While some people prosper in an amazing way from their affiliate internet marketing, why does the rest struggle and end up with little or nothing to show?

What do the cash affiliate program stars do that is different from the rest? What magic formula do they use that sets them apart from the crowd?

Do you want to discover what are the well guarded secrets of the affiliate super stars? There are definitely some very obvious mistakes that most people make which guarantees them failure and misery.

By simply correcting these mistakes any online entrepreneur involved in affiliate internet marketing can dramatically improve their chances of success easily. Let us focus on the three most common mistakes that affiliates make which lead to their resounding failure and downfall.

a) Affiliates That Expect Results But Do Nothing

It is amazing how little most affiliates do and yet they still expect results and are surprised and bitterly disappointed when do not get any. It just doesn’t make any sense. The key rule in this life is that it is not realistic to expect something from nothing. It just doesn’t work that way.

Actually what most affiliates do is to simply paste their affiliate link to their blog or site and then sit back and hope for the best. Of course nothing happens and they then turn round and tell everybody who cares to listen that affiliate programs and affiliate marketing do not work.

b) No Strategy, No Plan

Then there are those affiliates who will dive in and get involved in a flurry of activity doing that and the other. They may even get very busy while they are in the process. But as busy as they get, they will not produce much results from what they will be doing. The reason is very simple. Success in any business is not working hard, it is simply working smart more than anything else.

It is very important that you have a plan or strategy and that even as you get busy you must stick to it. And then at the end of a certain period of time, you should be able to sit down and analyze the results of what you have done and then either improve upon what you have just started or abandon your strategy if it is not working and try out something else.

c) Targeted Traffic - No Way To Generate It

The most important thing you must be able to do to succeed in any affiliate marketing program is to generate a constant supply of targeted qualified leads most of whom can easily be converted into paying clients and customers. It all starts with the generation of traffic in large enough quantities to enable you to get enough serious qualified leads on a regular basis.

The above are definitely obvious reasons why so many affiliates fail in their affiliate marketing, but most of them do not have a clue when marketing their affiliate programs.

To Your Success

Carol Oon

The “Nice” Mentor

I recently read the following interesting article at DigitalPoint which I would like to share :

101 Ways To Get More Traffic :-

1. Write and submit articles . It is a classic, but it works. This will be indefinite traffic stuck in the search engines for you. Write quality unique articles, not articles that are rehashed or provide no insight to readers, which is a huge problem these days.

2.Write and submit press releases, think prweb after you do one.

3.Write and ping blog entries. Always make sure to link back to your website with your blog posts. Try making multiple blogs and have them all link back to one main site.

4.Make sure your website is listed in DMOZ: http://dmoz.org/.

5. Advertise your website in the appropriate categories at Craigslist. Try posting your ads in the most populated cities in the world.

6.If a niche related forum that you frequently visit allows signatures, then make sure to add your website url in there.

7.Make sure to view related products on Amazon.com. You can try and take some customers from your competitors here by providing your own url if the product is similar.

8.Review websites in your niche on Alexa to try to take some of their traffic by including a reference back to your site.

9.Review some related products on epinion.

10.If you purchase a product that you actually like, then feel free to give an individual respect when respect is due and leave a testimonial. You should be able to get some traffic from that website if your testimonial is left with a url.

11.Whenever you send an email to someone, always add your website url as a signature.

12.Keep updating content on your websites/blogs… try at least once per week.

13.Tag blog posts at social bookmarking sites, especially at http://del.icio.us/.

14.Add photos to your blog with appropriate keywords.

15.Tag blog photos at Flickr.

16.Politely ask your readers to subscribe to your rss feeds.

17.Try coining your own term. Might want to trademark it if you smell that it will become popular.

18.Encourage readers to comment on your blogs.

19.Include translation for your websites/blogs, especially in Chinese.

20.Do not be boring, write about something that a wide select of people would want to know about.

21.Make sure to edit your writing (unlike what im doing ).

22.Comment on other related blogs.

23.Make a custom 404-error page for your website. You can provide a link back to your main website or even try to monetize it by offering a related affiliate program within your niche.

24.Sponsor a charity, most charities will link back to your website, and you are also doing a good deed .

25.Sell an item on eBay as a charity auction. Most charities will link back to both your auction and your main website.

26.Start a publicity campaign, do something that individuals in your niche will take note of.

27.Brand your website with a logo and a slogan/catch phrase. Think IBM.

28.Hold a crazy contest that people in your niche will talk about. This will equal more links and traffic to your website.

29.Build a tool that individuals in your niche will love and enjoy. Then give it away for free. If the tool is helpful, then you will get quality one-way links to your website.

30.Contact small newsletters sources offline and submit articles to them.

31.Become friends with editors of an offline publication.

32.Give speeches offline. Start small and local. Also, do not forget to participate in toastmasters meetings in your area.

33.Have a GREAT product. All of the marketing/advertising in the world will do you NO good if your product is sub par.

34.Make something innovative. If you are selling information, what makes your content something you cannot get from the local bookstore, Barnes and noble or even eBay for that matter?

35.Is your product groundbreaking? Will you leave individuals with no choice but to talk about your product or service?

36.Are you selling something that wide groups of people want to know about but there is limited/scarce knowledge?

37.Write good content, if your writing is good then people will share it with their friends. In addition, webmasters will use it as content on their website with a reference back to your article, or at least they should.

38.Spark emotions. If you get people emotional about something then they will most likely talk about it.

39.Get a custom t-shirt made with your website url on it, and wear it often.

40.Build a list of subscribers. Your list is like a golden asset to you if utilized correctly.

41.Write tip articles, such as “Ten easy tips to blank-blank-blank.”

42.Buy traffic from the search engines by utilizing one of their PPC campaigns.

43.Open up a myspace account and find targeted friends so that you can promote your services to them. Do not spam people, myspace is cracking down on spammers and are starting to sue people.

44.Solicit a link from your local chamber of commerce.

45.Have an easy to remember domain name. If your domain name is too long or not memorable then people may forget your site.

46.Add a bookmark option to your website/blogs.

47.Purchase the misspelled versions of your domain name and have it redirect to your main one.
48.Use keywords in your image alt tags. For example,

49.Make sure to include appropriate keywords in your title tag, search engines show more prominence or importance to keywords here.

50.Place appropriate keywords in your anchor text when linking.

51.If you have a profile anywhere online, always include appropriate keywords and link back to your website.

52.Try to get links from websites within your niche with a high pr (pagerank). Some The more one-way links (inbound links/backlinks) you have to your website, the higher your pr will become. Pagerank is important because websites with higher prs tend to have a higher search results in Google. It is a no brainier that if you can get number one for a competitive keyword then you will have enough traffic that you can handle… oh by the way its all free targeted traffic to remind you.

53.Outsource grunt work. Time is in essence money…. you can hire individuals at freelance services to send emails, request JV proposals, or to answer questions from prospective or current customers.

54.Offer something for FREE. Abracadabra is not the magic word, FREE is. It is like a worm on a pole for a fish in the water…. its bait! Offer a free mini course or free ebook to help collect more subscribers. You can always offer a backend to monetize on this opportunity, such as an affiliate product for example.

55.After someone orders from you offer a one-time offer that compliments your product. For example, if I offered a traffic ebook, then after the individual purchase it would make sense for me to offer a traffic conversion bonus for a limited time only.

56.Become the virus within your niche. Make yourself the bug and have people talking about your product. When people talk about your product then you can induce the viral effect. However, you must give people a reason to talk about you, and being like everyone else is not one.

57.Do your research and find expensive niches to tap into. A good way to do this is to find how expensive someone is paying for a keyword on a PPC search engine. If you can sell items that are more expensive more often then it is a quicker way to get rich .

58.Become an active respected member of niche related forums. You can do this by offering quality posts. Hint Hint, it is not the number of posts you make, it is the quality. Remember, quality or quantity. Many useless or negative posts will have people looking at you funny.

59.Test, test, test. Your flushing money down the toilet if your not testing to see what campaigns are bringing you in the most money compared to which ones are costing you money. When you test, you can eliminate the campaigns that are costing you dollars so that you can properly maximize your marketing efforts. Without proper testing, you are pretty much lost and can’t improve. You can only guess to what has or what is working. With proper testing, you do not guess, you know.

60.Stay up to date on what is going on in the world, you can monetize off hot topic trends.

61.Network, when you know more people you can find people that can help you get what you need.

62.Offer an affiliate program for your product or service. Make sure to let your satisfied customers know that you have one, if they like your product then they will be even more delighted to know that they will get money for referring you.

63.Write and give away a free ebook or report. It does not have to be long as long as its quality information neatly formatted and put together. You can also make a brandable ebook or report and allow affiliates the opportunity to brand their affiliate links in there to pass on to the next individual. You can then send this ebook to your subscribers or submit it to ebook directories.

64.Add viral components to your blog such as social bookmarking options, and a refer a friend option.

65.Be funny, people like something that will make them laugh and they will spread it for you if it is a genius idea.

66.Syndicate your content by using an RSS feeds on your website.

67.Answer people’s questions on Yahoo! answers with a link to your website in the sources area.

68.Put a link in the “about me” section of your eBay profile.

69.Make and upload a viral video to you tube. Use appropriate keywords in the video description for your target audience.

70.Record an informative podcast and submit them to poplar podcast directories.

71.Provide helpful answers for Google adsense on their help forum with a link back to your website. Go here to check it out: http://groups.google.com/group/adsense-help

72.Get people to comment and add content to your site. When they do this, they will provide you unique content, no need to pay for ghostwritten articles.

73.If you cannot get JVs, then try to bribe webmasters for sponsored advertising space on their newsletters.

74.Include a media section on your website so that you will give the media an easy way to stay up to date on what your company is doing.

75.Try to teach a class at your local community college or university. The more exposure you get in the public, the more credibility you will receive.

76.Make a screensaver and make it easy for individuals in your niche to download it. Have eye candy graphics combined with your company logo to brand yourself.

77.Write something controversial and spread it freely to your target market. It can be something as idiotic as the Da Vinci code, but as long people talk about it, its a successful campaign. A few hints, something controversial is something that goes against established beliefs in your market.

78.Write and publish a book. Having your own book is a quick way to gain credibility.

79.Take a guru in your niche out to lunch, and pay for it.

80.Start an organization or club about something. This can be done online through Yahoo! or Google groups.

81.Volunteer. Donate your time to a good clause…you can always network with people and form connections at the same time.

82.Get involved in your community and try to run some type of outreach program.

83.Offer good customer service, you may be surprised on how many referrals you get just be having a reliable one.

84.Consider adding a direct mail marketing campaign to your marketing ****nal.

85.Put an ad in your local yellow pages to get some local customers. Yellow pages tend to be more successful then newspaper ads because individuals are looking for a particular service when they are browsing through the yellow pages as opposed to newspapers.

86.Post bulletins in your local supermarket. However, since not everyone may carry a pen or pencil, place your contact information and url on strips on the bottom so that individuals can rip it off and take it with them.

87.Host your own commercial so you can put “as seen on TV” on your products.

88.Conduct surveys and publish them. These make you appear as an expert in your field of study.

89.Break a record or shoot to be in the Guinness world records for something.

90.Make a sitemap for your website.

91.Use a favicon for your site.

92.Make your visitors more involved in your website. You can help accomplish this by adding CGI scripts to your site.

93.Make sure you have no broken links on your site, and make sure that your website shows clearly in all browsers.

94.Find domain names that get traffic, purchase them, and have them redirect to your website.

95.Spell correctly whenever using keywords in writing.

96.Look at sites related to your niche to try to figure out how they get their traffic.

97.Properly optimize your website for the right keywords.

98.Try to avoid java scripts on your website as much as possible.

99.Do not use frames on your website.

100. If your website becomes popular and starts getting lots of traffic, try switching to a dedicated server. The longer you site is down equals the more lost visitors you will have.

101. Write a quality 101 article about a steamy topic that people want to know more about in your niche.

Wow! Really 101 Ways to get more website traffic! Even if you can use one of the above ideas effectively, I am sure your time is well spent reading it.

You can read the Forum thread at DigitalPoint :

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=246573

To Your Success

Carol Oon

The “Nice” Mentor

I am sure you have read about the woman in Texas who have spent nearly two years in her bathroom. Pam Babcock, 35, literally sat on her toilet bowl for too long that her flesh got stuck onto her toilet seat!

Can you imagine such a bizzare thing? How did this poor woman got herself imprisoned in the bathroom? So, what’s her problem? She is definitely a procrastinator because it was reported that her boyfriend tried to persuade her to come out of the bathroom but she usually replied “maybe tomorrow”..

What a sad news! Yet, we can learn something from this story. It teaches us not to be a procrastinator especially when it comes to making money online. So, what is procrastination? It is to avoid doing a certain task that ought to be finished but the person keeps postponing until the next day things which can be done today.

When a procrastinator fails to complete the needed task, he feels inadequate, depressed and guilty.. In any online business or internet marketing, I guess procrastination is our No. 1 enemy. Do you want to be successful in your online business? Then, do not be a procrastinator.

Do you want to be successful in your online business? Successful people are the ones that take action! Your daily duties should be your priority. Tasks such as advertising your website consistently, and doing what is necessary to propel your online business to the next level, and of course don’t be lazy.

If you are a procrastinator, preferring to postpone your needed task to the next day, then how do you overcome this No. 1 enemy?

Here’s 5 simple and effective ways to overcome procrastination:

1) Break your tasks into smaller ones

You heard this before, I am sure, how do you eat an elephant? Though an elephant is very big, you can still eat it bit by bit, chunk by chunk. So, similarly, break your big task into smaller ones. You can do this, for example, tell yourself to work for 1 hour, and take a 15 minute rest, and then do the same task for another hour, and take a rest, and so on.

2) Be Positive

Tell yourself you are going to be positive for next 24hrs, for 1 week, then 1 year and so on … Take away your negative feelings such as “I can never be successful”, “I am capable of doing nothing right” Be positive because it is definitely easier to concentrate when you are a positive person. If you are negative, chances are you are just limiting your choice to become a successful online marketer.

3) Face Your Fears

Be tough in your online business, if you start, don’t ever give up. Quitting is not an option in this industry. Of course, sometimes, it could be just your anxieties that is bothering you. But just remember, it’s still better to do something than nothing at all.

4) Prioritize Your Tasks

You need to prioritize your tasks between urgent and important things. Manage your time efficiently, be determined to follow your schedule to accomplish your much needed tasks. Find ways that suit your style but don’t quit but be persistent in following through.

5) Recount some of your success stories

I am sure there are times when you are very confident of yourself because you have been successful before. It could be just clearing your messy wardrobe, or doing something simple successfully. So, just keep these happy memories and meditate and tell yourself that as you have been confident and successful before, you will be successful again in completing the task.

Ok, just 5 simple and effective ways to overcome procrastination. Let’s recount, break your tasks into smaller ones; be positive; face your fears; prioritize your tasks and recount some of your success stories, and I am certain you will be on the way to become a super and smart internet marketer who does not procrastinate at all! Go, and promote your online business!

Carol Oon is an internet marketer who writes articles on Home Business and Affiliate Marketing strategies. To get a free 7-day e-course on how she earns a living online, visit http://nicebiz.ws/ For more tips, you can also visit her blog at http://www.gdi-info.blogspot.com/ Please feel free to distribute this article in any form as long as you include this resource box.

To Your Success

Carol Oon

Internet Marketer

http://www.nicebiz.ws/

Have you heard of TrafficSwarm before? It’s an easy and free internet marketing service. TrafficSwarm will send free, targeted traffic to your websites. Their mission is to assist webmasters, entrepruneurs, home business owners as well as affiliate marketers to to market their sites more effectively and simply.

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TrafficSwarm is quite a new free advertising system, and you will benefit even more if you create your FREE account now before most people join. Check it out!

To Your Success

Carol Oon

Internet Marketer

http://www.nicebiz.ws/

Do you think your online business could be a dream come true? Do you want an online business with a well-loved passion or hobby? Are you able to make money online if you have no money to start a home business?

But then, how are you going to earn a living online if you have not much cash or no money to start? You may say, my friend, don’t “BS” me and give me high hopes. So, is it really possible to start an online business with no money at all? I will share my marketing experience with you on 2 simple and effective ways to make money online without paying a dime on advertising.

1) Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing is probably the easiest online business to get involved with. For a start, there is no product or no website to begin with. For those of you who have no advertising budget, not to worry, there are many free ways to advertise your online home business. Free advertising such as writing articles and submitting to EzineArticles.com, creating your signatures at internet marketing forums, free advertising at classified ads, MySpace,You-tube, Craiglist, Squidoo, etc.

However before you start to promote any afiliate product online, you need to know about Clickbank.com. Why Clickbank? This is because Clickbank is a favorite marketplace which sells digital products, and as a Clickbank affiliate, you get to to sell many ebooks of your choice. Clickbank’s registration is free. You will get paid a commission whenever your prospect buys your Clickbank product. There are literally thousands of Clickbank products you can choose from. So, do your research, find out what is your passion or well-loved hobby, then choose a product of your choice.

For example, if your well-loved hobby is about animals such as dogs, and you want to do article marketing, you may want to write an article on “Ten Simple Secrets To Effectively Train Your Dog” and submit it to article directories. All you need to do is to include in your resource box your name and brief summary of your expertise and of course your affiliate url links too. So, that is to say, you should select an affiliate at Clickbank that has to do with your well loved hobby, and in this example, selecting affiliate products which are related to your favorite hobby, ie. dogs.

2) Blogging

Blogging is another favorite way to make money online. You can start blogging by signing up with Blogger.com which is free. The best way is write articles on your affiliate products which you like or have passion about on your blog. A review of the product if possible which should include your affiliate links. If you blog frequently, at least several times a week, you should be able to to get some free search engine traffic to your blog because search engines loves fresh contents.

There are a few great article directories which you can submit your articles such as EzineArticles, GoArticles, ArticleMarketer, etc. EzineArticles.com is my favorite article directory to submit my articles as it is a really great place to get good exposure; and Ezinearticles.com is also most internet marketer’s favorite resource place to get backlinks to their blogs. Anyway, since generating traffic via search engines is free,why not make full use of it? It will definitely boost your PR (Page Rank) of your blog. The reason why Ezinearticles.com is so popular is because their web pages often rank very high in the Google SERPs. So, take full advantage of this free article directory.

Before you start a blog on your free Blogger.com, you will need to think of the name of your blog and have your email account with you as you will be asked to enter your email address. Do your research on the keywords of your blog. You may want to try this free software, Goodkeywords.com for some good keywords. Once you set-up your blog, you can start posting your first article. Preferably put your keywords in the title of your blog.

See, just 2 easy, simple and effective ways to make money online without paying a dime on advertising. Of course, there are many challenges or problems starting an online business but with your patience and and determination, you should be able to start a home business.

So when you start, don’t quit; and be focussed and have a steadfast mind on your Internet business. But it’s persistence and patience which will lead you to the fulfillment of your internet dreams. There may be times of struggles, disappointment and trials but if you stick with it like a glue on your Internet business … I can assure you, dreams do come true!

Carol Oon is an internet marketer who writes articles on Home Business and Affiliate Marketing strategies. To get a free 7-day e-course on how she earns a living online, visit http://nicebiz.ws/ - For more tips, you can also visit her blog at http://www.nice-biz.blogspot.com/ - Please feel free to distribute this article in any form as long as you include this resource box.

Make Money Online

To Your Success

Carol Oon

Internet Marketer