Mike Paetzold and I am back again for day 2 of visit here as part of The Old Bald Guy’s Blog Tour. This week I will be discussing affiliate marketing. Yesterday I started with what affiliate marketing is. Today I will talk about the tools you need to be an effective affiliate marketer.

Now lets cut out the crap from the beginning as you do need to spend some money to be an affiliate marketer despite what all the sales letters promise you.

Yes there are free resources and I use some of them but ultimately to get good results there are some tools you need to pay for. The key is to use paid products that have an affiliate program you can earn from so that you can earn your money back.

Do that with your tools and you can have the advantage of using better tools and doing it for free (eventually).

Here are the tools you should have as an affiliate marketer at a minimum.

• Your own domain
• A hosting account for your domain
• An autoresponder
• Tracking

The first two are important because a good affiliate marketer is always looking to build a list first and your domain and a hosting account will allow you to start monetizing that process through the three page web site system I discussed in my first stop.

With out your own hosting you lose that chance to monetize the process.

As list building should be your focus even as an affiliate marketer you will need a quality autoresponder too. This will allow you to stay in contact with your subscribers and build a relationship. Now you can send them to your favorite affiliate product more than once increasing the chance of you earning a commission significantly.

Finally you need to track your results and if you are not tracking what you are doing it is impossible to know what is working or not working so you can improve it.

Fortunately you can get a domain for less than $10 a year and the balance of what you need you need can be had in one package at The Marketers Hosting for $20 a month. (That even includes an affiliate program for when you create your own product but we will stick to affiliate marketing.

Now for traffic generation there are other items you will need depending on whether or not you are going to use paid or “free” traffic. Yes I put “free” in quotes on purpose, You know that didn’t you .

You will always pay for traffic either with your time or your money or both so there never really is free. Now as I do almost no PPC type traffic I won’t discuss that but there are a couple tools for free traffic that you should consider.

First is to add a blog to the hosting you already have, preferably a WordPress blog as they are quite easy to make into search engine magnets.

Second I would strongly recommend a web based article submission service like Content Crooner if you are going to use article marketing fro driving traffic (and you should.) The time savings using a service like this pays for itself over and over.

Now there are lots of other items you can use for traffic like Squidoo, Hub Pages, etc but they do not qualify as tools at least to this Old Bald Guy.

That’s all for today tomorrow we will talk about content marketing for affiliate marketing.

About the author

Mike Paetzold has been online since 2000 and runs numerous blogs and you can find out what he is up to at Mike Paetzold Recommends. You can also find out and keep current with WordPress at his blog WordPress Made Easy. Follow Mike on Twitter

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, autoresponder, build list, domain, web hosting

Disclaimer: Links that are in this post or other posts may lead to one or more of my affiliate links. If you click on them and purchase I will get compensated because I recommended the product(s) to you. Rest assured that I will never recommend anything that I don’t personally believe in. In addition I always welcome your questions and feedback.

Let me take a minute to introduce myself. My name is Mike Paetzold and I am traveling across the blogosphere as part of The Old Bald Guy’s Blog Tour. Each week I stop at a new blog to guest post for 5 days.

I do a lot of affiliate marketing, am an avid blogger and write a blog on using WordPress and another on using provate label rights amongst many others.

This week I will be discussuing affiliate marketing and how to be an effective affiliate marketer. A large portion of my earnings comes from affiliate promotions.

To start let’s define affiliate marketing.

From Wikipedia

Affiliate Marketing is an Internet-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate’s marketing efforts. It is an application of crowdsourcing.

One of the nice things about working on line is that you can find affiliate programs for almost any product. New marketers look mainly at the digital products usually in the make money from home market.

Now there is a good reason as digital products pay a higher commission than when you are selling hard goods. It is easy for someone that creates a digital product to offer 50% or more as there is little overhead and almost no cost to deliver the product.

That being said you can find almost any product you see in your local store as quite a few off line retailers, like Wal-Mart, have on line affiliate programs. Add in Amazon which sells almost anything and it becomes easy to find products to recommend.

Some of the biggest affiliate networks are..

• Amazon
• Commission Junction
• Clickbank (for digital products)

but if you go to Google and put in your topic + affiliate program you can probably find a program for almost any topic.

That’s all for today and tomorrow we will discuss the tools to be an effective affiliate marketer.

About the author

Mike Paetzold has been online since 2000 and runs numerous blogs and you can find out what he is up to at Mike Paetzold Recommends. You can also find out and keep current with WordPress at his blog WordPress Made Easy. Follow Mike on Twitter

Disclaimer: Links that are in this post or other posts may lead to one or more of my affiliate links. If you click on them and purchase I will get compensated because I recommended the product(s) to you. Rest assured that I will never recommend anything that I don’t personally believe in. In addition I always welcome your questions and feedback.

Become An Internet Marketing Success Story

I’m sure you have heard a lot about the millionaire internet entrepreneurs. These internet marketers spent their time building powerful online businesses and affiliate marketing is a big part of what they do. They have left the normal hour after hour day job behind.

You may have read stores like this and shaken them off or simply take an unbelieving attitude. On the other hand, maybe you have seen the successes they have had. While it is true that many are not successful and make very little money online, the internet has become a very lucrative means for those with the dedication, determination, and innovation to put forth the effort required for reaching success.

With a small amount of smart and focused work, you can join these innovative internet marketers. You can stop working for someone else and start using your time to create an income that will work for you.

Is this really possible? Yes, but it takes your effort and time in applying powerful marketing strategies and implementing the tactics that are available to you.

If you want to create an online affiliate internet business, you must take control and work to accomplish it.

Consider the type of lifestyle that you want to have. Traditional jobs can pay the bills, but they limit your freedom and keep you tied to the work place. Many successful and innovative internet marketers have the ability to enjoy a lot of free time. They plan their major business efforts so that they have time to enjoy their self employment and escape slaving hour after hour. It’s all about building a business that builds income on a 24/7 basis.

What is the key for getting started in internet marketing? There is lots of good information out there. Much of this is free and has been around for a long time, but you will also find that sometimes you will need to purchase additional information.

However this free report will provide you with many marketing strategies and practical information that will be useful to any internet marketer.

 Click Here To Download Your Free Affiliate Marketing 101 Report

You can make it in internet marketing, but not if you set back and watch – it takes effort. The outlook for an affiliate internet business online is looking brighter and brighter. Better marketing methods and techniques are being developed all the time.

By implementing the knowledge and information is this free report, you can also become successful at internet marketing with your own affiliate internet business online. Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to start making money online right away. And this free report is a great place to start. Take action now.

Click Here To Download Your Free Affiliate Marketing 101 Report

Disclaimer: Links that are in this post or other posts may lead to one or more of my affiliate links. If you click on them and purchase I will get compensated because I recommended the product(s) to you. Rest assured that I will never recommend anything that I don’t personally believe in. In addition I always welcome your questions and feedback.

Back to Internet Marketing Basics

Being involved in internet marketing is an exciting and rewarding endeavor. It is also very challenging. You have to develop good learning habits, get the attention of potential customers, build enthusiasm for a potential product, and motivate people to actually make a purchase or subscribe to you list.

It also requires a lot of time and effort to develop an effective marketing plan. In addition it will require other resources including spending money to fully develop the plan and start getting the desired results.

Internet marketing requires that you follow some basic guidelines. You have to stay up with technological changes. In addition changes in the tastes of your potential customers will influences buying decisions. Consequently, you will need to be looking for new and exciting ways to get your marketing message to your potential customers.

Knowledge of marketing is essential in order to be successful at making money online; however, you don’t have to rush out and get some sort of marketing degree. You just need to learn the basics and you can do that as a home based business or a full time effort.

Here are three tips to help you with the basics:

1. Establish The Right Mindset.

Like any other endeavor you set out upon, you must establish the right mindset if you want your online efforts to be successful. I have discussed this in another post. Read it here.

Your approach and attitude can be the entire difference between being a successful internet marketer and one that fails to produce the desired end.

Just keep telling yourself that you can learn it and you can do it. Make this your first step and it will give you motivation to move forward. Confidence is important to your sticking with it or quitting before success is reached.

2. Learn The Terminology.

If you are just starting out, you likely will run into concepts and terminology that are strange to you. Make that a challenge instead of a show stopper. Never doubt your ability to learn these things. Don’t let these details stop your before you get started.

When your don’t understand something, research it until you nail the concept down well enough to move forward. Use Google searches, find a blog or website that teaches, ask your associates for assistance. Learn and move forward – never backwards.

It’s not a completive race, taking the time as needed to get the marketing terms and concepts nailed down will increase your chances for success in the future. You will find that you are able to read, understand, and implement the concepts that you need to insure success.

You will also have developed procedures and gained the confidence that are required for online success.

3. Learn And Obtain The Essential Tools.

You will find that some tools are free; however, some tools will cost you money. As mentioned above you must be prepared to spend some money.

Learn which tools are required and start assembling them as you are learning other things. Don’t just grab any tool that comes along. Evaluate them and make sure that it is essential to where you are at the present time. If you don’t need it right now, note it and file it for resurrection at the time you do need it. Save your money for things that are required now.

It’s early in your marketing efforts and you are still in the investigation stage.

If you will keep these three tips in mind and implement them, you will find that you are well on the road to internet marketing success. Also, you will be establishing methods that will carry you forward in your efforts to make money online.

Check out this FREE report that teaches you about affiliate/internet marketing and how others are making money online every month while only working a few hours per day. Just click the imaje below.

Disclaimer: Links that are in this post or other posts may lead to one or more of my affiliate links. If you click on them and purchase I will get compensated because I recommended the product(s) to you. Rest assured that I will never recommend anything that I don’t personally believe in. In addition I always welcome your questions and feedback.

Establish An Online Income Stream With Affiliate Marketing

Have you noticed that the recession has hit many pretty hard and has impacted all of us in some way? Layoffs have increased and for other reasons people have lost their source of income. In short the economy at large is not doing too well. However, this has resulted in more and more people looking at affiliate marketing as a possible means to make money online.

This has resulted in a considerable gain for entrepreneurship and marketing. Would you like to establish an online income stream that helps you use online methods to make money and help provide some relief and keep you out of the red?

Traditional employers are tightening their belts and moving away from big pay packages. This make it difficult to find income in the standard employment channels. The answer just might be establishing an online business instead of looking to big business, or even a small offline business.

Over the last several years affiliate marketing has proven to be one of the most lucrative and powerful methods to make money online. With millions being spent every week, there are affiliate marketers out there who are not worried and who don’t face the stresses of a 9-5 day job.

Whether you’re looking forward to leaving your current position or just looking for a replacement income for your lost position, affiliate marketing is the answer that you’ve been waiting for.

Don’t worry — this isn’t a field that requires a marketing degree. Obviously some knowledge of internet marketing will have to be obtained. But, with the paid and free information that is available on the internet, through other internet marketers, there is no better time than right now to get started towards a future in affiliate marketing.

With just a small amount of research and time invested, you can be on your way toward a less stressful, more profitable future. This is possible – instead of focusing on the idea that it is not, focus on achieving your goals and cutting through the wrong information and start focusing on getting information that will put you in a position to establish your an online internet affiliate business.

This free report is the best place to look for

• beginners advice,
• fundamentals principles, and
• strategies

for maximizing your internet marketing capabilities.

 Whether you’re just starting out, an experienced affiliate internet marketer, or someone with lots of business experience, you’ll find some valuable information and advice within this free report.

Click Here To Download Your Free Affiliate Marketing 101 Report

It’s not out of your reach, it is possible. If you want a stress-free online income, stand up, take action, and make it a reality. By using the simple techniques and strategies in this report, you can leave the stress of the rat race behind, maximize your lifestyle, and  start making money online with affiliate marketing.

Click Here To Download Your Free Affiliate Marketing 101 Report

Click the image above and get started now.

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, make money online, online income stream, recession

Disclaimer: Links that are in this post or other posts may lead to one or more of my affiliate links. If you click on them and purchase I will get compensated because I recommended the product(s) to you. Rest assured that I will never recommend anything that I don’t personally believe in. In addition I always welcome your questions and feedback.

Getting Started in Affiliate Marketing Requires Action

Getting started in affiliate marketing is relative easy, but it requires action. That’s sort of what getting started implies. However, many people think that it’s going to be easier than it really is. Therefore, they are not prepared for all the action or steps that must be implemented. Consequently, they give up on affiliate marketing and the opportunity to make money online before they really even get started.

Basically all you need to do in order to join an affiliate program is to fill out a form. But that’s not even the beginning. You first have to do a lot of research to find your niche and then find an affiliate program in that niche.

You need to do your keyword research to find out where and if money is being spent in your market. Do some offline research. For instance, are people buying magazines in you niche. What you are doing is trying to find an area to work in that suits you and that is profitable and of course that takes action.

Once you find your niche and affiliate program you can fill out the form and join it. But you are still many action steps from being successful at affiliate marketing.

Study what your competition is doing. Then determine that you will follow through with your affiliate program. Statistics show that about 90% of the people that want to be involved in affiliate marketing and sign up for an affiliate program will never do anything to promote the program they signed up for. In other words, they will take no action at all.

Earlier I mentioned finding out what you competition is doing. But, don’t worry about them. Just concentrate on your own promotions and make your best effort to promote your affiliate program.

Once you’ve take action to select your niche, you are getting close to being ready to get started. However, there are several other things that you will need to have in place before you can actually start your business as an affiliate marketer.

Like any other business, you will need some tools and you will need the tools that are appropriate for affiliate marketing. Also, you will need to learn how to use those tools. This again will require action on your part. Are you starting to get the idea that this new venture will require work? It will.

Let’s look at some of the tools that your must have in order to get started. In this context, I am just going to enumerate some of them, not go into a discussion of what they are or how to use them – that will be action that you must take.

You don’t have to acquire these tools in this order, but you will need to acquire them.

1. An email account

2. An Autoresponder

3. Keyword Research Tools

4. A List of Resources

5. Word Processor/Text Editor

6. A domain name for your niche

7. A Website

8. A means of keeping up with such things as affiliate products, affiliate links, commissions earned, commissions paid, advertising campaigns, affiliate tracking, login information, etc.

9. And more as you proceed with you business.

Running an online business involves staying up with the internet as it evolves – witness Twitter. What’s next is anyone’s guess, but you need to take the necessary actions to stay current.

That brings up another thing that you will need – some assets. Some of these tools will cost money. There are free alternatives but in some cases you should not accept these. This is especially true in the case of your autoresponder. You need to make sure you get one that will constantly make all attempts necessary to insure a high delivery rate.

Some other things that you will need are:

• A web page or blog and the means to build these
• An FTP program to upload information to your web site or blog
• A reasonable good computer
• An internet connection
• A bookkeeping system to keep things straight for business and tax purposes
• A home office or other place to run your business
• And more

You should be able to see from just this introductory bit of information that you will have to take action, if you want to be successful with your affiliate marketing business. The end result of all this is that making money online requires action. No action, no business, no money.

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, affiliate products, Getting started, keyword research, make money online, niche

Disclaimer: Links that are in this post or other posts may lead to one or more of my affiliate links. If you click on them and purchase I will get compensated because I recommended the product(s) to you. Rest assured that I will never recommend anything that I don’t personally believe in. In addition I always welcome your questions and feedback.

Use Article Marketing To Increase Your Internet Marketing Success

Have you noticed that your Internet Marketing business is not getting noticed? That is one of the biggest challenges that most online business face. Everyone wants to increase their list of potential customers.

In the offline world, businesses put up signs to attract potential customers. In the online world Article Marketing can be a very effective sign to you internet business. Including article marketing as a part of your marketing plan can direct traffic and many potential customers to your online presence.

Article marketing has been around for a long time and there are huge directories for articles on the internet. All content that is on your blog or anyone else’s comes from someone that has written the information.

Is this article we are going to discuss article marketing from two different standpoints.

1.  Producing content for the purpose of posting on your blog

If you publish the article as content on your blog, it provides content for the search engines to rank your blog. Also, it provides fresh content for your blog readers to read. That keeps visitors coming back for more information from you. And any visitor is a potential customer.

2. Producing and distributing content to article directories

If you distribute your article to the article directories and include your resource or bio box at the end of your article, you position your content as a method to drive traffic to your blog. This happens when other marketer’s select your article from the article directory and post it on their blog or website. You now have a link back to your site and if anyone clicks on that link you get traffic.

Most internet marketers consider the second method to be article marketing. Actually both methods are ways to market your content.

It’s just that in the second method, you are marketing your article in the hope that someone will obtain it and use it in such a way that your business will obtain traffic as a result of the use they make with your article.

That is one reason that you want to insure that your articles are well written. That will help you achieve a higher traffic rate when marketing your articles.

Just as importantly, well written article will increase the potential that article directories will accept your articles into their listings.

Your whole intent with article marketing is to get your internet marketing presence noticed by others and to keep it noticed. The more people you can get to notice your web presence the more traffic you will have; and a web presence without traffic just as well not be present at all.

A third positive aspect of article marketing is that it will help to increase your credibility in the internet marketing world. This will help in your efforts to get traffic to your site also. As more people come to recognize you as knowledgeable, they will visit your blog to see what content you are producing for your internet marketing business.

They will want to know if what you are doing will help them in their efforts, and your online business will grow. Article marketing is one internet marketing tool that should not be ignored in your traffic producing efforts.

Technorati Tags: article directories, article marketing, internet marketing, traffic

Disclaimer: Links that are in this post or other posts may lead to one or more of my affiliate links. If you click on them and purchase I will get compensated because I recommended the product(s) to you. Rest assured that I will never recommend anything that I don’t personally believe in. In addition I always welcome your questions and feedback.

3 Tips For Your Internet Marketing Sales Funnel Plan

One of the most forgotten steps in creating a new internet marketing online business is the planning phase. Creating a business plan is very important when creating your internet marketing business. By the way, planning is often overlooked by the veteran marketers also.

Early on you should use your time in mapping out how your content, products, services and marketing efforts are going to work together to insure that your internet
marketing efforts will produce income.

Here are some tips that will help your get started on the right food and insure that you create a sales funnel plan that will bring profits to your business.

1. Obtain or develop high quality products.

This is very important for the beginning and the future of your internet business.

Quality products are key whether it is a freebie your are giving away or the largest ticket item that you have in your inventory. Quality products will help you build a positive reputation for your affiliate internet business online.

And providing quality products should continue with all of your future business activities with your customers. They should be able to consider and know that you will keep treating them better and better as you continue to build your business.

2. Create your line of products.

What is a sales funnel? It’s basically offering your customers a constant line of quality products that are increasing in value and likely in price.

Your customers will probably enter your sales funnel at different places. But, the most common place will likely be by taking advantage of some free product that you are giving away. The will generally do this by opting into your list on your squeeze page.

However, some may purchase one of your products without ever seeing your free offer. In either case you want them to continue to fall through your sales funnel and buy more of your products.

This is where planning comes in. You need to have a different response for each of these customers – a different plan. Determine how to introduce your next level product. For the person that accepted your free gift you want to get him to become a customer. For the person that bought one of your products, you want him to buy your next level product or one of equal value. And then you want them both to continue to fall through your sales funnel.

3. Stay in touch.

Besides just creating a high quality line of products and services, you want to build a relationship with your prospects and customers. You do this by staying in contact. Send them email messages – content mixed with sales offers. Make sure they are aware of your blog posts.

This constant flow of valuable information helps to insure that prospects and customers stay tuned to your efforts and also makes it more likely that they will pass your information on to their associates or business partners. This could get you more subscribes and more customers.

As I stated at the beginning the planning phase is key to your internet marketing success. Planning involves creating your sales funnel plan, your marketing plan, your content plan and putting it all together to produce a working system.

Technorati Tags: internet marketing, online business, planning, sales funnel plan, squeeze page

Disclaimer: Links that are in this post or other posts may lead to one or more of my affiliate links. If you click on them and purchase I will get compensated because I recommended the product(s) to you. Rest assured that I will never recommend anything that I don’t personally believe in. In addition I always welcome your questions and feedback.

New PLR Package – Achieve Your Dreams

A new PLR package has been released by Brett McEllhiney. It is a complete PLR package called “Achieve Your Dreams”. You won’t find anything missing in this package. You will be able to get your niche website set up and completed quickly and with ease. This is a great niche marketing product.

Here is what you receive:

• 45 page PLR ebook
• 10 PLR articles
• Keyword research completed (over 75 keywords provided in 2 test files)
• A very professional sales letter
• Professional matched download thank you page
• Professional matched squeeze page
• Professional matched graphics – .JPG and .PNG formats
• Professional matched Blog Theme

This PLR package is available with a $10 discount until 9/18/2009. The price for this package gives you a PLR package that you can use right away. This is a real value product. Get your copy now.

Currently Brett has not placed a limit on the number of copies to be sold. However, I would not be surprised to see that and a price increase soon.

Get your discounted price for this Achieve Your Dreams PLR Package now.

Technorati Tags: niche marketing, plr, PLR package - Achieve Your Dreams, sales letter, squeeze page

Disclaimer: Links that are in this post or other posts may lead to one or more of my affiliate links. If you click on them and purchase I will get compensated because I recommended the product(s) to you. Rest assured that I will never recommend anything that I don’t personally believe in. In addition I always welcome your questions and feedback.

Stop Promoting Uninteresting Products

It seems that most of us that are involved in internet affiliate marketing are familiar with the fact that there are hundreds of affiliate products available to promote. Most affiliate marketers also know that we prefer to promote something that we are interested in ourselves – something that we would actually buy ourselves.

It’s hard enough as it is to promote and make affiliate sales; but, it’s doubly hard to promote something that we aren’t 100% interested in.

Sometimes the most profitable products are just waiting for us to find them, only we overlook them over while we’re looking for something more secure or the newest and most popular affiliate program. Well, it doesn’t need to be that way — you can enjoy the best of both worlds; a fantastic affiliate product and a massively profitable online affiliate marketing business.

How is this possible? By finding an innovative mix of online marketing tools and product searching software, it’s possible to search ultra-profitable niches and find products for them before you even set up a hosting account and purchase a domain. Micro Niche Finder, a great new piece of software, provides the opportunity to master any online niche and optimize your product searching and niche seeking system.

So, how do you get started and in the process stop promoting uninteresting products? Because there is such a massive amount of information available for internet marketers, it sometimes proves to be a difficult task to know where to start.

That’s where this free report can help. So a good place to start is also a free place to start. This report covers all the benefits and possibilities of an online niche business. In the internet marketing world, niche marketing is growing as a key to making money online.

Click Here To Download Your Free Niche Marketing Report

Tired of being beaten to online niches? Don’t despair, almost all internet marketers have been there, and they’ve gone down one of two paths in order to get through it. The smart marketers have taken their losses and learned from them. As internet marketers we must learn as much as possible as we go through the process in order to maximize our online success. We must not stall or ignore new information. Staying up to date is important if we want to compete successful online. This free guide provides some of the most important and current information for online marketers to learn, implement, and optimize internet solutions.

You will find that this report outlines some of the most important strategies on how to find and master a profitable niche business. This report is packed full of valuable information and contains very practical solutions for anyone that wants to extend their internet marketing into niche marketing. Your questions will be answered and you will find that this is very much worth the time you will spend reading it. And if applied you will find yourself promoting interesting and profitable products.

Click Here To Download Your Free Niche Marketing Report

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing business, internet marketing, Micro Niche Finder, niche marketing

Disclaimer: Links that are in this post or other posts may lead to one or more of my affiliate links. If you click on them and purchase I will get compensated because I recommended the product(s) to you. Rest assured that I will never recommend anything that I don’t personally believe in. In addition I always welcome your questions and feedback.