What I mean is that you should ask yourself what types of markets you are most familiar with.

Is it dating, dieting products, music, electronic gadgets or something else? Go through a list of your hobbies and what you enjoy doing as a starting point.

The reason I brought up this point is because in order to be successful in affiliate marketing, it is better to inform rather than to sell. Sometimes you will hear the word “presell” being used and what it means is simply informing the potential customer about the pros and cons of the product so that they can make an educated decision. If you come across as trying to push the sale, most of the time you will turn the potential customers away.

Now I am not just referring to ClickBank products that have high commissions. Admittedly, many people are drawn to the products on ClickBank that have high gravity and high commissions. There are many affiliates who have succeeded with independent affiliate programs and physical products as well.

Providing information to the potential customer is one reason why review type web sites work well. When a visitor comes to a review site, they will see different products that can potentially solve their problem. You are offering the a choice between several products in the same niche. At the same time, they can find rankings for the products and the advantages or disadvantages of each one. Think about how Amazon incorporates their customer reviews. How many times have you gone to Amazon and read the reviews before you decided to make a purchase?

People are looking for information online before they make a purchase. What you want to do is to intercept them in the process. That is why it is important to be familiar with the products that you are going to be promoting. If you don’t come across as a reliable source of information, the chances of getting the sale will be lowered.

If the niche you choose is something you are familiar with, you will have an easier time writing about the products and you will also know the terms that are commonly used in that niche. That is not to say that you cannot be successful even if you are not an expert in a particular market. You can join forces with other people to come up with a joint project or hire a writer who is well-versed in the subject.

The best reviews usually come from someone who has used the product themselves and can vouch for all its strengths and expose its shortcomings. This is why I am amazed by all the copycat product reviews especially in the “make money online” niche that I see. If you just copy what everyone else is doing you will not succeed. Also, please don’t cut and paste the product reviews that the vendor gives you. Try to come up with something of your own.

The old saying goes that “familiarity breeds contempt” but in affiliate marketing, “familiarity breeds success!”

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, promoting affiliate products, preselling

If you answered “time” then we’re on the same wavelength.

Everybody gets 24 hours a day no matter how rich or poor you are. The thing about those 24 hours per day is that we can’t spend all of them working. We have to sleep, eat, exercise and take care of our bodies. We need to spend time with our families and friends. So…we can allow ourselves just so many work hours each day. Since our working time is limited that means that we must be efficient with our work. We can’t waste time on unnecessary details or on tasks that others can do.

When you shave a few minutes here and a few minutes there, you will make more efficient use of your allotted work hours. Here are a few suggestions and in the interest of saving your time (and mine), I’ll keep this brief and to the point.

Email accounts. Let’s face it - as online entrepreneurs, email can be a huge distraction especially when your business grows to the point where you receive hundreds of emails a day. If you don’t want to hire a virtual assistant just to sift through your emails, here’s what you can do. If you have multiple email accounts, checking each and every email account more than once a day can be a huge time sucking activity. One thing you can do is to have all of the email that comes to all of your various email accounts forwarded to a central account. Something with lots of storage like Gmail would be a good candidate. One email account takes a lot less time than several and you can still maintain all of your various email addresses.

Always remember to cut down on the time spent reading and answering emails that are not going to add to your bottom line.

Prioritize your day. Do whatever it takes to set some goals for the day. Some people like to make lists. Others write down what they have to do on Post-It notes. Having a list of things you want to accomplish for the day will help you sort out and prioritize the important things that need to be done first.

Focus on building your business. Remember the 80/20 principle? Find out what your 20% is and focus on those activities. Don’t waste too much time checking your stats or lurking in forums. Those activities don’t always help you grow your business. Don’t get me wrong. Forums are a great place to meet people and network with others who share your same goals. And relationships that you form with other entrepreneurs are a valuable asset. However, you’ll need to strike a healthy balance so that you don’t end up neglecting the things that will prop up your bottom line now.

Outsource. Since you can’t clone yourself, the next best thing is to outsource some of the tasks that take up your time. Depending on your business model, outsourcing can work wonders to get you more of your time back. Things you can outsource include writing (articles, press releases, etc.) book keeping, PPC management, web design, article submission, and SEO, to name a few. Outsourcing doesn’t just mean that you farm out the menial tasks to others. You also outsource because others are better at certain tasks than you are. This will leave you to focus and develop your core competencies.

You will be really surprised at how much of your day that you waste if you keep a record of how you spend your time over the course of several days.

[tags]time management, solo entrepreneurs[\tags]

I have seen the potential of Private Label Rights ever since the very first PLR membership site appeared which I think was Jimmy D. Brown’s Nicheology (which has since been taken over by Paul Evans). The nice thing about PLR content whether they are ebooks, reports or articles is that you can modify them any way you like and them call it your own product. Just check the licensing terms to determine what the limitations are for each PLR product.

This is a great way to create a steady stream of products to add into your marketing funnel.

But the big question most people have is not know how to actually convert these PLR content into their own product. I feel that there is a lack of a solid guide out there that takes you step-by-step through the process. Most people think that you just have to put your name on the product, upload the generic sales letter and you’re going to start seeing cash pour into your PayPal account.

They’ll find out soon enough that it doesn’t really work that way.

PLR can be used in a variety of ways. You’re not limited to just product creation, you can use the very same PLR content and repurpose it for product marketing as well. I’ll cover all of this and show you 16 different ways how you can steadily profit from PLR content.

If you’re like me, you’ve probably got a TON of PLR content you’ve gathered over the years on your hard drive. Even if you’re new to the whole concept of PLR, you’ve probably seen sites that are selling PLR packages that contain multiple products. You buy the package, download it, and then what?

The missing link is HOW to really leverage these PLR content to grow your own business.

That’s the primary reason I wrote this e-book. I wanted to show folks how they start putting the GOLD that’s sitting on the hard drive to good use.

Find out more about PLR2Profits!

Technorati Tags: PLR2Profits, private label rights, PLR

I still think Entrecard is a great way to get exposure for your blog. If you look carefully through the inventory of blogs, you’ll find some that are great deals in terms of exposure/credits ratio. I’ve found some blogs to advertise in that are generating a lot of clicks relative to the number of credits needed to advertise. Try to look for great deals at the bottom of the barrel.

Don’t give up on Entrecard too quickly. Take some time to familiarize yourself with the system and carefully track all your ad placements to see which ones are performing the best.

I’m seeing better results with this than BlogRush which John admits was not performing up to his expectations.

Technorati Tags: Entrecard

The thing is a lot of people will keep on buying PLR content in the *hopes* of putting them to use one day. There’s always another project planned for the future that never gets implemented. What happens usually is that you end up with a TON of PLR content sitting on your hard drive gathering dust.

So how do YOU put PLR content to use?

I’m working on a guide for using PLR content to create your own products quickly. The purpose is to have a step-by-step guide that anyone can follow starting from acquiring the PLR content to getting the product ready for release and marketing it to the public.

I’ve surveyed my subscribers on questions that they have regarding product creation using PLR content and I’ve got some great responses already. In case you’re not on the newsletter list, please feel free to comment on this post and ask your questions.

I will try my best to incorporate all the answers in the guide. Keep a lookout for it… should be ready in a week or so.

Technorati Tags: PLR content, private label rights

Time can indirectly be equated to money since the time you spend writing could be used in some other way to earn an income.

What makes the BUM marketing method work is the sheer volume of articles you need to write and submit to article directories. If you want your articles to be picked up and syndicated by other webmasters on their sites or ezines, they have to first see your article. By having a large volume of articles in a particular niche, you will increase the chances of your article being found.

Having said that, you have to carefully consider the types of markets where article marketing will work. A good way to do this is to look at the topics that are most written about at the article directory of your choice. Capitalize on the research that others have already done for you. If there are a lot of competing articles, then it stands to reason that it must be a lucrative market.

The second way that your article can be found is if it is indexed and ranked well in the search engines. So when someone searches for a particular solution to their problem, they will read your article and follow the link in your resource box to the website you are sending them to.

Many people focus too much on the exact keywords that they need to have in the article title and body. Do not get hung up on keyword density. Rather, include the main keyword or phrase in the title and then write naturally about the topic. Your article will read better if you are not too focused on the mechanics of writing for the sake of search engine optimization.

The other thing is that you do not have to submit your article to hundreds of direcotories. Pick the top three and focus on submitting to those sites. You will find that having focus will be more effective than going far and wide.

Technorati Tags: BUM marketing, article marketing

The key to success with Bum Marketing is to research the niche you are targeting and find the keywords that have low competition. The idea is that you will have a better chance of ranking well in the search engine for those keywords or phrases. When someone searches for these “long tail” keywords, your article will be found on the first page of the search results. The interested reader clicks on your article link, reads it and is then directed to your site where you promote the affiliate product.

Others use a similar strategy but instead of promoting affiliate products, they are primarily focused on Google AdSense. If that is the case, they will be researching niches where advertisers are willing to pay a few dollars per click for their ads. The problem with this approach is that unless the advertiser is seeing good conversion rates for placing their ads on the content network, they will filter out sites that are considered to be low quality. I don’t think the strategy using articles to drive traffic to sites with AdSense will be as scalable as promoting affiliate products.

Strategy #2: Build Your Brand

The second way you can use article marketing is to build your brand. Use the articles you write as a way to introduce yourself and your business to others. If you submit your articles to a popular directory like EzineArticles, often times your article will get picked up and published by ezine publishers. This extends the reach of your original article to potentially thousands of readers.

As always, remember to include your resource box which is the part below the article where you write a brief biography about yourself. Don’t forget to include a link to your website so that the readers can go there and subscribe to your list. If you are using the second strategy for article marketing, you want to make it your main goal to the reader to opt-in to your list. After that, you can keep in touch with them as long as they are subscribed.

The strategy I have seen used by internet marketers who are building their brand through article writing is to write a large number of articles in one niche and submitting them daily. I have seen some authors on EzineArticles who have thousands of articles, particularly in the internet business category. This increases the potential exposure they are getting. If your name is out there more often, people will see it and recognize it.

So which type of article marketer are you?

Technorati Tags: article marketing, Bum marketing