My Online Marketing Page

According to the Internet World Statistics, the fastest growing internet usage is coming from Africa, Middle East and Latin America.   However relative to population, the penetration in Africa is still fairly low at 4% while Middle East stands at 10%.

North America and Australia have the highest penetration of usage to population at 70% and 54% respectively. 39% of Europeans use the internet.   

Asia has more than half of the entire population of the world, and although 10% of all Asian use the internet, in absolute numbers, Asia records the highest number of internet usage.

Interesting.

Makes you wonder where and what are the opportunities just by looking at these numbers.

http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

Many newbies might be overwhelmed at the thought of setting up a website before they can promote other merchants’ products.  As I have learned too, having a website is not the end all and be all to internet marketing.  If you want to know how, read on. 

Affiliate marketing is a program that allows for affiliates to earn fairly high commissions for each successful sale they manage to refer to the affiliate merchant.  The sales page, the payment processing, the digital delivery, and post sales services are the responsibilities of the affiliate merchant.  All the affiliates have to do is to recommend and promote the product by referring people to the affiliate merchant’s sales page.

This can be done by encouraging key target consumer to click on the affiliate links exclusively provided for the affiliate.  These special links are vital for the affiliate marketers as they serve to let the system know that a visitor was actually referred by the appropriate affiliate.

How do affiliate marketers market the merchant’s goods without the benefit of a website?  Here’s sharing some techniques:

* Article marketing:  We all know how powerful affiliate marketing can be in link building campaigns.  But instead of providing for links to your own website, you could provide your affiliate links instead.  Article directories allow you a resource box where you can fill up your bio and a  link of your choice.  Some article directories do not allow affiliate links in the body copy, but affiliate links are allowed in the resource box.  There are many article directories available but the better ones to submit your articles to are www.goarticles.com , www.ezinearticles.com , and www.isnare.com .

* Forum marketing:  Online communities, or forums, are additional channels to promote your affiliate links to.  Membership in pHp 2.0 based forums gives you a signature box where you could advertise your affiliate links.   For every post you make, your signature box will appear.  If you post a thousand messages, you’ll have a thousand pages advertising your affiliate links!  If you wish to know the forums which are relevant to the subject serviced by the affiliate products  that you’re promoting you can use the tool at www.link-advantage.com/search to find the appropriate online community.

* Advertise in eZines:  This may cost you as many eZines charge for advertising space.  Nonetheless, this enables you to expose your affiliate links to highly targeted prospects using this approach.  If the eZine has a list of 10,000 people,, you will immediately be able to reach 10,000 quality leads with one advertisement.  Point is, you don’t need a website.  Just use your affiliate link in your ads.

Not having a website is not an excuse to not be successful online.  Most of the strategies listed here can be accomplished without spending a single cent.  If you do not have the financial resources to register a domain or to subscribe to a web hosting service, you can still achieve success with affiliate marketing.  Joining an affiliate program is free.  So is promoting your affiliate links, if you so wish. 

Good luck!

As I have learned,  there is a certain science to affiliate marketing and it does require strategic thinking to promote another person’s product.   This separates the super affiliates from the rest of affiliate marketers.   But many people, who are newbies or even those who have been doing this for years, may believe it is that easy to make recommendation by just providing a link.   Here’s a checklist of things to avoid in affiliate marketing:   

1. Don’t believe that people would just click on your affiliate links just because they are there.   You need to presell and encourage people to click by highlighting the benefits of the affiliate merchant’s products.  By giving favourable recommendations and bundling with your own offer would entice readers to not just check out the package, but to buy through your links.

2. Organic traffic is a myth.  It’s a mistake if you believe that a website can generate natural traffic.  They have to find you and they can’t do that if your website is just sitting there doing nothing.   You need to learn how to make them find you through effective SEO techniques as well as through efficient marketing strategies.

3. One marketing strategy is insufficient to generate traffic , for eg, submitting one article to the article directories would not cut it.  This is a fatal mistake.  Do not limit yourself to a single, or even a couple, of marketing tactics as this will limit  the number of visitors you could generate for your website. 

4. Tracking and measurement sales performance is key in affiliate marketing.  You need to make corresponding adjustments if sales dip or remain at low levels, but first you need to know where have you fallen short.   It is important to study every facet of our marketing strategies.  How many visitors are we generating for our website?  How many of them are unique?  How many are returning?  How much time do they spend in our pages?  Where are they coming from?  To where are they exiting?  These are the questions that can be answered by an excellent visitor tracking software program, and these are the questions that could help us improve the performance of our marketing endeavors.

5. Find sellable affiliate product to promote.  Do not just be persuaded at the high level of commission.

6. Find an affiliate program with a proven record of consumer satisfaction, one that has established relationship with its target segment in terms of recognisable brand and excellent service. You will have an easier time pre-selling such an affiliate program’s products.

7. Gain competitive edge by keeping abreast with the latest developments, techniques and news in the industry.  Internet marketing knowledge becomes obsolete quickly given the speed with which technology changes.

8. Do not stop investing on knowledge.  Knowledge likewise evolves and you have to evolve with it.  Update yourself with the latest tactics relevant to your area of online marketing.

9. Success is not eternal, you need to continually sustain it.  Do not  leave your business alone once it shows the promise of success, you’re just setting it up for failure.

10. Do not believe that affiliate marketing is a “get rich quick” scheme.   You have to invest a certain level of commitment, a lot of time in learning, some financial resources, and lot of effort if you wish to see the promised land.   

Something to think about. 

If I was a complete newbie, I would think Adsense would make for the easiest way to earn passive income……

Not so my friend.  You can’t get started if :

*  you don’t have a website (& for this type of income, you would need more than one, and that’s got to be targetted)

*  you have not decided what topic or niche

* you have no idea how to promote your site/s

* you do not know how to write, how to get content, how to get traffic, how to get relevant Google ads on to your sites..

Basically, if you have not done market research, then you don’t know what niche that is lucrative, not so competitive, etc.    You first have to know how to do market research and where to find out?

I suggest you go back to your notes and find those recommended links the gurus have imparted to you.

Then next question - how to do websites?    Ah, this my friend is the question most newbies ask (if my partner, who’s quite the techie geek hears of this, he will strangle you .     If it makes you feel any better, I still do not know how to do websites, although I have learned bits and pieces - I have been forced to learn to upload my websites (that’s FTP - yeah another story

Four days ago, I attended Dr Mike’s preview on his Adsense Seminar (Dr Mike makes more than US$200k a year from this).   I picked up some useful tips and will apply to my sites and I will lshare with you the outcome when it’s successful (or not!).

Then again, is Adsense your main FOCUS?   

This time last year I was a total newbie, totally un-techie,  had no idea what I was getting into - like the majority of people, my knowledge of internet was limited to emailing and researching.   I wasn’t even “chatting” with anyone online.  I knew abit about blogging. I was quite resourceful though in research, as part of my job then and the internet was and still is a wealth of information.

Since then I have learned and understood stuffs like PLR, SEO, list building, adsense, google adwords, affiliate marketing, JV, resell rights, etcetc.   There’s tons and tons of knowledge out there and 100x more not discovered.  If I had gone into this knowing I needed to know all these, I would have gone into hiding.

But you know what, I do not have to know everything.  The gurus don’t know everything.   They know of some things that work well and they specialise and build a system around it. 

Key take-out this year was on focussing and having a system.   This I agree totally, one will be overwhelmed with the burden of info overload and opportunities.  

First thing first, take out your notes and review them -  said Jay Abraham.  Set goals, make commitment and put a system of measurement.   Set priorities and set progressive standards.

This year Stephen Pierce spoke a tad slowly than last year, so I understood him better:).  Marketing is the business of satisfying customer needs, said he, and the challenges are in finding, getting, keeping and growing customers.  How?  By making the right offer, at the right time, to the right consumers, at the right place, using the right channel.

Last year, Ted Ciuba , founder of WIS and publisher of Think And Grow Rich, aptly led the first WIS in Singapore/Asia with planting the seed of desire - a burning desire to succeed.    If you think you are beaten, you are.

The reason why I write this is because I have encountered too many people with only the desire to make money, but that’s all there is to it.  I have had to kick some friends’ butts to get them going and take action.  In the process I too remind myself of the need to work not just hard, but smart.

We’re all in this together.   We’ll kick each other’s butts from time to time.  If we keep at it, and we continue to learn and grow, we will not fail.   Failure is no longer an option.

Mr Rick Raddatz said, early in his speech, what is the number one thing that’s stopping you from succeeding in life?

The answer is :  Lack of focus

I have to tell you it is easy to stray.  You could be persuaded to buy more tools, packages, stuffs you could probably use but may not be critical to your internet existence.  You do need the time to learn and read alot if you are a newbie.  But you need the time to take action for every knowledge you gain.

Until next time!  And what have you done today?

Jay Abraham was a special guest keynote speaker at WIS. Dubbed as the world’s most renowned marketing genius, he is hotly sought after by Fortune 500 companies. We couldn’t get any pix with him one to one so here’s the closest - from the big screen!

That’s me and my business partner, Shafir Ahmad, with Willie Crawford. We booked him for lunch on Day One and took him to Northern Indian makan. Interesting stories of how he started his famous recipe book - Soul Food. The man has little to unfaze him by now as he spoke of his days in the Air Force. I adore him for his humility and charm. See what he wrote in his blog! http://www.williecrawford.com/blog/archives/001016.html

That’s Michael Cheney! I have watched many of his free tips via video on adsense and listbuilding. I would have liked to attend his 3-month course on listbuilding, but didn’t have spare cash even if it’s in the lucky numbers of S$8888! Next time perhaps Mr C! It was great meeting you in person.

Everyone knows Stephen Pierce! At last year’s WIS, I was too overwhelmed by his presence to grab a pix. But this year I got one BEFORE WIS. Last year I guessed that the dynamic Mr SP was setting his footprints in Asia and one year down the line he seemed to have a huge Asian following.

That’s Mrs Pierce - Alicia! As I said to her which she agreed totally, she’s the real hero behind her husband’s successes! And really, since they are here quite often, they should buy one of the islands here!  With PLR too

John Childers was awesome speaker!  He teaches people to be professional speakers.  And the audience voted him, by a large margin, to be the best speaker of WIS Singapore 2006! 

Rick Raddatz used to work with Bill Gates and I think he’s a brilliant presenter as well.  Talked about using audio and video in online business.   For one so dynamic and powerful he came across as downtoearth and humble.

That’s Andrew and Daryl Grant from Australia.  These guys are an inspiration to us all for having cracked the wealth code and they started to see huge results in after a year through a system they built. 

Never give up. Never give up. Never give up.  (one Internet Guru reminded us of this famous speech by Winston Churchill).

That’s a single most useful advice we all could use, whether it’s internet marketing or just about anything else that we do in our lives. 

WIS is not just about internet marketing.  It is about having the courage to change your life just when you think there is only one major highway and only mini roads thereafter.  I now see several super highways in the horizon.

The journey continues for me.  Twelve months down the road since the last WIS, I have taken actions to put together some websites, to build a list, to create products and continual learning.  It’s time to take MASSIVE action and make MASSIVE amount of $$$.  The thrust is to focus and to build a system.

I never thought it would happen so quickly, I dreamed of shaking the hands of very successful people in internet marketing business.   It happened during this WIS.  And that set you thinking that a dream or a goal, when set in proper affirmation, will manifest……the power of belief should never be underestimated.  I have to read again , Think and Grow Rich.  Now I need to be rich, filthy rich, and famous, no supremely famous - LOL!!!

Four days of intensive seminar, my brain is now totally wired to do better ways to improve my business.

I will share these tips and techniques in the near future for the very newbies because I have been there and done that and I will continue to invest my time and money to sharpen my online marketing skills.  Did I mention I will also have fun doing this?  Besides making pots of $$$$

There will be interesting pictures and more stories in the next post.