Internet Marketing Blog

You could replace the word niches with challenges, because that also has a bearing on the subject of this blog entry. It’s sensible to start with what we know in internet marketing, but once we’ve been around the block a couple of times it’s also wise to start looking for fresh challenges.

You don’t have to dive into something you know nothing about, but think about exploring a topic you have an interest in yourself, but would like to know more about. Is there enough interest in it to warrant an internet marketing presence?

Try looking online to see if anyone else has built an internet marketing business around that topic already. What are they doing to earn money? Could you do the same? How would you vary your idea so you can tap into a previously ignored part of that market?

A subject for your internet marketing venture

Picking a subject you want to learn about yourself guarantees you’ll enjoy the research required to make this new internet marketing venture a success. You’ll be able to find out where like minded people tend to congregate online, and you’ll know how to find them as well. Incidentally, going to forums and participating in discussions can help you to identify new products and services that the market would be interested in buying.

Exploring new niches helps to keep you on your toes and enjoying all the benefits that internet marketing has to offer. It also makes you a more versatile marketer – able to meet the needs of more than one kind of customer. This will ultimately lead to more profits for you and an increased ability to recognise new markets and penetrate them with the right products for the right customers.

So think about finding yourself some new niches to explore. It’s the best route to making more money online.

Sean Rasmussen
Internet Marketing Blog
WealthCreationAffiliate.com © 2007 - 2008

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That’s a pretty personal question, but it’s also one of the most important ones you could ever ask yourself.

Internet marketing is a huge umbrella term that covers many opportunities for making money. There is never any reason to get bored – there is simply way too much to be learning and doing.

Why do you need to do it now?

So if you are bored, you need to ask yourself why and you need to do it now. If you don’t you could end up becoming so disillusioned with internet marketing that you leave it altogether, and that would be wasting probably the best opportunity of your whole life.

One reason for a lot of people becoming disillusioned is that they aren’t following their own interests into internet marketing. They tend to follow whatever is making everyone else money – regardless of whether they actually have any interest in it themselves.

This is a sure fire way to head to the deep realms of boredom in double quick time. Just because someone else is making lots of money at something does not make it right for you. If you don’t have any real interest in it you won’t have any enthusiasm for it. That means little or no sales… and hey presto, you’re in internet marketing boredom country.

Have passion for what you do

It’s ironic that so many people want to get out of their dead end jobs and do something more appealing – and then go straight into trying to sell something they hate online, just to try and get the bucks rolling in. It’s akin to selling insurance door to door. The chances are you wouldn’t do that, so why try it online?

Internet marketing is your gateway to another life, but you can open that gate onto any world you want to. Why pick one you hate? Pick one you love and you’ll never be thinking about how bored you are again.

Sean Rasmussen
Internet Marketing Blog
WealthCreationAffiliate.com © 2007 - 2008

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How many is too many? Can there ever be too many?

We’re talking about affiliate products here and whether there is any ‘right number’ that you should be promoting to get the best results for your business.

There is no perfect number

In truth there is no magic number; everyone is different, with different needs, aims and goals to shoot for. You may be happy with a dozen different items to promote, while others would shudder at the thought of having less than a hundred items at the very least. You’re probably worrying now if you’ve only got two or three items on the go, but you really shouldn’t. Affiliate products work differently for everyone and what one sees as overkill is just right for another. The key is in how well you are managing what you have.

It’s always good to have a range of affiliate products that complement each other, as this can give you an excellent opportunity to achieve add on sales that you wouldn’t otherwise be able to get. This is perhaps a key point to remember when you are considering whether your promotions are all earning their place in your overall strategy. Those that complement each other are usually somewhat easier to make sales from than the ones that stand out simply because they don’t really fit with the rest of your plan.

If you only have two or three affiliate products that you are currently promoting, you may be missing out on a trick in this respect. Try expanding your repertoire a little by looking for other complementary items that will round out what you are already having some success with. In short, if you are earning what you want to be earning from your marketing, then you have the right number of affiliate products. If you aren’t, you need to be looking for some more.

Sean Rasmussen
Internet Marketing Blog
WealthCreationAffiliate.com © 2007 - 2008

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When a New Year arrives it’s tempting to chuck out everything in your life that you feel no longer serves you, in order to upgrade to a better lifestyle. But how much of that process is a kneejerk reaction, and how much is actually warranted?

Internet marketing is exactly the same.

If a particular program isn’t performing well and isn’t bringing in those affiliate commissions, you would be forgiven for wanting to get rid of it in favour of trying something else.

But that shouldn’t be the first thing you do. It’s worth holding fire – at least temporarily – to look at the individual situation in more depth, just in case there is another reason for that particular program’s lack of results.

How have you been promoting it, for example? If you haven’t been giving it as much attention as you should have been, then it’s not the right time to get rid of it. While some affiliates seem to be able to make mega sales within hours of testing out a new program, not everyone can make headway so quickly.

How long has it been part of your armoury?

It’s tempting to get rid of everything that isn’t working, but you need to know the reason for it first. If you don’t, and the reason turns out to be something you are doing wrong (or not doing at all) then the pattern will continue to repeat itself throughout all the new programs and businesses you try.

Keep a record of how you promote each affiliate program – where you promote it, what the results are and what kind of return it is bringing you.

Don’t let the prospect of a New Year get rid of things which may just need an extra push from you. The New Year should be a time to reflect and improve – but not necessarily a time to start new businesses when the old one is just as good.

Sean Rasmussen
Internet Marketing Blog
WealthCreationAffiliate.com © 2007 - 2008

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We’ve all heard about the phenomenon of multiple income streams, and how they are transforming the lives of hundreds of thousands of people who have taken to working from home.

But does it matter how big (or small) these income streams are?

The whole idea of having several streams of income is that it protects you against the consequences of losing one or more of them at the same time. If you’re in a regular job and that’s your only source of cash, you’ll be in instant trouble if you lose it. But if you have a dozen or more income streams and you lose one – or even two or three – simultaneously, then all you’ll experience is a slight drop in income. You still have plenty of cash coming in to meet all your needs. That is the power of having multiple income streams.

Now it’s obvious that large income streams are better than small ones

But you shouldn’t dismiss the opportunities that small income streams can bring. The fact remains that if you add a dozen or so small streams together, they can form quite an impressive river of cash that you would certainly miss if it didn’t exist.

The key is to look for small income streams that you can automate, and this can be quite easily done online. For example, if you have your own website you can put Google Adsense on it. You might only get a few dollars a month from it, but it won’t require any work at all after it is set up, so why turn down a few dollars for nothing?

So keep an eye out for small income streams as well as large ones, and use them to bump up your overall earnings online. It’s surprising how much difference a few dollars can make.

Sean Rasmussen
Internet Marketing Blog
WealthCreationAffiliate.com © 2007 - 2008

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Email is a fantastic tool for affiliates to use. If you use the services of an auto responder you can build a double opt in email list to send your offers out to. But it’s worth remembering that as an affiliate who is naturally interested in marketing, you are likely to receive a lot of emails as well – especially when you sign up for all those newsletters that promise to exploding your affiliate sales with all the secrets they reveal.

If you aren’t careful these emails can weigh you down and have a detrimental effect on your business. To combat this you need to have a plan to make sure that doesn’t happen.

First of all, make sure you have more than one email account - one for personal emails, and as many others as you need for your business. Your own needs will dictate how many this should be. You can then split each email account into several files or folders, enabling you to file away those emails you need or want to keep, without them continually cluttering up your inbox.

Try and make it a rule to handle each email the minimum number of times. Check your email at predetermined times each day, and don’t fall into the trap of doing it continually. If you do the time you have available to devote to promoting your affiliate products will be sucked up by emails instead.

Be firm and delete whatever you can, as soon as you can

If you want to keep something for your own use and you still haven’t done anything with it after, say, a month – it’s time to be firm and weed it out. If used properly email can be a huge benefit for affiliate marketers. But if you let it get the best of you, you’re fighting a losing battle.

Which do you want it to be?

Sean Rasmussen
Internet Marketing Blog
WealthCreationAffiliate.com © 2007 - 2008

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Although some internet marketers are afraid of offering refunds, it’s the best route to take if you want to increase your sales, as you will be removing one of the biggest barriers to people ordering from you. But what do you do if you start receiving lots of requests for refunds for your products? If this happens, you need to look at any comments made by the people returning them.

If several people start saying the same thing

Perhaps the information was inaccurate, for example – then you have a specific area to look at.

If there are no clues to what the problem could be, it’s time to delve a little deeper. You can always ask each person to elaborate on why they need a refund, but closer inspection should give you some pointers. It may be that the price is simply set too high for the product. If it is an e-book, is it really too short? Is the information given out of date?

Always ask for a reason from the person returning the item for a refund if you can. You will always get one or two people who will return it because it just wasn’t the right thing for them, but if there is a genuine reason for the return you need to find out what it is.

If the product is yours then you can make any changes necessary, but if it was created by someone else and you are merely selling it in exchange for a commission, you will need to think carefully about whether you still want to sell it to other people.

You don’t want to become known for selling items that you know are substandard, just to try and make some extra cash. If you continue to get problems, perhaps it’s time to cut the product free and find a better replacement.

Sean Rasmussen
Internet Marketing Blog
WealthCreationAffiliate.com © 2007 - 2008

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People are drawn to passion. It seeps into everything and becomes irresistible to those who discover it. We might be talking about the greatest love story of the century, but in this case we are referring to the enthusiasm you should be feeling about your particular niche in internet marketing.You might be surprised to hear this, but choosing which products to promote purely because they bring in a huge commission every time someone buys one isn’t the best way to go about establishing an income for the long term.

Okay, you might make some real cash by doing this

How much are you really going to enjoy the process of getting it? Why not try and find products related to a subject area you are really genuinely interested in?

By doing this you are guaranteed to become an expert in that subject – that will bring in a bigger audience for whatever it is you are promoting. You will also deepen your knowledge and natural level of interest in your subject – which could lead to more opportunities for building and profiting from your knowledge in the future.

Just imagine being able to spend all day writing books and articles about your favourite subject to sell online. Lots of internet marketers do just this, and they aren’t the ones who are still working a full time job as well.

There is something infectious about reading something written by a person who has a real knowledge and passion about something. You can tell when that person loves what they do and has a real desire to share that knowledge and help others in the process.

Now that is the kind of person you are most likely to buy something from, wouldn’t you agree?

Passion really can ignite your business and send it soaring, so make sure you choose your subject carefully.

Sean Rasmussen
Internet Marketing Blog
WealthCreationAffiliate.com © 2007 - 2008

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Writing a blog can seem like a lonely thankless task in the beginning. Many internet marketers start up a blog to link in to their website, in order to raise the profile of both and generate more traffic.

But of course those streams of traffic don’t all turn up on day one. You need to develop your blog and add worthwhile content and good posts for a while before you can hope to get some visitors who start coming back for more.

It’s those first hard, lonely days that really make or break you as a blogger. It’s not easy to write posts to people who may or may not even be there. But posts can be read in retrospect as well, so the post you write today may not get an audience for weeks or months to come.

That doesn’t make it any less important however

When you decide to start up a new blog, you need to make sure your intentions are long term. Forget about the traffic – at least for starters. Concentrate on setting up and developing a blog that has real quality and depth. Concentrate on making sure it relates to your internet marketing efforts and links in to your website and other relevant products you wish to promote.

In the end the value of a blog builds over time, and that is just as it should be. As the value builds, so will the audience. Once you have established your blog and got it indexed with the search engines, you can start promoting it elsewhere as well.

Before you know it every post you write will have people waiting to read it. Eventually you’ll look back and smile at those early days when nothing you wrote had an audience – until you realise your back catalogue of posts is being read today instead.

Sean Rasmussen
Internet Marketing Blog
WealthCreationAffiliate.com © 2007 - 2008

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