How was your week?  Good I hope.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about my blog this week, so much to say, but how to manage all the information and present in an effective way.  So after much thought I’ve decided to start splitting it up into topics, wherever possible I will provide links to other sites that can provide far more in-depth and varied information than I have the time or expertise to provide.

This week has been very exciting, if only there were more hours in the day or more days in the week for that matter.  I’ve invested in a few new programmes and joined two CPA networks (if you’re looking for fast cash then CPA/ Cost Per Action is definitely something worth researching).  More to come on that midweek along with some sales data.

To get started try having a look at Peerfly.com. This site is also going to be changing quite a lot over the coming weeks too as I introduce more features and implement different marketing strategies in an attempt to show you how to monetize your own sites.  I’m also going to introduce a forum and a review page and very much hope you will all chip in!

And so to the master plan; how to create a recession proof business.

If you have never thought of creating a web site or a blog before and you’re heading for the door at this point,  then please don’t, it’s far easier than you think, you can do it honest.

In order to succeed in any venture I think most people need a degree of self-belief or at least a desire to improve or change their own situation.  We are all driven in our own unique ways and often far more capable than we realise.  I guess what I’m trying to say is the greatest gift you can give yourself is belief in your own ability.  A good friend once said to me when I was having a difficult time, trust in yourself, it’s amazing how often those two words have come to my aid over the years!

I can’t claim credit for the main frame work of this plan, that belongs to a clever and amiable super affiliate named Mark Ling.  Mark has several videos available promoting the launch of Affilorama premium. If you have time they are worth taking a look at.  For our purpose however I’m going to adapt it to suit my own particular take.  For me this isn’t just about starting a business, it’s about discovery and a passion for knowledge and trying to convey that passion.

Lets get to it…

An overview:

Our first goal is to create a niche web site that is generating an achievable £50 a week.  It’s important to realise that this is just the first step, what we are aiming for is something much bigger. What we are going to do is create our own review site to use as a vehicle to promote information products. The main objective of this is to provide good quality content in the form of product reviews to a targeted demographic, in other words great information that has a specific target audience.  Google loves good content and will seek out these websites, this is an important part of the plan.

In addition to these reviews we are going to promote are own affiliated products by using Hoplinks, these are links that transfer hits from our sites to the website of the product we are working as affiliates. These hits are then logged so that as long as a sale is made within 30 days we are credited with the commission.  The beauty of this is that there are thousand of affiliated products to sell and you are free to choose whatever you want to promote.  This means that you are not tied to any one product and by a continual process of review and tweaking you can find the most profitable campaigns.

This is a system that is widely used, once you have learned how to spot it … its quite astounding. If you have been previously unaware of this type of marketing it’s quite an eye opener.

Don’t be daunted by the prospect of writing articles and reviews.  There are many techniques for creating copy and research is key.  A useful tip is to always a have a notebook handy.  I often read several articles and then amalgamate what I consider to be the key points into a list. It’s easy to create good content by then expanding on a list with your own thoughts. It’s important to draw a line between plagiarism (directly copying another persons work without consent) and research.

This is definitely to be avoided and wherever possible I recommend acknowledging the source of your information. It is also useful to get other people to proof read your work.  If all else fails try outsourcing articles by using sites  which specialise in creating such articles (roughly $10 per 500 words) and you can check out Elance.com to get an idea of how this works.  Reviews can take many forms they can be short and impartial maybe only one or two paragraphs with some form of rating to give them structure. Typically these are grouped together on a single page. This allows the reader to make a judgment on which product is best rated, or they can be full-length interviews that go into far more detail.  These are typically much better suited to landing pages, or paid for adverts.

In general the shorter reviews tend to be more successful because visitors can quickly see via a rating system what product is best rated and they are less likely to read longer articles if they are just browsing and trying to asses what their options are.

Well unfortunately it’s the wee small hours now and I’m out of time. So before I go I will leave you with something to think about:

What about if you had five or even ten sites.

What if instead of earning £50 a week they all earn £500 suddenly our equation takes on a new light.

So how do you move this forward?

Part of your home work for this week is to research review sites related to whatever niche you are interested in, look at how they are constructed and in pay particular attention to their links and what kind of ads they are running.  Why do this? Well first of all I want to change your attitude to the way you look at the Internet. This is our playground and it’s filled with opportunity.  Secondly its important to know your competition. These sites offer a wealth of information that can be used to make your own campaigns profitable.  What we need to do is understand and extract all the valuable information and use it to our own advantage. The wonderful thing about this kind of business is that 99% of the information already exists. The fun part is pulling it together.

Until next time

Si

First I like to say thanks for visiting, I’m amazed at how many hits I got last week and that has spurred me on to write this brief introduction to my business plan.

Originally I was looking for was something that was potentially recession proof.  My first idea was to spread risk by creating a network of mini sites selling  or promoting different products.  The  second part of the plan was to maximise profit by going after the highest commissions I could find i.e. anything in the range of 30 to 70% I will show you how to find these commissions.

In essence the idea was to research profitable niches, follow other peoples success and build on it.  It’s not as difficult as you might imagine and there are several ways to achieve this.

Looking at review sites is a good way to start.  Amazon is good and studies by independent research groups have shown that rating and review sites influence consumer shopping behaviour and large companies have begun to mention online reviews in television advertisements and on the back of receipts.

Adverts that you might notice on sites you visit regularly that run continuously are obviously profitable ( nobody is going to pay money to advertise if they are not making a profit).

Forum Searching for related products once you have found a niche, for example learning Spanish or in my case Solar Energy.  If your stuck, Google key phrases  or visit a site like Clickbank. There are also a variety of free tools that can be used to speed this process up which I will cover later.

Internet Marketing (IM) is a multi billion dollar industry, which is still quite young with areas that are growing rapidly  like CPA (cost per action) where large amounts of money can and are being made. Cost Per Action or CPA (sometimes known as Pay Per Action or PPA) is an online advertising pricing model, where the advertiser pays for each specified action (a purchase, a form submission, and so on) linked to the advertisement.

Direct response advertisers consider CPA the optimal way to buy online advertising, as an advertiser only pays for the ad when the desired action has occurred. An action can be a product being purchased, a form being filled, etc. The desired action to be performed is determined by the advertiser.The CPA can be determined by different factors, depending where the online advertising inventory is being purchased.

Every time you turn on your computer and surf the web you become part of an intricate game, the trick is to be awake to it.  You might not realise it but we are all subtly manipulated and are part of this vast battle as literally millions of companies  and sites compete for our traffic.  In order to be successful at Internet Marketing (IM) you need to know what kinds of traffic there are and how to manipulate them to your own advantage, for instance pay per click traffic (PPC).

The good news is that there are easy to follow strategies. You don’t have to go of piste for this just follow in the footsteps of those that have gone before.  Don’t worry though, it’s not worth getting  heated up about at this stage as all we need to do is find one method that works for us to start generating income.

Profitable niches can be broken into categories and generally speaking people will often want to improve some aspect of their life or search for information because they have a problem that needs fixing.

Ask yourself this:

why do you use the internet?

What is it that you do when you go online?

The internet is a tool for searching for information. What I aim to do is to show you how to profit from providing that information.  This could be to do with health (such as fitness or weight loss) or something to do with parental rights even, maybe they have a problem with their plumbing or are looking for advise on cosmetic surgery.  Whatever it is,  the chances are there will be an information product or advertising campaign that  you can become affiliated too.

Any area where information is important and has a sense of immediacy can be called a critical niche.  There are many other types of niche,  our role is to target these groups and promote relevant information on a commission basis.

If you have found this interesting have any questions please feel free to leave comments.

What next.… The plan is revealed …drum role please . Coming soon free ebook packed with information….don’t miss it.

see you next time

Si

A bit about me just so you know who I am
I am 44 .… it just happened. I have wonderful kids, a beautiful wife, a dog, two cats and live in a terraced house in Reading, England. At the moment I work in the TV industry as a freelance production carpenter. It’s a great job, I have been lucky enough to work on many of the most popular TV shows in the last twelve years including doing a bit of rock and roll here and there. Big Brother, XFactor, Fame Academy , Who Wants to be a Millionaire, the list goes on.

So why the sudden interest in internet marketing? Well, we all need a change sometime. Most of all I need to spend time with my family, I have missed too much. Like everybody I hold a dream, the only difference is that now I have taken the decision to turn it into a reality and I won’t stop or give up until it becomes real. My job is fairly demanding .… long and often unsociable hours and to be honest the possibility of increasing my income substantially and working from home doing something new and interesting is an extremely powerful lure.

The main aim of this blog is to track my progress and where possible show how I have built a profitable business online. Anybody with a computer, regardless of social background, age or education can learn valuable new skills and build a new future. I’ll try to be a good teacher and welcome any comments or questions. I’m following the Affilorama Blueprint and I suggest if you are interested in what I am doing you check out their free videos and maybe even join the friendly forum where you can ask questions such as where do I start and what on earth is affiliated marketing? There is a wealth of information available at your disposal. I’m not a computer genius and I will post my accounts quarterly so you can check my progress. I will try to update the blog as often as possible and maybe post some video and even the odd podcast. I wish everybody who gives it a go success. Remember you can travel an awful lot further with a positive attitude.

The Plan : originally when I looked at internet marketing before I had ever even heard of Affiliated Marketing I set myself several goals.

• The first was to earn an extra £1000 a month, this might seem a big target but I wanted to spend more time with my family and the solution was to be able to generate some form of income from home.
• The second was to find a means of making a system that would just continue to roll out after the initial set-up.  My wife had recently started writing knitting patterns and selling them as PDFs on etsy/Ravelry/ her website. This fascinated me. This was the first digital product I had really paid any attention to.  Imagine no inventory, no storage, no premises just a digital product that can be sold over and over again even in your sleep and so it went on.

The seeds of a plan were born.

If I could apply some basic business principles and economies of scale then hey this could work. As I reserached more the idea of £1000 a month didn’t seem that crazy and maybe even that soon would become £1000 a week, £2000 a week, £3000 a week, £4000 a week and on and on… Initially this seemed somewhat absurd, although in reality a lot of people do earn this kind of money but it wasn’t something I had ever seriously contemplated.

Well the good news is that I now not only see that £500 a day is possible but I also know how to achieve it.  Obviously this is a long-term plan that requires a fair amount of work but with a positive attitude and a degree of focus by following a tried and tested formula I truly believe anybody could have a lot of fun and make a successful business out of affiliated marketing.

What do I need? Amazingly not a lot ~  all that you need to start is a computer with an internet connection and all the information can be found for free at Affilorama.com

How long is it going to take ? Thats up to you. I have set my own goals and you can follow my progress here on my blog.  At the moment I still work seven days a week and I spend as much time as I can pushing the plan forward and the difference is that now I can see the day that I shall achieve my goals and the future will be different…….Happy days

Primarily this is a list to explain a little bit about what I have been up to for my friends.

Over the last eight months or so I have been looking a various ways of generating an extra income on the internet.  To be brief its been an interesting journey, I’ve had good and bad experiences… I have been trying many methods and on this blog I will update you with more info.

But firstly I want to tell you about something I think is a very exciting and extremely achievable  business model centred around Afilliated Marketing and Pay per Click Advertising . What on earth are you talking about Simon I hear you say…ah.  Well that is a very long story and a good excuse to head to the pub, but what I am saying is if you are looking to start a new business, start a new chapter in your life or try something different then take a leap of faith with me and take some time to look at something I have found.

My interpretation of Affiliated Marketing

If you haven’t heard of affiliated marketing before then Christmas may just have came early. Google describes it as an individual advertiser or website owner who has a business relationship with a merchant to promote the merchant’s product or service. The affiliate earns a small commission from the merchant for each referral that results in a sale; the merchant handles payment and fulfillment.

In short this means that the more savvy individuals amongst us are free to pick and choose from a myriad of products  and niches what we would like to promote in return for commission. Affilorama.com are free and offer over eighty educational videos for people just starting out to those involved in advanced internet marketing. They provide a wealth of information for you to tap into at your own pace. Honestly for value for money and content its hard to beat I would and have recommended this to everybody I know. 

Its taken me a long time to arrive at this path but I genuinely feel that this has potential. With a bit of drive and persistence the benefits of this kind of business are quite staggering. I know it’s not going to be for everyone, you can either leave a comment here or email at fileyhall[at]mac.com if you have any questions. To get started take a look at Affilorama.com

Happy Days

Si