Stu Mclaren posted something in his blog about marketing and advertising. He's such a good marketer!

It goes this way:

Marketing and advertising the old way can be excruciatingly expensive (as you’ll see in the video within this post).

It just isn’t feasible for the small business owner or start up entrepreneur to even think about marketing using traditional methods.

Unfortunately it’s rare for anyone to learn how to effectively market their products and services using direct response unless they learn it on their own.

It’s not taught in 99% of all business schools - I should know because I attended one of the best business schools in Canada and would say I use 5% of what I learned there.

So where does a small business owner turn for help?

Read more...

I've been hearing the term "affiliate marketing" for so long. I often hear it to my friends and collegues which make me wonder and question my self. What are they talking about?

So what I did was, I searched it over the internet and googled it up. With the help of Wikipedia, I found the answer to the question. :D

According to Wiki:

"Affiliate marketing is a method of promoting web businesses (merchants/advertisers) in which an affiliate(publisher) is rewarded for every visitor, subscriber, customer, and/or sale provided through his/her efforts.Affiliate marketing is also the name of the industry where a number of different types of companies and individuals are performing this form of internet marketing, including affiliate networks, affiliate management companies and in-house affiliate managers, specialized 3rd party vendors and various types of affiliates/publishers who utilize a number of different methods to advertise the products and services of their merchant/advertiser partners."

I knew then that there were a lot of people dealing with affiliate marketing nowadays. I'm sure they're making millions right now... :D Hopefully I'll be one of them someday! Or Soon..! hehe

I’m not ought to say about Halloween here though, since it will still take six more months till this annual celebration. When talking of Halloween, what comes to your mind, ghost, mysteries, dead people, zombies, and specially demons right? These could make us shiver and sometimes make us hide! Scary isn’t it?

But why the heck am I talking about demons and all these scary stuffs? Because I am going to talk about the different faces of demons in online/internet marketing. There were seven of them:

Demon #1: The Demon of Trust

First demon when trying to find profitable home based business opportunities online is the Demon of Trust.

Demon #2: The Demon of Money

The second demon we run across when we are deciding on a new business opportunity, or have already chosen one, is the Demon of Money. This demon can be nasty, as internet marketing ventures can be very expensive if we're not careful

Demon #3: The Demon of Time

Running an online internet marketing business is no easy task. It takes hard work, energy, and consistent effort before you can expect to see results. Even if you realize it will take time, there are often unforeseen events that happen in our lives that prevent us from moving forward with our businesses.

Demon #4: The Demon of Advertising

Internet marketing involves a great deal of advertising if you expect people to find your business online and purchase products or services from you. We must select different forms of advertising to find out what works best for us. This, too, is no easy task, and it can be terrifyingly expensive. If we keep in mind that there are many free and effective ways to advertise and we find and use these methods, then we might survive.

Demon #5: The Demon of Traffic

Once we have our web businesses up and running, we must get visitors to our sites if we expect to make any money online. The Demon of Traffic gives us endless frustration as we try to find ways for people to find our products and services online. If you don't have a very specific and targeted niche market, then this can get crazy in a competitive internet marketing world

Demon #6: The Demon of Downlines

If you are involved in a network marketing business, it is a real challenge to build a good downline to grow your network. You have to be willing to find prospects and communicate with them regularly if you expect anyone to join your business. You should be willing to offer your contact information, and accept phone calls to answer any questions your prospects may have

Demon #7: The Demon of Sales

Last but not least is the Demon of Sales. Sometimes even when we are doing all the right things in our businesses, the sales just aren't coming in as we'd like them to. Once we build a list and have traffic to our sites, and we have advertised using this or that method, how do we translate our efforts into sales? How do we keep our current customers interested in our products and services and coming back to us in the future to buy more? Sometimes this is just unpredictable, but one thing you can surely do to help your business boom is to develop solid relationships with your client base.

There are 4 considered majot things that each and every affiliate program needs to have if it is to be a success. These are the Commission, Creative, Consistency, and Communication.

Commission

The biggest differentiator to the affiliate is money. How much will they get paid for selling your product or service? How you structure this is really dependent on the type of product or service you are offering but really you have 3 options. Pay Per Sale, Pay per Lead or Pay Per Click. There are other options but to be honest these are the main ones.

Creative

How many times have you joined an affiliate program only to find there are no creative to promote the program? How are they going to promote your product or service if you do not help them. You must provide the affiliates with everything they need to sell your product. If you had a real sales force, you would give them marketing materials in order to sell the customer, so the affiliate program is no different.

Consistency

Whenever you commit to running an affiliate program, be consistent, if you are sending out updates or updating creative on a regular basis make sure you remain consistent. If you want make it a certain day of the month. Affiliates will then get used to expecting things from you at a given time of the month. They can then almost factor that into their workloads. Remember affiliates can have two jobs, two hundred websites to manage so try to accommodate that in your thinking.

Communication

Perhaps last but no means least is Communication. You need to communicate to affiliates for two main reasons. Firstly, to update them on any new product changes, new creative, new commission structures. So in effect , to keep them informed with what's going on with you and your business that will help them drive more sales.

PPP affiliate marketing is the most popular among merchant and is also the most lucrative type for the affiliates. In this type of affiliate program, the merchant only pays the affiliate whenever his referral translates into an action - that is whenever the visitor he has referred actually purchase something from the merchant's site or when the visitor becomes a lead. This means a lot of savings for the merchant as compared to paid advertising. On the other hand, it becomes the most lucrative type for the dedicated affiliate, for the commissions offered by the merchant in PPP affiliate marketing usually comes in the range of 20% to 75% of the actual product sales.

Pay-per-performance affiliate marketing can be further classified into two popular types: pay-per-sales (PPS) and pay-per-lead (PPL).

o Pay Per Sale (PPS)

In a pay-per-sale type of affiliate marketing, the merchants pay the affiliate a certain fee whenever the visitor he has referred to the merchant's site actually buys something from the merchant's site. Affiliates are often paid on commission basis, although other merchants would opt to pay a fixed fee. But no matter what the basis of the fee is, it is almost always a higher percentage commission and a higher fixed fee that would motivate and attract more affiliate to work harder for the merchant. This is a win-win situation, the affiliate earns more while the merchant gets more sales for doing nothing.

o Pay Per Lead (PPL)

The PPL type of affiliate marketing is a slight variation of the PPS type and is often used by companies who rely on leads for their company to grow. In this type of affiliate marketing, the affiliate is paid whenever the visitor he referred to the merchant's site fills up an application form or any similar form related to the business of the company. Compensation for this type of affiliate marketing is based on a fixed fee whose rates approximate that of the fixed fee in the PPS type.

Aside from these two main types of affiliate marketing, a lot of other affiliate marketing types exist. If the classification is based on the depth of the affiliate network, it can be classified as single-tier, two-tier, and multi-tier affiliate marketing. There is residual income affiliate marketing that pays the affiliate each time the same customer he has referred purchases the same product again or some other product from the merchant's site.

• Single-Tier, Two-Tier, and Multi-Tier Affiliate Marketing

These types of affiliate marketing are based on the different levels or tiers in the affiliate network by which payments are made. These structures offer more incentive and further motivate the affiliates to work harder and very quickly build a fleet of affliates under the merchant.

In a single-tier affiliate marketing program, the affiliates are only paid based on the direct sales or traffic he has referred to the merchant. PPS and PPL affiliate marketing types) fall under the single-tier classification.

In two-tier affiliate marketing programs, the affiliate is not only paid for the direct lead or sales that he refers to the merchant's site, but also on every lead or sales referred by various other affiliates who joined the affiliate program through his recommendation.

Multi-tier affiliate marketing works the same way, that the affiliate gets additional commission for a wider number of affiliates in different tiers in the affiliate network.

• Residual Income Affiliate Marketing

In residual income affiliate marketing, the affiliate gets paid not only once for the customer he has referred to the merchant's site. Rather, the affiliate is also paid whenever the customer he has referred returns to the site and purchase the same product or another product. Compensation for such type of affiliate marketing is based on either sales percentage commission or fixed fee basis.

Finding a profitable market is where most affiliates fail and then give up. It's not their fault, but nobody takes the time to explain that.

When you are starting, it is better to start with a huge market that is already profitable, like golf, weight loss, finance, self-help, beauty, sports, fitness...

Start by researching what those people want, what they are searching for on the Internet. For that, you will need a keyword research tool like Goodkeywords.com or Yahoo search marketing tool.

Day 2: Find an affiliate product for this market

Before finding the product, try to identify the needs of your targeted market. Your chosen product must be excellent; and you want to have a good commission that will reward you, motivate you and cover your affiliate campaign costs. You can start with clickbank.com or cj.com.

You must verify the sales page to see if it will convert your visitors into sales.

Day 3: Know and understand your product

Know that the goal of the affiliate is to pre-sell and not to sell. The merchant must sell his product, not you.

You should pre-sell (capture and warm up) your product to your subscriber. For that, you need to know the benefits of the product for your subscribers, and the best way to do that is to own the product.

Day 4: Prepare your advertising plan

Prepare your material: ads, articles, where you will advertise this affiliate program: Start with articles and pay-per-click traffic via Google Adwords.

Day 5: Prepare yourself to capture your prospects

You must not send your visitor to the merchant page, but you must capture his name and email address first, to secure your future affiliate commissions.

Day 6: Write your killer follow-up material

After capturing his email address, the pre-written message in your autoresponder will do the work for you and close the sale.

Day 7: Drive tons of traffic to your lead capture page

When everything is ready, start to advertise your affiliate program. Actually, you will show your lead capture (also called opt-in or squeeze page) page to the world, and take your future buyer's email address. One of the most effective ways to advertise it is to write articles.

But first, remove the 2 negative thoughts that might hold you back. The first negative thought that people worry about the most when starting an online business, is about not being perfect. So put that thought straight out of your head. No one’s perfect and no one expects you to be. You don’t have to get it right, you just have to get it going.

The other thing is criticism. Sure you’ll get it, you just have to learn to deal with it and not worry about it. So what if people criticise you? You’re getting it going and that’s the only thing that will drive your business forward to success.

2. Do a 12-product survey. You need to get 12 different products to sell to see what people are mostly buying. These products don’t have to be great or expensive, they just have to be diverse enough in content to see what most people want and then you can get more similar products to the more popular ones.

3. The Killer Sales Page It doesn’t matter how good or bad your product is, if you don’t have a killer sales page, then no one will be interested enough to buy it. Your sales page needs to include as much information as possible to arouse prospective customers’ interest.

Your headlines need to be intriguing and your first few paragraphs need to present your readers with a potential problem they may have. The middle part of your sales page should show how other possible solutions are not adequate enough or should elaborate more on the reader’s problem. The end of your sales page should offer your product as the solution, include as many bonuses as possible and repeatedly state what value-for-money your product is.

Make sure you get excited when you write your killer sales page.

4. Quickie Products. Make sure your products are quickie products that take the minimal amount of time to produce. Information products (eBooks) are the easiest, or if you want to sell a software product, get someone else to make it for you.

Then sell your products quickly and easily by signing up to a company like ClickBank.com. They have a low start-up cost and thousands of affiliates to help sell your products world-wide without you having to lift another finger.

Then automate your website so that visitors can buy directly from you or can sign up as an affiliate from your site. Capture the email address of anyone who buys your product and set up an auto responder with dozens of ready-made emails full of details about your other products to send out to your ever-growing email list.

5. Traffic. Next you have to drive as much traffic as possible to your website. One of the best ways to do this is by writing keyword-rich articles, submitting them to as many article directories as possible (I use Article Submitter software for this) and include a link back to your website in your resource box.

Reason #1. NO Domain Costs.

The beautiful thing about being an affiliate is they supply you with a unique Domain with your affiliate ID for you to promote. Though some affiliate domains are quite ugly, the fact remains that you don't have to worry about paying to register any domains to get started with your promotions.

Reason #2. NO Hosting Costs.

By being an affiliate you don't have to worry about web hosting because once you sign up as an affiliate you get your own unique URL which simply redirects your potential customer to the main affiliate website.

Again there are advanced affiliate marketing techniques that require hosting but that's a whole other article in itself.

Reason #3. NO Product to worry about creating.

Once again the advantage to being an affiliate is that you don't have to worry about creating your own product. That's why you became an affiliate in the first place.

Reason #4. NO Website or Salesletter to create.

Creating a profitable Website and Salesletter can be quite the costly task especially when it comes to your salesletter.

By being a affiliate you can choose a good converting affiliate product and not have to worry about all the Trial and Error and testing involved when setting up a direct response website.

Reason #5. NO Refunds to deal with.

This again is another benefit to being an affiliate and that is you don't have to worry about dealing with any refunds from customers who are unhappy with their purchase.

Also, educate yourself in business and marketing. Look at different businesses and types of businesses. You can get ideas from them. Read books on businesses and business and marketing related material. Pull ideas together from all these different sources and make them into your very own business idea.

In your spare time instead of doing something unimportant and worthless you could sit down and read a book on investing in stocks or a business. You could also read biographies about CEO's and see how they started their businesses' and what motivated them and so on. As you learn more then you can try different approaches to starting your own business and marketing it. Just be careful when starting a business because there are risks, but again if you can be creative as well as resourceful you can actually start a business with little or no risk on a shoestring budget and wield huge profits. Trust me, it's possible! Just remember the saying "if you believe you can achieve."

1. Affiliates

Sign up to become an affiliate for other businesses that are on the net. I only sign up with the companies that I honestly would recommend to anyone. All that you have to do is refer your customers to these sites. Once one of my referrals makes a purchase, I receive a small payment. With some of the affiliate programs the fee is quite large.

2. Google Ads

I was not too sure about this one but I signed up and I am now convinced. The first week that I had Google ads on my website I made $.18 and the next week I made $6.45! Wow! Big boost. If I keep this up, I just may be able to pay for my web host by the end of the month!

3. Google Search

Works close to the same way as the ads. People use your search tool, make a purchase and then you are compensated.

4. Amazon

Another great tool that will trickle in a few dollars here and there, all for 10 minutes of your time putting a little code into your website and Amazon does the rest.

5. Selling Ad Space

You could sell ad space if you have a site that has high traffic.

6. Selling Subscriptions to Your Newsletter

If you have a newsletter that has high demand information, you could charge for your newsletter.

7. Selling Ad Space in Your Newsletter

Sell ad space in in your newsletter. Same drill as with ad space on your website. Just put a box on your newsletter with a note inside it that says "Your Banner Could Go Here" Then have a page that tells how many subscriber that you have, how often your newsletter goes out and what type of content it usually contains plus the price per ad.

8. Selling E-Books

Do you know something about your craft or hobby that you know people would pay to learn as well? Then sell it in an e-book. What a great way to make a little extra money. You take the time to write a good quality e-book then just fill the orders. You could even set it up so that once the e-book order has been processed and paid for, it goes out automatically using an auto responder without you even having to lift a finger, except to go to the bank to collect your money.

9. Consulting - Offer your services

Do you sell wedding supplies and know all of the best suppliers around? Do a little research and offer your services as a wedding coordinator. Offer your assistance to the people that want to plan their own wedding, but need a little bit of help.

1) Invest in good advertising with search engines.

Google's Adwords and Yahoo's Overture provide great advertising schemes that are very truly popular and assures great traffic. Although with this surefire way to increase your traffic would cost some money. While some would shy away from spending money to increase traffic, it is imperative in this case to do so because Adwords and Overture is the top surefire way to increase your traffic.

You could see for yourself the success this search engine advertising methods have reaped rewards for so many companies. Lots of site feature these advertising system and many have signed on to reap the benefits. Do not be left behind. Every penny is worth it with using Google and Yahoo's advertising.

2) Exchange or Trade Links with other sites

With exchanging links with other sites, both of you will benefit from the efforts both of you do to enhance your sites traffic. When one site features another sites link, they could provide one another with the traffic one site generates. The efforts are doubly beneficial because it would seem like both of you are working to generate more traffic. The more links traded with more sites the more traffic could be expected.

3) Use Viral Marketing

Viral marketing allows you to spread the word about your company and product without any costs or if ever low costs only. This is a marketing method that can be quite sneaky; you can attach your company's name, product or link to a certain media such as a funny video, entertaining game, an interesting article or a gossip or buzz. With this method, people get infected with the creativity and entertainment of the medium that they will pass it on to many people.

4) Search and use proper keywords or keyword phrases for your sites content

Search engines look for certain keywords that they would show in their results page. In doing so, having the right keyword and keyword phrase is a high requirement in ranking in high in search engine results. You could write your own content or you could hire someone to do it for you.

5) Write Articles that can lead traffic to your site

Submit articles to sites that would contain the same subject that your site deals in. If you sell car parts write press releases and articles about cars and car parts. Attach your sites description and services at the end of the article as well as the link.

6) Join forums and form online communities

Capture a market and show your expertise and credibility. When you found a good foundation for your site, people will trust you and your site and will pass on to many people their trust. Traffic will certainly increase because they know that you can provide what they need.

7) Lastly, Offer newsletters.

If many people know what you are about and your existence is shared with many others, you will find a loyal traffic that can provide you with more traffic by recommendation. If you arouse the curiosity of your customers they would be pushed to help you with your traffic.