Dec 2008
23
10:23pm


How many times have you heard the phrase baby steps?  It’s often used when a piece of advise is given regarding some huge task that seems to be so hard to attain.  I hear it a lot in business management talks and team building events.  Baby steps they say.

When I give this advise to someone else, I often bring up the picture of a 100-step staircase.  100 steps seem to tiring to climb but unless you take the first step now and step two next, you’ll never get to the top of the stairs.  John Reese calls it Incremental Success and I agree with him.  One step closer to a goal should be considered success.  You have not attained your end goal yet but you’re successful in taking a step closer to it.

If you’ve cooked a good idea in your head then take the first step immediately and do not wait for tomorrow.  Do everything you can do now and waste no time.  I admit that I am guilty of procastination from time to time.  There are times when I put up a list of to-do’s with accompanying dates but each time I do this, I find myself lagging far behind each day.  When I check my accomplishments, I can hardly find any.

The year 2009 is a good opportunity to start changing things but why wait for 2009?  Why not start today?  Why not take that first step today and be closer to finishing that goal?  Oh yes, I’ll start today.

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Dec 2008
23
04:12am

Ever had the dilemma of having to choose which product to promote?  I know I have and it’s quite a headache.  If you’ve signed up as a publisher of Clickbank or PayDotCom, you probably know that these (and other) marketplaces have tons of products for publishers (like me) to offer.

So, what should the confused first-timer do?  There are two things to choose from.  One is to go through a list of products in a particular niche that interests you and choose one product that sells well and start promoting it like crazy.  But why put all your eggs in one basket?  So, the second thing you can do is to simply go through all the products in a particular niche and promote them all.  I call this the “Find out what Sticks” method.

It’s not as hard as you may think really.  All you need is a free blogging service like WordPress, Blogspot, or Squidoo.  Add to that some basic SEO knowledge and lots of consistency and persistence.  Basically, what you do is create a blog (WordPress / Blogspot) or a Lens (Squidoo) for each affiliate product that you wish to promote.  Fill it up with relevant and useful content with the right keywords and share it with your friends.

Is that it?  Technically yes.  But always remember the “Consistenct and Persistence” part.  You need to update your blogs regularly with fresh content, keep spreading the word about them in whatever ethical way possible and try not to lose focus.

As you go along, take notice of which products are selling well and which are not and start focusing more on those that work and wean out those that just waste your time – in other words, you find out what sticks.  As soon as you remove those that don’t work, try to add in some new products as well.  This way, you will slowly grow your affiliate marketing business into an empire.

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Dec 2008
13
06:17pm

Have you ever asked the question, “how do I make money?” to yourself?  Well, if you did then you’re in the right track to actually making money because the first important ingredient to earning cash is the desire to make money.  But of course, desires without action is fruitless which is why I wrote this short guide to help you find out how you can make money.

If the desire is the first step, then planning is the second.  Ask yourself, where am I good at?  Are you good at selling?  Then find stuff to sell.  Are you good in building things?  Then build them and sell them.  Are you good in helping others?  Then perhaps start a counseling service of some sort and sell it.  Plan carefully and don’t just jump into anything without thinking.  Ask yourself the following questions:

  • What will I sell?
  • To whom will I sell it?
  • How will I sell it?

The third step is to sell whatever you have to sell.  If you think of selling as something that you don’t want to do then I’m sorry to tell you that you have very little chances of making money because just about any way of making money requires selling.  Even employees sell.  You either sell a product or a service.  In order for you to actually sell, you will need to have a store of some sort.  If you’re planning to do things offline, then it could be your garage.  If you’re planning to do things online, then it’s most probably going to be a website of some kind.

Now that you have a store and you are technically already selling your goods (products/services), the next thing you need to do is build your market.  List down people you know whom you think will be interested in whatever you are offering.  Contact them one-by-one and tell them about what you have to offer.  I know it sounds “scary” but you have to do it.  It’s kinda akward at first but the more you do it, it’ll be second nature to you.  If they turn down your offer then move over to the next person in your list.

Lastly, broaden your market.  If you sell only to people you know then you’re business will die.  Yes, technically what you have now is a business but instead of thinking of it as a milking cow, think of it as a baby first.  You need to nurture it in order for it to grow.  Now, back to broadening your market.  You can do this by putting your computer and printer to good use.  Create simple posters (or have someone do it for you) and mass-print it.  Put it everywhere you can put it.  Also have tarpaulins printed and put it in front of your house.  The whole idea is to tell as many people as you can about what you’re selling. Someone’s bound to buy it sooner or later.

As for online stores, you can start by emailing your friends and giving them a link to your website.  You will also need to do some search engine optimization so you can get traffic from the search engines.  You can get a 30-day lesson on search engine optimization here.  If you have the funds, it will also be a good idea to pay for advertising.  You can do this through Google Adwords.  Before you get started with advertising on Adwords, you might want to learn the tricks of the trade first.  You can get a good Adwords guide here.

Lastly, check how you’re doing and make improvements.  Majority of start-up businesses die in its early stages because their owners don’t make improvements.  You have to learn from your mistakes and take steps to correcting them.

If you think that making money is hard, then you’re wrong.  If you think it’s easy then you’re also wrong.  You just have to be wise and cautious.

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Dec 2008
12
04:19pm

Google has finally extended AdSense for Domains to its publishers but don’t get too excited just yet because it’s currently only open to North American English-language publishers.  I know that sucks for the rest of us but this is still better than nothing.  Hopefully Google will extend AdSense for domains to all of its publishers irregardless of location or language.

“With AdSense for domains, users can find relevant information rather than see empty pages or “page not found” errors. Today we present ads, links, and search results on the pages, and may add other useful information in the future. To ensure positive user experience and the quality of our network, these sites are monitored for policy compliance and prohibited from using text and images designed to confuse users.” – quoted from Inside AdSense

If this goes full throttle to all publishers then I’m sure many will be happy – especially those who have lots of unused and under construction domains.  Can’t wait to get in to it myself.

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Dec 2008
11
11:57am

Note to reader: I decided to quite Magpie.  Yep, it’s something that I don’t want to promote or be a part of anymore.  The income earned is not worth it as I consider my twitter followers of more value.

I am however retaining this post for those who still want to give it a try.

Yeah, I’ve heard about this making money with twitter thing before and again I wish I joined the bandwagon earlier.  Oh well, better late than never.  Anyway, just about any form of communication on the internet is being utilized for advertising and when there’s advertising then there’s money in it.

Click here to Start Making Money with Twitter Now

You see, it takes three to advertise.  The advertiser (the guy who pays the bills), the publisher (the guy who gets paid), and the audience (the guy who sees the ads).  When it comes to statistics, it is the audience that has the numbers, then the publishers and lastly we only have relatively few advertisers.  The advertisers pay the publishers depending on how much audience the publishers can reach.

Now, how does that relate to making money with twitter?  Well I think the best way for you to understand is just click here to visit the beamagpie website and find out for yourself.  But basically it works like this…

  1. Advertisers advertise on beamagpie.
  2. Twitterers sign-up as publishers.
  3. beamagpie sends the ad to your followers.

Don’t worry about too much ad being sent to your followers because beamagpie has thought of that already.  You can actually specify how many ads are sent in a specified amount of time.  Ok, enough talking for me and enough reading for you and just give it a try.

And oh, don’t forget to follow me on Twitter.

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