The market for blogs has exploded. Many companies do not want to invest the time in developing a blog in their respective niche, which has given rise to a whole new cottage industry, blog flipping.
Blog flipping is done in a few different ways. Some flippers buy an existing blog that has potential, but is not currently producing. They take that blog and build the traffic and sales up to a level productive enough to reap a profit from their investment, and then sell it.
Or, more common in today’s blog flipping market, is to research a specific niche, develop a domain / blog, and then sell it.
But what does “developed” really mean? It depends on the flipper. So buyers really need to do their homework (read due diligence) before investing in an “established” blog or website. Because “established” is in the eyes of the beholder, and means many different things depending upon who you consult.
In my opinion, established means that the site, or blog, is profitable. Now profitable can be defined very differently for different companies. It doesn’t mean that the site has to be making money, though it does help justify the investment when purchasing the blog. It can mean to a prospective company only that the site has traffic that company believes it can convert into sales. Not everyone can convert website traffic in the same way. So there are companies out there looking to buy blogs that have a certain, specific reader demographic that fits their market. However, these types of sales are few and far between. Companies that are buying blogs normally want to see one thing.
Profit.
Not just income, because a blog’s gross monthly income and it’s actual profit margin can be two very different things. We’ve all seen the advertisements screaming that you can make ten thousand dollars a month blogging, or with Adsense, or whatever. But the part usually left out is the investment it takes to get that income. Sometimes the cost is far greater than the income, making the blog or website a LOSER.
So what steps should you take to sell your blog if you are a would be website flipper? Here are a few factors your blog or website should have in order to get top dollar:
1. Real Web Property
Your blog needs to be a real web property. What I mean by this is that it needs to be a real domain, on hosting you are paying for. Free hosted blogs are not a viable investment for most companies and corporations. There are exceptions to every rule and I’m sure that there have been a few sales of extremely popular Blogspot blogs, but unless you have a million visitors a month, you’re probably not going to sell a free hosted blog anytime soon. Buy a domain, pay for some hosting, build something that has value.
2. Professional Appearance
Your blog or website needs to have a professional appearance. Custom design is always better, but at the very least, it needs to have a template or layout that fits that blog’s readership or market. If you have poor graphics, even if your blog has monster traffic, you’ll sell it for much less than you could have if you had professional web design. It’s sort of like house flipping or selling a used car. If you can afford it, a fresh coat of paint usually brings the resell value up substantially.
3. Developed Traffic Sources
Potential buyers want to see traffic. Not just any traffic will do for most serious investors. They want to see solid, search engine traffic and a solid bookmarked reader base. StumbleUpon and other social bookmarking websites are awesome traffic sources, no doubt. But when it comes to someone buying your blog, they want to see more than just a few traffic spikes from a front page listing on Digg. They want to see that the traffic is going to keep coming for months and years to come. Without a lot of work if they can get it.
4. Documented Traffic Statistics
It is going to take more than just the summary of “hits” screen capture from your webalizer stats to make the sale. You are going to need at least three months history of actual traffic statistics. Unique visitors, tracking cookie info if you have it, Google Analytics, etc. Numbers, numbers, numbers. Corporations want numbers in order to convince their board of directors that your blog would be a sound investment. Private investors are no different for the most part and they want to know exactly what they are buying when it comes down the actual traffic your blog has.
5. Profit and Loss
Lots of income statistics. If you are looking to sell your blog or website for real money (read more than a few bucks nabbed on EBAY) then you are going to need to show your buyer some stats about money. P&L statements (Profit and Loss) for as far back as you can go will help your buyer make his or her decision. It is one thing to tell a potential buyer what the gross income per month is, it’s a completely different thing to show them exactly what the net income is and how it is obtained each month. Keep good records of your website expenditures and what the income received from those investments are. Include every cost. Website hosting, design, redesign, employee or outsourcing costs, whatever. Include everything and show them the real bottom line.
6. Set a Fair Price
I know you love your site, I love all of mine too. So it’s easy to attach an emotional value to your blog and inflate the price. It’s also really easy to confuse a blog’s actual value with your vision of it’s potential value. What you think the site will make someday and what it’s making now are two very different things. Sorry, but what you think it will make someday has zero value to a would be investor. They only want to know what the net profit is, right now. Yes, you can take some long term income growth statistics and make profit projections, but unless you have these statistics going back a year or more, most buyers are going to dismiss them entirely.
Set a real price. In the bricks and mortar world most companies sell for 2 to 3 years of the total net income. Online, this number is usually cut down to one year. So if your website is netting $300 per month, the actual value of your blog is probably somewhere around $3600. One again, it’s easy to add an emotional price tag for all the hard work you’ve done to get that blog making $300 clams a month, but your sweat equity doesn’t mean much to a buyer.
Neither do website values created with online calculators. These sites are traffic magnets and are built totally to obtain webmaster traffic. If you search long enough and hard enough, you’ll find a website value calculator that comes up with a number you like. It still means nothing to a buyer. It’s not what your site is really worth and should have no bearing whatsoever on your sale price.
7. Where to Sell your Website
Where and how you sell your website is super important. The profit you make will be directly related. Try to stay away from auction type formats if at all possible. If your site has some real value, use a website broker. A broker will help you determine the real value of your blog or website and then help you find a qualified and interested buyer. You would call a real estate agent (read professional) if you were selling your house, right? So why would you rely on your “for sale by owner” plan when it comes to your web property? Call a professional.
Sadly, one of the main reasons most flippers don’t call in a pro is because deep down they don’t really want to know what the site is worth. They want to live in their imaginary world where their holdings are worth millions. They can put a site up for sale on Sitepoint or Ebay for whatever price they want. Creating the illusion that they are worth substantially more than they really are.
8. Pie in the Sky Promises (magic beans)
Stay away from “Pie in the Sky” promises to potential buyers. When it comes to buying a website or blog, 99% of the buyers out there are from Missouri (the “Show Me” state) and only want to see the cold hard facts. Offering to take them to some new level of income at a later date is only going to make you look unprofessional and like an amateur.
There are sales contracts that require you to assist the new buyer for a set period of time. But these are normally for sites that are currently making money and allow time for you to teach the new owner just how that income is made. These clauses in sales contracts are not designed for you to hatch your half baked plans or for time to realize “what you think” the site’s potential might be someday.
9. Accessible Communication
You need to be extremely accessible to both your broker and potential buyers. They are going to have questions. So you need to have a cell phone number and an office number where they can reach you. You need to check your email often and respond quickly. Slow response can be a red flag signaling uncertainty, and that’s something an investor just does not want to see when they are thinking about laying some cash on you. Be available to talk to them.
10. Know the Details
Communication is only effective if you have answers. If you have to stumble and stutter with your answers, it’s going to have impact on the sale. You need to have done your homework and you need to know the answers to the questions in advance.
There you have the basics for flipping your blog or website. Of course there are many more points that can increase the actual dollar amount realized when you sell your blog, these only cover the some of them.
But if you follow these guidelines and are realistic with yourself and your buyer, you can sell your website for a profit. So take the time to prepare your web property for a real sale. Writing a good sales pitch is fine, but it’s not going to be sufficient for most investors. You’re going to need to have these bases covered.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
=
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
What is a Blog?
A blog is a website in which items are posted on a regular basis and displayed in reverse chronological order. The term blog is a shortened form of weblog or web log. Authoring a blog, maintaining a blog or adding an article to an existing blog is called “blogging”. Individual articles on a blog are called “blog posts,” “posts” or “entries”. A person who posts these entries is called a “blogger”. A blog comprises text, hypertext, images, and links (to other web pages and to video, audio and other files). Blogs use a conversational style of documentation. Often blogs focus on a particular “area of interest”, such as Washington, D.C.’s political goings-on. Some blogs discuss personal experiences
Before blogging, there were other ways for people to communicate online, such as chronicles, diaries, email lists, bulletin board systems, and more. When the Internet came about, users wanted a way to communicate with people all over the world. Before the Internet, many of us had pen pals to mail to every now and then. Today, we can have that with multiple people nearly anywhere.
Following the 1990s, the blog was born! The actual word, “blog”, comes from the term web log, which was eventually shortened to its new term.
In the beginning of blogs, they were mainly online diaries of people. Others could comment on the person’s blog, and therefore communicate. Now there are countless different kinds of blogs. They are still those who use it as a digital journal, but there are also corporate blogs, marketing blogs, topic-specific blogs, private blogs, and even blogs that are simply blog search engines!
There are so many possibilities with blogging. Using your imagination and creativity, there is no end!
A blog entry usually consists of a title, headline, body, post date, comments, tags, and more. One great thing about blogs is that they are almost always customizable. You can select your template (which determines how your blog looks, including its layout), which is usually provided by the blogging company you are using. You can also find other templates by searching on other sites, which I will discuss in a later article.
You can create a blog on whatever topic you like, use the template you want, and write in it when you want. Nearly all blogging sites offer registration for free. You can vent to the world, write about things that you care about, discuss your life…there is no limitation. Well, except for the terms and conditions you must agree to when you register! Blogging is fun, especially if you take joy in writing. It is a great stress reliever, and you can have it any way you want. If one blog isn’t good enough for you, create more! I currently write in four different blogs. It’s a lot of fun.
Blogging has reached new heights of popularity, with certain websites that look at the popularity of a blog through how many citations it has, or how the affiliation is has. There have even been a few lucky people who have blogged, and were contacted by publishers to write and publish a book!
Blogs are usually (but not always) written by one person and are updated pretty regularly. Blogs are often (but not always) written on a particular topic – there are blogs on virtually any topic you can think of. From photography, to spirituality, to recipes, to personal diaries to hobbies – blogging has as many applications and varieties as you can imagine. Whole blog communities have sprung up around some of these topics putting people into contact with each other in relationships where they can learn, share ideas, make friends with and even do business with people with similar interests from around the world.
Blogs usually have a few features that are useful to know about if you want to get the most out of them as a reader. Lets examine a couple briefly.
Archives – You might look at the front page of a blog and think that there is not much to them. A few recent entries, some links to other sites and not much else. However its worth knowing that there is a lot more going on under the surface that might initially meet the eye. For example in addition to the main page of this blog – at the time of writing this post there are over 520 other pages or posts below the surface that I’ve written over the past few months.
When I write a post like this one it goes to the top of the front page. As it gets older and as I add more current posts it begins its journey down the page until it disappears from it. This is not the end of its life however, because it goes into the ‘Archives’ of my blog. It sounds like a dusty dark place but its really just like a filing cabinet that is easily accessible in a couple of ways. You can read my ‘archives’ simply by looking on the ’sidebar’ (over on the left of this blog) at the ‘archives’ or ‘categories’ section. There you will see links to all my old posts which you can access either by category. You’ll see a category for ‘Advertising’ – click that link and you’ll see all my old posts on the topic of Advertising with the most recent at the top and the oldest at the bottom.
Comments – Not all blogs use comments – but most do. This blog is not a monologue but a conversation. You can give me feedback on almost everything I write simply by clicking the ‘comments’ link at the bottom of each one of my posts. This will take you to a little form where you leave your name, email and a link to your own blog if you have one as well as your feedback, comment, critique, question, essay on why you love my blog, promise of money…. etc). Try it now. Scroll to the bottom of this page, click ‘comments’ and fill in the blanks with a little introduction to yourself.
A great way to learn about blogs is to read a few. Leave some comments, ask questions and bookmark your favourites. An even better way to learn about blogs is to start your own. Ok – you might be laughing at me now – you think you are not web savy enough to have your own site? You wouldn’t know where to start? You don’t know how?
My Secret
Let me share a secret with you – three years ago I knew nothing about blogs, I had never used the internet for anything more than email, surfing and chatting to friends and I could only barely do any of that! But one day I discovered a blog and after surfing from one to another (blogs tend to link up to other blogs a lot) for a few hours I was hooked and wanted to start my own. I found that there are free blog services that almost anyone could set up in a matter of minutes. Really it is that simple. Literally millions of people blog from around the world. Its not just something for young people, or geeks, or cool folk, or Westerners, or even for people with their own computers – instead its something virtually anyone with access to a computer and the internet once or twice a week can start up.
Are you still confused? Would you like more information? Below are a few helpful articles on the topic – there are many more on the web – just do a search on your favourite search engine. Otherwise shoot me an email using my ‘contact’ button with your question and I’ll do my best to get back to you.
Update: If you’d like to start a blog I would recommend you to get a copy of the programm''BLOGGING TO THE BANK 2010 BLUE PRINT'' this program is the best blogging course on the internet and its content would be of great usefulness to both internet newbies and professional bloggers – it is specifically written for bloggers. I hope you find it helpful.
If you are new to blogging and want some hints on how to get started – keep an eye on my Blogging for Beginners Page for more ways to explore blogging
So now you know WHAT a blog is – learn how to start one and use it to build an online income with the
The possibilities with blogging are endless.
Top Stories
Before blogging, there were other ways for people to communicate online, such as chronicles, diaries, email lists, bulletin board systems, and more. When the Internet came about, users wanted a way to communicate with people all over the world. Before the Internet, many of us had pen pals to mail to every now and then. Today, we can have that with multiple people nearly anywhere.
Following the 1990s, the blog was born! The actual word, “blog”, comes from the term web log, which was eventually shortened to its new term.
In the beginning of blogs, they were mainly online diaries of people. Others could comment on the person’s blog, and therefore communicate. Now there are countless different kinds of blogs. They are still those who use it as a digital journal, but there are also corporate blogs, marketing blogs, topic-specific blogs, private blogs, and even blogs that are simply blog search engines!
There are so many possibilities with blogging. Using your imagination and creativity, there is no end!
A blog entry usually consists of a title, headline, body, post date, comments, tags, and more. One great thing about blogs is that they are almost always customizable. You can select your template (which determines how your blog looks, including its layout), which is usually provided by the blogging company you are using. You can also find other templates by searching on other sites, which I will discuss in a later article.
You can create a blog on whatever topic you like, use the template you want, and write in it when you want. Nearly all blogging sites offer registration for free. You can vent to the world, write about things that you care about, discuss your life…there is no limitation. Well, except for the terms and conditions you must agree to when you register! Blogging is fun, especially if you take joy in writing. It is a great stress reliever, and you can have it any way you want. If one blog isn’t good enough for you, create more! I currently write in four different blogs. It’s a lot of fun.
Blogging has reached new heights of popularity, with certain websites that look at the popularity of a blog through how many citations it has, or how the affiliation is has. There have even been a few lucky people who have blogged, and were contacted by publishers to write and publish a book!
Blogs are usually (but not always) written by one person and are updated pretty regularly. Blogs are often (but not always) written on a particular topic – there are blogs on virtually any topic you can think of. From photography, to spirituality, to recipes, to personal diaries to hobbies – blogging has as many applications and varieties as you can imagine. Whole blog communities have sprung up around some of these topics putting people into contact with each other in relationships where they can learn, share ideas, make friends with and even do business with people with similar interests from around the world.
Blogs usually have a few features that are useful to know about if you want to get the most out of them as a reader. Lets examine a couple briefly.
Archives – You might look at the front page of a blog and think that there is not much to them. A few recent entries, some links to other sites and not much else. However its worth knowing that there is a lot more going on under the surface that might initially meet the eye. For example in addition to the main page of this blog – at the time of writing this post there are over 520 other pages or posts below the surface that I’ve written over the past few months.
When I write a post like this one it goes to the top of the front page. As it gets older and as I add more current posts it begins its journey down the page until it disappears from it. This is not the end of its life however, because it goes into the ‘Archives’ of my blog. It sounds like a dusty dark place but its really just like a filing cabinet that is easily accessible in a couple of ways. You can read my ‘archives’ simply by looking on the ’sidebar’ (over on the left of this blog) at the ‘archives’ or ‘categories’ section. There you will see links to all my old posts which you can access either by category. You’ll see a category for ‘Advertising’ – click that link and you’ll see all my old posts on the topic of Advertising with the most recent at the top and the oldest at the bottom.
Comments – Not all blogs use comments – but most do. This blog is not a monologue but a conversation. You can give me feedback on almost everything I write simply by clicking the ‘comments’ link at the bottom of each one of my posts. This will take you to a little form where you leave your name, email and a link to your own blog if you have one as well as your feedback, comment, critique, question, essay on why you love my blog, promise of money…. etc). Try it now. Scroll to the bottom of this page, click ‘comments’ and fill in the blanks with a little introduction to yourself.
A great way to learn about blogs is to read a few. Leave some comments, ask questions and bookmark your favourites. An even better way to learn about blogs is to start your own. Ok – you might be laughing at me now – you think you are not web savy enough to have your own site? You wouldn’t know where to start? You don’t know how?
My Secret
Let me share a secret with you – three years ago I knew nothing about blogs, I had never used the internet for anything more than email, surfing and chatting to friends and I could only barely do any of that! But one day I discovered a blog and after surfing from one to another (blogs tend to link up to other blogs a lot) for a few hours I was hooked and wanted to start my own. I found that there are free blog services that almost anyone could set up in a matter of minutes. Really it is that simple. Literally millions of people blog from around the world. Its not just something for young people, or geeks, or cool folk, or Westerners, or even for people with their own computers – instead its something virtually anyone with access to a computer and the internet once or twice a week can start up.
Are you still confused? Would you like more information? Below are a few helpful articles on the topic – there are many more on the web – just do a search on your favourite search engine. Otherwise shoot me an email using my ‘contact’ button with your question and I’ll do my best to get back to you.
Update: If you’d like to start a blog I would recommend you to get a copy of the programm''BLOGGING TO THE BANK 2010 BLUE PRINT'' this program is the best blogging course on the internet and its content would be of great usefulness to both internet newbies and professional bloggers – it is specifically written for bloggers. I hope you find it helpful.
If you are new to blogging and want some hints on how to get started – keep an eye on my Blogging for Beginners Page for more ways to explore blogging
So now you know WHAT a blog is – learn how to start one and use it to build an online income with the
The possibilities with blogging are endless.
Top Stories
Monday, April 26, 2010
HANDLING DUPLICATE CONTENT IN YOUR WEBSITE
When you are building your own website, sooner or later you run into the question - how to handle duplicate content? What do I mean by that? Imagine that you have a highly visited web page, which receives most of the daily visits. You are planning to re-design the website, and give this web page a new URL and a fresh new look, but don’t want to lose all that traffic from that old page. And you can’t keep both of them online, since they will have most likely the same content text-wise - something, which is often penalized by search engines. How do you proceed from there?
The best practice is to do a 301 redirect. The 301 message on the Internet is handled by the search engine as: moved permanently. Here is how you can make a 301 redirect for your web page:
With PHP:
The code needs to be placed in the Header section of the website, so that the search engine can read it first.
Header( “HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently” );
Header( “Location: http://www.new-url.com” );
With .htaccess:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^old\.php$ http://www.domain.com/new.php [R=permanent,L]
The code above will direct all the traffic from the old.php to the new.php page.
With the rel=”canonical” directive:
If you run an online store and want to sell a custom made handbag, which is available in several colors, and decide to dedicate a separate page on your site for each color, then you have about 3 or 4 identical pages. You can use the rel=”canonical” element to direct all traffic to the page with the most popular color.
This will lead a search engine to point all the traffic from the similar pages to the page you have specified. This code needs to be placed in the header section of all the web pages you wish to lead somewhere else.
With the URL Redirection Manager in the Web Hosting Control Panel:
If you don’t like to meddle with code, or with new file creation, or anything like that, you can use the handy URL Redirection Manager available with all our shared web hosting plans, where a simple web interface will allow you to choose which pages to be redirected and what redirection code to be used.
Top Stories
The best practice is to do a 301 redirect. The 301 message on the Internet is handled by the search engine as: moved permanently. Here is how you can make a 301 redirect for your web page:
With PHP:
The code needs to be placed in the Header section of the website, so that the search engine can read it first.
Header( “HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently” );
Header( “Location: http://www.new-url.com” );
With .htaccess:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^old\.php$ http://www.domain.com/new.php [R=permanent,L]
The code above will direct all the traffic from the old.php to the new.php page.
With the rel=”canonical” directive:
If you run an online store and want to sell a custom made handbag, which is available in several colors, and decide to dedicate a separate page on your site for each color, then you have about 3 or 4 identical pages. You can use the rel=”canonical” element to direct all traffic to the page with the most popular color.
This will lead a search engine to point all the traffic from the similar pages to the page you have specified. This code needs to be placed in the header section of all the web pages you wish to lead somewhere else.
With the URL Redirection Manager in the Web Hosting Control Panel:
If you don’t like to meddle with code, or with new file creation, or anything like that, you can use the handy URL Redirection Manager available with all our shared web hosting plans, where a simple web interface will allow you to choose which pages to be redirected and what redirection code to be used.
Top Stories
How to set up a logging script
If your VPS or Dedicated Server is constantly running out of memory or its CPU usage is spiking with no apparent reason, then it’s time to track the process, which stands behind all that. Instead of constantly watching the server processes for hours, trying to see that elusive process, there is a much easier way – to set up an automatic logging script and review the results.
The following sh script can be run every minute through cron to allow you to track considerable data in the minutes leading up to a crash or a server freeze. The data is saved to a logging directory, using the number for the minute as the file name. In this script setup below, it will create 60 files, which are refreshed with new data every 60 minutes:
#!/bin/sh
TERM=vt100
export TERM
time=$(date)
min=${time:14:2}
top -b -n 1 > /home/my-home/log/$min
ps aux >> /home/my-home/log/$min
exit 0
Note that running the above script without any idea of logrotate can load up your server’s disk space in no time. The best solution would be to set the script to save data to /tmp so that if this partition overfills you can easily clean it up
The following sh script can be run every minute through cron to allow you to track considerable data in the minutes leading up to a crash or a server freeze. The data is saved to a logging directory, using the number for the minute as the file name. In this script setup below, it will create 60 files, which are refreshed with new data every 60 minutes:
#!/bin/sh
TERM=vt100
export TERM
time=$(date)
min=${time:14:2}
top -b -n 1 > /home/my-home/log/$min
ps aux >> /home/my-home/log/$min
exit 0
Note that running the above script without any idea of logrotate can load up your server’s disk space in no time. The best solution would be to set the script to save data to /tmp so that if this partition overfills you can easily clean it up
How to reduce the SpamAssassin load
If you are running a SpamAssassin ‘daemon’ on your VPS or Dedicated Server to look out for spam messages on your site, you should know that it can create multiple (typically 5) threads/processes and each of those threads can use a very large amount of memory, which can slow down the overall server performance or lead to possible Out Of Memory (OOM) errors .
SpamAssassin works very well with just one thread. So you can reduce the ‘children’ setting and reclaim some memory on your server for other apps to run with.
You can use the following shell script to do so:
#!/bin/bash
for location in /etc/default/spamassassin /etc/sysconfig/spamassassin; do
if [ ! -e $location ]; then continue; fi
replace “SPAMDOPTIONS=\”-d -c -m5 -H” “SPAMDOPTIONS=\”-d -c -m1 -H” — /etc/init.d/spamassassin
replace “\-m 10 ” “-m 1 ” — $location
replace “\-m 5 ” “-m 1 ” — $location
replace “\-m5 ” “-m1 ” — $location
replace “max-children 5 ” “max-children 1 ” — $location
done
Don’t forget to make the file executable with the following command: chmod +x /root/memmon.sh
Another thing to know about SpamAssassin is that any /etc/procmailrc entry only does one SpamAssassin check at a time. Otherwise, if you receive a batch of incoming emails, they will all be processed in parallel. This could cause your server’s CPU usage to spike, slowing down your other apps, and it may cause your server to run out of memory.
To make procmailrc run only one email at a time through SpamAssassin, use a lockfile on your recipe line, e.g. change the top line from:
:0fw:
# The following line tells Procmail to send messages to SpamAssassin only if they are less than 256000 bytes. Most spam falls well below this size and a larger size could seriously affect the performance.)
* < 256000
/usr/bin/spamc
To:
:0fw:/etc/mail/spamc.lock
# The following line tells Procmail to send messages to SpamAssassin only if they are less than 256000 bytes. Most spam falls well below this size and a larger size could seriously affect the performance.)
* < 256000
/usr/bin/spamc
Top Stories
SpamAssassin works very well with just one thread. So you can reduce the ‘children’ setting and reclaim some memory on your server for other apps to run with.
You can use the following shell script to do so:
#!/bin/bash
for location in /etc/default/spamassassin /etc/sysconfig/spamassassin; do
if [ ! -e $location ]; then continue; fi
replace “SPAMDOPTIONS=\”-d -c -m5 -H” “SPAMDOPTIONS=\”-d -c -m1 -H” — /etc/init.d/spamassassin
replace “\-m 10 ” “-m 1 ” — $location
replace “\-m 5 ” “-m 1 ” — $location
replace “\-m5 ” “-m1 ” — $location
replace “max-children 5 ” “max-children 1 ” — $location
done
Don’t forget to make the file executable with the following command: chmod +x /root/memmon.sh
Another thing to know about SpamAssassin is that any /etc/procmailrc entry only does one SpamAssassin check at a time. Otherwise, if you receive a batch of incoming emails, they will all be processed in parallel. This could cause your server’s CPU usage to spike, slowing down your other apps, and it may cause your server to run out of memory.
To make procmailrc run only one email at a time through SpamAssassin, use a lockfile on your recipe line, e.g. change the top line from:
:0fw:
# The following line tells Procmail to send messages to SpamAssassin only if they are less than 256000 bytes. Most spam falls well below this size and a larger size could seriously affect the performance.)
* < 256000
/usr/bin/spamc
To:
:0fw:/etc/mail/spamc.lock
# The following line tells Procmail to send messages to SpamAssassin only if they are less than 256000 bytes. Most spam falls well below this size and a larger size could seriously affect the performance.)
* < 256000
/usr/bin/spamc
Top Stories
What is website defacing and how to deal with it?
My site is hacked! – this is one of the most difficult questions for a customer support team to answer.
The most common website attack is Defacing . When a site is being defaced, its home page is changed to something else, usually announcing that this site is hacked by someone. While this is the most noticeable website attack type, it is also the easiest to deal with – a simple backup restore procedure will do the trick. If you have a copy of the home page, this will also help. Sometimes, it’s also possible to simply remove the responsible HTML code.
A more sophisticated form of defacing will extend not only to the home page, but to several other pages as well. Sometimes, the hacker goes so far as to put a code, which will open an HTML frame, leading to a remote content hosted on another server.
In order for someone to “deface” your site, they will need access to your account – such can be gained in several ways – via brute force or dictionary attacks on your administrative login page, SQL injections, XSS attacks or, most trivially, after hacking your email account where your account password is kept.
There are several ways to protect yourself against such attacks:
» Choose stronger passwords – this has been said many times, but it’s vital – the easiest way for someone to gain access to your site is via a brute force attack, which will try to guess your password or username, generating random characters. This means that the more complex your password is, the harder it will be for someone to hack your site. To prove my point I’ll mention that there’s even a Firefox extension, which allows anyone to launch a brute force attack from their browser!
» Keep your code updated – if you are using a CMS system, make sure that you are running the latest version possible. This also applies to any plugins you are using.
» Always keep a backup – make sure that you keep a backup of your site on your home computer, just in case. Keep this backup as fresh as possible
Top Stories
The most common website attack is Defacing . When a site is being defaced, its home page is changed to something else, usually announcing that this site is hacked by someone. While this is the most noticeable website attack type, it is also the easiest to deal with – a simple backup restore procedure will do the trick. If you have a copy of the home page, this will also help. Sometimes, it’s also possible to simply remove the responsible HTML code.
A more sophisticated form of defacing will extend not only to the home page, but to several other pages as well. Sometimes, the hacker goes so far as to put a code, which will open an HTML frame, leading to a remote content hosted on another server.
In order for someone to “deface” your site, they will need access to your account – such can be gained in several ways – via brute force or dictionary attacks on your administrative login page, SQL injections, XSS attacks or, most trivially, after hacking your email account where your account password is kept.
There are several ways to protect yourself against such attacks:
» Choose stronger passwords – this has been said many times, but it’s vital – the easiest way for someone to gain access to your site is via a brute force attack, which will try to guess your password or username, generating random characters. This means that the more complex your password is, the harder it will be for someone to hack your site. To prove my point I’ll mention that there’s even a Firefox extension, which allows anyone to launch a brute force attack from their browser!
» Keep your code updated – if you are using a CMS system, make sure that you are running the latest version possible. This also applies to any plugins you are using.
» Always keep a backup – make sure that you keep a backup of your site on your home computer, just in case. Keep this backup as fresh as possible
Top Stories
The best Affiliate marketing for Nigerians
Nigeria is not known for large deposits of gold or silver, but it may well be a gold mine for savvy Internet investors. Nigeria is the largest market in Africa with over 5 million Internet users and this is only 3.57% of Nigeria's 140 million people according to the official 2007 census. Meanwhile, Nigeria's economy has been growing steadily for decades. In US dollars, Nigeria's GDP in 1997 was a mere $36.2 billion. Ten years later it grew to $265.5 billion. During the same 10-year period, the country's debt dropped from $78.5 billion to $7.8 billion in 2007. No wonder Internet giants Yahoo and Google are now setting up presence in Nigeria. Not that there aren't challenges. It is often difficult to pay for goods and services online even when buyers have debit cards, due to lack of regional payment system with capability for global access. Nigerian banks did not issue international credit or debit cards until recently, although local cards were issued much earlier by formidable pioneers like Interswitch and eTranzact. As a result, despite the burgeoning entrepreneurial spirit of Nigeria's youth there is still a major eCommerce knowledge gap that is costing Nigeria millions in lost revenue.
Those who have ventured to start an online business have had significant setbacks and are often discouraged from trying again. The average life span of a web site in Nigeria is between 3-6 months, after which it's deserted when owners are unable to surmount the numerous obstacles to paying for further ongoing maintenance and hosting. And if a site accepts payments for goods or services, there are several more layers of challenges that are rarely overcome. Even if a determined entrepreneur manages to survive, there is still the problem of finding a reliable eCommerce infrastructure that will safely and reliably handle the electronic transactions without viewing the seller from Nigeria as high risk. So bi-directional commerce is virtually not in existence in Nigeria.
The influence of online merchants is critical in ecommerce chain in that when online shopper enters debit or credit card information at the point of purchase online, the seller's Website (in some cases) captures the card information and passes it on to an eCommerce payment processor. The processor then presents that information to a payment gateway, which in turn presents it to an inter-bank network for processing by Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, etc. In this chain, sellers generally have the option to approve or decline a purchase made with debit cards whether or not it was initially approved by the card issuer. Basic economics would indicate that merchants are generally happy to have as many buyers as possible, irrespective of the location of the buyer. In fact, the broader the scope of buyers, the better for the seller. So one might well ask why a merchant would deny a sale that had already been approved?
All things been equal, a merchant would not deny such an approved sale, so long as the payment was guaranteed. However, due to the nature of existing payment systems, a seller may lose the money even though the buyer consented to the purchase - even after the item has been shipped and received. Nearly every merchant worries about chargebacks, which can occur for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with the seller or his integrity. The purchase could have come from the fraudulent use of or a stolen credit card, or the shipment could get lost in the mail, or the buyer could come up with any number of reasons why he is not happy with the product after the product has been opened or used. Most credit card companies stand behind the buyer and will issue a full refund, leaving the merchant with neither his money nor his product. Even if the buyer should send the product back, it is unlikely that it will be suitable for resale.
If the purchase originated from the US or a European country, these issues can usually be handled with minimal loss to the seller. Dealing with buyers from elsewhere, however, can be quite risky because of the time and cost of dealing with the issuing banks in those countries. This puts sellers in a very difficult position. If merchants lose too many sales due to chargebacks, the banks may penalize them or cancel their accounts, putting them effectively out of business. It is much easier and safer, from the seller's point of view, to simply deny the purchases from the so called "unsafe" countries. Contrary to popular opinion, it is more often merchants rather than the credit card companies that make the final decision to deny an order. For this reason, merchants are very important in the chain and are the most difficult to deal with from a buyer's point of view. However, this dynamic changes completely if a different mode of payment is used.
Although buyers in Nigeria have been shut out of eCommerce for nearly 15 years, this trend can be reversed almost immediately. Historically most eCommerce payment processors were regional in their outlook, but they've all expanded beyond their original boundaries. While most regions now have their own ecommerce centric payment platform, PayPal, Money Bookers, Alipay are three such examples. PayPal (acquired by ebay for $1.5b in 2002) started as a USA-based eCommerce payment processor. Money Bookers is a similar service that began in the UK and Alipay the Internet payment subsidiary of the Chinese B2B e-commerce giant Alibaba Group. Because these companies rely almost exclusively on credit/debit cards to operate, their position as an aggregator more or less puts them in the role of a merchant, placing them in the same risk as the merchants described earlier. In fact, their position is even more tenuous in that they have no guarantee of a finalized sale and no control over the product itself. Such an extended risk and responsibility is what has kept such providers from extending service to Nigeria. There must be another alternative if Nigeria is to fully participate in the profits generated from an exploding eCommerce market.
What is needed for Nigeria is a fair system to handle dispute resolution between a buyer and seller that doesn't penalize the merchant simply because a buyer lodges a complaint. Except in blatant cases where a merchant is clearly defrauding customers, sellers should be able to compromise when necessary without the worry of losing their account due to some arbitrary number of chargebacks. So far, the best solution that seems to be emerging is VTN (Virtual Terminal Network). VTN began as an experiment to see if Nigerian market would benefit from a change in merchant attitude given a proper payment solution for the region. Specifically designed for Nigeria with ambitions for the rest of the continent, VTN offers a unique blend of features that have become very popular.
First, VTN is a very simple and secure way to make online purchases, even through the use of a GSM mobile phone. Money is safely transferred from VTN account of buyer to that of merchant or person to person transfer. Recipient can withdraw sales proceeds to their Bank account at anytime. Security features include a five minute recyclable 4 digit pin that comes from atmospheric noise that flashes on users GSM for added security and the ability to lock an account if it is suspected that an account and password have been compromised. VTN account holders can even add minutes directly to their cell phones without scratch cards and there is a referral program that earns them commissions if a friend uses the service. Sellers like the cross-border payment system and a dispute resolution system that doesn't automatically blame merchants when something goes wrong.
Due to the global economic downturn, the competition for new markets is fiercer than ever. More and more merchants are following the lead taken by Google and Yahoo, as evidenced by the recent surge in merchant registrations outside of Nigeria. In fact VTN was selected to power USA-AFRICA trade mission summit held in Maryland , USA in November 2008. Merchants are now flocking to VTN, which is projected to become the dominant eCommerce payment processor in the region. After years of waiting, VTN is finally paving the way for Nigerians to join the eCommerce marketplace with minimal competition.
Nigeria has the highest penetration of Internet users in Africa and because VTN satisfies the single most important concerns of merchants outside Nigeria, and the bi-directional transaction capabilities which will assure inflow of funds into Nigeria, they have a historic opportunity to reach millions of potential new Nigerian customers and thousands of global merchants. VTN has been growing at phenomenal rates since its pre-inauguration. Its initial success has allowed VTN to recruit thousands of new merchants from around the globe, making Internet shopping more attractive and useful for Nigerians than it has ever been. With millions of transactions already processed by VTN, there has not been a single case fraud - a remarkable achievement in today's world and a positive example of what is possible in Nigeria.
For more information about the VTN Solution, visit the Website at
Those who have ventured to start an online business have had significant setbacks and are often discouraged from trying again. The average life span of a web site in Nigeria is between 3-6 months, after which it's deserted when owners are unable to surmount the numerous obstacles to paying for further ongoing maintenance and hosting. And if a site accepts payments for goods or services, there are several more layers of challenges that are rarely overcome. Even if a determined entrepreneur manages to survive, there is still the problem of finding a reliable eCommerce infrastructure that will safely and reliably handle the electronic transactions without viewing the seller from Nigeria as high risk. So bi-directional commerce is virtually not in existence in Nigeria.
The influence of online merchants is critical in ecommerce chain in that when online shopper enters debit or credit card information at the point of purchase online, the seller's Website (in some cases) captures the card information and passes it on to an eCommerce payment processor. The processor then presents that information to a payment gateway, which in turn presents it to an inter-bank network for processing by Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, etc. In this chain, sellers generally have the option to approve or decline a purchase made with debit cards whether or not it was initially approved by the card issuer. Basic economics would indicate that merchants are generally happy to have as many buyers as possible, irrespective of the location of the buyer. In fact, the broader the scope of buyers, the better for the seller. So one might well ask why a merchant would deny a sale that had already been approved?
All things been equal, a merchant would not deny such an approved sale, so long as the payment was guaranteed. However, due to the nature of existing payment systems, a seller may lose the money even though the buyer consented to the purchase - even after the item has been shipped and received. Nearly every merchant worries about chargebacks, which can occur for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with the seller or his integrity. The purchase could have come from the fraudulent use of or a stolen credit card, or the shipment could get lost in the mail, or the buyer could come up with any number of reasons why he is not happy with the product after the product has been opened or used. Most credit card companies stand behind the buyer and will issue a full refund, leaving the merchant with neither his money nor his product. Even if the buyer should send the product back, it is unlikely that it will be suitable for resale.
If the purchase originated from the US or a European country, these issues can usually be handled with minimal loss to the seller. Dealing with buyers from elsewhere, however, can be quite risky because of the time and cost of dealing with the issuing banks in those countries. This puts sellers in a very difficult position. If merchants lose too many sales due to chargebacks, the banks may penalize them or cancel their accounts, putting them effectively out of business. It is much easier and safer, from the seller's point of view, to simply deny the purchases from the so called "unsafe" countries. Contrary to popular opinion, it is more often merchants rather than the credit card companies that make the final decision to deny an order. For this reason, merchants are very important in the chain and are the most difficult to deal with from a buyer's point of view. However, this dynamic changes completely if a different mode of payment is used.
Although buyers in Nigeria have been shut out of eCommerce for nearly 15 years, this trend can be reversed almost immediately. Historically most eCommerce payment processors were regional in their outlook, but they've all expanded beyond their original boundaries. While most regions now have their own ecommerce centric payment platform, PayPal, Money Bookers, Alipay are three such examples. PayPal (acquired by ebay for $1.5b in 2002) started as a USA-based eCommerce payment processor. Money Bookers is a similar service that began in the UK and Alipay the Internet payment subsidiary of the Chinese B2B e-commerce giant Alibaba Group. Because these companies rely almost exclusively on credit/debit cards to operate, their position as an aggregator more or less puts them in the role of a merchant, placing them in the same risk as the merchants described earlier. In fact, their position is even more tenuous in that they have no guarantee of a finalized sale and no control over the product itself. Such an extended risk and responsibility is what has kept such providers from extending service to Nigeria. There must be another alternative if Nigeria is to fully participate in the profits generated from an exploding eCommerce market.
What is needed for Nigeria is a fair system to handle dispute resolution between a buyer and seller that doesn't penalize the merchant simply because a buyer lodges a complaint. Except in blatant cases where a merchant is clearly defrauding customers, sellers should be able to compromise when necessary without the worry of losing their account due to some arbitrary number of chargebacks. So far, the best solution that seems to be emerging is VTN (Virtual Terminal Network). VTN began as an experiment to see if Nigerian market would benefit from a change in merchant attitude given a proper payment solution for the region. Specifically designed for Nigeria with ambitions for the rest of the continent, VTN offers a unique blend of features that have become very popular.
First, VTN is a very simple and secure way to make online purchases, even through the use of a GSM mobile phone. Money is safely transferred from VTN account of buyer to that of merchant or person to person transfer. Recipient can withdraw sales proceeds to their Bank account at anytime. Security features include a five minute recyclable 4 digit pin that comes from atmospheric noise that flashes on users GSM for added security and the ability to lock an account if it is suspected that an account and password have been compromised. VTN account holders can even add minutes directly to their cell phones without scratch cards and there is a referral program that earns them commissions if a friend uses the service. Sellers like the cross-border payment system and a dispute resolution system that doesn't automatically blame merchants when something goes wrong.
Due to the global economic downturn, the competition for new markets is fiercer than ever. More and more merchants are following the lead taken by Google and Yahoo, as evidenced by the recent surge in merchant registrations outside of Nigeria. In fact VTN was selected to power USA-AFRICA trade mission summit held in Maryland , USA in November 2008. Merchants are now flocking to VTN, which is projected to become the dominant eCommerce payment processor in the region. After years of waiting, VTN is finally paving the way for Nigerians to join the eCommerce marketplace with minimal competition.
Nigeria has the highest penetration of Internet users in Africa and because VTN satisfies the single most important concerns of merchants outside Nigeria, and the bi-directional transaction capabilities which will assure inflow of funds into Nigeria, they have a historic opportunity to reach millions of potential new Nigerian customers and thousands of global merchants. VTN has been growing at phenomenal rates since its pre-inauguration. Its initial success has allowed VTN to recruit thousands of new merchants from around the globe, making Internet shopping more attractive and useful for Nigerians than it has ever been. With millions of transactions already processed by VTN, there has not been a single case fraud - a remarkable achievement in today's world and a positive example of what is possible in Nigeria.
For more information about the VTN Solution, visit the Website at
How to use an SSL certificate
Recently, one of our students came asking how you can actually get an SSL to work after you have purchased it and installed it for your host, since the SSL certificate represents several files. So today, I will show you how you can install an SSL certificate with your web hosting account. For those of you who have missed the news, reseller panel now offers SSL certifcates as part of it’s Free Reseller Program.
In order to put an SSL certificate to use, you will have to redirect all traffic from the http:// version of your website to the https:// version of your website. The “s” in https:// will signal that the connection between the server and the visitor is encrypted.
In order to redirect the traffic, all you will have to do is place an .htaccess file in the top folder of the host, for which the SSL certificate is issued. The .htaccess file need to have the following code in it :
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} 80
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.mydomain.com/$1 [R,L]
replacing the www.example.com domain name with your own domain name (or host, for which the SSL certificate is issued).
And that’s it. Now all traffic will be redirected to the https:// version of your website – the one protected by the SSL certificate.
You can also enforce this protection for a single folder :
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} 80
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} somefolder
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.mydomain.com/somefolder/$1 [R,L]
If you choose to protect just a single folder, the .htacces file must be placed in this exact folder.
To create an .htaccess file, you can either use the .htaccess File Generator, included in the Marketing Tools section of the Web Hosting Control Panel, or you can simply create a new file, named .htaccess with the File Manager and enter the needed content by hand
In order to put an SSL certificate to use, you will have to redirect all traffic from the http:// version of your website to the https:// version of your website. The “s” in https:// will signal that the connection between the server and the visitor is encrypted.
In order to redirect the traffic, all you will have to do is place an .htaccess file in the top folder of the host, for which the SSL certificate is issued. The .htaccess file need to have the following code in it :
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} 80
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.mydomain.com/$1 [R,L]
replacing the www.example.com domain name with your own domain name (or host, for which the SSL certificate is issued).
And that’s it. Now all traffic will be redirected to the https:// version of your website – the one protected by the SSL certificate.
You can also enforce this protection for a single folder :
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} 80
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} somefolder
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.mydomain.com/somefolder/$1 [R,L]
If you choose to protect just a single folder, the .htacces file must be placed in this exact folder.
To create an .htaccess file, you can either use the .htaccess File Generator, included in the Marketing Tools section of the Web Hosting Control Panel, or you can simply create a new file, named .htaccess with the File Manager and enter the needed content by hand
Sunday, April 18, 2010
How to earn money from blogging
There are literally millions of people who blog. Most of these are personal bloggers who use their blogs as a platform to provide updates about their lives to friends and family. It’s no surprise that blogging is huge. It’s fun to keep track of friends and family.
After people have been blogging for a while, they start to hear that it’s possible to make money blogging. This usually leads them to articles like this one.
Types Of Blogs That Make Money
The blogs that make the most money are almost always blogs that share advice. News blogs also make money but it’s significantly harder to make money with a blog that provides news. Personal blogs rarely make a lot of money. In order to make a lot of money, your blog needs to line up with information that a lot of people are looking for.
Advice Blogs That Make A Lot Of Money
StevePavlina.com – Personal Development
ProBlogger.net – Blogging
Digital Photography School – Digital Photography
CopyBlogger.com – Copywriting
Lifehacker – Productivity
Get Rich Slowly – Personal Finance
There are of course thousands upon thousands of blogs that make a lot of money. Right here in The Keyword Academy community we have hundreds of people who are making great income from their blogs. Some of them are blogging daily and others are simply providing information on blogs that are rarely updated. It’s very possible to use either approach once you understand the concepts that lead to making money.
How To Get Paid To Blog
Step 1 in this process is starting a blog that lines up with information that people are trying to find. There are a lot of people who hope that they can make money with their personal blogs. However, massive amounts of people aren’t going to be interested in seeing pictures of your kids or in hearing about your latest trip. You would be a lot more likely to generate interest and traffic if you provided tips about your profession and/or hobbies.
The technical side of getting a blog going shouldn’t be too difficult for people that already have personal blogs. The setup will be virtually identical, it’s the topic that will be different.
How To Choose A Topic
Choosing a topic really isn’t that difficult. I personally like using an online tool to determine the size of the audience that’s looking for information. The tool shows you how many people are searching for things in Google. By entering ‘digital photography’ into the tool, I can see how many people are searching for it each month. By comparing the results against those from other topics, I can get an idea of how large the audiences for each are.
How To Develop A Popular Blog
There are two keys to developing a popular blog. The first is bringing traffic to the blog and the second is providing solid information that people look for. The Keyword Academy is full of information on developing traffic. We help people to learn to bring steady traffic from Google.
How To Make Money With Your Blog
Once you have a blog that gets a lot of traffic, it’s pretty easy to make money. Some people use advertising programs like Google Adsense and others sell their own ads. Adsense is by far the easiest way to make money and it can be used to make money on most blogs that get traffic.
Further down the road you can consider using more advanced forms of making money like affiliate marketing (selling the products of other people and companies) and even selling your own products. This of course is optional and is something that you should only consider when you are already producing income with your blog.
As you can probably see, there is quite a bit to learn. We have already created a lot of material here at The Keyword Academy that can help. There are a lot of people who have used that material to get started and have already been producing significant incomes. It takes some time to learn but it’s honestly a great way to make money.
After people have been blogging for a while, they start to hear that it’s possible to make money blogging. This usually leads them to articles like this one.
Types Of Blogs That Make Money
The blogs that make the most money are almost always blogs that share advice. News blogs also make money but it’s significantly harder to make money with a blog that provides news. Personal blogs rarely make a lot of money. In order to make a lot of money, your blog needs to line up with information that a lot of people are looking for.
Advice Blogs That Make A Lot Of Money
StevePavlina.com – Personal Development
ProBlogger.net – Blogging
Digital Photography School – Digital Photography
CopyBlogger.com – Copywriting
Lifehacker – Productivity
Get Rich Slowly – Personal Finance
There are of course thousands upon thousands of blogs that make a lot of money. Right here in The Keyword Academy community we have hundreds of people who are making great income from their blogs. Some of them are blogging daily and others are simply providing information on blogs that are rarely updated. It’s very possible to use either approach once you understand the concepts that lead to making money.
How To Get Paid To Blog
Step 1 in this process is starting a blog that lines up with information that people are trying to find. There are a lot of people who hope that they can make money with their personal blogs. However, massive amounts of people aren’t going to be interested in seeing pictures of your kids or in hearing about your latest trip. You would be a lot more likely to generate interest and traffic if you provided tips about your profession and/or hobbies.
The technical side of getting a blog going shouldn’t be too difficult for people that already have personal blogs. The setup will be virtually identical, it’s the topic that will be different.
How To Choose A Topic
Choosing a topic really isn’t that difficult. I personally like using an online tool to determine the size of the audience that’s looking for information. The tool shows you how many people are searching for things in Google. By entering ‘digital photography’ into the tool, I can see how many people are searching for it each month. By comparing the results against those from other topics, I can get an idea of how large the audiences for each are.
How To Develop A Popular Blog
There are two keys to developing a popular blog. The first is bringing traffic to the blog and the second is providing solid information that people look for. The Keyword Academy is full of information on developing traffic. We help people to learn to bring steady traffic from Google.
How To Make Money With Your Blog
Once you have a blog that gets a lot of traffic, it’s pretty easy to make money. Some people use advertising programs like Google Adsense and others sell their own ads. Adsense is by far the easiest way to make money and it can be used to make money on most blogs that get traffic.
Further down the road you can consider using more advanced forms of making money like affiliate marketing (selling the products of other people and companies) and even selling your own products. This of course is optional and is something that you should only consider when you are already producing income with your blog.
As you can probably see, there is quite a bit to learn. We have already created a lot of material here at The Keyword Academy that can help. There are a lot of people who have used that material to get started and have already been producing significant incomes. It takes some time to learn but it’s honestly a great way to make money.
My Favorite Online Business Models
On Monday when I posted about preparing to pursue internet marketing full-time, I got a series of questions about what my favorite business model is. I started to reply to a couple of the comments, but before I got very far I realized it’s not a very easy question to answer.
I’m kind of a business junkie anyway so asking me to name my favorite business model is like asking a chubby person to name his favorite flavor of ice cream. It’s not easily done.
I’d rather not tell you my favorite business models, and give the impression that my preferences define what is best for you. I think I’d do you a favor by telling you how I think you should choose a business model for yourself. The best way to do that is probably to look at the elements of business models you see used on this site, and pick which of them would be the best fit for your personality.
At the core of every business is the single question: Which of its core activities are most closely related to making money? Let’s answer that question in terms of business models you’re seeing on this site. You’ve seen us talk about Niche SEO, Flagship Blogging, BANS (via Vic), and you’ve also seen Court offer his own personal coaching services.
Activities Most Closely Tied to Income:
Niche Site Creation:
- Keyword Research and Selection: the ability to consistently find new niches to target is key to success and income with this strategy.
- Link Building: Niche SEO is all about Google traffic, and Google traffic is all about quality content and links.
*I’m no authority on BANS, but the reading I’ve done on Vic’s site tells me that it’s all about keyword selection and links, just like niche SEO.
Flagship Blogging:
- Content Creation: as I’ve been part of Famevilla Internet Marketing School I’ve seen his name and audience explode as he has found something he can teach (with authority) that solves a real problem for a lot of people (actually achieving rankings on Google and making money off those rankings). If you can write content that achieves the same thing, you’re on your way to doing what Court (and many others) have done.
- Networking: when this blog was new, I remember my mentor commenting on 50 or 60 blogs per day, sending emails introducing himself to people, and making friends like crazy. At the time I didn’t get why he was doing it. Now it’s pretty obvious right? Flagship Blogging is about people knowing who you are.
Being known and having problem-solving content will bring links, traffic, and subscribers, and income.
Coaching and Consulting:
- Flagship Blogging: Yes it sounds odd, but the entire Flagship Blogging model fits right inside the Coaching and Consulting Model. At least it should in my opinion. I used to work for a coaching company that sells its services to people without creating a relationship of familiarity and trust first. My take is that this sets up the client to always doubt what is being taught. If you successfully create a Flagship Blog first, you’ll position yourself to give your personal clients real value because they’re learning from someone they know and trust.
- Interacting with Clients: my mentor spends a few hours each week on the phone with our personal clients. He really enjoys it (mostly because we’ve been lucky to work with nothing but high caliber, hard-working people). He also responds to emails answering our students’ questions. Interacting with our students via phone and email are the core of the model.
Which Of These Activities Appeal Most To You?
Whichever model you pursue, you need to understand that successful businesses are highly repetitive in nature. You should pursue the business whose core activities best fit your personality and preferences. If you can’t see yourself performing these activities day in and day out for an extended period, without becoming miserable, then that model isn’t for you.
My mentor has been coaching people one-on-one for years now and he really enjoys teaching and building relationships with his students. I’ve been doing keyword research and building links for over two years now, and I’m far from sick of it. That’s why these models work for me and for my mentor.
Which models and activities appeal to you and why?
I’m kind of a business junkie anyway so asking me to name my favorite business model is like asking a chubby person to name his favorite flavor of ice cream. It’s not easily done.
I’d rather not tell you my favorite business models, and give the impression that my preferences define what is best for you. I think I’d do you a favor by telling you how I think you should choose a business model for yourself. The best way to do that is probably to look at the elements of business models you see used on this site, and pick which of them would be the best fit for your personality.
At the core of every business is the single question: Which of its core activities are most closely related to making money? Let’s answer that question in terms of business models you’re seeing on this site. You’ve seen us talk about Niche SEO, Flagship Blogging, BANS (via Vic), and you’ve also seen Court offer his own personal coaching services.
Activities Most Closely Tied to Income:
Niche Site Creation:
- Keyword Research and Selection: the ability to consistently find new niches to target is key to success and income with this strategy.
- Link Building: Niche SEO is all about Google traffic, and Google traffic is all about quality content and links.
*I’m no authority on BANS, but the reading I’ve done on Vic’s site tells me that it’s all about keyword selection and links, just like niche SEO.
Flagship Blogging:
- Content Creation: as I’ve been part of Famevilla Internet Marketing School I’ve seen his name and audience explode as he has found something he can teach (with authority) that solves a real problem for a lot of people (actually achieving rankings on Google and making money off those rankings). If you can write content that achieves the same thing, you’re on your way to doing what Court (and many others) have done.
- Networking: when this blog was new, I remember my mentor commenting on 50 or 60 blogs per day, sending emails introducing himself to people, and making friends like crazy. At the time I didn’t get why he was doing it. Now it’s pretty obvious right? Flagship Blogging is about people knowing who you are.
Being known and having problem-solving content will bring links, traffic, and subscribers, and income.
Coaching and Consulting:
- Flagship Blogging: Yes it sounds odd, but the entire Flagship Blogging model fits right inside the Coaching and Consulting Model. At least it should in my opinion. I used to work for a coaching company that sells its services to people without creating a relationship of familiarity and trust first. My take is that this sets up the client to always doubt what is being taught. If you successfully create a Flagship Blog first, you’ll position yourself to give your personal clients real value because they’re learning from someone they know and trust.
- Interacting with Clients: my mentor spends a few hours each week on the phone with our personal clients. He really enjoys it (mostly because we’ve been lucky to work with nothing but high caliber, hard-working people). He also responds to emails answering our students’ questions. Interacting with our students via phone and email are the core of the model.
Which Of These Activities Appeal Most To You?
Whichever model you pursue, you need to understand that successful businesses are highly repetitive in nature. You should pursue the business whose core activities best fit your personality and preferences. If you can’t see yourself performing these activities day in and day out for an extended period, without becoming miserable, then that model isn’t for you.
My mentor has been coaching people one-on-one for years now and he really enjoys teaching and building relationships with his students. I’ve been doing keyword research and building links for over two years now, and I’m far from sick of it. That’s why these models work for me and for my mentor.
Which models and activities appeal to you and why?
5 Internet Marketing Strategies That Don’t Work
1. Image Search –> Programes that produces income. This strategy works great if you want to boost your ego, because it can be extremely effective for getting traffic(visitors). However, if you care about marketing or earning cash online, image-search does almost nothing for you. I challenge anyone to take a stream of image searchers and to try to get them to act. Getting them to click ads is extremely difficult and getting them to make a purchase is even more difficult.
2. Personal Blogging –> Adsense. The bottom line is that people don’t really care about bloggers. They are only interested in what they will benefit from your blog. If you are trying to establish a blog while hoping that people are getting interested in YOU, you have a long road ahead of you. People care about what you can provide to them - they care about how you can solve their problems.
3. Social traffic –> Adsense. It doesn’t take degree from MIT to figure this one out. Social traffic rarely clicks ads of any kind. This happens because more often than not, these individuals are looking for entertainment. They also have a solid understanding of what ads are, and what they can expect to see if they click one. You can expect social traffic to click on an ad less than 0.25% of the time they hit one of your pages. That means you’ll need 400 social visitors to produce one click IF you’re lucky
4. Social traffic –> Sales. Social traffic is also extremely difficult to sell to. Again, these people are looking for entertainment and honestly, are often information addicts. However, it is often possible to get them to subscribe to a feed and then convince them to make a purchase later.
5. PPC –> Adsense. People were making a killing with ‘Adsense Artbitrage’ a few short years ago. However, this is almost impossible to do in today’s climate. Google’s smart-pricing made this a LOT harder. There are still people claiming that it can be done, but as you might guess, these people are almost always trying to sell you a product that tells you how to do it.
2. Personal Blogging –> Adsense. The bottom line is that people don’t really care about bloggers. They are only interested in what they will benefit from your blog. If you are trying to establish a blog while hoping that people are getting interested in YOU, you have a long road ahead of you. People care about what you can provide to them - they care about how you can solve their problems.
3. Social traffic –> Adsense. It doesn’t take degree from MIT to figure this one out. Social traffic rarely clicks ads of any kind. This happens because more often than not, these individuals are looking for entertainment. They also have a solid understanding of what ads are, and what they can expect to see if they click one. You can expect social traffic to click on an ad less than 0.25% of the time they hit one of your pages. That means you’ll need 400 social visitors to produce one click IF you’re lucky
4. Social traffic –> Sales. Social traffic is also extremely difficult to sell to. Again, these people are looking for entertainment and honestly, are often information addicts. However, it is often possible to get them to subscribe to a feed and then convince them to make a purchase later.
5. PPC –> Adsense. People were making a killing with ‘Adsense Artbitrage’ a few short years ago. However, this is almost impossible to do in today’s climate. Google’s smart-pricing made this a LOT harder. There are still people claiming that it can be done, but as you might guess, these people are almost always trying to sell you a product that tells you how to do it.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
The new Mindset of internet Marketer
Chapter One: The New Mindset of Internet Marketing
Have you been watching other people make money on the Internet, and you’re ready to make the Internet work for you? Once you finish learning the Multiple Streams of Income System, you’ll be amazed at just how easy it is – and how profitable, too!
For a long time common wisdom said that to make money online you had to get good at one thing – find a niche market or specialty to capitalize on and spend all of your time working on it.
Of course you can take this approach. You can become a player in a niche market and capitalize on one particular talent or specialty. There are some marketers right now making money this way – but it’s the profits they’re missing out on that make it a poor business decision.
Why stop with one stream of income when you can have 10-50 or more tributaries of cash flowing into your bank account?
The new trend in making money on the Internet is to split your profit potential. This is known as creating multiple income streams, and it’s a choice that mean the difference between a comfortable bottom line and one that makes you fall over in shock.
Everything you’re about to learn, I’ve tried, tested, and am currently earning money with. None of it is complicated, outdated, or expensive to start. In fact, I turned my own operation into a multi-million dollar empire with just $50 and an Internet connection!
Your Road to Easy Riches
You’re probably thinking this all seems like a lot of work to set up and maintain. It doesn’t take as much effort as you might think – almost everything you’ll learn here today is based on an automated system.
That means you set it up, set it loose, and check in from time to time to tweak a few things here or there. Sure, signing up for programs, getting content on your blog or website, and basically doing the “grunt work” to get the ball rolling takes a few hours over a few days, but your returns over a matter of months for not much effort makes it all worth it.
You’re probably itching to get started, but before we do let’s take a look at a few of your multiple income stream possibilities. Maybe you’ve done some marketing or product placement and sales in the “real world,” but Internet marketing is a whole new ball game.
Getting used to the way information flows online can be a challenge. Luckily, there are several options for marketing on the ‘net so as you learn the systems, if you find you prefer one way over another, you can pick and choose – or tweak a system so that it fits in with the goals you set to achieve.
I’m going to start out with systems that are easy to set up, simple to automate, and allow you start earning money quickly and around the clock. Remember, the Internet is open 24/7, 3654 days a year, so your online sales tools need to be in proper working form.
What Do I Sell and Where Do I Sell It?
If you can think of something you’re good at, know a lot about, or just enjoy, you’re on your way to creating your niche. Now all you have to do is find a place to let the world know about it.
What do I mean by place? We’ll get into more detail later, but for now think of a place online as a website, a web log (blog), a content page, a review site or other place you can go to show off your knowledge – and rake in the profits.
You want to position yourself as an expert because you’re trying to build a niche market. You want to advertise your specialty and toot your own horn. That makes other people spread the word about you, too.
The nice thing about most of your niche options is that you don’t have to be a web coding genius to do any of them. Sure, learning a little code won’t hurt your chance of success, but you can get started without it.
If you can do an Internet search and type an informative paragraph or two of text, you’ll do fine putting your niche content together. Many of the other ways to make money online use the talents of others to put the Internet to work for you. That’s great for the average ‘net marketer!
You’re someone who is probably always busy anyway. You work hard at your job, trying to make ends meet, and you see this as the perfect way to cut back your hours and work less or maybe quit working outside of the home altogether.
That means options that just require you to sign up, add a button to your website or spread the word by using the websites of others are a great time saver for you! I’m going to show you how to take advantage of this.
Do you have a product to sell online, or an idea for one? Excellent! I’ll go over direct product sales later in the guide. You’ve never heard of direct product sales? Don’t worry, it’s new to a lot of people. You’ve seen direct product sales online if you’ve ever surfed the Internet.
Trust me, you’re more familiar with them than you think.
What about affiliate marketing? We’ll talk about both sides of affiliate marketing. You can work both sides at once and double your profits – or focus on one aspect of affiliate marketing (as an affiliate or the program owner) and add the other part later. Both options are pretty easy if you know what tools to use online.
To run an affiliate program, you need a product you can sell. Then you need a place to sell it online, and a way to pay the people who sign up to sell it for you. To become an affiliate yourself, you’ll sell another person’s product.
The same places online that can help you become an affiliated seller also have a flip side. They also help people find products to represent. The income potential with affiliate marketing on both sides varies.
Some product sellers give a generous percentage to their affiliates. Some affiliates don’t have the web traffic to generate the large sales number you want. Finding a balance is key to being successful on either end of the affiliate scale.
I’ll cover how to run an affiliate program, how to be an affiliate yourself and how to enhance both later on in The Multiple Streams of Income System.
Profiting Through Participation
Are there other ways to make money with less effort? Sure there are. I’ll go over those, too. Not only can you make money with little effort, but the road to easy profits is paved with perks.
You can take advantage of programs that pay when you give your opinion, take surveys and click on links. Taking surveys and giving your opinions is a great way to turn idle Internet surfing time into cash. There are some pitfalls you have to keep an eye out for, but I’ll go over those with you too.
Of course, taking surveys and giving your opinions can quickly become time consuming. But if you’re with the right survey and opinion companies, it’s worth it and I’ll show you how to choose a survey company.
What did I mean by clicks? There are a lot of companies out there selling ad space online. They offer you, the Internet surfer, the chance to click on ads for rewards. Some rewards are cool stuff, since click sites are the best way to get promotional items, but some rewards are cold, hard cash.
If you can sign up with a major click site that offers both you’ll get the most return for your time. Sure, clicking links isn’t difficult, but just like participating in the surveys and opinions sites it can be time consuming. The key is to figure out the sites that won’t waste your time by making it impossible to earn cash or cool stuff.
I’ll spend some time teaching you about click sites, survey sites and opinions sites and I’ll go over some of the companies that have the best reputations for being reliable, not spamming you and for delivering the goods.
Making Money with Money
A new trend in Internet income streaming is to invest in online monetary systems. I’ll teach you about this, but it’s not for the faint of heart. Still, the profits to be made are incredible since some people are too timid to go for it.
If you want to invest real money in online currency you have be that rare combination of cautious and a risk taker. You have to be cautious enough and alert enough to spot a scam. You also have to be enough of a risk taker to invest your money online.
I’ll cover a few basic places to invest your money online, and go over some common scams to avoid. With a little planning, investing only what you could afford to lose, and keeping your eyes open, you’ll be just fine.
The Big Question: How Do I Drive Traffic to My Money System?
You’re probably wondering how on Earth you’ll let people know about your income streams, your websites, your affiliate programs and everything else. There’s nothing to worry about at all.
I’m going to show some Internet marketing strategies that can turn your ideas into real money. Will you become a millionaire company like I did super quick? Anything is possible. If you’re motivated, you can see your income grow by leaps and bounds as time goes on.
Do people become wealthy in weeks or months doing this? Some do. I know I did. I invested a lot of time and effort into setting up my Internet marketing streams – but you’re getting a shortcut to the systems while I had to do some trial and error testing.
Do I see you retiring on these plans? I see you retiring in a better way than you could have imagined. If you follow the system step-by-step, you could definitely be retiring soon.
Right now the state on e-commerce is on the cusp of growing at a phenomenal rate. That means those who have their online systems in place before the surge are going to reap the rewards of grabbing most of the profits that are up for grabs – and we’re talking trillions of dollars!
The Internet is still in its infancy. More people are logging online everyday – looking to buy – and seeking information. You can take advantage of this massive gush of traffic and watch the money funnel directly into your accounts while you’re busy enjoying life as it was meant to be lived.
So get ready, grab a chair and let This e-book teach you everything I know about creating multiple streams of income online. You may not have heard of some of the ideas I toss at you when you signed up, but by the time you finish it you’ll have systems in place to start earning money – TONIGHT!
IMPORTANT: To continue, go right now to Nick Marks Forex Enterprise Above should give you a good idea of what Forex Enterprise is all about, as you can see the info Nick covers inside of Forex Enterprise is incredible.
To register with Nick's affiliate programm normally costs 20 dollar one time fee but write here if you can not afford the a master card, paypal or 20 usd to enroll in the programm, as an affiliate of Nick' I will give you this programm to first 10 lucky nigerians for just N700
But if you can afford to register direct with Nick Mark, feel free to visit his site by clicking the following link.
http://www.forexenterprise.com/cb1/?a
Have you been watching other people make money on the Internet, and you’re ready to make the Internet work for you? Once you finish learning the Multiple Streams of Income System, you’ll be amazed at just how easy it is – and how profitable, too!
For a long time common wisdom said that to make money online you had to get good at one thing – find a niche market or specialty to capitalize on and spend all of your time working on it.
Of course you can take this approach. You can become a player in a niche market and capitalize on one particular talent or specialty. There are some marketers right now making money this way – but it’s the profits they’re missing out on that make it a poor business decision.
Why stop with one stream of income when you can have 10-50 or more tributaries of cash flowing into your bank account?
The new trend in making money on the Internet is to split your profit potential. This is known as creating multiple income streams, and it’s a choice that mean the difference between a comfortable bottom line and one that makes you fall over in shock.
Everything you’re about to learn, I’ve tried, tested, and am currently earning money with. None of it is complicated, outdated, or expensive to start. In fact, I turned my own operation into a multi-million dollar empire with just $50 and an Internet connection!
Your Road to Easy Riches
You’re probably thinking this all seems like a lot of work to set up and maintain. It doesn’t take as much effort as you might think – almost everything you’ll learn here today is based on an automated system.
That means you set it up, set it loose, and check in from time to time to tweak a few things here or there. Sure, signing up for programs, getting content on your blog or website, and basically doing the “grunt work” to get the ball rolling takes a few hours over a few days, but your returns over a matter of months for not much effort makes it all worth it.
You’re probably itching to get started, but before we do let’s take a look at a few of your multiple income stream possibilities. Maybe you’ve done some marketing or product placement and sales in the “real world,” but Internet marketing is a whole new ball game.
Getting used to the way information flows online can be a challenge. Luckily, there are several options for marketing on the ‘net so as you learn the systems, if you find you prefer one way over another, you can pick and choose – or tweak a system so that it fits in with the goals you set to achieve.
I’m going to start out with systems that are easy to set up, simple to automate, and allow you start earning money quickly and around the clock. Remember, the Internet is open 24/7, 3654 days a year, so your online sales tools need to be in proper working form.
What Do I Sell and Where Do I Sell It?
If you can think of something you’re good at, know a lot about, or just enjoy, you’re on your way to creating your niche. Now all you have to do is find a place to let the world know about it.
What do I mean by place? We’ll get into more detail later, but for now think of a place online as a website, a web log (blog), a content page, a review site or other place you can go to show off your knowledge – and rake in the profits.
You want to position yourself as an expert because you’re trying to build a niche market. You want to advertise your specialty and toot your own horn. That makes other people spread the word about you, too.
The nice thing about most of your niche options is that you don’t have to be a web coding genius to do any of them. Sure, learning a little code won’t hurt your chance of success, but you can get started without it.
If you can do an Internet search and type an informative paragraph or two of text, you’ll do fine putting your niche content together. Many of the other ways to make money online use the talents of others to put the Internet to work for you. That’s great for the average ‘net marketer!
You’re someone who is probably always busy anyway. You work hard at your job, trying to make ends meet, and you see this as the perfect way to cut back your hours and work less or maybe quit working outside of the home altogether.
That means options that just require you to sign up, add a button to your website or spread the word by using the websites of others are a great time saver for you! I’m going to show you how to take advantage of this.
Do you have a product to sell online, or an idea for one? Excellent! I’ll go over direct product sales later in the guide. You’ve never heard of direct product sales? Don’t worry, it’s new to a lot of people. You’ve seen direct product sales online if you’ve ever surfed the Internet.
Trust me, you’re more familiar with them than you think.
What about affiliate marketing? We’ll talk about both sides of affiliate marketing. You can work both sides at once and double your profits – or focus on one aspect of affiliate marketing (as an affiliate or the program owner) and add the other part later. Both options are pretty easy if you know what tools to use online.
To run an affiliate program, you need a product you can sell. Then you need a place to sell it online, and a way to pay the people who sign up to sell it for you. To become an affiliate yourself, you’ll sell another person’s product.
The same places online that can help you become an affiliated seller also have a flip side. They also help people find products to represent. The income potential with affiliate marketing on both sides varies.
Some product sellers give a generous percentage to their affiliates. Some affiliates don’t have the web traffic to generate the large sales number you want. Finding a balance is key to being successful on either end of the affiliate scale.
I’ll cover how to run an affiliate program, how to be an affiliate yourself and how to enhance both later on in The Multiple Streams of Income System.
Profiting Through Participation
Are there other ways to make money with less effort? Sure there are. I’ll go over those, too. Not only can you make money with little effort, but the road to easy profits is paved with perks.
You can take advantage of programs that pay when you give your opinion, take surveys and click on links. Taking surveys and giving your opinions is a great way to turn idle Internet surfing time into cash. There are some pitfalls you have to keep an eye out for, but I’ll go over those with you too.
Of course, taking surveys and giving your opinions can quickly become time consuming. But if you’re with the right survey and opinion companies, it’s worth it and I’ll show you how to choose a survey company.
What did I mean by clicks? There are a lot of companies out there selling ad space online. They offer you, the Internet surfer, the chance to click on ads for rewards. Some rewards are cool stuff, since click sites are the best way to get promotional items, but some rewards are cold, hard cash.
If you can sign up with a major click site that offers both you’ll get the most return for your time. Sure, clicking links isn’t difficult, but just like participating in the surveys and opinions sites it can be time consuming. The key is to figure out the sites that won’t waste your time by making it impossible to earn cash or cool stuff.
I’ll spend some time teaching you about click sites, survey sites and opinions sites and I’ll go over some of the companies that have the best reputations for being reliable, not spamming you and for delivering the goods.
Making Money with Money
A new trend in Internet income streaming is to invest in online monetary systems. I’ll teach you about this, but it’s not for the faint of heart. Still, the profits to be made are incredible since some people are too timid to go for it.
If you want to invest real money in online currency you have be that rare combination of cautious and a risk taker. You have to be cautious enough and alert enough to spot a scam. You also have to be enough of a risk taker to invest your money online.
I’ll cover a few basic places to invest your money online, and go over some common scams to avoid. With a little planning, investing only what you could afford to lose, and keeping your eyes open, you’ll be just fine.
The Big Question: How Do I Drive Traffic to My Money System?
You’re probably wondering how on Earth you’ll let people know about your income streams, your websites, your affiliate programs and everything else. There’s nothing to worry about at all.
I’m going to show some Internet marketing strategies that can turn your ideas into real money. Will you become a millionaire company like I did super quick? Anything is possible. If you’re motivated, you can see your income grow by leaps and bounds as time goes on.
Do people become wealthy in weeks or months doing this? Some do. I know I did. I invested a lot of time and effort into setting up my Internet marketing streams – but you’re getting a shortcut to the systems while I had to do some trial and error testing.
Do I see you retiring on these plans? I see you retiring in a better way than you could have imagined. If you follow the system step-by-step, you could definitely be retiring soon.
Right now the state on e-commerce is on the cusp of growing at a phenomenal rate. That means those who have their online systems in place before the surge are going to reap the rewards of grabbing most of the profits that are up for grabs – and we’re talking trillions of dollars!
The Internet is still in its infancy. More people are logging online everyday – looking to buy – and seeking information. You can take advantage of this massive gush of traffic and watch the money funnel directly into your accounts while you’re busy enjoying life as it was meant to be lived.
So get ready, grab a chair and let This e-book teach you everything I know about creating multiple streams of income online. You may not have heard of some of the ideas I toss at you when you signed up, but by the time you finish it you’ll have systems in place to start earning money – TONIGHT!
IMPORTANT: To continue, go right now to Nick Marks Forex Enterprise Above should give you a good idea of what Forex Enterprise is all about, as you can see the info Nick covers inside of Forex Enterprise is incredible.
To register with Nick's affiliate programm normally costs 20 dollar one time fee but write here if you can not afford the a master card, paypal or 20 usd to enroll in the programm, as an affiliate of Nick' I will give you this programm to first 10 lucky nigerians for just N700
But if you can afford to register direct with Nick Mark, feel free to visit his site by clicking the following link.
http://www.forexenterprise.com/cb1/?a
Setting a smart goal for yourself
If you’ve been lurking around on the Internet for Ways To Make Money Online, one thing you’ll be seeing a lot of lately is developing the right mindset. Before you even set up a single system, if you’re filled with “what ifs” and negative, self-defeating thoughts, your business won’t go anywhere.
The successful Internet Marketers are those who are determined and focused. So before you even put your toe into the pool of profits, you have to set some goals and change the way you think. My Smart Goal Setting formula will help you…
Why is this such an important first step in your success? It’s an area seasoned ‘net marketers are scrambling to learn because they know that sometimes, the single thing that’s holding you back can be the attitude with which you approach your online efforts and the specific goals you set in place.
For a long time, people didn’t know what made a guru a guru and why some people who tried for months (or even years) weren’t seeing a fair share of the profits. What emerged was that there’s a different mindset between the gurus and everybody else.
I’m going to show you how to think big, seize the opportunities that you deserve, and turn your wishes and dreams into true realities that you can take to the bank!
The Power of Positive Thinking
Right now, there are hundreds of Internet marketing hopefuls who are saying no to their own success. Believe it or not, your mindset is crucial to the way you perform and the way your business efforts succeed or fail.
There’s a right and wrong way to think, talk, and believe. Simply changing your vocabulary can often mean the difference between seeing a 2% change in your profit margin (up or down) and amazing growth that you never dreamed possible.
I have a chart that I refer to on a regular basis. It’s there to remind me not to let negative thinking creep into my thought process and slow down my success. I’ll let you copy it for your own efforts:
Instead of using words like:
· Maybe,Try,Hope,Wish,If,Help,Need,Can’t,Tomorrow,Want to,Going to,Well….ummmm…,Work
I think
· Can’t afford
· Problem
· But
· Probably
· Have to
I use these words and phrases instead:
· Done
· Finished
· Completed
· I will
· I am
· When
· Assist
· Deserve
· Accomplish
· Today
· Now
· Goodbye, next
· Moving forward
· Create
· Definite
· Committed
· Opportunity
· However, although
· I know, I will
· I choose to
At first, it felt awkward having to forcibly change the way I thought and talked. But I knew that like most people, I had been ingrained to complain and prepare myself for the worst.
Now my subconscious mind – which accounts for about 95% of all of our actions – guides my success without me having to try so hard. I use positive affirmations (verbal or mental accounting of everything that is going good) every day to reinforce my success – and since my income has reached multi-million dollar levels, it’s easy to continue my role.
You may not have it as good as I do right now, so how do you use positive affirmations when you’ve had a rotten day (or year) and feel like Murphy’s Law was written about your life in particular?
I don’t care how small of a good thing it is – take some time (a couple of minutes) at the beginning or end of each day to focus on it. Forget about what went wrong. If you got your first sale, acknowledge it and set a goal for how many sales you’re going to make the next day.
There are an awful lot of people in this industry moaning and groaning about why they can’t make money, why everyone else is, and why they’re failing. If you’re thinking this way then I have the answer for you – it’s YOU!
You are the only thing preventing your success. If you say, “I can’t do this,” then your prediction will come true. You can do it. You will do it. Believe in yourself. People who are failures aren’t true failures – there’s no such thing. They only failed before they allowed themselves to succeed.
Many successful businesspeople have had their ups and downs. Look at Donald Trump – he filed bankruptcy before he built his empire! You may launch a product and realize it flopped because you had your niche slightly off target.
Does that mean you quit and go back to the 9-5 grind, slaving away in a 6 x 6 foot cubicle? Sure, if that’s all you think of yourself. But you can get over the speed bumps and obstacles that try to slow down your success.
And once you hit it – once you see the profit machine start churning – you’ll realize that anything you dream is POSSIBLE. You’ll finally “get it” and be one of the few who continue their success, instead of one of the many who give up.
Setting Goals the SMART Way
The first thing I want you to do is forecast your future. Forget about the negative stuff – you won’t get anywhere harping on doom and gloom. What I want to know is this:
* Where do you see yourself in the next 30 days?
* How about the next 3 months?
* Half a year from now?
* A year from today?
* Five years?
* Ten years?
You’ll notice there’s a healthy mix of short and long-term goal setting that’s necessary for you to begin mapping out a blueprint for your success. When you write them down, use the present tense.
“I am proud that I’m earning six figures and ecstatic that I’m living with my beautiful family in Hawaii…”
Don’t write, “I should be” or “I will…” You want to be living in the moment and seeing it come to fruition. Using future tense is wishful thinking. Using present tense is taking advantage of positive affirmations. Believe it and it will happen.
Use emotions in your goal setting. In the above statement, I didn’t just write, “Earning 6 figures and live in Hawaii,” I wrote the feelings I’ll have when I achieve those goals.
When you use the SMART system, it makes it easy to determine what path you need to take to success. It helps you get everything you want out of life – and then some! Let’s look at what the SMART system is all about:
Specific goals are crucial to helping to reach milestones that are important in all areas of your life. If you’re vague and just say, “I will make more money,” then you might have it come true – to the tune of $1 more this year than you made last year.
You want to put something solid into the equation. Set a date and an amount. “I make $7,000 in September.” But don’t stop there. What will that money do for you? “I make $40,000 in the next 90 days and put down a deposit on a new home.”
It’s better to know how the money is going to help you when planning your goals – even if it’s just to splurge – because it helps you visualize what’s about to happen in your life – and it keeps you motivated and enthused about your daily efforts.
Measurable goals are important because they keep you accountable for your own success. This is a huge pitfall for many Internet marketers. They fly by the seat of their pants and start and stop so many projects that they never realize their full potential.
Measurable goals help you stay on track. They let you evaluate your performance and tweak areas that need your immediate attention. If you’ve spent six weeks on a system that isn’t working, it lets you know so that you don’t waste another six weeks not earning profits!
When you set measurable goals, you can check on them as you’re working. For instance, don’t just say, “I want to be out of debt.” Your specific, measurable goal of “I want to earn $50,000 in the next four months” will let you measure if and when you reach the goal, and also allow you to pay off your debts in the process.
It also turns a negative into a positive. When you’re focused on “being out of debt,” you constantly have to think about the burden of it. When you write about the specific amount of money you’re earning, it’s a positive reflection of your efforts.
It’s also wise to set measurable goals that help you reach your big goals. For instance, if losing weight – 25 pounds to be Specific – were your goal, then you could write measurable goals such as, “spend an hour a day on the treadmill.”
Each day, or at the end of every week, you could measure your results – you either did or didn’t do the work to get you to where you want to be. Then you have a chance to continue working toward your goals or change it if necessary.
Attainable goals are vital to your continued success. If you write down that you’ll make $1 million with your first product launch, you may be setting yourself up for failure.
Your goals should be attainable. That’s not to say you won’t make $1 million with your product launch – it’s been known to happen – but be reasonable with what you can likely achieve.
For example, if you’re only able to dedicate an hour a night to Internet Marketing right now, then a million dollars isn’t reasonable (unless you have a highly unique and in demand idea).
Take into consideration the outside factors that can contribute to your plans – and make sure you leave room for unexpected circumstances. What if you have a family emergency or a financial setback?
You want to reach the goals you set. It’s not bad to dream big, but you have to continue climbing the rungs of success one step at a time instead of trying to leap from the bottom of the ladder to the top in a single bound.
When your goals seem insurmountable, it causes you to get bogged down in negative thoughts and eventually give up on them altogether. This is a common occurrence with ‘net marketers who didn’t take time to consider their mindset.
Relevant goals mean they relate to what you’re passionate about. If you’re not emotionally connected to your goal, you won’t work hard to make it happen. Some people set goals that are so broad and general that it doesn’t help them actually achieve anything.
If you say, “I want a happy life,” that isn’t relevant enough to explain that you want “A seven-figure income this year.” Happiness is different for everybody. Some people making $30,000 a year are extremely content.
Timed goals help you reach a date of completion. If you don’t give yourself a deadline for tasks or goals, then chances are you’ll get infected by the plague of procrastination and never realize your true potential for success.
If you aren’t sure how long it’ll take, make an educated guess. You can always revise your goals – they’re a living, evolving document of how you want your life to unfold.
The only thing you shouldn’t do is keep changing your completion dates because you “just haven’t gotten around to it.” This is unfair to you – you’re sabotaging your own path to success.
You have to remind yourself that your goals are in place. It’s important to have a tangible reminder – write them on a sticky note and put it right on your computer, or carry your goals in your wallet written on the back of your business card.
When you’re able to look at them without having to try to recall from memory what you wanted to do, you’ll be able to take actions that correspond to your individual success.
You’ll instantly be able to see when and if you do something that isn’t aligned with one of your goals. If you eat a Death by Chocolate dessert at a restaurant, then you know that didn’t help your goal of losing 10 pounds in the next 30 days.
Or, in regards to money, if you quit your day job intent on making a go of Internet Marketing, but you sit around all day watching soap operas or surfing sport sites on the ‘net, then you’ll know that you haven’t spent your time toward reaching the goals that you hoped to achieve.
Most people don’t set goals. Do you see them – commuting to work day in, day out – like robots on autopilot? They just do what needs to be done and cross their fingers that it’ll all work out the way they wanted it to – never once considering they have to take the reigns and make things happen for them!
Successful Internet Marketers know that in order to succeed, you have to be focused, driven, and enthusiastic about the endless opportunities and possibilities that are coming their way.
Get emotional about your pending success!
Hype yourself up and drool over the fact that there is no glass ceiling to online profits! When you do this, taking action won’t be a chore – it’ll be an outlet for your enthusiasm and drive.
The successful Internet Marketers are those who are determined and focused. So before you even put your toe into the pool of profits, you have to set some goals and change the way you think. My Smart Goal Setting formula will help you…
Why is this such an important first step in your success? It’s an area seasoned ‘net marketers are scrambling to learn because they know that sometimes, the single thing that’s holding you back can be the attitude with which you approach your online efforts and the specific goals you set in place.
For a long time, people didn’t know what made a guru a guru and why some people who tried for months (or even years) weren’t seeing a fair share of the profits. What emerged was that there’s a different mindset between the gurus and everybody else.
I’m going to show you how to think big, seize the opportunities that you deserve, and turn your wishes and dreams into true realities that you can take to the bank!
The Power of Positive Thinking
Right now, there are hundreds of Internet marketing hopefuls who are saying no to their own success. Believe it or not, your mindset is crucial to the way you perform and the way your business efforts succeed or fail.
There’s a right and wrong way to think, talk, and believe. Simply changing your vocabulary can often mean the difference between seeing a 2% change in your profit margin (up or down) and amazing growth that you never dreamed possible.
I have a chart that I refer to on a regular basis. It’s there to remind me not to let negative thinking creep into my thought process and slow down my success. I’ll let you copy it for your own efforts:
Instead of using words like:
· Maybe,Try,Hope,Wish,If,Help,Need,Can’t,Tomorrow,Want to,Going to,Well….ummmm…,Work
I think
· Can’t afford
· Problem
· But
· Probably
· Have to
I use these words and phrases instead:
· Done
· Finished
· Completed
· I will
· I am
· When
· Assist
· Deserve
· Accomplish
· Today
· Now
· Goodbye, next
· Moving forward
· Create
· Definite
· Committed
· Opportunity
· However, although
· I know, I will
· I choose to
At first, it felt awkward having to forcibly change the way I thought and talked. But I knew that like most people, I had been ingrained to complain and prepare myself for the worst.
Now my subconscious mind – which accounts for about 95% of all of our actions – guides my success without me having to try so hard. I use positive affirmations (verbal or mental accounting of everything that is going good) every day to reinforce my success – and since my income has reached multi-million dollar levels, it’s easy to continue my role.
You may not have it as good as I do right now, so how do you use positive affirmations when you’ve had a rotten day (or year) and feel like Murphy’s Law was written about your life in particular?
I don’t care how small of a good thing it is – take some time (a couple of minutes) at the beginning or end of each day to focus on it. Forget about what went wrong. If you got your first sale, acknowledge it and set a goal for how many sales you’re going to make the next day.
There are an awful lot of people in this industry moaning and groaning about why they can’t make money, why everyone else is, and why they’re failing. If you’re thinking this way then I have the answer for you – it’s YOU!
You are the only thing preventing your success. If you say, “I can’t do this,” then your prediction will come true. You can do it. You will do it. Believe in yourself. People who are failures aren’t true failures – there’s no such thing. They only failed before they allowed themselves to succeed.
Many successful businesspeople have had their ups and downs. Look at Donald Trump – he filed bankruptcy before he built his empire! You may launch a product and realize it flopped because you had your niche slightly off target.
Does that mean you quit and go back to the 9-5 grind, slaving away in a 6 x 6 foot cubicle? Sure, if that’s all you think of yourself. But you can get over the speed bumps and obstacles that try to slow down your success.
And once you hit it – once you see the profit machine start churning – you’ll realize that anything you dream is POSSIBLE. You’ll finally “get it” and be one of the few who continue their success, instead of one of the many who give up.
Setting Goals the SMART Way
The first thing I want you to do is forecast your future. Forget about the negative stuff – you won’t get anywhere harping on doom and gloom. What I want to know is this:
* Where do you see yourself in the next 30 days?
* How about the next 3 months?
* Half a year from now?
* A year from today?
* Five years?
* Ten years?
You’ll notice there’s a healthy mix of short and long-term goal setting that’s necessary for you to begin mapping out a blueprint for your success. When you write them down, use the present tense.
“I am proud that I’m earning six figures and ecstatic that I’m living with my beautiful family in Hawaii…”
Don’t write, “I should be” or “I will…” You want to be living in the moment and seeing it come to fruition. Using future tense is wishful thinking. Using present tense is taking advantage of positive affirmations. Believe it and it will happen.
Use emotions in your goal setting. In the above statement, I didn’t just write, “Earning 6 figures and live in Hawaii,” I wrote the feelings I’ll have when I achieve those goals.
When you use the SMART system, it makes it easy to determine what path you need to take to success. It helps you get everything you want out of life – and then some! Let’s look at what the SMART system is all about:
Specific goals are crucial to helping to reach milestones that are important in all areas of your life. If you’re vague and just say, “I will make more money,” then you might have it come true – to the tune of $1 more this year than you made last year.
You want to put something solid into the equation. Set a date and an amount. “I make $7,000 in September.” But don’t stop there. What will that money do for you? “I make $40,000 in the next 90 days and put down a deposit on a new home.”
It’s better to know how the money is going to help you when planning your goals – even if it’s just to splurge – because it helps you visualize what’s about to happen in your life – and it keeps you motivated and enthused about your daily efforts.
Measurable goals are important because they keep you accountable for your own success. This is a huge pitfall for many Internet marketers. They fly by the seat of their pants and start and stop so many projects that they never realize their full potential.
Measurable goals help you stay on track. They let you evaluate your performance and tweak areas that need your immediate attention. If you’ve spent six weeks on a system that isn’t working, it lets you know so that you don’t waste another six weeks not earning profits!
When you set measurable goals, you can check on them as you’re working. For instance, don’t just say, “I want to be out of debt.” Your specific, measurable goal of “I want to earn $50,000 in the next four months” will let you measure if and when you reach the goal, and also allow you to pay off your debts in the process.
It also turns a negative into a positive. When you’re focused on “being out of debt,” you constantly have to think about the burden of it. When you write about the specific amount of money you’re earning, it’s a positive reflection of your efforts.
It’s also wise to set measurable goals that help you reach your big goals. For instance, if losing weight – 25 pounds to be Specific – were your goal, then you could write measurable goals such as, “spend an hour a day on the treadmill.”
Each day, or at the end of every week, you could measure your results – you either did or didn’t do the work to get you to where you want to be. Then you have a chance to continue working toward your goals or change it if necessary.
Attainable goals are vital to your continued success. If you write down that you’ll make $1 million with your first product launch, you may be setting yourself up for failure.
Your goals should be attainable. That’s not to say you won’t make $1 million with your product launch – it’s been known to happen – but be reasonable with what you can likely achieve.
For example, if you’re only able to dedicate an hour a night to Internet Marketing right now, then a million dollars isn’t reasonable (unless you have a highly unique and in demand idea).
Take into consideration the outside factors that can contribute to your plans – and make sure you leave room for unexpected circumstances. What if you have a family emergency or a financial setback?
You want to reach the goals you set. It’s not bad to dream big, but you have to continue climbing the rungs of success one step at a time instead of trying to leap from the bottom of the ladder to the top in a single bound.
When your goals seem insurmountable, it causes you to get bogged down in negative thoughts and eventually give up on them altogether. This is a common occurrence with ‘net marketers who didn’t take time to consider their mindset.
Relevant goals mean they relate to what you’re passionate about. If you’re not emotionally connected to your goal, you won’t work hard to make it happen. Some people set goals that are so broad and general that it doesn’t help them actually achieve anything.
If you say, “I want a happy life,” that isn’t relevant enough to explain that you want “A seven-figure income this year.” Happiness is different for everybody. Some people making $30,000 a year are extremely content.
Timed goals help you reach a date of completion. If you don’t give yourself a deadline for tasks or goals, then chances are you’ll get infected by the plague of procrastination and never realize your true potential for success.
If you aren’t sure how long it’ll take, make an educated guess. You can always revise your goals – they’re a living, evolving document of how you want your life to unfold.
The only thing you shouldn’t do is keep changing your completion dates because you “just haven’t gotten around to it.” This is unfair to you – you’re sabotaging your own path to success.
You have to remind yourself that your goals are in place. It’s important to have a tangible reminder – write them on a sticky note and put it right on your computer, or carry your goals in your wallet written on the back of your business card.
When you’re able to look at them without having to try to recall from memory what you wanted to do, you’ll be able to take actions that correspond to your individual success.
You’ll instantly be able to see when and if you do something that isn’t aligned with one of your goals. If you eat a Death by Chocolate dessert at a restaurant, then you know that didn’t help your goal of losing 10 pounds in the next 30 days.
Or, in regards to money, if you quit your day job intent on making a go of Internet Marketing, but you sit around all day watching soap operas or surfing sport sites on the ‘net, then you’ll know that you haven’t spent your time toward reaching the goals that you hoped to achieve.
Most people don’t set goals. Do you see them – commuting to work day in, day out – like robots on autopilot? They just do what needs to be done and cross their fingers that it’ll all work out the way they wanted it to – never once considering they have to take the reigns and make things happen for them!
Successful Internet Marketers know that in order to succeed, you have to be focused, driven, and enthusiastic about the endless opportunities and possibilities that are coming their way.
Get emotional about your pending success!
Hype yourself up and drool over the fact that there is no glass ceiling to online profits! When you do this, taking action won’t be a chore – it’ll be an outlet for your enthusiasm and drive.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Today on the cyber planet(web), Lots of so called internet gurus in the market have often painted the picture of making money online to be as easy as eating a cupcake.To be honest these are individuals or group of persons who go about seeking a way to squize money out of the wallets of their victims. This have resulted to lots of people lossing their hard earned money to these so called gurus hoping they would be giving some secret code on how they too can start making money online.
There is another set of people or indivduals which i call ''THE SO CALLED ASPIRING INTERNET MARKETER'' these set would often go about searching for information all over the web on how they can make money online without spending or investing a dime,they forget that ''nothing good comes easy and if you want to make money, you have got to work before having it.
You want lots of cash in your wallet but you are not willing to work, now tell me; How possible do you think you can ever achieve your dream.The fundamental truth remains valid and it will ever be valid so long as the world keep balling on finance.
The true money Matrix system will not paint a false picture on how to make money online,The true money matrix programm tells you that it takes determination and knowledge of the principle that underlines finance defination to make money, The money true matrix teaches you how to invest your finance and time wisely to achieve your set goal and it guides you towards earning money online by working for it just like I have been able to convert this blog into a money making machine, though I cant say I have earned millions from this blog, but the fact remains that this blog generates me not less than us$120 on a weekly basis.
Now how much is a dollar in Nigeria? a dollar is about 150 Naira,If I earn us$120 simply from blogging every week, that means I earn about N18000 from the internet marketing every week now how possible is that? It is very possible.
No body on earth has ever earned money online legitimately without having to work for it,That is the first and basic principle that underlines the doctrine of money matrix.Lots of so called internet gurus go about deceiving people that you can earn thousands of dollars by merely joining a programm , they tell you to sit back and relax without working and that your dollars could keep flowing, well after you read through my article you will be left with no option than to swallow one out of the two pills that will be presented to you.
I often receive emails from people who are strugling to make a living online but ends up falling for deception of some so called internet gurus,they buy existing system and courses but just can not seem to make it work, some of these many individuals have spent over two thousand dollars advertising on google but haven seen any profit, some have even spent time optimising their website or bloggsfor search engines only for them to be ignored totally.
Its not their fault actually to have lossed lots of cash,the basic problem is that most information you read online today is just a total garbage or its outdated and no longer works or its just hypothesis(information that has not been tested).
I am coming out from the underground after many months of earning about us$120 online on a weekly basis legitimately to reveal to you the real proven techniques to earning cash every day from the internet without having to get yourself worked up.
You see i have been there right where you are trying everyday.....no success, in debt and working like crazy trying to make this internet thing work.
you see you are very lucky because i did not have any one willing to give me this information for free .It took countless months of wasting my time and resources trying to figure out how to start earning money online till i finally i descovered the true Money Matrix.
TODAY YOU ARE ABOUT TO DESCOVER THE TRUTH
Back in 2000,i was strugling to make money online.I had graduated from school and was working long hours everyday to earn just 6000 every month,i was deeper into debt and could hardly afford good cloths and good meal.
After months of wasting my time on existing system, i did the thing the so called internet marketers tell you not to do.I threw away all their gabbage i had on ''get rich quickly'' and went my own way.
To be sincere, it took me about 7 months before i had my breakthrough when i descovered the true matrix and at first my earning was rising to about 30 usd on a weekly basis.
Then I had descovered two major people online, they are my mentors today and through their work, i have been able to raise my earnings to 120 dollars every week.
These two men are the most notable internet marketers for the year 2010, in fact Nick Marks won the Award for Internet Marketing for this year 2010.
Rob Benwell is just 24 years old and he is making thousands of dollars on a daily basis from internet marketing, he is the author of ''BLOGGING TO THE BANK 2010'' aA programm that teaches you how to convert your blog into a money making pipeline, Infact, In fact, it was just within few weeks of my purchasing this programm online that my famvilla earnings raised to us$120 on weekly basis. The program cost 30 dollars in the clickbank market place but right here i will give this product to the first 10 nigerian who is interested in the programm
for just N600. Now what is 600 naira compared with 37 dollars, you will soon learn the secret behind this blogging to the bank.
Now i am going to share some information freely with you so that you too an earn legitimate income online just like me, so make sure you join this programm benefit from the system.Its hundred percent free,
Over the years the game has changed and what was working in 2007 is no longer working today.I have been constantly testing my method and other system and i have come to descover that my money matrix programm will remain valid even a thousand year from now but only a few people who joins will benefit from it.This system has helped me make lots of cash, so i am not going to ask you to pay a dime for the lectures.
Once more,in the spirit of oneness and love, I welcome you to my blog,Your Blog,Our World Of Liberty from the financial Letdown that so many have often encountered in life.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Best way to earn money online in Nigeria
This Ebooks Affiliate code and rapid mass traffick is a product from the clickbank market, It is now available to the first 50 residence in nigeria who would love to start driving traffick to their site without having to pay for google adwords and other advertising programm, I am giving out this book for only N1000 only.You can contact me to grab your copy of this programm or visit the clickbank market it cost only $101.49 there. But here I am subsidising it to members of my blog.
Participating in Online Affiliate Marketing Programs over the years has led to an entire Affiliate marketing industry.It is a lucrative way to earn legitimate income as an affiliate. Some online entrepreneurs earn as much as six digit incomes with little or no effort using affiliate marketing programs. Since it is an online business, it means that any one can actually participate inrespective of location.
However, like any other business idea, you need to understand the workings of the business before expecting profit. Too many online entrepreneur have spent money and time struggling to earn income from affiliate marketing programs without success.
What is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate Marketing is an Internet-based marketing practice in which a business or company rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate's marketing efforts.
Examples include rewards sites, where users are rewarded with cash or gifts, for the completion of an offer, and the referral of others to the site.
The Core Players Of The Industry:
The industry has four core players: the merchant (also known as 'retailer' or 'brand'), the network, the publisher (also known as 'the affiliate') and the customer. The market has grown in complexity to warrant a secondary tier of players, including affiliate management agencies, super-affiliates and specialized third parties vendors.
Affiliate marketing overlaps with other Internet marketing methods to some degree, because affiliates often use regular advertising methods. Those methods include organic search engine optimization, paid search engine marketing, e-mail marketing, and in some sense display advertising. On the other hand, affiliates sometimes use less orthodox techniques, such as publishing reviews of products or services offered by a partner.
Affiliate marketing—using one website to drive traffic to another—is a form of online marketing, which is frequently overlooked by advertisers. [1] While search engines, e-mail, and website syndication capture much of the attention of online retailers, affiliate marketing carries a much lower profile. Still, affiliates continue to play a significant role in e-retailers' marketing strategies.[2]
Origin
The concept of revenue sharing—paying commission for referred business—predates affiliate marketing and the Internet. The translation of the revenue share principles to mainstream e-commerce happened almost four years after the origination of the World Wide Web in November 1994.
The consensus of marketers and adult industry insiders is that Cybererotica was either the first or among the early innovators in affiliate marketing with a cost per click program.
During November 1994, CDNOW launched its BuyWeb program. With this program CDNOW was the first non-adult website to introduce the concept of an affiliate or associate program with its idea of click-through purchasing. CDNOW had the idea that music-oriented websites could review or list albums on their pages that their visitors may be interested in purchasing. These websites could also offer a link that would take the visitor directly to CDNOW to purchase the albums. The idea for remote purchasing originally arose because of conversations with music label Geffen Records in the fall of 1994. The management at Geffen wanted to sell its artists' CDs directly from its website, but did not want to implement this capability itself. Geffen asked CDNOW if it could design a program where CDNOW would handle the order fulfillment. Geffen realized that CDNOW could link directly from the artist on its website to Geffen's website, bypassing the CDNOW home page and going directly to an artist's music page.
Amazon.com (Amazon) launched its associate program in July 1996. Amazon associates could place banner or text links on their site for individual books, or link directly to the Amazon home page.
When visitors clicked from the associate's website through to Amazon and purchased a book, the associate received a commission. Amazon was not the first merchant to offer an affiliate program, but its program was the first to become widely known and serve as a model for subsequent programs.
In February 2000, Amazon announced that it had been granted a patent on all the essential components of an affiliate program. The patent application was submitted in June 1997, which predates most affiliate programs, but not PC Flowers & Gifts.com (October 1994), AutoWeb.com (October 1995), Kbkids.com/BrainPlay.com (January 1996), EPage (April 1996), and several others.
Historic development
Affiliate marketing has grown quickly since its inception. The e-commerce website, viewed as a marketing toy in the early days of the Internet, became an integrated part of the overall business plan and in some cases grew to a bigger business than the existing offline business. According to one report, the total sales amount generated through affiliate networks in 2006 was £2.16 billion in the United Kingdom alone. The estimates were £1.35 billion in sales in 2005.[8] MarketingSherpa's research team estimated that, in 2006, affiliates worldwide earned US$6.5 billion in bounty and commissions from a variety of sources in retail, personal finance, gaming and gambling, travel, telecom, education, publishing, and forms of lead generation other than contextual advertising programs.
Currently the most active sectors for affiliate marketing are the adult, gambling, and retail industries. The three sectors expected to experience the greatest growth are the mobile phone, finance, and travel sectors. Soon after these sectors came the entertainment (particularly gaming) and Internet-related services (particularly broadband) sectors. Also several of the affiliate solution providers expect to see increased interest from business-to-business marketers and advertisers in using affiliate marketing as part of their mix.
Web 2.0
Websites and services based on Web 2.0 concepts—blogging and interactive online communities, for example—have impacted the affiliate marketing world as well. The new media allowed merchants to become closer to their affiliates and improved the communication between them.
Compensation methods
Main article: Compensation methods
Predominant compensation methods
Eighty percent of affiliate programs today use revenue sharing or cost per sale (CPS) as a compensation method, nineteen percent use cost per action (CPA), and the remaining programs use other methods such as cost per click (CPC) or cost per mille (CPM).
Diminished compensation methods
Within more mature markets, less than one percent of traditional affiliate marketing programs today use cost per click and cost per mille. However, these compensation methods are used heavily in display advertising and paid search.
Cost per mille requires only that the publisher make the advertising available on his website and display it to his visitors in order to receive a commission. Pay per click requires one additional step in the conversion process to generate revenue for the publisher: A visitor must not only be made aware of the advertisement, but must also click on the advertisement to visit the advertiser's website.
Cost per click was more common in the early days of affiliate marketing, but has diminished in use over time due to click fraud issues very similar to the click fraud issues modern search engines are facing today. Contextual advertising programs are not considered in the statistic pertaining to diminished use of cost per click, as it is uncertain if contextual advertising can be considered affiliate marketing.
While these models have diminished in mature e-commerce and online advertising markets they are still prevalent in some more nascent industries. China is one example where Affiliate Marketing does not overtly resemble the same model in the West. With many affiliates being paid a flat "Cost Per Day" with some networks offering Cost Per Click or CPM.
Performance marketing
In the case of cost per mille/click, the publisher is not concerned about a visitor being a member of the audience that the advertiser tries to attract and is able to convert, because at this point the publisher has already earned his commission. This leaves the greater, and, in case of cost per mille, the full risk and loss (if the visitor can not be converted) to the advertiser.
Cost per action/sale methods require that referred visitors do more than visit the advertiser's website before the affiliate receives commission. The advertiser must convert that visitor first. It is in the best interest for the affiliate to send the most closely targeted traffic to the advertiser as possible to increase the chance of a conversion. The risk and loss is shared between the affiliate and the advertiser.
Affiliate marketing is also called "performance marketing", in reference to how sales employees are typically being compensated. Such employees are typically paid a commission for each sale they close, and sometimes are paid performance incentives for exceeding targeted baselines. Affiliates are not employed by the advertiser whose products or services they promote, but the compensation models applied to affiliate marketing are very similar to the ones used for people in the advertisers' internal sales department.
The phrase, "Affiliates are an extended sales force for your business", which is often used to explain affiliate marketing, is not completely accurate. The primary difference between the two is that affiliate marketers provide little if any influence on a possible prospect in the conversion process once that prospect is directed to the advertiser's website. The sales team of the advertiser, however, does have the control and influence up to the point where the prospect signs the contract or completes the purchase.
Multi-tier programs
Some advertisers offer multi-tier programs that distribute commission into a hierarchical referral network of sign-ups and sub-partners. In practical terms, publisher "A" signs up to the program with an advertiser and gets rewarded for the agreed activity conducted by a referred visitor. If publisher "A" attracts publishers "B" and "C" to sign up for the same program using his sign-up code, all future activities performed by publishers "B" and "C" will result in additional commission (at a lower rate) for publisher "A".
Two-tier programs exist in the minority of affiliate programs; most are simply one-tier. Referral programs beyond two-tier resemble multi-level marketing (MLM) or network marketing but are different. Multi-level marketing (MLM) or network marketing have more requirements/qualifications to get paid a commission. Whereas affiliate programs do not.
From the advertiser perspective
Pros and cons
Merchants favor affiliate marketing because in most cases it uses a "pay for performance" model, meaning that the merchant does not incur a marketing expense unless results are accrued (excluding any initial setup cost).[15] Some businesses owe much of their success to this marketing technique, a notable example being Amazon.com. Unlike display advertising, however, affiliate marketing is not easily scalable.
Implementation options
Some merchants run their own (i.e., in-house) affiliate programs using popular software while others use third-party services provided by intermediaries to track traffic or sales that are referred from affiliates (see outsourced program management). Merchants can choose from two different types of affiliate management solutions: standalone software or hosted services, typically called affiliate networks. Payouts to affiliates or publishers are either made by the networks on behalf of the merchant, by the network, consolidated across all merchants where the publisher has a relationship with and earned commissions or directly by the merchant itself.
Affiliate management and program management outsourcing
Main article: Affiliate manager
Successful affiliate programs require significant work and maintenance. Having a successful affiliate program is more difficult than when such programs were just emerging. With the exception of some vertical markets, it is rare for an affiliate program to generate considerable revenue with poor management or no management (i.e., "auto-drive").
Uncontrolled affiliate programs did—and continue to do so today—aid rogue affiliates, who use spamming, trademark infringement, false advertising, "cookie cutting"[citation needed], typosquatting,[18] and other unethical methods that have given affiliate marketing a negative reputation.
The increased number of Internet businesses and the increased number of people that trust the current technology enough to shop and do business online allows further maturation of affiliate marketing. The opportunity to generate a considerable amount of profit combined with a crowded marketplace filled with competitors of equal quality and size makes it more difficult for merchants to be noticed. In this environment, however, being noticed can yield greater rewards.
Recently, the Internet marketing industry has become more advanced. In some areas online media has been rising to the sophistication of offline media, in which advertising has been largely professional and competitive. There are significantly more requirements that merchants must meet to be successful, and those requirements are becoming too burdensome for the merchant to manage successfully in-house. An increasing number of merchants are seeking alternative options found in relatively new outsourced (affiliate) program management (OPM) companies, which are often founded by veteran affiliate managers and network program managers. OPM companies perform affiliate program management for the merchants as a service, similar to advertising agencies promoting a brand or product as done in offline marketing.
Types of affiliate websites
Affiliate websites are often categorized by merchants (i.e., advertisers) and affiliate networks. There are currently no industry-wide accepted standards for the categorization. The following types of websites are generic, yet are commonly understood and used by affiliate marketers.
Search affiliates that utilize pay per click search engines to promote the advertisers' offers (i.e., search arbitrage)
Comparison shopping websites and directories
Loyalty websites, typically characterized by providing a reward system for purchases via points back, cash back
CRM sites that offer charitable donations
Coupon and rebate websites that focus on sales promotions
Content and niche market websites, including product review sites
Personal websites (This type of website was the reason for the birth of affiliate marketing; however, such websites are almost reduced to complete irrelevance compared to the other types of affiliate websites.)[citation needed]
Weblogs and website syndication feeds
E-mail list affiliates (i.e., owners of large opt-in -mail lists that typically employ e-mail drip marketing) and newsletter list affiliates, which are typically more content-heavy
Registration path or co-registration affiliates who include offers from other merchants during the registration process on their own website
Shopping directories that list merchants by categories without providing coupons, price comparisons, or other features based on information that changes frequently, thus requiring continual updates
Cost per action networks (i.e., top-tier affiliates) that expose offers from the advertiser with which they are affiliated to their own network of affiliates
Websites using adbars (e.g. Adsense) to display context-sensitive, highly relevant ads for products on the site
Virtual Currency: a new type of publisher that utilizes the social media space to couple an advertiser's offer with a handout of "virtual currency" in a game or virtual platform.
Publisher recruitment
Affiliate networks that already have several advertisers typically also have a large pool of publishers. These publishers could be potentially recruited, and there is also an increased chance that publishers in the network apply to the program on their own, without the need for recruitment efforts by the advertiser.
Relevant websites that attract the same target audiences as the advertiser but without competing with it are potential affiliate partners as well. Vendors or existing customers can also become recruits if doing so makes sense and does not violate any laws or regulations.
Almost any website could be recruited as an affiliate publisher, although high-traffic websites are more likely interested in (for their own sake) low-risk cost per mille or medium-risk cost per click deals rather than higher-risk cost per action or revenue share deals.
Locating affiliate programs
There are three primary ways to locate affiliate programs for a target website:
Affiliate program directories,
Large affiliate networks that provide the platform for dozens or even hundreds of advertisers, and
The target website itself. (Websites that offer an affiliate program often have a link titled "affiliate program", "affiliates", "referral program", or "webmasters"—usually in the footer or "About" section of the website.)
If the above locations do not yield information pertaining to affiliates, it may be the case that there exists a non-public affiliate program. The most definitive method for finding this information is to contact the website owner directly.
Past and current issues
Since the emergence of affiliate marketing, there has been little control over affiliate activity. Unscrupulous affiliates have used spam, false advertising, forced clicks (to get tracking cookies set on users' computers), adware, and other methods to drive traffic to their sponsors. Although many affiliate programs have terms of service that contain rules against spam, this marketing method has historically proven to attract abuse from spammers.
E-mail spam
In the infancy of affiliate marketing, many Internet users held negative opinions due to the tendency of affiliates to use spam to promote the programs in which they were enrolled. As affiliate marketing matured, many affiliate merchants have refined their terms and conditions to prohibit affiliates from spamming.
Search engine spam
As search engines have become more prominent, some affiliate marketers have shifted from sending e-mail spam to creating automatically generated webpages that often contain product data feeds provided by merchants. The goal of such webpages is to manipulate the relevancy or prominence of resources indexed by a search engine, also known as spamdexing. Each page can be targeted to a different niche market through the use of specific keywords, with the result being a skewed form of search engine optimization.
Spam is the biggest threat to organic search engines, whose goal is to provide quality search results for keywords or phrases entered by their users. Google's PageRank algorithm update ("BigDaddy") in February 2006—the final stage of Google's major update ("Jagger") that began in mid-summer 2005—specifically targeted spamdexing with great success. This update thus enabled Google to remove a large amount of mostly computer-generated duplicate content from its index.
Websites consisting mostly of affiliate links have previously held a negative reputation for underdelivering quality content. In 2005 there were active changes made by Google, where certain websites were labeled as "thin affiliates". Such websites were either removed from Google's index or were relocated within the results page (i.e., moved from the top-most results to a lower position). To avoid this categorization, affiliate marketer webmasters must create quality content on their websites that distinguishes their work from the work of spammers or banner farms, which only contain links leading to merchant sites.
Some commentators originally suggested that Affiliate links work best in the context of the information contained within the website itself. For instance, if a website contains information pertaining to publishing a website, an affiliate link leading to a merchant's Internet service provider (ISP) within that website's content would be appropriate. If a website contains information pertaining to sports, an affiliate link leading to a sporting goods website may work well within the context of the articles and information about sports. The goal in this case is to publish quality information within the website and provide context-oriented links to related merchant's websites.
However, more recent examples exist of "thin" Affiliate sites which are using the Affiliate Marketing model to create value for Consumers by offering them a service. These thin content service Affiliate fall into three categories:
Price comparison
Cause related marketing
Time saving
Adware
Although it differs from spyware, adware often uses the same methods and technologies. Merchants initially were uninformed about adware, what impact it had, and how it could damage their brands. Affiliate marketers became aware of the issue much more quickly, especially because they noticed that adware often overwrites tracking cookies, thus resulting in a decline of commissions. Affiliates not employing adware felt that it was stealing commission from them. Adware often has no valuable purpose and rarely provides any useful content to the user, who is typically unaware that such software is installed on his/her computer.
Affiliates discussed the issues in Internet forums and began to organize their efforts. They believed that the best way to address the problem was to discourage merchants from advertising via adware. Merchants that were either indifferent to or supportive of adware were exposed by affiliates, thus damaging those merchants' reputations and tarnishing their affiliate marketing efforts. Many affiliates either terminated the use of such merchants or switched to a competitor's affiliate program. Eventually, affiliate networks were also forced by merchants and affiliates to take a stand and ban certain adware publishers from their network. The result was Code of Conduct by Commission Junction/beFree and Performics,LinkShare's Anti-Predatory Advertising Addendum, and ShareASale's complete ban of software applications as a medium for affiliates to promote advertiser offers. Regardless of the progress made, adware continues to be an issue, as demonstrated by the class action lawsuit against ValueClick and its daughter company Commission Junction filed on April 20, 2007.
Trademark bidding
Affiliates were among the earliest adopters of pay per click advertising when the first pay-per-click search engines emerged during the end of the 1990s. Later in 2000 Google launched its pay per click service, Google AdWords, which is responsible for the widespread use and acceptance of pay per click as an advertising channel. An increasing number of merchants engaged in pay per click advertising, either directly or via a search marketing agency, and realized that this space was already well-occupied by their affiliates. Although this situation alone created advertising channel conflicts and debates between advertisers and affiliates, the largest issue concerned affiliates bidding on advertisers names, brands, and trademarks. Several advertisers began to adjust their affiliate program terms to prohibit their affiliates from bidding on those type of keywords. Some advertisers, however, did and still do embrace this behavior, going so far as to allow, or even encourage, affiliates to bid on any term, including the advertiser's trademarks.
Lack of self-regulation and collaboration
This section's tone or style may not be appropriate for Wikipedia. Specific concerns may be found on the talk page. See Wikipedia's guide to writing better articles for suggestions. (August 2009)
Affiliate marketing is driven by entrepreneurs who are working at the edge of Internet marketing. Affiliates are often the first to take advantage of emerging trends and technologies. The "trial and error" approach is probably the best way to describe the operation methods for affiliate marketers. This risky approach is one of the reasons why most affiliates fail or give up before they become successful "super affiliates", capable of generating US$10,000 or more per month in commission. This "frontier" life combined with the attitude found in such communities is likely the main reason why the affiliate marketing industry is unable to self-regulate beyond individual contracts between advertisers and affiliates. Affiliate marketing has experienced numerous failed attempts to create an industry organization or association of some kind that could be the initiator of regulations, standards, and guidelines for the industry. Some examples of failed regulation efforts are the Affiliate Union and iAfma.
Online forums and industry trade shows are the only means for the different members from the industry—affiliates/publishers, merchants/advertisers, affiliate networks, third-party vendors, and service providers such as outsourced program managers—to congregate at one location. Online forums are free, enable small affiliates to have a larger say, and provide anonymity. Trade shows are cost-prohibitive to small affiliates because of the high price for event passes. Larger affiliates may even be sponsored by an advertiser they promote.
Because of the anonymity of online forums, the quantitative majority of industry members are unable to create any form of legally binding rule or regulation that must be followed throughout the industry. Online forums have had very few successes as representing the majority of the affiliate marketing industry. The most recent example of such a success was the halt of the "Commission Junction Link Management Initiative" (CJ LMI) in June/July 2006, when a single network tried to impose the use of a Javascript tracking code as a replacement for common HTML links on its affiliates.
Lack of industry standards
Certification and training
Affiliate marketing currently lacks industry standards for training and certification. There are some training courses and seminars that result in certifications; however, the acceptance of such certifications is mostly due to the reputation of the individual or company issuing the certification. Affiliate marketing is not commonly taught in universities, and only a few college instructors work with Internet marketers to introduce the subject to students majoring in marketing.
Education occurs most often in "real life" by becoming involved and learning the details as time progresses. Although there are several books on the topic, some so-called "how-to" or "silver bullet" books instruct readers to manipulate holes in the Google algorithm, which can quickly become out of date,or suggest strategies no longer endorsed or permitted by advertisers.
Outsourced Program Management companies typically combine formal and informal training, providing much of their training through group collaboration and brainstorming. Such companies also try to send each marketing employee to the industry conference of their choice.
Other training resources used include online forums, weblogs, podcasts, video seminars, and specialty websites.
Affiliate Summit is the largest conference in the industry, and many other affiliate networks host their own annual events.
Code of conduct
A code of conduct was released by affiliate networks Commission Junction/beFree and Performics in December 2002 to guide practices and adherence to ethical standards for online advertising.
Threat to traditional affiliate networks
Cost per action networks can be viewed as a threat to "classic" affiliate marketing networks. Traditional affiliate marketing is resource-intensive and requires continual maintenance. Most of the maintenance includes managing, monitoring, and supporting affiliates. The goal of affiliate marketing is directed toward long-term and mutual beneficial partnerships between advertisers and affiliates. Cost per action networks, however, eliminate the need for the advertiser to build and maintain relationships to affiliates, as that task is performed for the advertiser by the cost per action network. The advertiser makes an offer, almost always CPA-based, and the cost per action networks handle the remainder of the process by mobilizing their affiliates to promote that offer. Cost per sale and revenue sharing are the primary compensation models for classic affiliate marketing, and are rarely found in cost per action networks. Affiliate marketers typically avoid the topic of cost per action networks; however, if it is being discussed, the debates can become heated and explosive.
Marketing term
Members of the marketing industry are recommending that "affiliate marketing" be substituted with an alternative name. Affiliate marketing is often confused with either network marketing or multi-level marketing. Performance marketing is a common alternative, but other recommendations have been made as well.
Sales tax vulnerability
In April 2008 the State of New York inserted an item in the state budget asserting sales tax jurisdiction over Amazon.com sales to residents of New York, based on the existence of affiliate links from New York–based websites to Amazon. The state asserts that even one such affiliate constitutes Amazon having a business presence in the state, and is sufficient to allow New York to tax all Amazon sales to state residents. Amazon challenged the amendment and lost at the trial level in January, 2009. The case is currently making its way through the New York appeals courts.
Cookie stuffing
Cookie stuffing involves placing an affiliate tracking cookie on a website visitor's computer without their knowledge, which will then generate revenue for the person doing the cookie stuffing. This not only generates fraudulent affiliate sales, but also has the potential to overwrite other affiliates' cookies, essentially stealing their legitimately earned commissions.
Click to Reveal
Many voucher code web sites use a click to reveal format, which required the web site user to click to reveal the voucher code. The action of clicking places the cookie on the website visitor's computer. The IAB have stated that "Affiliates must not use a mechanism whereby users are encouraged to click to interact with content where it is unclear or confusing what the outcome will be.",
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)