Five steps to earning money with affiliate internet marketing

It is all about planning. Many people getting into affiliate marketing are thinking about making a fast buck. It is hard to fault them. Since the formation of CDNow almost thirteen years ago, affiliate marketing has exploded into a billion dollar per year industry. There are also the benefits including little to no overhead, residual income, getting paid for the work of your downline and not having to deal with any customer service problems.

But it is still a business and many people do not understand that a business requires planning. No matter how great the product or service, if you do not have any guidelines mapped out beforehand then you will probably wind up like ninety five percent of affiliate (and internet) marketers who do not make any money online.

Affiliate internet marketing is a lot of work, time, patience, mistakes, uncertainty and constant learning. The key is to create a plan and work it.

Where does it start?

1. Your Office.

Whether working out of your garage, kitchen or bathroom (hey sometimes you do what you got to do), make sure your office is comfortable with proper lighting, ventilation and as little distraction as possible. It is hard to get any work done with the phone ringing every 15 minutes. If you have to, let the answering machine pick up. Set aside blocks of time where you concentrate on nothing but your affiliate marketing

2. Learn and Keep Learning.

Study the affiliate marketers who are making money. Visit affiliate marketing forums. While your overall goal is to become successful, you may from time to time have to change your strategies. Forums are a great place to get tips and ideas that you can adapt to your business. Also, many affiliate programs now offer conference rooms. This allows you to live chat with the product creators, as well as other affiliate marketers participating in the program.

Some conferences are just cheerleading sessions. They get you fired up to sell the product but do not give you any concrete ways to sell it. However, many merchants do provide solid support, answer any and all questions in real time and recommend affiliate marketing strategies to help you. If your merchant is scheduling conferences on a regular basis, take advantage of it.

3. Research Your Target Market.

It is not enough just to know what is going on with your product or service. What are the new trends? Watch television. Read newspapers and magazines. Find out where the hot markets are popping up and how it affects your business. Do not just read affiliate news. Get as much information as possible on what is happening around the world and then apply it to your affiliate business.

4. Your own website.

This is the command center for your affiliate marketing campaign. Yes you can promote different programs without one but this makes it more difficult and less profitable for you. Having your own website means you can capture the visitor information before you send them to the merchant. If they do not like the particular product you are selling at this time, you can always contact them about other offers or promotions later. The beauty is once you get their name and e-mail, you can contact them for as long as they remain on your opt in list. This is called backend and you can believe it is how many of the top affiliate marketers make their money. The money is in the list and the only way to do that is get your own website where people can sign up.

5. Do not kid yourself.

We all want to be millionaires by the time the sun goes down or at least by early the next morning but that is not reality. Affiliate marketing is hard work so set a goal that you can achieve. How much realistic profit can you generate in a month? Start small. If you earned five hundred dollars last month, shoot for seventy hundred fifty next month. They may seem like baby steps but they can stop you from getting any false expectations which lead to discouragement and finally giving up all together. It may take awhile before you actually see any money so hang in there.

According to the AffStat 2007 report over eighty percent of affiliate programs offer revenue sharing. If you plan and treat your affiliate internet marketing like a business, then there is no reason why you cannot share in the profits.

Daryl Campbell is an affiliate marketer and online business owner. It is easy to get lost in the jungle of internet marketing. So what do you do? Get yourself an Internet Marketing Guide. Free tips, tools, resources, coaching, video and up to the minute news and information to help you get out of the jungle. Get started now at Internet Marketing Guide

Internet Marketing Basics: What worked years ago still works today!

Internet marketing can seem mystifying not only for beginners, but for moderately skilled internet marketers. With all the courses, forums, blogs, reports, seminars and teleconferences available to help people learn how to get traffic to their sites, it is one of the most overwhelmingly dense subjects on the internet.

Unfortunately, and this is perfectly true, most of the advice or "expert" tips are outdated or completely false. Since anyone can publish on the internet, you have a mixed bag of good information followed with much more bad information.

The mysticism of internet marketing is created largely by this glut of some good and mostly bad information. It makes the whole topic SEEM like rocket science when, in fact, much of what was true about internet marketing years ago is true today.

Most people think that since search engine marketing changes every five minutes, that ALL internet marketing tactics must have changed as much in the same amount of time. Not true.

The basics, like trading links, article syndication, testimonials, forum signatures, joint ventures, affiliate programs - most work as well today as they did years ago. That is, if you know how to value the work above for what it will truly do for your website traffic.

Funny thing is, no one places much value on the above tactics anymore because there is always some "new" tactic around the corner that claims the death of everything that came before it. And most people blindly follow that advice as if it were true.

Most of the time, this is to the detriment of their internet marketing efforts. The basics are what work all the time and what have always worked on the internet.

You can always experiment with new things, as long as you have not forgotten to do the basics. The basics proven to drive traffic, page rank, link popularity, and branding to your business.

Conservative, relevant reciprocal linking
Article syndication
Participation in your field and among your market (forums)
Blogging
Offline advertising
Non-reciprocal linking tactics
Press releases
...and many other proven methods.

Everything else is just a big experiment until proven to work over time. "Over time" being the operative words. Lots of flash in the pan crack pot schemes work for awhile. But most never stand the test of time.

Links from a widely syndicated article will never fade away, yet I see people chasing down fly-by-night linking pyramid schemes as if they truly believe something like that is a smart thing to base their internet business on!

Tens of thousands have walked away from their dreams, gone back to their depressing, predictable, slave-labor jobs never knowing how close they were to actually succeeding.

Good people have left this business proclaiming it an utter lie that any average person can make it with an internet business and an internet marketing plan.

I guess there is truth in that statement. Average people do in fact quit this business before they ever get started because average people fall for tricks and schemes that above average people avoid on their way to success.

If you have read this far, you are probably in the above average category. Why? Because average people would have taken one look at the list of things I mentioned that are the bread and butter of internet marketing and saw nothing but hard work. And they'd be right!

Above average people don't shy away from work though. I don't know a single soul (and my rolodex has some of the biggest names in internet marketing in it) who got where they are today without a lot of hard work.

You can succeed in internet marketing if you are not afraid to work, and not constantly tempted by those who say you can succeed without it!

Focus on the basics of internet marketing and stay with them as you try new strategies. We all experiment. But successful internet marketers never leave their bread and butter tactics behind unless they cease to be effective.

Jivinder Sabherwal

Profitlance - a real money making opportunity

This article had to be written, there is just no way that it could be left without being committed to paper ( albeit virtual ) as an account of about just how exciting the money making prospects behind the Profitlance course really are.

I subscribed to the course ( I say 'subscribe' - just a one off fee for a lifetimes membership. Unlike the Wealthy Affiliate program which requires you to part with more hard earned cash every month ) about 2 months ago. Having trawled through the internet searching and assessing the pro's and con's discussed on many forums for so many 'get rich quick' schemes, there seemed to be a resounding thumbs up for the Profitlance course and its creator # Michael Andrews.

.....I was not disappointed. Once inside the members area - the wealth of information available to me was - quite honesty - astounding. I set about taking the tutorials one at a time and over the weeks I built up an understanding of exactly how this thing works.

I've already started making money using the processes and lessons I am learning from the course - not a lot just yet - but it is explained quite clearly by Michael that this is not about making a relatively large amount of money quickly ( although I am told it is possible - I am just still working full time and also have a house to renovate so therefore cannot afford to spend even the 2 hours a day suggested ). Instead this is about learning the skills that will mean that you can turn this into a real career opportunity and keep making money ( an even more money ) year after year.

The possibilities are endless.

Once inside the members area you are treated to a simple to understand and use 'web site' - easy to navigate and clearly mapped out for you.

Some of the things you can expect to see are

• At least 10 hours of Video tutorials on over 20 topics and courses
• A projects area where you learn on live projects - given to you in the course
• Use of over 15 Websites, specifically set up for your use - to start making money
• Traffic Generation Tutorials
• Adsense explained
• Keyword analysis and discovery explained
• Sales copy writing tutorials and examples
• SEO Tactics
• Affiliate Marketing - explained and implemented for you
• 25 plus - ebooks collected by Michael and given to you for FREE to complement his teaching
• Website templates to use and edit
• Landing page creator
• Lessons on Blogging
• Lessons on Article Writing

....I could go on but I fear I may have given away perhaps a little too much as it is.

What I am trying to get across here is that this is a real opportunity for me to finally be my own boss and get that big house in the country, with land, working from home - with my family. It's what I've wanted since I was 16 years old....it's my dream....and I just got bogged down in the rat race and I work long hours and put up with so much stress.....making other people wealthy. That can't be fair can it?

This is why - although I know it's going to be hard work to begin with - I will eventually get what I want.

One thing the course teaches is that failure at first will eventually bring it's own successes, it's about keeping on trying and putting in the effort. Let's face it - most of us don't get something for nothing...it just doesn't work that way...unless you're born into it, in which case you wouldn't be reading this now would you?

I nearly didn't go for this - my wife was convinced it was a scam (I had bought into another online business opportunity some years back with was - quite frankly - pathetic ). What's $77.00 these days though - about 35 quid, just about enough for an evening out at the pub! ( I stayed in that week! ).

I've done further investigation on the net and have managed to find a number of free tools to complement the lessons taught on the course ( in addition to those given to you by Michael Andrews ) .Other Profitlance members are also out there ( some easier to spot than others ) and you can see for yourself that they are making this work ( check out Paul Archer's video testimonial on the main site ).

If you are still really not sure after seeing what the course has to offer. Check out what people are saying about it on the forums - visit these guys for an inside track : work-at-home-forum - I have found this to be the most informative and encouraging discussion group on the subject so far.

After reading what they have to say about the real business opportunity behind profitlance� the idea is to make your decision, go with it, and stick with it!

This article written by Rich Richardson - internet entrepreneur, Father and Husband

For more info and to delve more visit my blog : http://profitlancegenuineopportunity.blogspot.com/

I'll keep writing and let you know how I get on in my quest to achieve my dream