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Easy Web Design Software For Home Businesses

2008-04-02T02:13:00.000-07:00

Designing your own website from scratch that you're proud of is not as hard as you may think. Especially nowadays, because there is software available that takes on much of the work that used to be relegated to the webmaster (which is you!).

In days past, in order to build a website from scratch, you had to know HTML, or "Hyper Text Markup Language." And really, you are still better off knowing at least the basics of HTML. Nevertheless, it's not required. Especially if you find easy web design software that does most of the work takes care of this for you. Now, every single HTML editor on the planet now features a "WYSIWYG" interface. (What You See Is What You Get.) So, in theory, you shouldn't have to know the first thing about hand-coding a website.

The reality is, however, not all HTML editors (or "web design software") does WYSIWYG well. Little annoying problems tend to crop up. For example, say you typed the following sentence using your site builder:

"Discover the best places to SCUBA dive in the Cayman Islands." Say you want "best places" to be italicized and "Cayman Islands" to be bolded. Here's what's supposed to happen:

In the background, your HTML editor is supposed to 'type' the phrase as such: Discover the best places to SCUBA dive in the Cayman Islands. (I put extra spaces between the tags for this example, in order to keep the article publishing software from parsing it like normal HTML.)

But instead, this is what you get: "Discover the best places to SCUBA dive in the Cayman Islands." Even though you selected the words "best places" and clicked the little graphical icon on your html editor's toolbar that represented italics, your phrase comes out non-italicized. And your bolded words are not bolded.

Well, in this instance, you'd have to go to the "Source View" of your HTML editor and manually insert the above HTML tags to make these things happen. This is a very annoying problem with too many popular web design software titles nowadays.

Another problem that will frustrate the heck out of you, is seeing a totally different result in the web browser than you see in your desktop. For example, your formatting changes are (apparently) taking effect as you type--just as it should (remember it's touted as being WYSIWYG)...

However, they don't show up when you publish the page to the internet! I don't know why, but this problem still plagues most web design software to this day.

Fortunately, there are a few (very few) good software titles that work for cheap, while doing all the other things to make your site stand out and (if you're so inclined) draw visitors by the hundreds.

Charles Brown

Ten Ways to Piss Off You Readers, Kill Your Blog, and Get Banned From the Internet!

2008-04-01T02:01:00.000-07:00

Everywhere I look there is blogging advice on how to increase your traffic, pagerank, and readership on the net. Theres syndication, RSS feeds, and any type of social topic you would ever need. However, nobody tells you how to stop the traffic, alienate your fan base; so I thought I should try.

1. Active in blogging? Why not put as many popups on your page as humanly possible? Make it as difficult as possible for a reader to navigate away from your page and ensure that he will never come back! If you are not comfortable with popups, AdSense ads after every post and every type of widget that you can find will do the trick.

2. Too many comments? Turn them off, dont respond when they are posted, and return fire with fire. People like to feel engaged when they read your content. Dont let em!

3. Got an RSS feed? Get rid of it, or better yet, find a blog that you absolutely hate and offer it as the feed through your site. It all looks like XML code until you plug it into a reader anyway. Your readers wont know what hit them.

4. You have a bookmarking widget; Digg, del.icio.us, News Vine, Reddit? Arent there equivalent bookmarking tools for adult sites? Couldnt you use the same graphic and just replace the hyperlink? Hmmm, if you want to get some hate mail, this may be the way to do it. When responding to the hate mail, please refer to item 2 above.

5. Member of MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, Xanga, LinkedIn, MyBloglog and other networks that syndicate your content? This ones easy, dont complete your profile, syndicate content that is not yours, be un-genuine, and do not respond to comments. We keep going back to step 2 for some reason.

6. Overload your readers with useless bookmarks. Stop writing content and go hog wild with your Sumble Upon and del.icio.us bookmarking Wordpress widgets. Nobody likes going to a blog that has nothing other than a collection of non-related bookmarks. No content, just bookmarks; nothing slows down traffic like a great link farm.

7. DUMP THE TAGS!!!! Nobody will read your blog if nobody can find it. If you have a search term that inadvertently shows up under a Google search, repeat it in the text as many times as possible. A black-hat trick or two will also work to get you banned from Google.

8. All text and no pictures makes for a very boring and unpleasant blog. Pictures are worth a thousand words, and people love to look at and share video. Why do you think YouTube sold for a billion dollars? If you dont want traffic, do not use flickr, youtube, or other multi-media sharing service.

9. Whatever you do, do not reference blog posts that you had writer earlier. This would entice readers to go further into your blog and spend more time there. Why would you want that?

10. This one I had to think long and hard about. How do you get blacklisted from as many sites as possible, kicked off search engines and banned from the internet? One word.SPAM!!!

TAGS: spam, banned, rss, ugly, kicked off, no readers, bad blog, bookmark widgets, digg, anti-comments, popups, tricks, reference, readers, ugly blog, mybloglog, wordpress, blogger, stumble upon

Barrett Niehus and 4MySales.com explore helping real estate agents and small business professionals market their business and grow their income. Join the real estate and marketing discussion at http://realtorleads.blogspot.com or explore investing in real estate at http://www.4mysales.com

Publish Your Own eZine Without A Website

2008-03-29T22:04:00.000-07:00

Publishing an ezine just got easier with the invention of blogs. Now ezine publishers can easily post past issues of the ezine on a blog and do not have to maintain a website for that purpose.

Publishing an eZine without a website is certainly possible since you really only need to be able to send your newsletter to your readers using email. However, most publishers like to post the past issues of the newsletters and this is usually done on a website. Also, in text email you cannot embed AdSense ads and other revenue generating items. In the HTML format of the website you are able to do this to develop some potential for revenue.

Also, the website gives you a location where you can post a form for new subscribers to complete for entry into your database. Having a web site is definitely an advantage in publishing an eZine, but it is not absolutely necessary.

A new concept that has recently developed is to use a blog to post past issues of the newsletters so people can read them in HTML format.

Lets discuss a blog and blogging. Blog is short for web log. It is an online journal or newsletter that is published by someone on the Internet for public reading.

The largest blog site on the Internet is www.blogger.com. This site started in 1999 and was purchased by Google in 2002. The site on the Internet that keeps statistics on the traffic for every site on the Internet is called www.alexa.com. www.blogger.com always ranked very high on Alexa since it is so popular and has so much traffic.

Traffic to your site is the major factor for the success or failure of your site. Your sites position on Google or Yahoo search engines for your key words will make or break you. Having your newsletter on Blogger helps since the Google spiders check the blogs quickly when new information is posted. This will give you much quicker exposure to the search engines than posting your newsletters to your own website.

Boomer eZine made a decision to continue to post copies of the newsletter on both the Boomer eZine web site and also on the Boomer eZine blog on http://boomer-ezine.blogspot.com.

There are some great advantages of using a blog for the archives of your eZine.

1. It is free.
2. You do not have to worry about setting up a website.
3. Publishing on a blog is very quick and easy.
4. You can include AdSense or affiliate advertising on your blog to generate revenue.
5. Setting up AdSense ads on Blogger is much easier than setting them up on your own website.
6. Readers can leave comments about your issues and interact with you.
7. Search engines see your new content faster than on your own website.

Since AdSense is such an important part of this program, I recommend that you join it first and then set up your blog.

AdSense is a Google program that you set up on your web pages. It reads the content of the page and automatically places ads on the page that match the pages theme or content. When a reader clicks on an AdSense ad on your page and makes a purchase, you receive a commission on the sale. All you have to do is allow the AdSense program on your pages and Google does the rest. It is an ingenious system and one that has revolutionized advertising on the Internet. If you are not already a member of AdSense, you can join it at https://www.google.com/adsense.

Once you have set up your account, go to www.blogger.com and follow the three easy steps on the page. Once you open an account, you will name your blog, and then choose a template. There are several templates to choose from which is the hardest part of the set up. Dont get too concerned about the template since you can change it whenever you want to.

Now you can set up the blog for your eZine. (You can have multiple blogs in your account). However, I would recommend that you create a blog about your thoughts and experiences while you are planning your eZine launch and make daily entries in that blog. This will give you experience on how to maintain a blog. I think you will have fun doing it. Just remember that the world sees your information in the blog so dont give away any confidential information about your new eZine.

Good luck with your newsletter and your blog.

John V. W. Howe is an entrepreneur, author, inventor, patent holder, husband, father, and grandfather. He has been involved in entrepreneurial activities for over 40 years.

Work At Home Dads: Are You Getting Rich?

2008-03-28T21:24:00.000-07:00

The Chances are that if you are reading this article, you are not quite there yet, but would like to be. The good news is that you can make a substantial income working from home.

Here is a list of tips that can help you find true wealth working from home.

Never forget that part of finding true wealth is to be found in the not so simple act of taking care of your children. Think of your children as your little dividends.

Then you must budget and schedule your time so that you allow for the effort you need to put in on your work at home business separate and apart from taking care of your children.

You need to develop the proper mindset that convinces you that you can be a success working from home. Dont forget to remind yourself that you are entitled to be rich.

You should allow your good instincts to come into play when checking out various work from home opportunities. It wont hurt to have a little faith in Gods hand in making this whole thing happen.

Dont forget to check out any project you are interested in for positive or negative feedback on google. Its good to trust your instincts and have faith, but you also need to do some research.

Dont invest in any online business that requires you to make a large upfront investment. You are investing your time and effort. That should be enough. People need to want you for who you are and what you can achieve.

Spend some time with your mate going over what you plan to do so that you are both on the same track. You will need all the support you can get. Also discuss your plans with close friends and relatives to get their opinion and enlist their support. Thats right, get out there and network by e-mail and on the phone.

Be sure you have adequate savings to handle the first three to six months while you are getting your work at home business to be profitable enough to provide you with a good income.

Dont be afraid to look at new situations if all you are risking is your time and effort, but be careful not to waste your time on fly by night scams that promise you the moon.

This list could go on and on, and it is up to you to summarize what is important to you and focus on your goal of becoming successful working at home. If you really need it and you want it, you can find a way to get rich working at home on the Internet. You can do it.

© Copyright Arthur Levine 2007

Arthur Levine is a freelance writer who specializes in work at home opportunities. To read more of his articles and suggestions go to http://www.youcan-workathome.com or to discover an opportunity that can show you how to earn real money at home absolutely free go to http://www.mypowermall.com/Biz/Home/12357

The Closely-Held SECRETS of Blogging Gurus Who Earn Five-Figure Monthly

2008-03-27T20:43:00.000-07:00

It has never failed to amaze me that the big gurus continue to flash their Adsense and Affiliate income checks in our faces, yet never really reveal exactly what and how they earn these fat checks... even in their highly priced information products and courses.

They mostly always just scratch the surface; enough to wet our appetites but hardly enough to get us earning as much as they do.

What are those secrets they are holding close to their hearts, I wondered. Now I know.

I started blogging mainly because of the big promises of money to be made therein, especially the fact that Search Engines love blogs because of the fresh content and reader friendliness of blogs.

But after setting up a few blogs and practically killing myself with work to get them to earn me the fat checks the gurus told me about, I still wasn't getting the fat checks.

I read and read many of the blogging materials out there but still couldn't get my few blogs to earn the five figure monthly income that the big guru bloggers were earning.

Of course my blogs were about profitable topics that got high Adsense clicks and high paying affiliate payouts...

Of course I took my time to perform keyword research on the topics of the blogs to get words that people were searching for...

Of course I got great content for the blogs that were well written and keyword rich to interest my readers...

Of course I got links from other sites to the blogs and even got all the pages indexed so they ranked well for some of the key phrases...

Of course I did all that was necessary to succeed with these few blogs I had...

But there was something I didn't do that the big gurus DO.

That was the reason why I was not earning as much from my blogs as the big guru bloggers out there.

I am sure YOU too are guilty of this.

Can't wait to hear it?

Here it goes --

I had only a few blogs while the gurus that earn five figure income monthly from their blogs have hundreds and even thousands of blogs.

BINGO... that's the secret they are closely hiding from you.

While we are spinning our wheels with one or a few blogs and earning just a few dollars here and there, the big gurus spin out hundreds and thousands of blogs using software (yes, whitehat software exists for legitimate blogging) to ease the blog creation process and the posting process.

If this doesn't make sense to you, spare some minutes and think of it this way...

If one blog DOES make you a few dollars daily, won't hundreds of blogs make you hundreds of dollars daily AND won't thousands of blogs make you thousands of dollars daily?

This is really so simple. But I guess it's too simply that most folks won't get it - even after reading this.

Of course there are lots of work involved in creating and managing dozens of blogs, let alone hundreds or even thousands.

But there are now specially designed software (not blackhat software) that can help you achieve in mere minutes what would have taken you hours or even days to achieve.

So, if you want to earn like the big guru bloggers out there, start thinking of dozens, hundreds or even thousands of blogs.

And when you do your due diligence you will find great whitehat software out there to ease the process of creating and managing your multiple blogs for you painlessly and effortlessly.

Remember this, earning a five-figure monthly income mainly from blogging isn't impossible. It is done by the gurus and even by ordinary bloggers who know this secret and apply it. Ah, yes-- that last word is critical to your success -- APPLICATION.

It isn't enough to know what to do and have the right software to help out, you have to actually APPLY that knowledge to start earning fat checks from Adsense and Affiliate programs.

Finally, this article won't be complete without showing you REAL evidence of at least one "ordinary-folk-turned-guru" who is REALLY earning five-figure+ monthly income from blogging.

Ever heard of Jason Calacanis? This "ordinary-folk-turned-guru" with his conglomeration of 85 blogs pulled in up to $1,000,000 (yes, one million US dollars) yearly until he sold them to AOL for a reported staggering $25 million.

With that said... what are you waiting for before you start creating and managing your dozens and even hundreds of blogs?

King J. For is a webpublisher, infopreneur and blogopreneur who knows the importance of using great whitehat software to do in minutes what others do in hours and even days.

Domain Names Become Premium Web Real Estate

2008-03-26T20:03:00.000-07:00

The following article presents the very latest information on Domain Names. If you have a particular interest in Domain Names, then this informative article is required reading.

See how much you can learn about Domain Names when you take a little time to read a well-researched article? Don't miss out on the rest of this great information.

Everyone should have Amy Schrier's problem.

For six months, she resisted selling the domain name Blue.com for $200,000. Using a formula she devised to fetch the highest market value for cheap domain names, Schrier eventually convinced a private party that Blue.com was worth $500,000. Since the name was sold in March, its site now includes links to sexual material and airfare ads.

"The market will really explode when people realize they are sitting on premium real estate," says Schrier, 37, an entrepreneur in New York who bought Blue.com for $65,000 in 2002.

Dan Taylor, 54, an industrial designer in Toronto, stumbled onto his domain riches. In the 1990s, he bought Realtone.com with the intent of developing online content for skin care products. As Taylor's luck would have it, that was before ringtones became available on cell phones. When Universal Entertainment in Germany came calling for the domain name last year, Taylor sold it for an undisclosed amount.

So now you know a little bit about Domain Names. Even if you don't know everything, you've done something worthwhile: you've expanded your knowledge.

Have you ever wondered what exactly is up with Domain Names? This informative report can give you an insight into everything you've ever wanted to know about Domain Names.

The information about Domain Names presented here will do one of two things: either it will reinforce what you know about Domain Names or it will teach you something new. Both are good outcomes.

Schrier and Taylor are among an estimated 1,000 to 2,000 individuals who make a living buying and selling cheap domain names, though about half prefer to remain anonymous to avoid competition, says Ron Jackson, editor and publisher of Domain Name Journal.

'A long-term investment' Most domainers buy and own names. They "park" on sites, where they develop content in the form of Web links and ads, to generate income and increase the value of their virtual real estate.

"It's a long-term investment, like owning a home," says Lawrence Fischer, vice president of business development at SmartName.com, a company that owns and manages thousands of cheap domain names, including Stockquotes.com. "But if a major brokerage firm came along with a big offer, I would be willing to listen."

Plenty have been willing to pay. Sales of 5,851 cheap domain names generated $29 million in 2005, compared with the sale of 3,813 names for $15 million in 2004, market researcher Zetetic says.

Venture-capital firms, too, are betting on cheap domain names.

Like a lottery ticket

"It's like buying a lottery ticket, but the odds are better," says Ken Carey, 50, a longtime autoworker in Grand Rapids, Mich., and part-time inventor who owns 200 cheap domain name. "All you gotta do is hit the right niche, and you're well on your way to being a millionaire."

When a technology is about to take off, if you buy a domain name that pertains to it, the more generic the name, the better its value.

Sometimes, the payoff is huge.

Sometimes, it lands the owner in legal hot water.

A surge in online ads and Web viewing have made cheap domain names a serious business proposition. Online ad revenue is expected to reach $13.6 billion in the U.S. this year, up 14 percent from last year, according to Jupiter Media. Overall, 153 million people in the U.S. use the Web, up 2.5 percent from a year ago, Nielsen//NetRatings says.

"Those who understand domains and what they represent, can and have done very well," says Schwartz, 52, who sold Men.com for $1.3 million in late 2003, a huge profit from the $15,000 he paid for it in 1997. He bought Property.com for $750,000 last year.

And Schrier, who sold Blue.com for more than twice what she was originally offered, may soon offer advice. She intends to market her formula for getting the most value out of cheap domain names.

There's no doubt that the topic of Domain Names can be fascinating. If you still have unanswered questions about Domain Names, you may find what you're looking for in the next article.

Sinta Makah is a Full Time Adsense Publisher and She Makes her living from Adsense. She is passionate about sharing her Adsense Knowledge and about generating online income:

eBay Affiliate Program

2008-03-25T19:36:00.000-07:00

Learning about the eBay affiliate program and how it functions within eBay can be time well spent toward developing an effective affiliate program.

Did you know that eBay has an affiliate program? This is sometimes overshadowed by the sheer size of eBay, but you can make affiliate income from eBay.

Here is how it works. Go to the http://affiliates.ebay.com and sign up. This will direct you to Commission Junction (www.cj.com) which handles the commissions for eBay. You should spend time on Commission Junction after you join to see all the other affiliate programs that you can join as well as eBay. You will be amazed at all the affiliate programs that are available on Commission Junction.

You will notice that you can become an affiliate of eBay in several countries. If you speak the language of another country, you can become an affiliate of that country if you desire. I am an affiliate of eBay USA, Italy, France, UK, Canada, and India. I am not active except in the US and Italy. Italy you say! No, I do not speak Italian, but I found an Italian translator through elance.com who helps me with my Google Adwords ads that drive traffic to eBay Italy. When they join and buy, I receive my commissions in US dollars through Commission Junction.

If you refer a person to eBay who is not a member and they join and purchase an item, you get referral fees and a commission on the sale. eBay recently increased its fees. These fees changes will help the smaller affiliates make more money at lower transaction volumes.

Currently, the initial fee for causing someone to join eBay is $12.00. Under the old structure, this covered the first 499 people. Then the fee rose to $16.00 each over 499.

The new structure still pays $12.00 for the first tier, but the tier is for 1 - 49. At 50 - 499 the fee is $16.00. This structure is much more favorable for the little guy.

To understand how this all works, go to eBay and study it. The fee structure is located at http://affiliates.ebay.com/revshare.

Learn about the eBay affiliate program and other affiliate programs on the Net. Affiliate programs when used correctly can make you money without having to monitor them constantly.

Good luck as an affiliate of eBay.

John V. W. Howe is an entrepreneur, author, inventor, patent holder, husband, father, and grandfather. He has been involved in entrepreneurial activities for over 40 years.

Starting Out on the Web to Make Money

2008-03-24T19:06:00.000-07:00

This article is for people who are just starting to get online and make money. In this article, I will detail what needs to be done in the first few days starting out in the internet marketing realm. Please be aware that in most cases you will not start making money immediately online. There are some ways to earn money online in the first few days, but do not expect to pull in $100 or even $10 in your first few weeks. Regardless of what any website says, people did not fall into $1000 or $5000 in their first few days online. They laid a foundation of links, research, web pages, and marketing efforts before they were able to pull in large amounts of money. Keep in mind the old phrase Rome wasnt built in a day when starting your online business effort. It might be a week, a month, or two months before you start making consistent money. The important aspects are research, patience, and persistence. Take the time to lay a strong foundation and avoid the pitfalls of trying to make money online in a short amount of time. This is KEY starting out. If you fall down too many times, eventually you dont want to get back up

That being said, there are a couple of easy and inexpensive ways to start making money online.

1 Paid Surveys/Product Trials
2 Blogging and AdSense

1 Paid Surveys/Product Trials/Email Reading

Ill start off by saying you should be skeptical of any site that charges you money to give you surveys or try out products. When was the last time you had to pay someone to interview you for a job? Same principle. Before you sign up with any of the sites listed below, create an alternate email address in Yahoo or another Email provider. This can be your Survey/Product/Spam email address. This will keep your main email box from getting filled with stuff you dont want or need.

Now the sites listed below offer to pay you money for completing surveys or testing out products. Sounds pretty easy right? For the most part it is, but be careful with the product trials. If its a limited time trial, you may start getting charged if you arent careful.

Check out the sites listed below. These are ones Ive used before and have had no trouble with. They are FREE to sign up for so youre not in danger of giving up money with no return.

Hits4Pay.com
Treasuretrooper.com
SendEarnings.com

2 Blogging and AdSense

Go to www.blogger.com and setup a blog (short for Web Log). You can choose from a variety of templates. Name the blog something that will distinguish what the blog is about. If its about gardening, name it gardening tips or how to garden or make your garden beautiful. The title is important as youll see later. Once youve got your blog setup, you can start posting information about your topic. Once youve successfully created a post, go into your blogger settings and go to the template tab. You should have an AdSense link up there. Now you are asking, what is AdSense? AdSense is a program that delivers content relative ads to web pages. For instance, go to http://cheap-carinsurance.blogspot.com. Notice the small ads above and below some of the postings. Those are AdSense ads. How do you make money off those? A company or individual has paid Google to run these ads. Whenever someone clicks on these ads, the person who has the ads showing makes money. Granted it may only be $.20 or $.30 (or less sometimes), but its basically free money for the webpage owner. Now before you think you are going to make yourself rich by clicking on your own ads, DO NOT DO IT!!! Google is smarter than you think. I know of more than one person who has been banned from the AdSense program due to click fraud. Besides, if someone told you that you could make $.20-$.30 based on someone clicking on an ad based on something you wrote and they could do this 24 hours a day/ 7 days a week/ 365 days a year and you would pay nothing (NOTHING) for this to happen, why would you risk losing it? Dont click on your own ads..period!

Now some of you may be seeing a nice business idea here. If you arent, here it is. You can setup multiple FREE blogs on different subjects and have the AdSense code on all of them. This means instead of one page getting a few clicks a day, you could have 5 pages getting a few clicks a day. I would recommend updating your blog content every 2 or 3 days. This is crucial if you want your blog to get picked up by search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. If you blog on gardening is specific to organic gardening, then you want to make sure you mention organic gardening a few times each entry and put it in bold. This will help the search engines pick it up faster. You can also use http://ping-o-matic.com to let blog engines know that your blog has been updated. More Traffic to your page = more potential ad clicks = more money in your pocket. See how easy this is? You are not going to make a fortune this way, but it would not be unreasonable with 5-10 quality blogs to make an extra $5-10 a day depending on the amount of traffic you are getting.

Next time, more ways to advertise your blog.

Mark South writes articles for three site;

Drinking From The Fire Hose

2008-03-13T23:13:00.000-07:00

Recently, I attended a seminar on Internet business presented by Tim Knox (author and entrepreneur) and Jim Cockrum (author of The Silent Sales Machine Hiding on eBay). During the seminar, Jim Cockrum said, learning about the Internet is like drinking from the fire hose. I was taken back with such an accurate saying since I have been researching the Internet for a couple of years and that is exactly what happened to me.

As is the case with most things I hear, I searched Google for more information on the saying and for the name of the person who coined it. However, I could not find any credit given for it. On Google, it was used quite often by graduate students at MIT to describe their experience in the graduate program.

The saying is so fitting for those of us who have undertaken the quest to learn all we can about what business opportunities are available on the Internet. Before the Internet, most of the research was done in the stacks of the library. There it was easy to keep focused since we were usually working on a single train of thought. With the Internet, one search generates another search and soon we do not know which one to follow in detail. I am speaking from experience, and I know that I am not alone when I say that I have been drinking from the fire hose.

The other saying I recently read described the situation when you have been drinking from the fire hose too long and you have gathered a voluminous data base of all that you have found on the Net. You start to analyze the data to chart your course for your Internet career and you cannot get started because of analysis paralysis. You just keep on researching rather than decide that you have enough information and take action. I can claim to have suffered from this too for a few weeks when it all just would not fit together.

Just remember drinking from a fire hose and analysis paralysis are common problems that we all face when we start researching the Internet. Just drink as fast as you can, and when you think you have drunk deeply enough of Internet wisdom, dont forget that the reason for all that research was to take action.

TAKE IT NOW!

John V. W. Howe is an entrepreneur, author, inventor, patent holder, husband, father, and grandfather. He has been involved in entrepreneurial activities for over 40 years. He founded http://www.boomer-ezine.com, www.boomer-entrepreneur.com and http://www.retirement-jobs-online.com to help Boomers (baby boomers) become entrepreneurs when they retire.

Five Reasons Most Affiliate Marketers Fail

2008-03-13T14:58:00.000-07:00

Article directories are full of articles about how to succeed as an affiliate marketer. It often seems like I can't get away from websites telling me they'll give me the secret to becoming a millionaire in fifteen minutes. And the number of affiliate marketing courses out there is growing all the time.

So why isn't everyone a successful affiliate marketer? After all, there's all this advice out there. Even if most of it is rubbish, with enough searching and by taking advice from reviews sites it is possible to find the good. But beginner affiliate marketers still make the same mistakes, time after time.

So, instead of an article telling you how to become a successful affiliate marketer, here's one telling you how to fail. If you don't make any of these mistakes, you'll be doing better than 95% of beginning affiliate marketers.

1. Sit back and hope you'll be lucky.

You might be. You might also win the lottery. But I wouldn't put much faith in either happening. I am sure that there are people out there who have done nothing but thrown up a website and earned money from it. But there are far more people who have done nothing but thrown up a website and ended up only wasting their own money.

2. Promote products you don't believe in.

Insincerity shines through. People can tell if you're lying. The words sound rehearsed and often like a repeat of the sales pitch. You will probably also end up sick of it, and if you have any conscience at all, you should feel guilty about the fact that you are sending people to a poor quality product.

Another thing to avoid is promoting products you haven't actually bought. Always read a product carefully before you start trying to sell it. Buy it through your clickbank account if you want some money off! But not knowing anything about a product will make you sound phoney, will mean you are unable to answer questions about it, and will mean you are reliant on the author's own sales pitch for information.

3. Expect people to visit the collection of links you claim is a website.

Websites with no content don't attract visitors. Would you? They're even less likely to come for a repeat visit, and you'll have about as much chance of reputable sites linking to you as of winning the lottery. You won't get listed in any directories either, and your search engine ranking will suffer. Good content leads to more visitors and more sales. Pre-selling something well can up the conversion rate dramatically.

4. Treat your visitors and subscribers as cash machines.

They're not. By clicking on your affiliate links, they're making you money. And why should they do that if you give them nothing in return? People don't visit your website or subscribe to your mailing list because they feel like you deserve a bit of extra cash. They do so because they want something, usually information. You have to give that to them.

5. Give up.

Most affiliate marketers give up. They make mistakes, they lose money, they get discouraged, and they stop trying. The success stories are the ones who kept going, who kept believing that it was possible to make a living affiliate marketing. You need to believe the same, and be prepared to work hard for it.

If you avoid these mistakes, your chances of becoming a successful affiliate marketer increase dramatically. Committing any of them is likely to cost you time and money; but even if you have, they are easily fixed. Content can be added to a website, products can be researched more thoroughly, your sales pitch can be adjusted and you can always put in more work than you have been.

Does it sound boring? Yes. Is it difficult and often frustrating? Yes. But seeing your traffic increase, and then watching the sales start to come in is extremely exciting. That feeling alone makes it all worth it. And the money doesn't hurt either! The hardest part of affiliate marketing is always getting started. When you are up and running, word will spread about your site and traffic will grow by itself.

Just don't commit any of the above mistakes, and you will already be ahead of the pack.

Anita Buchan is a successful affiliate marketer who now wants to help others make the same money she does. For honest reviews of legitimate affiliate marketing opportunities, visit http://www.dont-get-scammed.biz

Drinking From The Fire Hose

2008-03-12T21:23:00.000-07:00