to manage your web hosting account. We can’t cover

every single thing that Cpanel can do, because it’s just too complex. It’s so complex that many

people are afraid to even use it.

It can certainly be a bit scary for anyone who hasn’t used it before. Technical people pick it up

pretty quickly, but non-technical people usually stick to using only the most basic features to

avoid confusing themselves.

Let’s go over some of the most common things you may need to use it for. First, you can add a

domain to your hosting account. After you log into Cpanel, click “Addon Domains.” Where it

says “New Domain Name,” enter your domain name with the format yourdomainname.com.

Then add the name of the subdirectory and username you want to use as your FTP login. This

will be the directory where your website is stored on the server, and also your FTP username.

Use something easy to remember, but not “yourdomainname.”

You don’t want to make it easy for hackers to find out your username. Then simply enter the

password you wish to use for FTP and click the button that says “Add Domain!” Now you’ll be

able to log in to the FTP account using the username and password you just set up.

Just remember, the domain name won’t resolve until you change the name servers in your domain

account to point to the correct name servers. You’ll have to do that by logging in wherever you

purchased the domain and finding the name server section for that domain.

The next thing you need to learn how to do is set up a MySQL database. From within Cpanel,

click on the button that reads “MySQL Databases.” Enter the name of the database you want to

create. If you’re creating a database for WordPress on a domain called LittleBlueCookie.com,

you might call it “wplbc.” Then click on the button that reads, “Add Db.”

After the database is created, you have to set up the username and password. It will

automatically take you back to the page where you can do this, so enter a username and

password in the fields and submit it. Do NOT name your username the same thing as your

database. That’s just making it easier for hackers to get into your database.

Make sure to add the user to the database. So many people forget to do this, and then they

wonder why their scripts don’t work. You MUST add the user to the database. Use the

dropdown boxes to select the username, then the database name. Tick the box to add all

privileges for the user. Then click the button that says, “Add User to Db.”

Finally, you’ll probably want to set up an email address for your domain. To do this, click

“Mail.” Then click the small link at the bottom that says, “Add Account.” Enter the name you

wish to use, and then use the dropdown menu to select the domain you wish that email address

to be set up for.

If you want the email address johndoe@yourdomainnname.com, enter johndoe in the name area,

and select the proper domain. Next, enter a password that’s hard to guess, but make sure you

write it down.

Leave the quota blank if you want the amount of space the email can take up to be limited only

by your web space. That’s it! Your new email is ready to use. As you get comfortable with one

feature of cpanel, see what the others have to offer.

There are many exciting elements, like being able to add a blog, add a forum, and check your

web page statistics, to name a few. None of them are difficult to manage once you know the

step-by-step details to follow.

Your keyword choices are critical to your success in nearly any online business model. Whether

you’re pursuing PPC, blogging, VRE and AdSense, or any number of Internet marketing

opportunities, the keywords you choose can make or break your success.

Keywords are important for several reasons. First of all, there’s traffic. If you choose the wrong

keywords to target, you’re probably not going to get nearly as much traffic as you’d like.

Whether you’re using PPC or search engines to get your traffic, your keywords are going to

affect your ranking and link performance.

Another reason why keywords are so vital is the fact that you need targeted traffic. Ten

thousand visitors coming to your domain via the keyword “books” is probably going to be

worthless compared to 500 visitors who come via the keyword phrase, “Harry Potter books,” if

that’s what you’re selling.

Someone who is searching for “books” is probably just browsing. They may not even be

interested in buying anything – they could be interested in selling books, book bans, book

publishers, and more.

But someone who is searching for “Harry Potter books” is probably ready to buy something right

then and there. So it’s not enough to just get a lot of traffic – you need a lot of traffic that’s

willing to take the action you want them to take.

Whether you’re looking to sell eBooks, promote affiliate products, get leads for a CPA offer, or

just get sign-ups to your list, you want targeted visitors who are likely to be buyers now or in the

future.

Once you’ve chosen a niche you’d like to pursue, you need to research the keywords you’ll use.

If you’re writing articles, you’ll need to choose keywords to use in the titles and text. If you’re

building niche websites, you’ll need to use keywords in the domain name. If you’re buying PPC

traffic, the keywords you choose will likely be one of the biggest factors determining whether or

not your campaign is profitable.

WordTracker is a very good tool for researching keywords. If you can’t afford to get a paid

membership there (even for a day), they have a very good free keyword tool at

http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com.

Google has their own keyword tool, but they don’t show you numbers. They only give you a

general idea of the searches a keyword gets, as indicated by a colored bar:

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal.

First you’ll want to enter a base keyword for your niche. Let’s say you’re targeting the golf

niche. You might enter “golf” into the keyword tool of your choice. Then the keyword tool will

show you a number of related keywords.

You might come up with “golf clubs,” “golf tips,” “golf swing,” “golf bags,” “golf carts,” and

“golf courses.” This is a short list of more broad terms. But you’ll want to generate a warehouse

of keywords that you can use over the coming months and years, so grab them all!

AdSense can be a fantastic moneymaker. There are many people who make thousands of dollars

per month through AdSense alone. Hearing this may get you excited, and you may already have

dollar signs in your eyes. But don’t get your hopes up just yet.

Although you’ve probably heard about people who bring in five or six figures per month with

AdSense, you need to keep one very important thing in mind. In order to make that kind of

money with AdSense, you need to have a ton of traffic.

In fact, most people who make more than $100 per month with AdSense either have a very large

website with thousands of visitors per day, or they have dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of

smaller websites.

For most people, AdSense may not be worth the effort to create sites only for promoting it.

AdSense only pays a few cents for each click, depending on the keyword you target (some pay a

lot more) and those few cents are a lot smaller than they were just a few years ago.

A few years ago, some people were getting several dollars per click for many keywords. These

days, $1 clicks are relatively rare in most niches. Most clicks seem to be under $0.50 now, and

smaller niches may experience clicks of only around $0.10 (or even less.)

In order to make $10 per day, at $0.10 per click you would need 100 clicks. If your click

through ratio were 5%, you would need 2,000 visitors to your site every single day just to earn

$10 per day.

For sites with very little traffic, you would have to have a really fantastic click through ratio in

order to earn decent money with AdSense – or, choose highly competitive keywords that pay a

lot, but are harder to rank high for in the search engines.

Some sites just naturally have traffic that doesn’t buy much as far as paid information, but they

like to click through links to access free information. Webmasters who have sites that target the

freebie seeking demographic should test AdSense links to see which type performs best.

If you’re running a site that has an extremely general audience, AdSense might also be a good

alternative. AdSense is usually pretty good at delivering targeted ads. You can create thousands

of content pages with AdSense links, place the code in your blogs, and watch your monthly

earnings rise as you create more fodder for your readers.

If your only goal is to make money without becoming a product owner, then create a content-

laden site that weaves affiliate links into the text and provides ample opportunities for clicks to

AdSense links so that you can profit from the information you’re delivering.

Seth Godin is a well-known marketer who wrote a little book called The Dip: When to Quit and

When to Stick. The book talks about when you should keep working at something, and when you

should just give up and call it a day.

Seth says the common saying about winners never quitting and quitters never winning is just

wrong! Sometimes winner do quit, and sometimes quitters really do win. It’s about knowing

when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em and in the Internet marketing industry, this is a lesson

we all must master.

Whenever you start a new project, it’s usually very exciting. It’s fun, it’s new, and it’s a lot

easier to stick to. After awhile, the project starts to lose your interest. It starts to get boring, and

then it gets a lot harder to stick to.

A Dip is only temporary. If you keep working at it, you’ll break through it. But sometimes it’s

what Godin calls a Cul-de-Sac, which won’t get better. You could try and try and you’d never

make it out of your rut.

You shouldn’t always keep working at something because if it’s going nowhere, it could be

preventing you from realizing success. So many people will tell you to keep pushing no matter

what – that it’s the only way to be successful. That’s not always true. Smart people know when

to escape those dead ends and walk away.

Yes, winners do quit. They quit while they quitting’s good. They quit when it makes sense to

quit. People who fail a lot generally fail to keep going when times get a little rough. Sometimes

they’ll even keep going when they know deep down they’re fighting a losing battle.

If you train yourself, you can eventually learn to tell when you should quit and when you should

keep pushing. It becomes second nature. Until then, there are a few tips you can use to decide

whether or not you should maintain momentum with a specific project.

First, ask how long you’ve been going. If you’ve been going quite awhile, giving up might be a

waste of the work you’ve already put in. Then again, if you’ve stuck to something for a very,

very long time and you’re not seeing any results, it would be ridiculous to keep going.

Next, ask yourself if the potential rewards are worth it. If you’re busting your butt to carve out a

big chunk of a very tiny niche, maybe it really isn’t worth it. Will that tiny niche ever be worth

the mammoth amount of work you’re putting in?

On the other hand, if you’re already making some headway into a very large market, giving up

might be a bit premature. Why give up on a major cash cow when you’re already halfway to the

barn?

Finally, ask yourself if it’s REALLY worth it. Don’t think in terms of money – think in terms of

your LIFE. You’re the one putting the time, effort, and money into a project. If the potential

reward doesn’t seem worth the hassle anymore, maybe it really is time to give up.

After all, most of us wouldn’t be willing to sell our soul to the Devil for fame and fortune. So

why sell your soul to this project? If your heart just isn’t in it, consider getting out while you

can.

When you need to make money, you’re ready to believe in a system of Internet marketing that’s

so easy even a bum using a free library computer can do it. After all, if he can do it, you can do

even better.

Granted, you can make money online with practically no cash out of pocket. Just avoid counting

on the bum marketing method as the be-all and end-all for online marketing. Don’t fall into the

bum marketing blunders that cost both time and money:

1. Constantly searching for the “hot ticket product.” You can waste a lot of time roaming the

Internet for the next big thing. You can make money with “evergreen” products that have an

ongoing demand. If the product you’re promoting is too trendy, interest diminishes in a short

time and you have to start the marketing process over again.

2. Limited range of exposure. ClickBank is a great place to find information products to

promote, but it’s not the only game in town. If you depend on ClickBank without any other

affiliate marketing efforts on your part, then you’re leaving money on the table. Don’t forget

about other third party affiliate marketplaces such as PayDotCom.

3. Working free to benefit others. A big part of Bum Marketing is submitting articles to free

content sites like EzineArticles, Associate Content or ArticleBiz. Sure, this is a way to get

exposure for your topic and maybe attract interest to your website as it appears in your

signature line. Spending too much time writing free for these sites doesn’t give maximum

return on your time investment – consider building up your own domain as an authority in

your niche.

4. Relying on one keyword tool. Online marketers have favorite research tools: Overture, SEO

Toolbar, Word Tracker, Wordze or Google Labs. The mistake is in getting comfortable with

just one keyword research tool. You need to use several research tools and compare results. If

you limit yourself to one tool then you can miss important information.

5. Do it yourself responses. If you have ten information requests daily, you can handle the

email, but how will you handle 100 requests? Even if you spend hours at the computer, you

won’t be as efficient as using an Autoresponder. It’s a small monthly fee to save time and

get out responses faster to your prospects.

6. Depending on affiliate products. Using affiliate products is a quick way to get started, but

don’t camp out there. Either purchase the rights or create your own products as soon as

possible. Otherwise, you make a few bucks only to let your buyer become loyal to the

affiliate product (and get on their email list for more products).

7. Simple isn’t sloppy. Use a template to create a neat, easy to read website. You don’t have to

be a web guru, but you do need a site that’s attractive, even if simple. Don’t let low cost

marketing look like it’s cheap. That impression cheapens the value of your product.

Getting viewers who click and pass on is no more productive than window shoppers at the mall.

You make money online when you capture that traffic and convert the “lookers” into “buyers.”

Sounds simple, right?

Well, it is if you pay attention to the details. Here are 12 traffic conversion secrets that even a

newcomer to Internet marketing can do:

1. Refine your Unique Selling Proposition (USP). What makes your product different, special,

better or more desirable? That’s the USP. Now get the answer to that question down to one

or two concise sentences.

2. Sound friendly, not slick. Your sales copy needs to sound like one friend excited to tell

another friend about a great buy. Avoid sounding like a high-pressure infomercial.

3. Ask for help. Give the viewers a reason to interact with you by asking for their opinion on a

survey or product rating. You get useful information and keep them thinking about your

product longer.

4. Simplify the offering. If you have three different products to sell, use three websites. Don’t

make the mistake of trying to offer too much at once. This might work for major retailers, but

they already have a brand and a following.

5. Leave some open space. Prepare a sales page that’s easy to read with wide margins. You

don’t have to fill every inch. Leaving some white space helps the reader to better focus on the

copy.

6. Brag openly. If your product has a good rating or endorsements from satisfy buyers, then let

them brag about the product for you.

7. Cast with plenty of bait. In your sales letter and squeeze page, put out the “bait” for your

offer over and over. Don’t skimp on bait. Better too many offers than not enough to convert

that buyer who is still uncertain.

8. Find problems. Even after your sales page is complete, keep thinking about other problems

that your product can solve. You might get a hint of new ways to promote your product by

asking buyers how they use the product.

9. Use moderate highlighting. Yes, highlights draw visual attention but too many highlights or

excessive colors frustrate online readers.

10. Package deals are popular. After presenting your USP, sweeten the offer with a package

including several free items as part of the “Buy Now” deal. Limited time offers create a sense

of urgency for the buyer to act.

11. Ask for the order. An old principle of sales that must never be ignored – ask for the order, ask

again then ask again. You can’t ask too many times.

12. Say “Thank you.” Have a gracious, personal sounding, “Thank you” email with the order

confirmation. It never hurts to show good manners and buyer appreciation!

The best outcome of your first online marketing campaign is a big response. The worst outcome

is being overwhelmed by thousands of responses awaiting your response. Online buyers expect

instant response to their information requests.

So not only will you frustrate your potential clients, but you’ll wear yourself out trying to handle

this alone. That’s where you hire the inexhaustible personal assistant, the autoresponder. Just set

up your autoresponder to perform all of the tasks you need, and then you’re free to move on to

the next campaign.

The autoresponder catches those email requests and in a split second sends information back.

You can set the autoresponder to actually sound personal by sending the friendly, welcoming

note that you wrote.

The autoresponder also captures the email information of prospects or buyers. That’s absolute

gold for building your email list. Smart Internet marketers use this list to stay in touch on a

regular basis.

No, you don’t have to irritate with daily emails. But you do want to give them a “sneak preview”

and pre-sale buying opportunity for your new product along with many free tips. Another great

use of the autoresponder is to send regular newsletters.

Offering a free niche market newsletter helps you get those valuable email opt-ins. Some

prospects want to learn more about your product before buying. The newsletter is a tool for

developing trust with potential buyers.

The fact is that buyers would rather choose products from trusted sources than take a chance on

the unknown, so keep the relationship solid with regular, meaningful communication. Your

autoresponder can handle multiple lists and different messages.

That gives you a way to tailor the email to prospects for each product. One of the biggest

mistakes that marketers make is failing to target the message for each product prospect. They get

lazy, write one message and one thank you note and then move on.

The autoresponder is capable of so much more work for you. Give each list a distinct name that

relates to the product so that you can easily identify the list. If the autoresponder tool

seems daunting, take time to view the tutorials.

Even if you have an active list under management, scan the tutorials to see if there are new tricks

you can learn for maximizing the effectiveness of your autoresponder emails. Keep your

electronic personal assistant busy and you’ll make more money online with less effort.

Blogs are a fantastic way to make money. They perform well in search engines, they’re easy to

promote, and they can offer very sticky content. If you blog often, and you’re good at what you

do, you could develop a pretty large following of readers who subscribe to your RSS feed and

read your content on a daily basis.

One of the biggest keys to success with blogs is posting in them regularly. If you don’t post

regularly, you probably won’t get much traffic, and people won’t return. Posting frequently also

keeps your content fresh, and search engines love fresh content.

The more often you post, the more often the spiders will visit your site. And every time you

post, you can ping your site at the various ping locations. This can also bring in more traffic.

Another major key to blog success is creating sticky content. This means you have to write posts

that people will actually be interested in reading.

Readers probably don’t care what you had for dinner, unless you’re John Chow or you’re

running a food blog. They want to read about stuff related to your niche. If you’re running a

blog about golfing, at least 75% of your posts should be related to golf. Preferably 100%.

You should talk about golf courses you’ve recently played on, tournaments you’ve watched, and

clubs you’ve tried. You might occasionally post about family matters, or your dog, or your

favorite restaurant as a way to connect on a more personal level with your readers, but most of

your posts should be on target with your niche.

Blogs are great for people who sell services. If you’re a graphics designer or writer, having a blog

is a good way to keep in touch with your clients. You can offer updates on your schedule and

availability, current prices and special offers, and when you’ll be taking some time off.

You can also post samples of your latest work. If you have a number of clients subscribe to your

RSS feed, you’ll be able to keep in contact with them so they’ll order from you more often.

People also tend to follow blogs more carefully than websites.

Don’t start a blog with the intention of letting it sit dormant and earn money. It probably won’t

work. If you’re going to start a blog, you need to be prepared to commit yourself to growing the

blog, posting often, keeping it updated, and not giving up on it.

They offer multiple selling opportunities – from text links woven throughout the content to image

ads like banners you strategically place in between blog posts. The sidebar can also be utilized as

affiliate or direct sales revenue space.

Make sure you take the time to transfer your blog over to your own domain instead of hosting it

within the blogging community. This makes it more professional to the person who lands on your

website and lends credibility to your efforts as the go-to person in your niche.

When it comes to making money online affiliate marketing is one of the most cost effective methods around today. The two myths that you need to dispel before we go much further is that a) it’s really easy and b) it’s far too difficult and too competitive. Let’s look at the reality between these two extremes.

Blogs are a fantastic way to make money. They perform well in search engines, they’re easy to

promote, and they can offer very sticky content. If you blog often, and you’re good at what you

do, you could develop a pretty large following of readers who subscribe to your RSS feed and

read your content on a daily basis.

One of the biggest keys to success with blogs is posting in them regularly. If you don’t post

regularly, you probably won’t get much traffic, and people won’t return. Posting frequently also

keeps your content fresh, and search engines love fresh content.

The more often you post, the more often the spiders will visit your site. And every time you

post, you can ping your site at the various ping locations. This can also bring in more traffic.

Another major key to blog success is creating sticky content. This means you have to write posts

that people will actually be interested in reading.

Readers probably don’t care what you had for dinner, unless you’re John Chow or you’re

running a food blog. They want to read about stuff related to your niche. If you’re running a

blog about golfing, at least 75% of your posts should be related to golf. Preferably 100%.

You should talk about golf courses you’ve recently played on, tournaments you’ve watched, and

clubs you’ve tried. You might occasionally post about family matters, or your dog, or your

favorite restaurant as a way to connect on a more personal level with your readers, but most of

your posts should be on target with your niche.

Blogs are great for people who sell services. If you’re a graphics designer or writer, having a blog

is a good way to keep in touch with your clients. You can offer updates on your schedule and

availability, current prices and special offers, and when you’ll be taking some time off.

You can also post samples of your latest work. If you have a number of clients subscribe to your

RSS feed, you’ll be able to keep in contact with them so they’ll order from you more often.

People also tend to follow blogs more carefully than websites.

Don’t start a blog with the intention of letting it sit dormant and earn money. It probably won’t

work. If you’re going to start a blog, you need to be prepared to commit yourself to growing the

blog, posting often, keeping it updated, and not giving up on it.

They offer multiple selling opportunities – from text links woven throughout the content to image

ads like banners you strategically place in between blog posts. The sidebar can also be utilized as

affiliate or direct sales revenue space.

Make sure you take the time to transfer your blog over to your own domain instead of hosting it

within the blogging community. This makes it more professional to the person who lands on your

website and lends credibility to your efforts as the go-to person in your niche.

Branding your name (or your pen name) is very important on the Internet, no matter what niche

you’re in. You need to establish yourself as an authority in your market, because people trust

authority figures.

They trust their recommendations, they trust that their products will be of good quality, and they

trust that they have integrity. It also lends credence to the buyer that you’re a real person – not

just some nameless, faceless entity trying to sell them something on a static, automated website.

You should put your name on everything you create. Whether it’s a membership site, an eBook,

or something as small as a PLR article pack for sale – you should put your name on it. Getting

your name out there is so essential to your ongoing success.

Think about all of the marketing gurus you’ve heard of. Some of them you may not have heard

of yet, especially if you’re new, but chances are you’ve heard of at least a few of these. Have

you heard of John Reese, Mike Filsaime, Frank Kern, Dan Kennedy, Joe Vitale, Willie Crawford,

or the late Gary Halbert?

If you’ve been in marketing long at all you’ve surely heard of at least one of these people. People

know and remember the names of these people because they put their names on everything they

put out.

Their names are all over the marketing forums, their eCovers, their headers, and everything else

they do. They work very hard to brand their names, because their names become the brands.

People buy their products simply because their name is on it.

Buyers think that the product must be good, because the person is so well-known. You should

do the same thing with your name. Always use the same name on everything you do within a

particular niche.

You may not want to use your real name for whatever reason, but your name needs to be a “real

name.” A nickname usually won’t cut it in most markets, but sometimes it works – like in the

case of Travis “The Bum” Marketer or the “Rich Jerk.”

If you’ve signed up for forums under a nickname, ask the moderators if they can change your

name to your real name or pen name. You might not want to tell the moderator’s it’s a pen name.

That’s up to you.

Keep getting your name out there any way you can. Host teleseminars, JV with well-known

people if possible, and offer to help create content for well-known people in your niche in

exchange for a Bio Box that hosts your name and link to your website.

Offer to be an interview subject for someone. Be a “guest author” for popular websites and

blogs in your niche, and create 100% original content for them. Never stop branding your name.

Even when you’re as famous as Donald Trump, the king of name branding, don’t stop.

Donald still puts his name on everything he does. His name appears in huge, bold letters on his

books. He names buildings after himself. Think of Trump Tower, Trump Taj Mahal, and Trump

Plaza. His name is all over everything.

Not only is it a matter of pride, but it keeps his name everywhere. You may never be as famous

as the Donald, or even as famous as John Reese, but you might become known as the king or

queen of your own little niche or for a particular slant that grows in popularity.

When it comes to online affiliate marketing or any Internet Marketing based business, Traffic is king. The one thing that you can do to increase your chances of affiliate marketing success is traffic, traffic, traffic. That is getting traffic, the kind of traffic that is targeted to your product.

Long tail is a big buzzword in marketing these days. The term “Long Tail” was initially coined in

2004 by Chris Anderson in an article in Wired magazine. The term was initially used to describe

the niche business strategy that is used by companies like Amazon.

Marketers are now using the term to describe the phenomenon that “long tail keywords” could

get more traffic combined than the broader, more general keywords. For example, let’s say the

keyword “dog training” gets approximately 2,420 searches per day.

Then you start looking at the long-tail keyword phrases for that niche – dog training collars, dog

potty training, dog training careers, and so on. When you add up all of the long-tail keywords,

which are easier to dominate in the Google SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), it equals more

traffic than if you simply went after Dog Training.

If you have 10,000,000 websites competing for the term “dog training,” but only 361,000

competing for “dog training DVD,” then you have a far greater chance of reaching the first page

than you would if you were competing against 10 million pages.

Being ranked number one for a broad term like “mp3” would probably take a truly exceptional

SEO expert many months of very hard work and a very large budget for buying backlinks to

accomplish.

Ranking for a term like “1970s rock mp3s” might be much easier – because it’s a long tail. If the

term gets 50 searches per day, and you rank number three, then you might get 20 or 30 hits to

your website per day.

If you rank number 30,714 for the term “mp3,” you won’t get any traffic from that at all.

Finding good long tail keywords is very important, because you need those long tail phrases to

bring in traffic.

While some marketers shun long-tail keywords, believing they have to rank well for the prime

keyword phrases, others are using it to reach a demographic that has money in hand. Would you

rather get traffic from people searching the word “golf” or from someone who types this into

Google: “Taylor Made R580XD Titanium Driver?”

The person who gets more specific with their searches is usually someone who’s ready to buy –

someone who knows what they want. The person typing in golf may want to know its history for

a project, might want to take a golf vacation, or could be interested in attending a local

tournament. That won’t do you any good if your site sells golf clubs, but the long tail phrase will

cater to that crowd.

Pick your keywords and phrases carefully. Separate your broad, generic terms from your long-

tail phrases so that you can monitor your Google SERP positioning and see how your keyword

list is performing for you.

Finding a niche topic requires more than just identifying your interests. You need to divide the

topic down to a very specific area so that you can better target the audience. Let’s look at how to

break down a niche idea using a popular online search topic: how to make money with online

marketing.

That’s much too broad and difficult to market. You’ll also bump into many competitors. Think of

the process as an upside down funnel. Or, if you’re mathematically inclined, it’s like reducing a

fraction to its lowest terms.

Overall Topic: How to make money with online marketing.

Sub Topics from initial brainstorming include:

* People who want to work from home

* People who want to work anywhere using a computer

* People who want freedom to choose their own work hours

* People who hate their job and want to get out of the cubicle

* People who lack advanced skills or degrees and need to learn a skill fast

* People who lost their jobs due to downsizing or outsourcing

* Baby boomers looking to supplement their retirement income

* College kids needing to earn extra money

* Stay at home moms who don’t want to go back to work

Wow! That’s an entire set of niche topics that can be developed merely by taking time to analyze

why people might want to earn money from online marketing. Out of the six topics generated,

select two that really interest you or represent areas where you have personal experience.

Take the first topic you chose and brainstorm five to seven key questions that people might ask in

searching for the topic. Next, start a niche search using the keywords you developed and see

what you find. Using Google Notebooks or designated files, collect this information. Add to

your research those websites that deal with the niche topic.

Finally, look in ClickBank and on similar sites for affiliate products that you can use in

developing the niche. If you decide to write your own information product, create an outline for

each eBook that you’ll prepare. Then get ready to dominate your area of expertise.

Tens of thousands of affiliates sign up daily in big affiliate networks but many of them fail. Learn the secret behind being successful as an affiliate marketer.

Social bookmarking is extremely popular with marketers in every niche. Social bookmarking sites

such as Digg, Del.icio.us, and Technorati allow users to add links to sites they like and other

visitors can grab those links and add it to their own lists, making your URLs go viral.

Social bookmarking sites can be great for getting traffic to your own domains. You can

bookmark your sites yourself and then hope others will share the links and in some cases vote

your entries up, like Digg users will do.

If enough people vote for a particular story, it might make it to the front page of that

bookmarking site. A front-page listing can mean thousands of visitors a day. But because of the

very nature of social bookmarking sites, if you want to get a lot of traffic from the bookmarking

sites themselves, then you have to make sure that the links you submit are newsworthy – not just

your sales pitch page.

Use the news to work your site into the bookmarking bevy of links. For instance – let’s say

you’re in the gardening niche and you have a site on growing tulips. A simple how-to site may

not get shared a lot.

But let’s say you read an article about a the discovery by a group of scientists that says people

who grow tulips in their yards are 60% less likely to develop lung cancer, then you’d have a

pretty decent shot at having a lot of users in both the gardening and health demographic share

your links with others.

If your sites tend to be less newsworthy and more general, then you shouldn’t worry about how

many people vote for a story or share your links. Just concentrate on using the social

bookmarking sites to gain backlinks to your sites.

Concentrate on bookmarking the index page of each of your sites first. Be careful not to

bookmark too many of your own sites at first, since that can appear spammy – remember to

bookmark other interesting sites you see that you don’t necessarily own yourself.

The key to social bookmarking is to become part of the community who shares interesting

information. Create a good profile that tells a little about you. Add a picture, and if the site

offers it, start building a “friends” list.

Be careful about how many links you add per day. You shouldn’t go crazy and add 100 links

the day you sign up to a social bookmarking site. Keep it to ten or less per day and you should

be fine.

After you’ve been a user for several weeks, you might be able to get away with up to 50 per day.

Just make sure to keep bookmarking stories on other websites. Vote for a few of the stories that

made it onto the first page. Bookmark a story at FoxNews.com every once in a while, or a funny

YouTube video. This helps make your profile look a lot more legitimate in the eyes of the

community.

Now, more and more people want to work at home and earn money online. Being struck in a nine-to-five job is no longer an option. The values are changing and people are changing. We do not want to work hard, but smart.

If you haven’t yet heard this phrase, information overload, you will soon –

because it happens to the majority of new Internet marketers at some time or another.

Information overload is when you simply have too much to learn – so much that you feel

overwhelmed, frustrated, and more confused than before you had help.

It happens easily with this industry because there are so many options you have –

an endless array of opportunity. You can be a product owner and an affiliate at the same

time.

You can use article marketing, social marketing, or pay per click campaigns.

You’re new, you may not know much about any of the above, and suddenly you’re thrust

into an environment where everyone’s opinions differ and you don’t know where to start!

The first thing to do is calm down and take some of the pressure off of yourself.

All of this information you need to digest isn’t going anywhere. It’s going to be here

tonight, next week, and a year from now.

Don’t invest in a guide about Google AdWords, another about Squidoo, and one

about Private Label Rights all at the same time. There’s an old saying, “How do you eat

an elephant?” Answer: One bite at a time.

Internet marketing is your elephant and you have to choose whether you want to

eat the ear, the foot, or the tail section first. It doesn’t matter if you start out learning

about social marketing before you know the ropes of article marketing.

The point is that you’re educating yourself and putting that knowledge to work

for you. As long as you read the social marketing guide and apply that insight to a

method of making money, you’re on the road to success!

Some things won’t make sense to learn before others. If you know you have no

money to start with, then don’t buy (or even download for free) a guide about pay per

click marketing. Start with something you can do.

You don’t want a guide to everything all at once. You want to invest in small,

bite-sized chunks of information that you can digest and utilize before moving on. Want

to start with a free blog? Get a blog guide. Launch a blog.

Then move on to whatever interests you next, such as product creation or selling

on eBay – whatever floats your boat. The key is to not get stymied by having too much

information and too many choices at once.

Here’s another phrase you’ll grow sick of: The gold is in the list. You might get

weary of hearing it, but it’s smacking you in the face for a reason – it’s the truth! First of

all, let’s answer the question, “What is a list?”

A list in Internet marketing terms is a database of contact information for your

prospects. So if you have a product or promote products about gardening and I sign up

for your list, I’m a prospect that you can market to repeatedly until I unsubscribe.

So why is building a list so important? Let’s say you start off as an affiliate

marketer. You find a niche you truly enjoy and you start working what you’ve learned

into some traffic for your affiliate links.

Over a period of 30 days, you funnel 5,000 prospects from the World Wide Web

who are interested in your niche straight through your affiliate link to the product owner’s

site.

They even buy – yea! You’ve made a 50% commission with a 2% conversion rate.

That means 2 out of every 100 people you sent bought the product, and your share was

$26.00 (as an example). You earned a cool $2,600 this month – good for you!

But you’re leaving money on the table. Those 100 people who bought from your

5,000 clicks? They’re now on the product owner’s list, not yours. So what he’s going to

do is send them more offers over the coming weeks.

After all, they are proven buyers. Over the next 30 days, those buyers fork over

some more money for products that complement the original one they bought. That

money goes to the product owner, not you – because you passed on building a list the

first time around.

A better way to build an Internet marketing business is to start with a list from

day one. Before you let a single person slip through your link without capturing their

name and email address, have your system set up to build a list.

You can have unlimited lists for different niches using a simple tool like Aweber,

which costs $19.95 a month. Every day you can log in and see how many people have

signed up, and you can create automated messages to send out to help convert your list

into more sales.

Why should the product owner get to cash in on that person again and again when

you’re the one who brought him the customer in the first place? Stake claim to each

prospect and leverage your relationship with him for future sales and commissions.