Internet Marketing Blog

Article marketing is one of the best ways to get some long term promotion for no cost at all. While that makes it a great resource for newbies to internet businesses, it’s also a form of promotion that is heavily used by experienced marketers who recognize its long term potential for driving huge volumes of traffic to their websites.

Article marketing is really a numbers game when you look at the potential it has. The copy doesn’t need to be exceptionally long – in fact you’ll do better if it runs to around 500 or 600 words ideally, as that gives the reader something to get their teeth into without keeping them engaged for too long. You want to give them something worthwhile to read – not something that’s novel length.

Your details will be temptingly displayed in the resource box at the bottom of each piece, so you can expect to receive some traffic from each session of article marketing you indulge in.

Good Form Of Promotion

That’s the beauty of this form of promotion – you get to decide how many pieces you write, and how much traffic you want to get. If your article marketing ensures that each piece is well written, has a good resource box, has proper keywords, and is submitted to a number of good sites that enjoy a lot of traffic, then you can expect to get a better reward for sustained effort.

Make it a pact to write and submit a set number of pieces every week and see what results you get. If you double that number, you can expect to get double the traffic to your website, so you can see that article marketing and the success it brings you depends a great deal on how much effort you put in.

So – how successful do you want to be?

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

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If you know the answer to that one, then you’re an exceptionally well organised internet marketer. If like the rest of us you’re struggling to find an answer, then it’s time to figure out how much of the time you devote to your internet marketing activities is actually well spent.The best way to get your answer is to keep a blow by blow timetable for the next couple of weeks.

Write it all down – from the moment you sit down at your computer to the moment you switch it off again. What sites do you visit and why? How long do you spend checking your emails? How much time do you devote to promoting your products and/or services? How much time do you spend looking for new products to add to your current range?

Income From Internet Activities

You might be surprised – and shocked – by the amount of time you actually spend working towards your goal of building a substantial income from your internet activities. Chances are it’s much less than you think.

The first step towards becoming more efficient is to become more aware of how you are spending your time. Make a list of the activities you do that really move you towards a bigger income from selling products and services online, and try and spend the majority of your time on those activities. The more things you can automate the better. If you use an autoresponder, block out an afternoon each week to write four emails that can go out weekly for the next month, for example. They can then be loaded onto your autoresponder in advance and sent out at weekly intervals.

You might be like me and tend to overestimate how much time it takes you to do certain jobs; over time you will be able to plan your timetable much more efficiently as you get the hang of how you work. Just be sure to use the information you glean from your efforts to structure your days more profitably.

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

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Owning an affiliate site can be the key to big profits online. With proper care and attention you can find a range of products and services relating to a single interest, get your referral links in place, write some worthwhile content and put the whole thing together to start gaining traffic from lots of different sources.

What is the Problem?

The problem is, once your affiliate site becomes successful, it can fall victim to what made it a success in the first place.

You see, as you continue to develop your affiliate site you will come across other products you want to promote. They may complement the subject of your site, or alternatively they could start to go off topic a little. Not much, but enough to warrant another page on your site to deal with that topic.

And then off you go to find more products on that topic alone. Before you know it your affiliate site is getting rather too unwieldy to handle.

What’s the solution?

As soon as you notice your website is starting to split off into sub-divisions of the main topic, it’s worth starting to think about creating another website to deal purely with that. Because it is still related to your first website you can still link one to the other and benefit from the traffic you are already getting.

This is worth bearing in mind even while you have just one affiliate site to concentrate on. Watch for subjects that might be worth their own website, and think about how you could exploit them and build on the audience you already have. If you have built an email list of subscribers you can let them know about your spin off venture the moment it is launched… so you should even see visitors and sales very early into its new life.

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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Free articles are a great way to promote your business. Not only do they drive traffic towards your website or affiliate products, they also help to raise your own profile in the internet community. If you write and distribute free articles over a period of time, faithfully and continually, you’ll even become known as something of an expert.

What could be better?

Of course you are not guaranteed to get such a rousing response to your writing; it is up to you to make sure people view it in a positive light. To that end you need to be certain that your free articles contain useful, insightful or revealing information – and ideally all three.

The best way to do this is to start with a plan in mind. Instead of just writing the first thing that comes into your head, try asking yourself this question, ‘How will this piece help the reader, encourage them to maybe read some more of my stuff, and hopefully click through to my website as well?’

A little time spent planning is worth it when you get better results. Ideally everything you write should have a purpose, a reason for being written in the first place. Of course you will want to generate traffic and attract the attention of new customers, but you need to ensure that you have something worthwhile to offer them when they come.

In this sense you are better off writing half a dozen free articles of excellent quality than you are writing a dozen, where the only thing you are really worried about is how many keywords you have put in them. Why not give real value and show people that you know what you’re talking about as well?

If you manage to do this you’ll enjoy far more visits to your website as a result.

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

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Do you ever get so wrapped up in your own business and online marketing efforts that you forget to look around you to see what’s going on elsewhere? It’s easily done, but it can harm your business if you don’t stay in touch with what everyone else is doing. That’s why it pays to stop and smell the roses once in a while.

Take time out from planning your next marketing campaign and have a look round the internet for a while. Let one click lead to another, one site lead to another and one source of information to yet another. You’ll learn from what you are reading and digesting; different ways of doing things might occur to you that are working for other people already.

The internet is never the same two days running

It’s great to stake out your own corner of cyberspace, but don’t ignore what everyone else’s little corner is like in the process. You might just be missing a trick somewhere.

Look out for what other people are recommending, whether it’s a product, a service or a way of doing something. It all goes towards building your knowledge and your experience of doing business online, and it can build your sales and visitors to a more healthy level as well.

You’ll also find you’ll be more aware of new developments in various different areas, and you can easily come across a new ezine that might be worth subscribing to. All the new knowledge you’re gaining will come in handy at some point, whether it’s to help you create a new product or website, or decide which affiliate scheme to sign up for.

So allocate some time to checking out what your competition is doing, and make notes of any good sites you come across. You’ll be surprised how much you can find out when you’re sitting back with a cup of coffee doing ‘nothing’.

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

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When was the last time you did anything different in your internet marketing life? When did you last think, ‘Hey, let’s try an experiment to see if that idea I thought of last week would actually bring in more sales.’ When was the last time you added a different way of advertising to your usual promotional mix? We tend to get stuck in a rut so easily that we barely notice it’s happened until long after the event itself. But staying fresh is half the battle in making sure we can earn the biggest amounts from our internet marketing efforts.

The problem isn’t even so much that we get stuck in that rut, it’s that we can’t see that we’ve stopped while everything else is still moving. In short, it’s easy to get left behind… and when we finally realise we’re lingering in other people’s dust, it takes some time to even catch up again, let alone overtake them.

The World Of Internet Marketing

I make a point of spending a few moments every day or so just surfing any interesting sites that are related to my work. I’m probably not much different to you - I subscribe to a few good email newsletters that are related to the world of internet marketing, in the hope that I’ll learn a thing or two every now and again that I can apply to my own business.

Make sure you keep that fresh input of ideas and information coming in – it helps to prevent ‘rut’ syndrome and keeps your brain active. That in itself should give you some ideas to experiment with, but always make sure you continue to push the boundaries of what you are doing, and try new methods and ideas of making a little more (or a lot more) cash from your efforts.

Even if you can only come up with one new idea every day, and only one of those ideas works each week, that’s fifty two new ideas every year that you can set to work to improve what you’re doing and earn more money from.

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

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There is no better way to attract the attention of new, existing and potential customers than by giving away some freebies. Ebooks are ideal for this purpose, as they can be worth their weight in gold if the information contained in them can benefit the reader in some way. They are also easy to send and can be written in a reasonably short space of time.

But they can benefit you in more ways than one too

If you’ve seen those marketers who are forever writing e-books and giving them all away for nothing, you would be forgiven for thinking they must be nuts. After all, they’re not earning a red cent on them are they?

Well… not directly, no.

But by encouraging the world and his wife to pass on that same e-book to anyone they want to, they are ensuring that their name and website address is passed along too. Not to mention any other affiliate links that might be in the text.

In this sense, giving away e-books for nothing can be one of the most effective forms of advertising there is – and you should think seriously about joining the ranks of marketers who are already doing it.

The e-books don’t need to be too long, but they do need to contain useful information. If they don’t say something different, or benefit the people reading them, then there is really no incentive to pass it along to share that information with others.

With time and practice you’ll be able to create freebies in no time, and pass them on to an ever increasing network of contacts that will be happy to pass them along to everyone they know as well.

Why pay for advertising when many of the free methods available – just like this one – work just as well, if not better, and keep working for months on end?

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

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Once your online business starts to develop, you’ll naturally stick with the things that are working and ditch those that aren’t. After a while you’ll find you have created an online business that is uniquely yours. Congratulations are certainly in order for getting to this milestone, but where should you go now?

The internet is an ever changing place

It’s rarely the same from one minute to the next, as entrepreneurs and webmasters discover and try out new ideas for promoting their wares and reaching more customers as a result.

That’s why anyone who stays the same automatically gets left behind.

You should never settle when your livelihood is dependent on running a successful online business. What’s more, the act of continually exploring and trying out new ideas for earning money online keeps you fresh and alert, and encourages new income streams and developments.

Branching out from your current ventures may seem a little nerve wracking, but it shouldn’t jeopardise what you already do. Look on it simply as a way to explore other possibilities for developing your business in new directions.

Some internet marketers run different websites on completely different subjects, and keep the two apart. Others develop different areas of the same subject and link them all together to strengthen the overall effect.

There is no right or wrong way to run an internet business, provided it is honest, trustworthy, doesn’t break the law and makes money. That’s a pretty large area within which to operate, and it would be a real shame if you decided you weren’t going to branch out in some way.

Even if you don’t feel like now is the time, it’s worth starting to consider ways in which you might like to develop your business in the weeks and months to come.

Once you start thinking along these lines you’ll find it hard to stop.

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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