Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Internet Marketing Forums

If you are a newbie you may not know that posting on internet marketing forums is a great way to learn about this industry. It is also a nice way to network with other internet marketers.

Forums are places where you can learn free of charge all kinds of stuff that you can pay tons of money for (we all know those expensive e-books that purport to teach us about internet marketing).
I like to spend some time in the morning and in the evening, just catching up with what's going on on the various forums. Posting to forums is also a great way to drive traffic to your site or blog. You probably found this blog through one of the forums.

One bit of advice: Before you go charging in to a forum to try to advertise your product or site, please read the rules of the forum. Most forums do not allow affiliate links. Some allow them in your signature (most, actually). Spend some time posting before you try to sell stuff to people. Otherwise, it's very, very annoying to the old timers and you'll miss out on the biggest benefit of belonging to a forum, which is building relationships with people/potential customers.

Here is a list of some forums that I have found helpful and where I am known to hang out:

The Warrior Forum
The Warrior Forum is probably one of THE best forums out there today. Lots of serious internet marketers hang out there and you can get an entire education from hanging out there!!

Conquer Your Niche
Conquer Your Niche is a revolutionary forum where you actually get credit for posting and reading posts. These credits enable you to display your ads in the forum. The latest rage!

Work at Home
The Work at Home (Whydowork) forum is more of a forum where people who are just starting out go to. It's a place where you can get ideas about how to make money on the internet.

Work From Home Moms
Like its name, this forum is geared more to work at home moms, but anyone can join. The people on the forum are often people with real niche businesses as opposed to internet marketing businesses.

Mike Merz's Newbie Forum
A newbie forum. Lately, the moderators have not been doing their jobs, so there is TONS of spam on the forum. Very annoying, but it has the potential to be a good forum.

Craig Desorcy's I'm4Newbies Forum
This forum is part of Craig's I'm4newbies site. Craig is an American living in Japan who is dedicated to helping newbies. It's still a very small community and therefore it is possible to get some personal attention and help from Craig. Craig is so nice, that when I told him about my blog and asked his opinion, he made me a 10 minute Camtasia video where he critiqued my site. What a guy!!

Joel Comm's Adsense Chat.com
Nice little forum dedicated to discussing all the various Adsense issues. I joined it because I purchased Joel Comm's Instant Adsense Templates. There are people there with alot of site building experience and I always get good advice there.

Clickbank Success Forum
As its name suggests this forum is all about Clickbank. Run by Clickbank expert Harvey Segal. I don't go there often but it is a wealth of valuable information.

Here is Mike Merz's directory of forums. It's not the most updated in the world, so not all of the links work but it'll give you somewhere to start.
Internet Marketing Forums

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Sunday, November 19, 2006

Randy the Hermit's Marketing Beginners

I found a wonderful (free) site which you can sign up to and get tons of valuable information and educational videos. The site belongs to Randy, the Hermit and is called Marketing Beginners. Randy has 10 years of experience online and he is giving you 75 videos on all kinds of internet marketing topics FREE OF CHARGE. You can upgrade your membership and get even more stuff, but even the free membership is unbelievable.

His videos are of great quality. Clear and understandable. And Randy has this great, deep voice which is very easy to listen to (very often videos have lots of pauses and uhms and ahs or are very hard to hear without plugging in earphones). I have to tell you very honestly that this site is one of the absolute best sites I have encountered in a long time.



Editor's note: Check out the BEST beginner's e-book around - Breakthrough Marketing Secrets Revealed. It's inexpensive and loaded with great information for the newbie!


Randy also has a forum on the site where he is happy to answer newbie questions. It's not that often that you find someone who is just "there" for you, the newbie or the intermdiate marketer.

There is also a wealth of information on the site about resources that Randy recommends. You can tell that this guy is on the level. An honest, hardworking internet marketer that is out to really help others and not just make a fast buck. It's obvious that he invested alot of himself in this helpful site.

Needless to say, you can also earn money promoting his site. He even has a free e-book which you can rebrand and make your own.

Check it out!!! Marketing Beginners.

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Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Affiliate Marketing - 6 Reasons to do it!

Affiliate Marketing is one of the most cost effective businesses to run.

What exactly is affiliate marketing? Affiliate marketing is all about selling someone else's products. Basically, you sign up with a vendor as an affiliate and then you drive traffic to the vendor's site. When someone makes a purchase from the vendor you automatically collect your commission. The vendor pays you a percentage of the sale price for bringing the customer to him.

Here are the 6 reasons that it is worthwhile to choose affiliate marketing as your form of home based business.

1. Relatively low cost

It usually costs quite a bit of money to start a home based business. There is always some investment required. An affiliate marketing business does not require a huge investment. Sure, you have to have a computer, connection to the internet and a printer. But that's not like the starting capital you would need for a business based outside your home where you sell physical products.


2. No inventory necessary

With affiliate marketing it is not necessary to have a warehouse full of products which you have to ship to your customers. Usually the vendor takes care of all aspects of product maintenance and supply.


3. Unlimited Income Potential

The sky is really the limit with affiliate marketing. You don't have to show up at the office. You do have to put in the necessary hours to promote your affiliate products and drive traffic to your or the vendor's site. But you decide how much effort you want to invest and you reap the rewards. It's possible to work "smart" instead of "hard".


4. The World is Your Market

When you have your store on real real estate you are limited to the people in your town or city. When you sell products on the internet your market is the whole world! The power of the internet is unbelievable and you can reach anyone who is connected to the world wide web.


5. Low Risk

There is very little risk associated with affiliate marketing, considering that the initial investment is very low. Yes, your time is valuable and you need to invest some money in essential tools to build your business but the risk is still relatively low.

6. No Closing Time

A website is (usually) up 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Your "store" can be making money while you sleep or are on vacation. It's kind of like a vending machine. It's always there even if you are not. People can come in and buy at any time.

These advantages are fairly significant when choosing a home based business.
Sure, there are many other factors to consider, which will determine the degree of success your business will have. But, all things considered, affiliate marketing is a pretty good deal and definitely a worthwhile path to take!!

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Saturday, November 11, 2006

The Death of Internet Marketing

Ok, I want you to download this FREE report on "The Death of Internet Marketing" by Mike Filsaime.
Why?

Well, first of all, because I will get $1 for each person I refer to the report (and you can too!).

Secondly, although I haven't read through the whole report yet, it's really, really interesting and you don't have to buy anything!
Mike Filsaime has been in the Internet Marketing business for a while and is a very, very successful marketer. He is the author of Butterfly Marketing which has affected many in this profession. He has been around the block a few times and has very interesting observations about internet marketing - what's going on and where the whole industry is going. Specifically, he talks about marketing to other internet marketers, as opposed to working in niches. By the way, he's paying money to give away this report in order to build his opt in list (like what Scott Boulch did with his "Death of Adsense" reports)

So, what are you waiting for? It's free! The Death of Internet Marketing.

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Thursday, November 09, 2006

Tutorials for PC and Internet Use

As you may know by now, I am always looking out for good tools for newbies.
There is so much to learn! Internet marketing is such a complex and sophisticated world (no matter what anyone says).
Then, there is the whole topic of learning how to deal with your own computer and gaining the skills necessary to run a business online. I know that these skills are a major challenge for me!

Well, I found a great tool to help a newbie learn the ropes in no time (well, in some time...).
PC & Internet Companion is the name of the course you can buy from the Newbie Club. It is a Mega library of 43 chapters and over 800 tips and tutorials. It's written in Plain and Readable English and will help any newbie understand all the gobbledygook associated with computers and internet.

Here's what it contains ...

6 Volumes,

43 Chapters,

32 Topics,

123 Charts, Images, and Screen Captures. And a

MASSIVE 849 Tips, Tutorials, and additional Resources.


It's specifically designed to be used as ...

A comprehensive in-depth course,

OR;

An occasional learning center to be dipped into as time
permits,

OR;

The ultimate reference library to refer to whenever you come
across a PC or Internet problem you don't understand.

That's why it's called Companion, because you can have it
sat on your PC desktop, ready at all times just to delve
into as and when you wish.

Check it out. PC & Internet Companion by the Newbie Club.

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Wednesday, November 08, 2006

ListLotto - Play to win at the Double Opt In

ListLotto -

Building my list is at the top of my "to do" list these days.
I found what looks like a good tool. It's especially interesting because it's new and there is a chance to get in very high up, meaning you won't get mailings from a huge upline.

Lets look at what ListLotto is:

Its a Downline List Building web site that lets you email the list you build every 5 days.
There are many other sites like this on the market, such as ListDotCom, YourLuckyList and many others.

Each of these sites allow you to build a list, then mail out to that list every few days or so. The incentive is you can grow your list by sharing information about the main site, which in turn attracts new visitors and then means you build a list of your own.

Provided you build the relationship correctly with these people, you can then start to pull them across to your main sites and market to them from there.

In general, these downline list builders will also let you upgrade to a paid membership which gives you more access to mail more people on the site itself.

This is great in the early days of these sites launch as everyone reads the mail from them and you can get a great response.

Where ListLotto has set itself apart from the current trend of list building web sites, is it gives you the potential to email to the entire house list, no matter how big by winning the weekly free draw, hence the name List Lotto!

The cool part is, for every person you refer, you can gain a further entry into the weekly draw, thus making it Viral... Invite more people, the more chances you will have to win the weekly draw.

Now with the appeal this has, it means that thousands of people will be marketing this site with all the great tools included, even Blog Posts :)

The more people promoting, means the BIGGER the list will be on the site... Imagine for one moment the potenial to mail to hundreds, thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people? Wouldn't that be simply AWESOME...

Well now you can...

ListLotto is the ultimate list builder online and its free to get started... You could win the weekly draw and be sending your information to thousands of interested people.. now that sounds like a list I would want to send to..

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Monday, November 06, 2006

Reseller Rights - caveat emptor (buyer beware)

I wanted to mention something that you have to be really careful about.

If you sign up to different mailing lists like I have (usually in order to get freebies), you tend to hear from the mailing list owner on a daily basis. I get many, many mails with all kinds of offers.

This week I got a whopper freebie offer. There were about 9 pages loaded with all kinds of free stuff. That same day, I received offers from other people with only one or two of the products that I had already seen in the freebie offer. Except that people with reseller rights were now offering me the products for a much higher price tag.

Another thing that happened was that I received an offer for a product for $5 or $7 and that same day I got the same offer from someone else for (I think) $27. Wild, huh?
Just goes to show you that you really have to be careful before whipping out the credit card!!! it's like the wild west out there in internetland....

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Thursday, November 02, 2006

Free Video Tutorials for Learning the Basics

Today I want to give you a nice link that will enable you to get lots of video tutorials for FREE. There are videos on all kinds of topic like:

How to Find Your Niche
How to Create a Minisite in 30 Minutes or Less
29 Easy and Instant Web Design Tricks
How to Master Web Graphics in 10 Easy Steps
Audio Mastery
Boost Your Web Traffic
10 Easy Steps to a Google Friendly Page
How to Set Up a Secure Members Area for Free
7 Fast Ways to Get Great Links to Your Website
How to add Automatically Updated Content to Your Website for Free
Secretly Spy on Your Internet Competition
How to Build Huge Niche Keyword Lists
How to Create Profit Pulling Toolbars for Free
Joe Cooper's Niche Profits Audio Course
Mike Filsaime's Outsource Secrets Course
5 Easy Ways to Maximize Your Adsense Commissions
Instant Blog Traffic
How to Get alot More Google Traffic for Free
Affiliate Windfall Secrets
Email Promotions Exposed
and more....

There are also some free software products like Promobuddy, a piece of software which enables you to manage and keep track of your marketing activity - affiliates, passwords, articles, ads, keyword lists, ezines etc. I use this software and find it very helpful.

Obviously, I haven't had a chance to watch all the videos. I did watch one, by Dave Isaacs about finding your niche. It had good information, although, I must admit that he is not the most dynamic speaker to listen to (and his Aussie accent is very strong). But, hey, free is free and the content is what counts!! There is a wealth of information here for which you do not have to pay. There is a "backend" offer, which you may decide to purchase, but you don't have to!! Just join the site and start to watch the videos.

It is one of the more useful membership sites and it's run by Dave Isaacs and Aaron Leighton.