Saturday, September 27th, 2008
There are a few things that every affiliate marketer or aspiring affiliate will need to start making his or her first dollar in affiliate marketing.
From my conversations with a lot of my subscribers, it appears that most affiliates feel too overwhelmed by the information overload. They get swarmed by all the experienced internet marketers’ emails throwing them into all directions.
Frankly, there is nothing wrong with the offers and methods taught by the internet marketers. The only problem is for a newbie, that is too much to digest.
Right here, I offer a few simple steps to start making your first dollar in affiliate marketing. If you own a list or membership site that has many newbie affiliates, perhaps you might want them to read this post.
The idea is to stay focused on a single plan and take mass action!
1. Choose Your Product
One affiliate program for a start!
While this sounds basic, the truth is, many get sucked into different affiliate programs and end up distracted!
Start with ClickBank if you are new. All you need to do is register. Approval is instant and you go for to the Marketplace to choose a good product to promote.
People will tell you to go for low competition products, ie products that few affiliates are promoting or not selling in large volumes. That’s not quite true. For me, I find from my experience in niche marketing that the hot sellers sell much better.
The reasons are simple: The hot sellers are proven to sell, ie high conversion rates. Secondly, the market is much larger!
Take a look at the Gravity. This is a single parameter that tells you how many affiliates have made at least 1 sale over the past 30 days. Not the exact number though but a good estimate. Go for at least 30 to 50.
2. Create Your Sales Funnel
By that, this is the conduit of getting visitors to your sales page. Some will advocate direct linking, in other words, sending your visitors immediately to your sales page.
This works at times. But I have only seen successful models if you use targeted paid advertising. For example, buying banners ads, text link ads, etc at Ad Networks. Unless you are an experienced marketer or have deep pockets to test different advertising avenues, this option can be very expensive! Not quite suitable for newbies.
However, it is often much better if you put your prospect through a sales funnel for the purpose of educating and preselling your prospect. Conversions are much higher!
What kind of sales funnels can you create?
a. A content website that talks about the particular market you are in.
b. A blog using free blogging platforms like Blogger and WordPress is great!
c. A name squeeze page that allows you to capture the name and email address of your visitor. This allows you to follow up with him or her for at least 7 times to condition him to buy from you. Offer great content or a free report as a bait!
d. A forum signature can become your direct sales funnel. Create a catchy forum signature like this “Copy The Secrets A Newbie Used To Get A $3212 PayCheck Every Month!”. The simple way to do it is to use the headline of the product you are selling and modify it.
A case study here. If I am promoting Google Manipulator, I may actually create a signature from its headline.
Headline:
“Underground Marketer Banks $57,100 In Profit From Free Google Search Traffic And How You Too Could Easily And Effortlessly Blow Past Anyone And Everyone In Your Niche And Hit The Jackpot Using The Exact Same Simple As 1-2-3 Methods”
Signature:
“Learn How I Bank $57,100 In Profits From Free Traffic Using A Simple A-B-C Blueprint!”
3. Traffic Driving
The third part is in driving traffic to your sales funnel. This is the most challenging for most internet marketers. If you do have a budget, you can resort to PPC, ideally Google Adwords.
But if you are on a tight budget, free traffic driving techniques can also deliver a punch.
Some of the most effective and simple traffic driving methods here:
a. Article marketing – I swear by its effectiveness. After all, this is the single traffic technique that gets me well over 1000,000 visitors over a year period. Hint: Use EzineArticles.
Read my other blog posts on article marketing tips and techniques to maximize your efforts.
b. Forum marketing – Spend time contributing to at least 10 forums in your target niche. This will get you a good reputation and trust. The selling point is in your forum signature. People do make their first sales there.
c. Classified advertisements – Go to the free classified advertisement websites like Craigslist, EPage, BackPage and USFreeads. These places allow you to post a classified ad. Look for the appropriate places to post your ad.
d. Create a free report and give it away – This method is a more advanced one which I hesitated to share. Nonetheless, if you feel you are experienced to do it, go ahead and create a report with your affiliate links embedded in the report.
Give it to anyone you meet, post it to free ebook directories, or participate in a giveaway.
e. Social bookmarking at top sites like StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us and Digg.
f. List building – this is a lengthy process but you will be able to build a long-term business in the niche you are targeting. All gurus built their successes from their own lists or piggybacking others’ lists.
There are other more advanced techniques, but I shall stop here. By following these methods and duplicating it all over and over again, you will find yourself not only making the first sale, but many sales. You just got yourself a proven business model!
Posted in Article Marketing, Blogging, Buzz Marketing, Forum Marketing, Free Money Making Methods, General, Giveaway Events, Google Adwords, Joint Venture, Online Marketing Learning, Pay Per Click, Product Reviews, SEO, Social Bookmarking, Web Traffic | 40 Comments »
Tuesday, August 19th, 2008
Commission Blueprint, a new report scheduled to launch on 27 August 2008, is the first from Steve Clayton and Tim Godfrey. Who are these folks and what is this report about? Read this Commission Blueprint review to find out.
Steven Clayton, quite an unknown marketer till now runs a company managing Adwords campaigns for clients in the tune of 6-figures. Prior to founding hims company “Worth Overdoing Marketing and Consulting”, he was a Vice President for a $5 billion Fortune 500 Company.
Tim Godfrey is quite a new face but he isn’t. Just recently, he has successfully launched Profit Praxis, a killer product in the IM arena. Hailed as the rising star in internet marketing by two heavy weights, Chris X and Alex Goad, Tim has been quietly sweeping cool affiliate checks from the recent product launches like Google Nemesis and Four Tier Annihilation, knocking out gurus with huge lists and hitting sales of more than 280 copies sold with a list of only 7000 members.
Obviously, these guys may be unknown but are no newbies to the internet marketing industry.
What Commission Blueprint is about?
A collection of exact techniques to generate $526,422.83 in affiliate commissions within 7 months. And all using Adwords and landing pages. NO List or SEO involved!
Not a single internet marketing product was sold to hit that figure. See the income statement below.
Watch the pre-launch video here!
By now, you would have seen dozens of Google/Clickbank related product launches. In case you quickly associate Commission Blueprint with them, then you are in for a surprise. This report has a Web 2.0 twist to it.
All in, there are 14 videos and 5 PDF that explain in great detail how to execute the killer techniques to make huge profits from Clickbank products.
Learning Google Adwords is something which every internet marketer should consider. After all, increasing your traffic is the main activity every living marketer should do.
Commission Blueprint will have an entire suite of tips to show you how.
I will share in greater detail about this report when I get hold of my very own copy of the Commission Blueprint in a few day’s time.
Wait closely for my detailed Commission Blueprint review and bonuses here.
Updates on 20 Aug 2008:
I have received my first installment of the Commission Blueprint! Here’s an updated Commission Blueprint Review! Needless to say, I immediately opened the whole suite of pdfs and videos. I shall let you take a quick peek at a portion of them. This is not the complete package yet. But I am already excited after reading through the Opt-In Page Secrets PDF!
The PDFs: (there are 2 more PDFs to be added here. But just reading the first is enough to get your attention)
Opt-In Page Secrets
Pre-Sell Page Secrets
Review Page Secrets
The Videos: (The videos are impressive and make it really clear for us to understand how to execute each step. Truly a step-by-step no brainer video series)
Video 1 – Introduction & Welcome
Video 2 – How To Use This Program
Video 3 – Picking Profitable & High Converting Products
Video 4 – In-Depth Keyword Research & Advanced Tools
Video 5 – Domain Name Secrets & Hosting Set Up
Video 6 – Creating Your Story – The Essential Component
Video 7 – Setting Up Your Landing Pages For Maximum Conversion
Video 8 – Setting Up Your Campaign
Video 9 – Managing Your Campaign
Video 10 – Picking A Winner & Milking It
Video 11 – Scaling For Profit (Step From $100’s to $1000’s In Profit)
Video 12 – What Can Go Wrong & How To Fix It Fast
Video 13 – Cash Flow & Business Management
Video 14 – Wrap Up
The Templates: (All ready to be used. All you have to do is make minor tweaks to suit your campaigns. These are all proven to sell templates!)
The Review Page Template
The Pre-Sell Page Template
Opt-In Page Templates
I shall return to give you more run up on what is happening. To be honest, I am quite awed by the amount of goodies offered in the Commission Blueprint package.
Posted in General, Google Adwords, Online Marketing Learning, Pay Per Click, Product Reviews, Web Traffic, keyword research | 8 Comments »
Monday, August 18th, 2008
Wow! It has been more than a month since I last posted. So where was I? In case you are wondering if I went missing forever, I have not. The last month was busy and I was away in Japan for about 2 weeks on holidays. It was quite cooling in Hokkaido and the lavender fields were beautiful! Tokyo’s weather was quite terrible – it was hot! But my wife and I had a great time at DisneySea.
Overall, it was an enjoyable trip and now that I am back, it is time to get back to posting more good stuff for you guys.
I am going to post a quick keyword tip here for all bum marketers and practically all internet marketers. Keyword research as you know by now is a must. Whether you are using it for Pay-Per-Click aka Google Adwords or for SEO and bum marketing, it is the one most critical component.
Google’s external keyword tool is now an improved version, providing approximate monthly search counts for any keyword you search. Here’s the link to the free keyword tool.
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Previously, there are no figures and you probably have to second guess what the search volume toolbar means for each individual word.
If you are a bum marketer looking for a quick keyword to target, the search volumes should give you a good idea of the traffic each keyword will attract. Also, if you notice that the advertiser competition is high, ie a full bar, chances are it is profitable for the advertisers.
This should pass the first litmus test. Then, I will go to Google.com to run a search using “keyword” and allintitle: keyword.
If both shows a low result, probably in the range of lower than 5,000 for “keyword” and 1,000 for allintitle: keyword, then I will target this for bum marketing with articles at EzineArticles, Squidoo and HubPages.
But there is more to Google’s keyword tool. Notice that there is a small section on the left hand that says “Results are tailored to”. Try to fiddle with the drop-down menu, it will give you a good grasp of how much traffic each keyword is attracting from different countries in the world.
This should be useful for PPC marketers who are targeting geographically. Even for bum marketers, you can try to plan your content to contain keywords for those specific countries. For example, if you notice that a keyword looks promising with decent search volumes in Canada, perhaps you can mention about “Canada” in your article content and title to draw some relevance to it. So, for illustration’s purpose, say the keyword is “make money online”, you can try creating content based on the keyword “make money online in Canada”.
Posted in Article Marketing, Blogging, Buzz Marketing, General, Online Marketing Learning, SEO, Web Traffic, keyword research | 14 Comments »
Thursday, June 19th, 2008
Google Manipulator is the latest report to be launched on the 26 June 2008. Written by Pawel Reszka, an unknown 6-figure underground marketer, this 80 page report teaches you the exact methods he has used to “manipulate” the Google search engine for profits. I was invited to review this report. As usual, I am going to share what this “Google Manipulator” report is all about.
Content Of Google Manipulator:
Chapter 1. Introduction
Chapter 2. What This Is About
Chapter 3. Market Research
Chapter 4. The Master Plan
Chapter 5. Content Creation
Chapter 6. Executing The Plan
Chapter 7. Getting The Word Out
Chapter 8. Your Own Site VS Direct Linking
Chapter 9. Black Hat
Chapter 10. Building Huge Sites Fast
Chapter 11. Closing Words
Chapter 12. Recommended Resources
Chapter 13. Affiliate Program
I am not easily won over by sales letters and loud headlines. After all, all internet marketing products have fantastic headlines and sub-headlines. And you get numb after a while.
When you get to see the sales letter subsequently. you will read about how this underground marketer named Pawel Reszka managed to pull in over $50,000 profits in one month relying only on free google search traffic.
No Google Adwords, PPC or huge lists at all. And he earned his $50,000 profits all using free search traffic from Google. How did he do that? These are all revealed in his Google Manipulator report. But here is a hint, he uses niche sites together with the power of Web 2.0 authority sites.
The aim of this report is to show you how to conquer the Google search engine results with No.1 ranking or at least within the Top 10 search results. Anyone can do it without even owning or building a single website.
I reviewed the report, read through the entire 80 pages and found a shocking truth! This guy is really sharing what works, without hiding anything!
I hate to say it but most gurus do not share their killer techniques with us. They either write about methods that used to work but are obsolete now or methods that they personally have not used before. Theories at best!
But in Google Manipulator, the steps to dominate the Google search results are clearly spelt out. I can say that because I have personally used the methods and I know they work like crazy! When he says that you can get Google’s approval for your websites and rank top or even No.1 for your targeted keywords within days, he is not lying. And we are not talking about complicated SEO but using Web 2.0 authority sites.
Pawel tells you the 2 best ways to make use of his techniques to conquer Google’s search engine results to your advantage. No, he is not talking about long tail keywords in case you are wondering.
His killer backlinking strategies are powerful and effective. The Google Manipulator report shares 2 such methods to get quality one-way links. The black hat techniques are actually mini strategies to increase your affiliate commissions.
Priced at $67, this Google Manipulator report is worth the buy. It is a complete income system. I like his style of writing which is clear and concise. And Pawel Reszka takes great pains to use screenshots to illustrate each step. Newbies will love this because they are easy to understand and anyone can execute to outrun even the gurus with huge lists, even without your own website!
I would be surprised if you do not make any money with this report.
Grab his report and I shall throw in a set of attractive bonuses. See my Google Manipulator bonuses.
Posted in Article Marketing, Blogging, Buzz Marketing, Free Money Making Methods, General, Online Marketing Learning, Product Reviews, SEO, Social Bookmarking, Web Traffic, keyword research | 14 Comments »
Monday, June 9th, 2008
What Is Alex Goad’s Four Tier Annihilation Method or 4 Tier Annihilation Method?
My buddy Alex Goad has just released a new video you can go watch now for free.
In it he talks about the Four Tier Annihilation Method being deregulated… This is big news as you will soon see…
Watch 4 Tier Annihilation Method Video Now!
It’s also strange because it looks pretty much different from anything I’ve ever seen.
Not to mention that the earning account screen-shots show just short of $200,000 a month.
Here is what’s happening: they are deregulating a set of killer tactics known as the Four Tier Annihilation Method (which incidentally has nothing to do with MLM or any of that stuff).
This is the exact material that was taught to an exclusive group of 10 people in a closed door commando seminar in London England (which cost $10 thousand to attend).
There are actual case studies being released and the results are beyond impressive. Several of the students have reported making 5 and even 6 figures a month.
And this is all documented:
Listen, I just finished watching the short video (it’s under 10 minutes), and I can tell you right now this thing is going to explode any second.
In fact this has all the makings of a game changer. It’s not every day that killer underground tactics like these are made available at all…
Apparently this is going to open doors tomorrow 10th June at 12 Noon Est. You’ll be able to see the full student case studies then as well as a lot more… things like
1. How to use this “radar” to zone in on “shooting fish in a barrel” style profit magnets
2. The Legal Highjack System: Lethal and crushingly effective yet perfectly legal method to leverage geographical factors for a stunning advantage and giant profits
3. Error Cheats: Nobody is perfect: uncover simple errors others are making and transform them into huge deposits in your account.
Plus, the recent trend reversal that creates a new ground floor opening…
I don’t think this video will be up much longer, so go watch the free Four Tier Annihilation Method video now!
Posted in General, Online Marketing Learning, Product Reviews | 10 Comments »
Tuesday, May 27th, 2008
It has been about 2 weeks since I last posted. Well, I am back after getting all busy with creating and semi-automating my network of blogs. Yes, I do own tons of blogs and with my new projects coming up soon, I got to set certain systems in place to take care of the content management as well as link and traffic building of my blog empire.
Ok, back to this post. Here are some cool and free keyword competition analyzers you can use to conduct a search for “low competition keyword phrases”. Now, “low competition keyword phrases” are much sought after for a few reasons.
Firstly, if you are an article marketer or bum marketer, using such keywords will get you ranking in top placements in the search engines really fast.
Secondly, if you are using PPC, targeting a specific long tail, low competition keyword phrase for your keyword, landing page content, ad title and ad content will bring down the cost of your ads really fast. But be mindful to target low competition keyword phrases with some decent amount of searches. Otherwise, you will be wasting time building a landing page and optimizing it around the keyword.
Which are these free keyword competition analyzers?
1. WordTracker’s Cool Google Trends Feature
You may be familiar with WordTracker but did you know that you can combine the power of the free keyword competition checker with Google trends?
Say I want to check out the keyword competitiveness of “working from home”. I will go to
http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/gtrends
Take a look at this screenshot.
Next, I will click on the little icon on the right column that says “Niche summary for working from home”.
It will bring me to this screen that shows the Google competition and the actual number of visitors from the No.1 website in Google.
Powerful, right? Within a few minutes, one can easily find some long tail low competition keywords to target. Now to the second free keyword competition analyzing tool.
2. SEO For FireFox Plugin
Yes, this is an add-on for your SEO browser.
Download it from
http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/seo-for-firefox.html
Install it and run the tool. See the screenshot below when I try to check if the keyword “working from home” is worth targeting.
It pretty much tells you a great deal about the sites that are ranking well for the keyword “working from home”. If you see most of them with a high PR and tons of backlinks, this is a good sign that you should avoid it!
But if the sites that are ranking well for the keyword phrase are all low PR pages with small number of backlinks, the keyword phrase could just be the low competition keyword phrase you are looking for!
Posted in Article Marketing, General, Online Marketing Learning, SEO, keyword research | 7 Comments »
Tuesday, May 13th, 2008
In my visits to money making forums, I often come across questions like “how do I make money for free”, “can anyone make any money without a list” or “is it possible to make money as an affiliate”?
There are 4 simple ways to make money online if you are starting out and do not own a list, a product and simply do not have a single penny to spend.
1. Writing Articles and Selling Them
A very straightforward method is to sell original articles. You can either use project-based communities like Elance, Scriptlance and GetaFreeLancer to find work as a writer. Project assignments go for around $3 – 10 per article written depending on your skill level and reputation.
Alternatively, you can simply write a set of articles on a hot topic like dog training, dating and so on. Then sell them as PLR articles at forums like Digital Point forum. Go to all the money making forums and promote the sale. But the trick is to price each article below $1. If you can sell a batch of 10 articles @ $10 to 20 or 30 buyers, that is $200 – 300 in your pocket. Not too bad if you can do it every day!
2. Direct Affiliate Marketing
Since you do not own a product, you can simply sign up as an affiliate in ClickBank. This is the first step. The next step is to drive tons of traffic to your link.
Direct Linking Method
Basically, what this means is you promote the affiliate link directly. You can use a signature link that points to your affiliate link and be active in forums.
Go and post at least 10 interesting posts a day in each forum. Repeat it for as many forums as possible, minimum 10 forums. By doing so, you have 100 posts scattered around and 100 chances of getting some targeted eyeballs on your signature. Be creative and make some outrageous or catchy signature like “How to Make $100 Within 2 Hours”.
You can also leave your affiliate link in blog comments as well as free classified ad sites like Craiglist, BackPage, EPage etc.
Try this and do not be surprised that you will start seeing sales streaming in. One of my readers was so thankful when he made 2 sales shortly after doing so. While that is not a lot, but for a newbie, it can be very encouraging.
But one word of advice, try not to send all the traffic directly to the sales page unless the sales page converts really well! Otherwise, it makes sense to presell your prospect first.
Presell Method
This requires more work but it works like a charm. Do a review of the product be it at Squidoo, HubPages or EzineArticles. Direct the traffic to the affiliate product (EzineArticles require a website, so why not direct the traffic to a Squidoo lens you have created?)
Reviews are known to improve conversions by many fold. I personally tested it and found in one case that it actually improved the conversion rate from 1% to 5%.
Start driving traffic to your review pages using article submission, blog comment posting and forum posting.
Anyway, these are all free to set up, so why not?
3. Blogging
Go and start a free blog at Blogger or WordPress. Pick an expensive topic like Mortgage, Debt and so on.
Start blogging and update the blog frequently.
Do not use Google Adsense immediately. I discovered that it does not help you in the search engine rankings when you slap those ads on your blog while it is still fresh and new. Google often see these new blogs with Adsense ads as trashy “made for Adsense” sites and never love them.
But that does not mean you cannot put other affiliate product banners on it. 
Build it for a while, at least a month or two before you put Adsense on it and you are safe and ready to receive expensive clicks.
One important thing you need to do is to ping your blog after posting. Ping it at http://www.Pingoat.com to inform the feed directories that your blog has been updated.
Building backlinks to your blog is vital. There are many free methods like article marketing, bum marketing, blog comment posting, forum posting and link exchange.
From this method, you are monetizing your blog by earning when someone clicks through your affiliate product banners and buys the products and click on the Adsense ads.
Once your blog hits a good PR, you can even start selling text link and banner ads on your blog. Participate in Adbrite or other ad networks for more cash.
4. Sell Your Own Products
This sounds contradictory. How do you sell your own products without creating one? Well, you can always download any product and treat it as your own by participating in giveaways like:
Viral Marketing Giveaway 11 – Download Your Free Gifts Now!
The IM Giveaway – The Most Massive Giveaway With Thousands Dollars Worth Of Gifts
There are tons of free ebooks, templates and scripts with Master Resale Rights and Private Label Rights (PLR). You can simply resell them for profits.
How to set it up?
Go to one of the free web hosts that allow you to upload web pages and files.
You will be able to find a lot of free web hosting services at http://www.free-webhosts.com.
Upload the sales page, download page and report. These are included in the resale rights packages.
Create a PayPal button for your customer to pay you.
How to promote the product?
Simply apply the methods I described in 1, 2 & 3.
So, here you have 4 really simple to follow methods to make money online without a product, a list and even budget. All the above are free techniques that work!
Once you have a hang of these methods, it is time to proceed to more advanced techniques as an experienced marketer.
Posted in Article Marketing, Blogging, Forum Marketing, Free Money Making Methods, General, Giveaway Events, Online Marketing Learning | 4 Comments »
Sunday, May 4th, 2008
Giveaways or Giveaway events are great places for all internet marketers. You can download tons of free gifts. There are ebooks, software, guides and memberships and many of them even come with full resale rights. What this means is that you not only can use them personally, you can also sell them to someone else and profit from them.
A lot of these giveaway events give away hundreds of products created and contributed by the giveaway partners. You do not need to pay a single cent but can sink your teeth into dozens of quality products. Participate in one of such event and you can set up an entire bookstore selling all these products. Wow!
You get your products, the contributors get to build their lists. It is quite a fair deal and in most cases, the people who come for the freebies are the ones who gain the most.
So if you are wondering what are the Giveaway events taking place now, here’s some details:
1. Viral Marketing Giveaway 11
This event gives you over 300 hot and fresh Internet marketing ebooks, software packages, guides, and memberships – many with Resell Rights you can turn around and sell for big PROFITS! Download them all, or just the ones you want.
If you’re interested in building a subscriber list and have a gift to contribute, you should check out Viral Marketing Giveaway 11.
It’s designed for people who want to start or grow an online business because it offers tools in all the key aspects of online marketing – from setting up websites and list building to converting sales and creating joint ventures.
Check out Viral Marketing Giveaway 11 now!
2. Lightning Giveaway 4
Mike Mazzella and David Thompson have come up with the latest Lightning Giveaway 4 Giveaway Event. This giveaway is different from most that you see. Both Mike and David have managed to arm twist online marketers including myself to contribute brand new products that you have not seen anywhere else. You get to download quality reports, software etc from the likes of:
Jason James
Soren Jordansen
Denise Hall
Doug Champigny
Jason Dinner
Reed Floren
Mike Steup
Mike Mazzella
Larry Dotson
Xavier Nelson
Earl Day
Kez Engineer
Matthew Griffin
Gregg Hall
Michelle Brouse
Joel Osborne
Stephanie Mulac
James Jackson
Barry Richardson
Jim Miller
Jordan Hall
Brad Smith
Richard Wing
Jamie Bing
Matt Ng
John Rogers
Tuks Engineer
Kathe Lucas
Daniel McGonagle
Ken Reno
David Thompson
Gina Gaudio Graves
Joe Gilharry
Edmund Loh
Aurelius Tjin
Alex Sysoef
Rick Macaulay
Shelby Carr
Greg Lloyd
Todd Gross
Mieke Janssens
Melvin Ng
Pete Hall
Julius Moltgen
Scott Case
Davion Wong
Go and download your gifts before the event closes. It will be open only for 14 Days!
Here’s your invitation link.
Lightning Giveaway 4 Special Invitation Link
If you own a list of more than 5000, you can join in as a JV member. Here’s the JV invitation link. Only on my special invitation.
Lightning Giveaway 4 Special JV Invitation Link
Posted in General, Giveaway Events, Joint Venture, Online Marketing Learning | No Comments »
Wednesday, April 30th, 2008
I have titled this blog post as “Quitting the Rat Race In An Economic Downturn” because of 2 reasons.
The first reason is that I have resigned from my organization after working for close to 7 years now. My last day of corporate work life is on 09 June 2008. Come next week, I will be starting my leave for an entire month.
The second reason for such a title is I am quitting at a time when the US economy is still rather slow. A lot of my income comes from the US.
Yet, what are the motivations for me to do so?
In life, there are always Pull and Push factors for every decision you make. Push factors are the ones that force you to move out of your status quo, ie where you are in your current situation. Pull factors are what drives and attracts you on the other side.
In the equation, when the Pull and the Push work hand in hand together, there is no reason for staying in status quo.
That brings me the point of preparing the Pull factors. Push factors in most circumstances are not really within our control but the Pull factors can be influenced by our choices.
3 years ago, I started to grow tired of my work. I was doing well in my career being one of the youngest in my organization (huge one with a few thousand staff) to move up the ladder to middle management and I am barely 30 years of age. Thank God for the favor. I was ahead of many of my peers. But something inside me always challenges me to do something different.
For 3 years, I went around hunting for answers and finally chanced upon internet marketing or for that matter affiliate marketing. After some hard knocks here and there, I finally figured certain things out, crafted a vision and made plans. I worked towards it and I am glad that things worked out well enough for me to quit my job and work full time on my online business.
The excitement of being able to do what I truly enjoy is immense though I do have some apprehension. The “What If”s are real. I do not deny it but my promise to myself and my wife-to-be is that I will work hard and smart and by God’s grace, I will make it!
Here are some tips for all my dear readers who are working hard to make ends meet or working for long hours but always wishing in your heart to one day quit the rat race and be your own boss:
1. Develop a Vision
A vision is bigger than a goal. Making that “1 million dollars” is not a vision but a goal. Because I have seen folks who made their first million but are still not happy. In fact, they became very lost after achieving that success and needed another goal to be injected into their lives.
A vision is bigger than yourself. Yes, a vision will challenge you to where you now cannot imagine. So what is your vision? Set up a trust fund to support the orphans in a third world nation or be the most successful Internet Marketer in the world?
2. Craft Out Your Plans
What are your plans? You need a plan to meet your vision. Plan out your strategy. It is highly important to set tangible targets and goals that are measurable with a timeline.
If your goal is to quit your job at 40 years old, you need to know how much money you will need then. Then work backwards to where you are now. Do some reality checks.
3. Take Baby Steps
I am now mentoring one of my friends in making money online. One thing I always teach him is to make plans but take baby steps.
If your goal is to make $1000 in a month from now, break that down into 30 days and all it takes to meet the target is to make $30 a day. That does not sound as daunting, isn’t it?
Be accountable to someone who can constantly remind you to stick to your plans.
4. Make Adjustments To Your Lifestyle
I know this is painful but if you truly desire to quit the rat race and no longer have to report to work each day, then this is a pain you have to endure.
If you have to stop surfing the net to watch a movie or chat with your friends on MSN, do so. Some adjustments will go a long way in shaping good habits.
5. Learn From People
You do not have to be the best. Just second best will do. Richard Branson of Virgin is known for his uncanny abilities to mimic the success of others. In affiliate marketing, you really do not need to reinvent the wheels.
Just find someone or some strategies and techniques that work and do it. You will not know until you try.
This is why I make it a point to learn from people who have done it successfully. There is always a lesson to learn.
Well, I am done with my ramblings. Wanted to share something that I thought might be good food for thought for you.
Do share your thoughts with me. For friends who have successfully quitted the rat race, do also share your opinions and tips here. See you!
Posted in General, Online Marketing Learning | 6 Comments »
Sunday, April 27th, 2008
Have you heard of GistWeb? If not, this is the latest free tool developed by Jonathan Leger. Jon has been pumping out many free and paid software that are useful for marketers especially affiliate marketers. This online tool is intended for people who find content research a chore.
Any affiliate marketer alive would know that writing good quality unique content is the lifeline of content publishing. Your blogs and websites need content to improve readership. Your article marketing efforts need unique content to capture the attention of the search engines to achieve good rankings.
But the trouble is, to create unique content, there are only 2 main ways. Either you write it yourself which takes tons of time and a lot of brain juice and creativity or you pay for your content.
Writing everything yourself can be time-consuming. It takes time to conduct research for the information and organize them properly before you can write a good blog post or article.
Another way is to hire someone to write for you. This may help you to get away from writing your own content, but getting somebody to write unique content for you can cost a lot of money. This is especially so if you own a lot of websites and blogs, monetized for Adsense or affiliate programs.
GistWeb.com is able to overcome both sets of problems – cost and time. Firstly, it is a free service anyone can use. Secondly, it takes only a minute for it to work.
What can GistWeb do for you?
It pulls out the gist of search results, organize them nicely into summaries of different lengths. You simply input the keyword you are interested to research on and it will go searching the web for related information. You can use the short, medium or long summary as you wish.
While it takes a little time to organize the content a bit, you will realize that it is a really cool tool to conduct online research for useful information.
Try out GistWeb today to conduct your content research and start churning out unique content as fast as lightning!
Posted in Article Marketing, Blogging, General, Online Marketing Learning | 4 Comments »
