To download your complimentary ebook "101 SuperTips" please go here: http://www.supertips.com/sales.php?offer=bekat1&pid=14 Perks of the Trade Volume 1 Issue 9 December, 2004 This is a by-subscription only newsletter. Your information will never be shared, rented, or sold. Unsubscribe information may be found at the bottom of this page. =========================================================== Contents =========================================================== Quote Of The Month: Victor Kiam Editorial: Glenn Beach Feature Article: Affiliate Business Part 1: How to Find an Affiliate Program and Get a Website by Glenn Beach Additional Articles: Affiliate Business Part 2: Money Management and Targeted Traffic by Glenn Beach Humor Guest Article: Amazing Secrets Of A Free Traffic Generation MASTER by Willie Crawford Internet Marketing News: How to Deter Click Fraud Tips Q & A Advertisements General & Unsubscribe Info =========================================================== Quote of the Month =========================================================== Entrepreneurs are risk-takers, willing to roll the dice with their money or reputation on the line in support of an idea or enterprise. They willingly assume responsibility for the success or failure of a venture and are answerable for all its facets. The buck not only stops at their desks, it starts their too. --- Victor Kiam =========================================================== Editorial =========================================================== A recent survey of over 300 internet entrepreneurs asked the question "what does your online business need the most?" These are the 5 most common responses: 1. Traffic (how to get more) 2. Money (no resources) 3. Trust (so much rubbish) 4. Time (not enough to go around) 5. Strategy (the plan) I'm going to tackle all of these needs in the next few issues of Perks of the Trade. As always, I'll be joined by guest authors, and together we'll be offering you the "cream o' the crop" of business strategies. My goal? To help you do what I am doing for myself right now, which is developing goals, strategies and action plans for the coming year. I want you to join me in completing a workshop of sorts, so that when we're finished we'll have a plan on paper that we can look at over the coming year. Your plan may look different from mine because your passions are different, and you may decide to place your emphasis on building traffic and trust, while mine may be on time and money. This is going to be fun, and I'd love to hear from you, see how it works for you. As most of you may already know, there are 3 main ways to make money in sales, whether it's online or offline: sell your own product, sell someone else's product, and buy the exclusive resale rights to someone else's product. We'll be talking mostly about affiliate marketing, and that means selling someone else's product for a commission, and at the same time selling the opportunity and building a downline. We'll get past the "I can't sell" and the "how do I get someone to sign up?" M~L~M blues. We'll talk website, promotion, marketing, planning (yes that means turning your goals into how-to's and to-do's), and reputation. When we're through, you'll be working efficiently, enthusiastically and profitably in the coming year. So get comfortable, pour yourself a cup of coffee, and let's roll... Glenn Beach . =========================================================== Feature Article: Affiliate Business Part 1: How to Find an Affiliate Program and Get a Website by Glenn Beach =========================================================== I'm going to give you a step-by-step plan for the next month, and I will be focusing on those of you already involved with affiliate marketing. But just in case there are a few of you not yet actively working in the field, here's some tips for getting started. Part One: Finding an affiliate program and getting a website. Step 1: Making your list, checking it twice: so many programs, so little time. Goal: By the end of this step you will have a list of possible affiliate programs to join, and a list of content sites for content ideas. First, find your passion--here's a list to get your mind working: airplanes aerobics/exercise boats bicycles cars children crafts organic gardening natural products (biodegradable cleaners, organic cotton products, organic food etc.) pets do-it-yourself movies tv music sports theater novels/magazines home business wine beer cheese chocolate coffee Take your passionate ideas and run them through the Overture keyword search tool: http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ to find the "hot" keywords, the ones that have been searched the most in the last month. Then do a search on your keywords at several of the engines - Google, AltaVista, Overture, MSN, AOL or any of the others. Have a quick look at the first ten or twenty listings. If you use SiteBuildIt!(more about that later), the Manager will automatically show you ten related sites for each keyword. You will find two different kinds of websites in your search, merchant and content. Remember when you are looking at these 10-20 listings that what you are looking for is affiliate programs selling the products you want to offer. Look at the merchants' sites and see if they have a product you'd like to offer your visitors and if they have an affiliate program. If so, they go on your keep-in-mind merchant list for that keyword. Next check out the content sites. Maybe you'll find ideas for content, but you're mainly there to see if they link to merchants. If so, visit those merchant sites as you did above. If you still don't have a list of 10 merchant sites, you can try any or all of these options: 1. Do another search for your keywords plus the word "affiliate". For example, if your passion is gourmet cheese, then type in gourmet cheese affiliate or affiliate gourmet cheese. You will find merchants with affiliate programs or content sites that are affiliates. Again, for the merchants, you'll see if you like their product and affiliate program. For the content sites, you'll check their links. End of Step 1: you have content ideas and merchant sites organized by keyword. Step 2: Check affiliate directories and networks. Goal: Choose your affilate program(s) You will check your list of merchant sites/affiliate programs against some directories and merchant sites, looking for reviews and recommendations. Here's some places to try: AssociatePrograms.com, Refer-It.com, CashPile.com and Associate-It.com. Commission Junction, BeFree, LinkShare, and/or ClickTrade And there are others; do some searches (Google, AOL, MSN etc.) if necessary until you are satisfied you have made good choices. Then sign up. End of Step 2: Success! You have your affiliate program or list of programs and you've signed up. Step 3: Establish a web presence I'll assume you want your own website. There are no-cost ways to do it, and there are systems you can buy into. No-fee websites: http://www.finitesite.com No-charge hosting without any ads; but you have to build your own website. Bravenet: http://www.bravenet.com Geocities: http://geocities.yahoo.com/ Website systems: SiteBuildIt http://quicktour.sitesell.com/marketing101131.html SFI: http://www.work-at-home-business-opportunity-canada.com; ask about Work at Home Team website options PlugInProfit: http://www.pluginprofitsite.com/main-5000 Beginning html/website help http://newbieclub.com/ http://www.pagetutor.com/ http://www.htmlgoodies.com/nontechintro/ Alrighty now, you're up to speed and kickin'...you're ready for Part 2: Traffic and Money =========================================================== Additional Article: Affiliate Business Part 2: Money Management and Targeted Traffic by Glenn Beach =========================================================== I'm going to give you a step-by-step plan for the next month. Part 1 got you into an affiliate program and gave you a web presence. Now on to Part 2, finding money, creating a monthly budget and getting some targeted traffic to your website. Step One: Finding some money, the first step in creating a budget. Goal: Finding a minimum of $50/month to invest in your business, and creating a budget. It's time to search your monthly expenses, search your soul, for any way you can cut back on your current expenses and put $50 or more aside for business investments. A carton of cigarettes in Ontario costs $31.50, $51.40 in Michigan and $48.46 in New York State. ( http://temagami.carleton.ca/jmc/cnews/04022000/n1.htm) (No, smuggling isn't a good choice for a home business...) A large Domino's pepperoni pizza with extra cheese $15 ( http://www.themenupage.com/dominosm.html) Blockbuster's movie rental $3.99 ( http://www.blockbuster.ca/promotions.aspx) Starbuck's double cappuccino $3.75 ( http://starbucksgossip.typepad.com/_/2004/09/for_your_375_do .html) You see where I'm going here. Maybe you can set aside $12.50/week from your paycheck, or maybe you can whittle that much off of your "luxury items" allowance. Maybe a little of each. That's what I mean by finding money. Sure, you can look in all your pockets and under the armchair cushions, but that usually only works once. We're talking monthly investment here. Once you have "found" your money, you have to decide how to spend it. Having chosen your affiliate programs, you will need to pay any charges within those programs. You can expect to start and continue in any program for free, but within the program's training you will find recommendations for wise investments. Follow the recommendations of your sponsor or teammates, when possible. But also educate yourself about the possibilities. Here are some things I would consider: 1. Buying leads. Empowerism: http://www.empowerism.com/e/89270/ Membership in this program includes 50 leads per month, an autoresponder pre-loaded with an email marketing course, marketing tools and much more. Lead Factory: http://leadfactory.com/leads/ PushButton Leads: http://www.pushbuttonleads.com/index.php?aff=connections2 2. Pay-per-click advertising Google Adwords: https://adwords.google.com/select/ FindWhat: http://www.findwhat.com Overture: http://www.content.overture.com/d/ Top 10 PPC Search Engines: http://www.payperclicksearchengines.com/ 3. Classified ads (on high-traffic websites, in ezines, as well as offline) 4. Program upgrades: Some people prefer to wait until they start earning money in a program or gaining affiliates under them before they upgrade. Trust your instincts on this one. End of Step 1: You've freed up some investment cash and decided where to spend it each month. Step 2: Getting traffic to your website can also be free: 1. Reciprocal linking: Reciprocal links information: http://www.linking101.com/ 2. Article writing: http://www.akamarketing.com/writing-articles-for-ezines.html http://www.web-source.net/write.htm 3. Free classifieds: to find the ad sites that will truly attract prospective customers, conduct a search as if you were that customer. If you use the search engines and type in "classified ad sites" you will find a lot of ad sites. But is that what the people you are trying to reach do? No! They search for a phrase like "work at home, or "home based business" or "home business selling gourmet cheeses". So if you place ads on classified ad sites you have found searching for "classified ad sites" your ads will be on pages your targeted visitors never find. Put yourself in the shoes of someone who's looking for a work at home opportunity. How would they go about searching for this on the net? Think of the phrases they might type in their favorite search engine search box. Now type one of those phrases in the search box of the major search engines and research the sites that shows up in the results. Then try those phrases with different search engines (Yahoo, MSN, Google, Lycos, etc.). Go to every site that comes up in the 1st 20 matches (anything lower than 20 is not worth your time). Take notes or print out the 1st 20 results, especially the Yahoo and Google results. Decide which of the 3 advertising tactics above will work on that site--posting an article, reciprocal linking, and/or posting an ad. 4. Traffic exchanges The key here is to find the exchanges that will deliver targeted leads. This means they must allow you to choose surfing categories. Here are a few I have found: Bullseye Traffic: http://bullseye-traffic.com/ Traffic Swarm: http://www.trafficswarm.com/go.cgi?255528 NoMoreHits: http://www.nomorehits.com/cgi-bin/start.cgi?referrer=bekat AllFreshClicks: http://www.AllFreshClicks.com/cgi-bin/ref.cgi?r=bekat End of Step 2: You are using each of the four free advertising tactics: reciprocal linking, article writing, free classifieds, and traffic exchanges. You may email me for a copy of my list of article directories; I currently have over 100 on my list. :) =========================================================== Humor =========================================================== Headlines are important. They advertise and market the following information. Sometimes, it goes horribly wrong... 1. Something Went Wrong in Jet Crash, Expert Says 2. Police Begin Campaign to Run Down Jaywalkers 3. Drunk Gets Nine Months in Violin Case 4. Survivor of Siamese Twins Joins Parents 5. Iraqi Head Seeks Arms 6. Prostitutes Appeal to Pope 7. Panda Mating Fails; Veterinarian Takes Over 8. Miners Refuse to Work after Death 9. Killer Sentenced to Die for Second Time in 10 Years 10. War Dims Hope for Peace =========================================================== Guest Article: Amazing Secrets Of A Free Traffic Generation MASTER by Willie Crawford =========================================================== Without traffic to your website, you're not going to make any money in your online business (unless you're able to tap into someone else's traffic). For many websites... especially new sites, one of the fastest, surest ways to drive traffic to the site is pay per click search engines. The RISK in using pay per clicks is that you don't know how well that traffic is going to convert before you've paid for it. You can adjust your webpages and your pay per click listing fairly quickly, but today I want to share with you two of my MAJOR free traffic generation methods. The most powerful weapon I've used in my marketing arsenal lately is actually... blogging. A blog is simply an on-line diary or weblog. Since they are usually updated frequently, the search engines love them and visit them often. The way that I use my blogs is that when I make a post, I include a link to a site or webpage that I want spidered by the search engines. Google actually visits my blogs daily, and takes snapshots of everything there, and follows links from the pages, and takes snapshots of those pages! So, I make minor changes to pages that I want to get ranked higher, and then I "help" Google to find those updated pages. It's a simple, ethical, and very powerful method. I'm fairly new at blogging, but I'm quickly getting the hang of it. Most of what I know about blogging I learned from a course by my friend Paul Short. The course is called RSS Exposed. I recommend you get a copy of Paul's course today and set aside 2 hours to digest it. Get it at: http://www.profitautomation.com/app/adtrack.asp?AdID=109478 Paul is like me... he's very busy, and doesn't have time for fluff. So his course is under 100 pages, and it's all "stuff" that you can read and then immediately implement. Does this stuff work thought. My friend Stephen Pierce taught me that NOTHING is more powerful than concrete PROOF. So let's look at how I rank for a few keywords that I'm focusing on right now. I'll show you with a few of the more than 100 niches that I have top 10.... often top 3 rankings for. I know that showing you these examples may attract the attention of potential and existing competitors, so I won't show you the most lucrative ones :-) Readers who know me, know that my real online success started with a simple soul food or southern cookbook! That one cookbook still generates a very nice six-figure income! This season of the year, I know that people are on-line searching for holiday recipes and also gift-giving ideas. My logs show me how my market finds me... keywords and sources. They show that for the cookbook, most find my site through Google, with MSN being a distant second. Here's how I ranked for a few cooking related terms (as of November 21st, 2004): Soul Food Recipes - #2 out of 1,220,000 Soul Food - #3 out of 8,840,000 Soul Food Cookbook - #2 out of 273,000 Deep Fried Turkey Recipe - #3 out of 257,000 Deep Fried Turkey Recipes - #4 out of 302,000 Sweet Potato Pie - #2 out of 614,000 Sweet Potato Pie Recipe #2 out of 394,000 Fried Chicken Recipe - #2 out of 861,000 Fried Chicken Recipes - #2 out of 1,160,000 Southern Fried Chicken - #2 out of 436,000 Deep Fried Turkey - #14 out of 330,000 Pound Cake Recipe - #2 out of 547,000 Macaroni And Cheese Recipe - #1 out of 207,000 Collard Green Recipe - #4 out of 21,200 Southern Recipes - # 15 out of 4,970,000 ... I guess I need to work on that last listing :-) One of my other markets is "Internet Marketing," and those looking to start or improve upon an online or home-based business. How do I rank there? Here are a few of the thousands of terms that bring me in free search engine traffic (again based upon my website logs): Internet Marketing 101 - # 1 out of 5,550,000 Internet Marketing Course - #2 out of 10,600,000 Free Internet Marketing Course - #2 out of 11,800,000 Free Internet Marketing Lessons - #2 out of 2,810,000 Homebased Business - #9 out of 1,930,000 Homebased Business Course - #1 out of 522,000 Free Homebased Business Course - #1 out of 483,000 For those of you without your own product, let's see how I do with products I have reprint rights to. One is a web copywriting course by Bob Serling called Power Copywriting For The Internet. When someone is searching for that course they search on very specific terms... but... since their search is so specific, a higher percentage of them will buy when they get to my website. This is a more niche market, but some of my rankings are: Internet Copywriter + Bob Serling - #1 out of 985 Web Copywriting + Bob Serling - # 7 out of 918 Web Copywriting Course + Bob Serling - #5 out of 16,400 Power Copywriting For The Internet - #2 out of 128,000 Another product that I have reprint rights to is an excellent course on how to increase your website, and advertising, conversion rates. It's called, "Small Changes - Big Profits." Here's my ranking on keywords customers have recently used to find (and buy) this product: Increase Website Conversion - #6 out of 2,480,000 How to Increase Website Conversion - # 6 our of 2,490,000 Note that when you enter that last phrases, Google tells you that "how to" is a very common phrase and therefore not included in the search. However, notice that Google found an additional 10,000 pages when I gave it that expression. Ok, so I'm confused too :-) My second most powerful weapon right now is that I write lots of ezine articles... like this one. Since 1998, I would estimate that I've written over 300. Those articles are a very powerful way of getting one-way links to my site. Those articles are a powerful way for people with specific problems or interest to find my sites. Here's a simple example of how powerful articles can be. I know for a fact that the majority of people in network marketing aren't doing that great. I also know why. The proof that I know what they are doing wrong, and how to correct it, is provided by the fact that I was recently the #2 producing representative in a major network marketing company for 2 consecutive months. The only reason I wasn't #2 longer is that I've only been with the company a little over 4 month, and that in my fourth month, I was the #1 top producing rep in the entire company! Recognizing what many network marketers are doing wrong... especially those that market over the internet, I wrote an article on the topic. This article targeted those who wanted to know why their network marketing is failing. So if you go to Google and enter... "Network Marketing Failing" without the quotation marks, you'll see that the returns for webpages featuring my article take up the entire first page. If a person were to type in the statement "My Network Marketing Is Failing" my page ranks #1 out of 312,000. Do people search on these terms? Not as many as search on more competitive terms, but why not go after easier terms... why not go after "the low-hanging fruit." People do visit my sites after reading the hundreds of articles that I've written, and they do make purchases and join my network marketing team. That's proof that writing and properly using articles is a very powerful traffic generation technique. I have lots of resources on how to properly do this inside my private membership site. If you're not a member, you should join today. Inside the site you'll find lots more solid, usable information like you just gotten in this article. I've just shared with you two of my most powerful free traffic generation methods. I actually know HUNDREDS but only use a handful. I believe that it's better to get really good at using a few rather than tinkering with (but never mastering) many. You need to do your research and find the techniques that work best for you. If you'd like a really comprehensive course on website traffic and sales generation methods, I recommend John Reese's Traffic Secrets Course. Check out John's course to learn a ton of ways to outflank your competition at: http://www.profitautomation.com/app/adtrack.asp?AdID=110203 It's 14 DVD's, so realize that it will throw a LOT of information at you. Make sure that you pick just a few techniques he covers, and then put them into immediate action rather than letting the sheer volume of information overwhelm you. As I've demonstrated, being a master at generating free, responsive traffic doesn't have to be complicated or even difficult :-) Copyright 2004 by Willie Crawford Willie Crawford is a corporate president, published author, seminar speaker and host, tele-seminar speaker and host, retired military officer, karate black belt, master network marketing trainer, and lifetime student of marketing. He shows people how to actually generate substantial income on-line using very simple, easily modeled systems. An example of such a system that you can study and duplicate is at: http://ProfitMagician.com =========================================================== Internet Marketing News =========================================================== http://www.dmnews.com/cgi-bin/artprevbot.cgi?article_id= 31149 Google Files Click Fraud Suit Nov. 30, 2004 Google filed its first fraud lawsuit against a Web publisher in its AdSense program, accusing Texas Web site operators of clicking their own ads to generate revenue at the expense of marketers. More... =========================================================== Tips =========================================================== http://www.webadvantage.net/tip.cfm Click Fraud and How to Deter It - November 18, 2004 Pay per click (PPC) advertising continues to gain popularity in the online marketing world as an effective and inexpensive way to drive targeted visitors to web sites. Research firm eMarketer reported that between 2002 and 2003 the paid search listing market grew 175 percent. Major trusted search properties such as Google, Overture, FindWhat.com, and Kanoodle, all offer PPC campaigns in which you pay only when someone clicks through your banner ad or link. But PPC also has an enemy--click fraud--and understanding what it is and what to do about it should also be a key part of your PPC campaign....cont'd. =========================================================== Q & A =========================================================== Q. How do I write a good pay-per-click ad? A. Let your customers show you what works! When it comes to ad copy: test, test, and test some more. The Google AdWords program is especially helpful in this process. You can run multiple ad listings for the same keyword and Google will rotate the ads. Monitor your results closely for 30 days. Delete the worst-performing ads (refine your ad listings by leads/sales, not click through rate, if you have this type of performance tracking in place). Q. Why should I promote my website with Search Engine marketing? A. Search engine marketing is vital. Next to E-mail, using Search Engines is the second most performed activity on the Internet, followed by researching products, places and services. If your website can't be found on the major Search Engines then you'll be missing a significant amount of potential website traffic. =========================================================== Classified Ads =========================================================== Netterweb.com Article Database There are thousands of internet and email newsletters out there, and they need articles to fill themselves with. Submit an article to this database where ezine editors may find it and use for their ezine. They will give you free advertising in their newsletter as a thank you! http://www.netterweb.com/articles/ =========================================================== General & Unsubscribe Info =========================================================== Perks of the Trade © Copyright 2004 Glenn Beach, except where indicated otherwise. All rights reserved worldwide. Reprint only with permission from copyright holder(s). All trademarks are property of their respective owners. All contents provided as is. No express or implied income claims made herein. Your business success is dependent on many factors, including your own abilities. Advertisers are solely responsible for ad content. To contact us with feedback, questions or praise, email mailto:begle@work-at-home-business-opportunity-canada.com To subscribe, please email with "subscribe" in the subject mailto:begle@work-at-home-business-opportunity-canada.com To unsubscribe, please email with "unsubscribe" in the subject mailto:begle@work-at-home-business-opportunity-canada.com Please feel free to share this newsletter in its entirety including the link to our website: http://www.work-at-home-business-opportunity-canada.com Back issues available upon request. I bet you can guess the email address... =========================================================== Sincerely, Glenn Beach SFI Sponsor Perks of the Trade is an opt-in ezine available by subscription only. We neither use nor endorse the use of spam. Thank you!