Internet Marketing Blog

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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We tread a very fine line when we’re marketing our wares online. No one likes to feel as though they’re being pushed into anything, and even when we’re sitting in the comfort of our own homes browsing the internet, it can sometimes feel as if we’re being sold to over and over again.

Of course we want to make sales if we are marketing our own (or other peoples) products, but we don’t want to annoy people in the process. We want them to remember us for the right reasons and come back and spend some more money with us in the future.

So how on earth do we achieve that precarious balance?

How do we sell without selling? Perhaps the answer can be seen in some of the best blogs the internet has to offer. The most popular blogs are invariably those where the writer has a real interest in what they are writing. Slowly their audience builds until they become a real authority on their chosen subject.

At that point, if they want to monetize their blog they could do so quite easily without being at all pushy. It would simply be a matter of integrating some Google ads in there, plus a couple of referrals to relevant sites or products that they know their readership would probably go and find elsewhere anyway.

There are certainly plenty of bloggers who start their blog purely as a means to make money. But are they more successful – or pushier – than those where the subject comes first?

I suspect the best blogs are those where preparation meets opportunity – in short, the love of a subject and the interest in it meets with the knowledge of how to make that pay the writer in the process.

In my opinion, if you need to be pushy to try and make some sales, you’re missing out on something vital somewhere.

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

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Every day on the internet, the next big thing is being promoted heavily by marketers all across the world. You know the kind of thing – you get half a dozen emails from various people whose newsletters you subscribe to, telling you they’ve found out about a fabulous opportunity you simply have to know about.

How tempted are you to find out more and get involved?

There’s nothing wrong with jumping on board if it’s something that has potential, it’s genuine and you have a real interest in it, of course. But you need to be wary of developing the nasty habit of constantly jumping from one new thing to the next, without staying long enough to really make anything of any one opportunity.

This is where you need to have focus and determination. Don’t get distracted by new things every time they come up in front of you. Stay on course and put the required effort into what you are doing at the moment.

If something comes to your attention that fits in with your other promotions then it may be worth looking at. The danger comes when you end up flitting from one thing to another, acquiring lots of affiliate opportunities in so many diverse areas that it’s hard to keep track of them all yourself, let alone promote them effectively.

If you specialise in promoting items related to self help subjects and you are building an audience for these products, then steer clear of anything which isn’t related to self help. Why pick up on something that you need to go out and find a whole new audience for, when it’s far easier to pick products you know your current audience will like?

That’s why the next big thing isn’t always going to be big for you, so make sure you take it on for the right reasons, and not just because it’s new.

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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It’s a strange question to start a blog with, but it’s a valid one. You see, lots of people who want to start out in internet marketing look at the people and companies who are making the most money. It’s a natural desire to want to be like them.

But it’s much harder to reach that level of success than you might think. In essence you are a very small fish in the middle of a huge ocean – you’re surrounded by customers, but they are all looking at the huge sharks swimming by, not at tiny little fish like you.

So why not be a big fish instead?

It’s easy to do – all you need to do is change your perspective. Quite often big companies don’t look at going into small markets, because there is not enough profit there for them. They tend to think in terms of hundreds of thousands of dollars as being a decent return on a marketing campaign.

But for you, the return you could get from a niche market – or a small pond, if you prefer – is more than enough to keep you happy. You won’t find as many customers in a pond as you will in the ocean, but the ones you do find will already be interested in what you have to sell them. And you won’t be competing with any sharks either.

Niche markets can be extremely profitable for small internet sellers. Some people make a point of developing more than one niche that they like to sell in – and if it’s attached to something they are already interested in themselves, they are likely to make even more money, as their natural passion for the subject will come out and lead to them becoming an expert.

So don’t be a small fish and give yourself more work than is necessary. Be a big fish in a small pond instead – you’ll be noticed far more.

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

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Some people don’t like to pay any attention to how other people are earning money online, because they want to strike out and make their own mark on the internet landscape. That’s fine and very understandable, but browsing other websites to see what other people are up to can be a huge benefit to your own business. I would never advocate copying anyone else directly, but it can help to see how things are working for them – even if all you do is think about how you react to what they are doing and how their website is laid out.

Paying attention to your own feelings and opinions about others can help to shape your own ambitions. Without a constant stream of fresh input our brains can become rather tired and stale – and this doesn’t bode well for the development of our own business.

You might not think there is any truth in this, but think about what happens when you come across a particularly good website that has information which interests you.

How does it make you feel?

The chances are you immediately get a ‘lightbulb moment’. You know the kind of thing – it’s as if something you should have known all along is now staring you in the face and making you realise how doing one particular thing can improve your business and bring in more sales without even trying.

It sparks off all kinds of other ideas and brainwaves that could keep you going for months. And that is the power of checking out the competition – it can breathe new life into your own ventures, and improve your income in the process.

So if you have five or ten minutes to spare, why not do some surfing now to see what you can find? It might just give you the boost you’ve been waiting for.

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

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Everyone has their own way of making money online. Some people flock to eBay and sell second hand or brand new items to make a living; others concentrate on building their own website; still more develop blogs and Adsense sites to bring in streams of income, and others prefer to promote affiliate products without the use of a site at all.

But whatever your own personal niche may be, it’s important not to become complacent about it. The internet – and the world as a whole – is constantly advancing, constantly developing and constantly discovering new ways to do business, as well as making the most of the one you have got.

That’s why it’s worth building some research time

into your day now and again, to make sure you are keeping up with any developments in your own particular area of interest.

When you try this, it might just feel as if you are skiving off with a coffee, sitting with your feet up on the desk and having a surf round the internet. It may well look like that too, but in fact you are keeping yourself familiarised with your niche. Everybody develops their knowledge at different rates, so you can bet there will be people out there who know a lot more about your niche than you do.

Your job is to find those people during your surfing sessions, and learn as much as you can about them. Remember to save any useful links or sources of further information so you can revisit them when needed.

Building good quality sources of information like this is a sure way to help you develop your online business. You can do it on your own, of course – but it is likely to take you far longer.

There are plenty of people out there who have already succeeded in reaching their goals, so why not learn from them?

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

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In the last post, I wrote about The Importance Of Regular Blog Activity.  Funny enough, I have been a bit slack lately in posting my blogs! The you go. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!

Here we go with todays post:

If you have been running your internet business for a while, you might be feeling a little stagnant. Maybe it’s time to make some changes?

Altering the way you do things is sometimes warranted

Especially if it means offering your customers a better service than you do now. But if you are doing it through boredom you might want to reconsider your motives.

A common reaction to these kinds of feelings is to immediately turn your attention in a new direction, but although branching out can be a good thing to do if you are prepared for it, doing it as a knee jerk reaction can backfire on you.

Look at how you might be able to improve on your current interests before diving into anything else. No business is ever perfect, and there are bound to be things you can do to bring in more customers, develop your product range or even look at advertising in different ways.

Whenever you start feeling a degree of inertia in relation to your internet business, it could be a sign that things are slacking off a bit. If you aren’t paying enough attention to what you are doing, you might start to see your sales – and income – slipping.

Keep an eye on how things are doing, and how you are feeling

But if you do start to feel that changes need to be made, take the time to review every aspect of your business before you do anything. If you give in to the temptation to shoot off in a completely new direction, you will be leaving behind your existing business while you explore – and that could be disastrous.

The moral is clear – look after your current business first and don’t assume that a new opportunity is the best one for you. Expanding on your existing interests is easier than going into the unknown.

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

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How often do you update your blog? Once a day? Once a week? Or only when you remember and have the time to do it, without it encroaching on your other activities?

A well written and frequently updated blog has the potential to pull in lots of traffic and sales if you target it towards a specific group of people. Of course it takes time to create a successful blog; you need to write worthwhile content and build both incoming and outgoing links to get the search engine spiders interested, in order to rank more highly in their results.

The problem is that a blog can fall way down in your list of things to do if you’re not careful. Because you don’t have to update it every couple of days if you really don’t want to, it’s easy to let all your hard work slide.

That’s why it’s a good idea to build it into your schedule each week

If you don’t have a written schedule now might be the best time to start one. You can think about what you are going to write about at all times of the day – even while you’re washing the car. Just make sure you always have a pen and notepad close at hand to jot down any ideas you get.

Then all you need to do is build in ten to fifteen minutes to write up your entry and post it to your blog. If you keep things up to date it only takes a few minutes every day or two to keep it fresh, and you’ll be rewarded with the long term benefits of a more highly trafficked blog which has more repeat visitors – as well as generating more sales for you.

Why not start now? Get that first blog entry organised and start posting again while the thought is fresh in your mind.

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

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