Archives for April 2018

Have you ever wondered how to start your own business online?

If you answered yes to this question then you are among the many. You may be interested in starting your own business for a variety of reasons. This can include replacing an income from your old or current job, or supplementing your current income in addition to your current job, or to allow yourself more time freedom as well as financial freedom. What ever the reason, starting your own business online is actually not that difficult to do and can bring you huge returns.

The best way to start is to make sure you do not over complicate the process, and yes, there is a proven process and a sequence of steps to follow to ensure your success when you are starting out. But, you must be consistent in your approach, follow the laws concerning work, and you must not let all the noise of the internet distract you from following these 7 simple steps that I am about to show you.

1. Find a niche market that you have an interest in.
2. Make sure people are searching for information on your niche.
3. Design and build an easy-to-use website.
4. Use the major search engines to drive eyeballs to your website.
5. Establish authority in your niche and on your website.
6. Follow up with your prospects through email marketing.
7. Do things in this order.

I know these steps seem very general, however, they do work and are intended to be done in this particular order. This is very important.

Anyone can follow this process. You do not have to have a particular degree or background for the type of research you need to do can be done through simply using the search engines on the internet.

Find a niche market that you have an interest in

You may be wondering what a niche actually is. Lets begin by defining a niche. A niche is nothing more than an “audience”, a distinct segment of a market. When choosing a niche, you should choose something that you are truly interested in. Whether it be a hobby or even something you want to know more about. Keep in mind, you do not need to be an expert. What happens is you become an expert by setting up a foundation and then becoming an authority in that area.
Almost anything can be a niche, and what’s even more interesting is that you can earn money from any niche because there are billions of people on the internet searching for information and solutions to their problems, and these become products or services that you can sell to them.

Many people at this stage of the game are tempted to look for a product to sell first and then look for a market to sell to after. You want to resist doing this. To increase your chance of success, start with your niche first before even thinking about a product or service to sell. So, if you are even worried about not having a product, no worries. It is simply not important right now. Just focus on finding the niche and worry about the product later.

Make sure people are searching for information on your niche

Understanding why people use the internet is very important when it comes to knowing how to start your own business online. So, why do people use the internet?

To find information.

So, the secret to creating a successful business online is to simply provide the information people are looking for. If you give them information they are looking for, they are more likely to want to look at products that you recommend for them. It’s that simple. People don’t like to be sold on things. They want help to find information they are looking for. If the information that you provide for them gives them value, then they are more likely to look at your recommendations. This way you are not selling them products, you are simply recommending products that are relevant to what they are already looking for .

That being said, how do you make sure people are searching for information on your niche?

The answer is to ask your favorite expert “Google”.

Well, you don’t ask directly, you use what is known as “Google Instant”.

What is Google instant?

Well, your friend Google discovered that it takes a person more than 10 seconds to type in a search request and then hit the enter button. Since Google is always trying to improve things, they developed what is know as Google instant search which lets the system search for results as you type them in the search bar. They claim these methods will shorten time spent searching by more than 3 seconds per search attempt, and this instant search in ON by default.

This attempt to decrease the search time, gives marketers to see what people are actually searching for and gives us suggested keyword phrases. The results that you see below are results that people are actually doing. Therefore, you are seeing what people are searching for. If people weren’t searching for those terms, they would not display.

So, let’s say you are interested in starting a business online providing information about learning how to play guitar and you want to know if people actually are interested in this subject. Well, just start typing in google….

See the image below:

Notice, how I just start typing in “learn how to p” and google finishes the sentence beneath my search. This indicates that people are searching for that term. I also found that people are searching for information on how to play piano, chess, how to paint and how to play the ukulele. I just came up with more niche ideas that I know people are looking for information on. Isn’t that cool!

I can even find out how many people are searching for this term and if I have a lot of competition. Because ideally, a good number of people searching my niche with not a lot of competition equals a real good chance I will get a lot of eyeballs on my online business. So, how do I find out how many people are searching for this term and how much competition is there? A good keyword tool will give you this information. I use what is known as Jaaxy.

Here is a screen shot showing a search result using Jaaxy.

As you can see by looking at the above search results, “learn how to play guitar” has 10184 average searches per month, but does have some competition. The QSR results indicate how many other websites have a page or post about the same topic. So, there are 181 competing websites trying to “rank” for this search term. The KQI results indicate that it is “normal” competition.

But what we want is at least 50 searches a month with less than 100 competing websites if we are just starting out. This way we know as a beginner, we have a chance of having many eyeballs looking at our website.

I personally would try to target the term “learn how to play guitar chords”. There is 128 people searching for this term every month and only 28 competing websites with a KQI of “great”. That is, well, great!

Now, imagine if you had a website with just 5 pages written with 5 different search terms like these that each had 128 people searching each month. Well, that is 128 X 5 = 640 sets of eyeballs looking at your online business every month. Now, imaging 10 pages. Yep, that is right 1280 sets of eyeballs looking at your business.

Get the picture of how powerful this can be?

Oh, and by the way, Jaaxy has a free version where you can get access to 30 free searches. There is also a paid version where you get unlimited searches for a fee of $19.95 a month. I will show you later, how you can access Jaaxy for free and get unlimited searches. For now let’s move on to the next step.

Design and build an easy-to-use website

This is where most people start to freak out.

Designing and building a website in the 21st century is nothing like it was back in the day. In fact, you can actually build a website in less than a minute. As far as designing it, well, that may take a bit longer, but not much.

And yes, you do need a website. Do not, I repeat, do not, ever, never (Am I making myself clear here) listen or answer an ad stating you can make money online without a website. It is utter CRAP to even go down that road. Why, because it will distract you from your original intent, which is to make YOURSELF an income online.

If you do not listen to what I am saying, you will end up making SOMEONE ELSE money online. It is that straight forward, OK, enough said on that topic. There are many scams out there, so stay away from anything that smells like make easy money. IT DOES NOT EXIST.

whew! Got that one out of the way.

Anyways to build a website is very easy and I recommend using a blog format and WordPress.

The WordPress platform is easy to use and easy to host and, most importantly, easy to drive traffic to. There are many themes available that make design simple and there are many plugins available to keep it simple.

You basically want to build your website around the idea of your chosen niche. If you want to teach people how to play guitar, then build a website all about guitars. Plain and simple.

Notice how we haven’t even chosen a product yet?

It will become clear why. You see, now that we have chosen a niche. Lets take learning how to play the guitar as an example. We now know we are going to build a website around guitars. I can now research and write all about guitars. It should not be that difficult, because I like guitar. So, I am essentially going to research and write about a topic that I enjoy. Isn’t that the way life should be?

I do not need to know what I am going to sell to write all about guitars do I? no, I do not. At this point I just want to write about information that people are looking for so that I can attract visitors to my website. A product doesn’t matter at this point, because there are no visitors to my business yet anyways.

So, how do I build a website?

Well you follow these simple steps:

• go to http://wordpress.org and download wordpress to your computer
• find a hosting company to install wordpress. Any hosting company will have instructions on exactly how to do this.
• You will want to search for a domain name that is relevant to your niche. For example learn guitar.com (might now be available) Your hosting company will give you directions on how to get a domain name.

That is really all there is to it.

Want a quicker and easier way?

Here is a step by step video on exactly how to build a website it less than one minute. Check out the video below 

See, I told you it wasn’t hard to do. And, it is completely free (two free websites).

Now for the next step.

Use the major search engines to drive eyeballs to your website.

There are essentially two ways to drive traffic to your website using the search engines.

• Paid traffic
• Free traffic

Free traffic

For both of these methods you still use the following strategy. I am going to give you the simplified version, but it is the most effective strategy.

This is how it works. You write an article based on a search term that you know people are searching for and does not have a lot of competition. For example, let’s use the example keyword phrase from above. “Learn how to play guitar chords”. Remember from the second step? We learned that 128 people per month search for this phrase and that there are only 28 competing web pages writing about this phrase. That is only 28 pages in the whole world writing about that exact phrase.

So, we write an article all about learning how to play guitar chords. With a little knowledge about Search Engine Optimization (SEO), we can target this keyword phrase and rank this article in Google. Anyone can learn how to use the basics of SEO, it is not difficult at all. Later on I will show exactly where to learn how.

So, you then write an article based on this search phrase.

You then, rinse and repeat. You look for other search phrases within the guitar niche and do the same thing.

Make it a goal to write 2 to 3 articles like this a week. After a while, you will see a bunch of traffic to your website. Remember above how we said if you wrote 5 articles with 128 searches per month, that would equate to 640 searches a month? Yes, it adds up folks!

Now you can start to look for related products!
How? You ask. Well, again, let’s ask our friend Google. In the search area, type is learn how to play guitar affiliate programs and check out the results:

Below the paid ad section from the image, you will notice a number of guitar lesson affiliate programs. These type of affiliate programs are all free to join. You do not have to pay to promote these products. Many of these products (if not all of them) are digital products so your readers can download them instantly after purchasing them and you earn a commission. Pretty cool right?

So, how this works is you write an informative article on how to play guitar chords because you are somewhat familiar with it or you have researched chord diagrams and you give people some free content about guitar chords. You then recommend a product for them to learn in more detail. That is it! If you wrote 5 articles you would have over 600 people a month looking at your website and can potentially be interested in a recommended product.

You are not aggressively selling them you are simply recommending a product that they have already shown an interest in.

Paid Traffic

Now you start to see some traffic and sales, but you want to scale up. Now it’s time for some paid traffic. I recommend to start with Bing Ads. Bing Ads Network is advertising you can purchase for 3 different search engines with one ad. They target Bing, Yahoo and MSN when you purchase a single ad. Here is how it works.

Again, you write an article based on a search term, but this time you are not as concerned about the competition level. So, in this case we may want to target the keyword “Learn how to play guitar” instead of “learn how to play guitar chords” because there are more people searching for this term.

Now instead of trying to rank your article, you are going to pay the search engine to display your ad towards the top of the search results. Similar to what you see in the image for affiliate programs above. You see the three top search results are ads that were purchased. They will appear up there regardless of SEO because someone paid for those positions.

So, in this case you would write an ad with a headline with something like “Learn how to play guitar like the pros” Click here form more information. And then, boom! someone lands on your page, reads the article and then is led to your affiliate link on a recommended product and hopefully they buy the product and you make money.

The advantages of paid traffic is you get traffic quicker, but your return on investment is higher than that of free traffic. Free traffic gives you a better return on your investment because it is free, however, it takes more time to rank your articles to page one of the search engines. The best thing to do is a little of both.

Establish authority in your niche and on your website

This is really an ongoing thing. As you write more articles about your niche and conduct more research on keyword phrases using Google Instant and a good keyword tool like Jaaxy, you will become an authority in your niche.

As your authority in your niche increases so does the authority of your website. This is what is known as an authority website as apposed to a small niche site. The difference being the number of pages and posts within your website. Can you imagine if you wrote 2 to 3 articles each week to your website what would happen after a year or two. Yes, that is right, you would have an authority website.

It is at this point that you will start to receive income on complete autopilot. Google and other search engines favor websites like this and you will constantly be ranked for many search terms in the search engines.

You should not at this point that we didn’t really worry about a product until after we started to receive some traffic to the website and started to establish authority. This is one of the reasons why it is crucial that you follow these steps in order, which leads me to the next step.

Follow up with your prospects through email marketing

I am sure you have heard of email marketing. All the big players do this. Walmart, CVS, Amazon, and just about every retailer now practices email marketing. Again, it is one of the final steps for a reason.

Why?

because it doesn’t do any good to start getting peoples email addresses until you are getting regular visitors to your website. This is known as the “content first” email marketing strategy. This is different from the “funnel first” email strategy, which is totally different. You can get the details of these two strategies by reading my article entitled “Best email marketing strategies”. It would be good to know the differences between this two strategies to get the full impact.

So, basically the idea here is that toward the end of your article, you place a form on your page that asks your prospect for their name and email in exchange for giving them a gift. A gift can be any free download or free guitar chord chart PDF file that you have created or anything you have to give away. Once you collect their name and email address, you can email them future product recommendation through email.

The reason this is so powerful is that you never lose the customer. Since you have a steady stream of traffic now visiting your website, you can keep promoting and recommending products to them over and over if you collect their email address. Otherwise, you may never see them again until they visit your site again and unless they have bookmarked your site, there is a slim chance they will return. This is very powerful indeed.

It is especially powerful if you use software tools such as an auto-responder, such as aweber or GetResponse. These tools allow you to practice effective email marketing and gives you the ability to ad one of these forms to your web page. Once the prospect fills out the form, you collect their email and you can set up automated email messages to them. These messages can be scheduled over a duration of time giving your prospect both valuable information mixed in with affiliate product offers. This is where top marketers really make a huge amount of money. Through email marketing

Do things in this order

This brings us to the last step. I believe it is critical that you do these steps in the order that I laid them out. It is more efficient and allows for the most profitability for your business. You don’t want to lead your business with the product for example, because it causes people not to trust you and it is difficult to establish authority that way.

Plus you don’t want to start developing your email list until you have provided valuable content to your prospect by providing information they are searching for. Not to mention, it is easier to build an email list when already have a website that is attracting a large amount of visitors.

So, if you are interested in getting detailed information regarding step by step, university type of training on how to start your own business online and get access to a whole community that is dedicated to your success, then read my

#1 recommended resource here

Have you ever wanted to know how to sell affiliate products online?

If you answered yes, then stick around and I will explain in detail exactly how this can be achieved. As you most likely already know, there is a massive amount of information on this topic and many techniques taught. But, again, a foundational approach is the best approach and is the one that will bring you the most success.

Theory is one thing and it certainly has its place, but this article will focus more on the practical side of things. Like, what to do and where to go for the information to actually earn an income online. This approach will work whether you are someone who wants to make a full time income online or if you are someone who wants to supplement their income while working a full time job.
This is the beauty of the internet, it allows total flexibility and, yes, it is possible to earn a substantial income on the internet while working a full time career. I have done it myself.

Is It Hard To Sell Affiliate Products Online?

Like anything else in life, it is only hard if you do not have an outline and a map of what to do and where to go. I will attempt to show you what to do and where to go to simply the process. Speaking of processes, one can complicate this making money online thing, or they can simply do what works, and one of the best ways to do this is get mentoring from people just like you who are currently doing it today (not yesterday).

The process of how to sell affiliate products online can be broken down into 4 main steps:

• Choose and interest (we all have them)
• Build a website (don’t worry, you can do this in about 30 seconds)
• Attract visitors to your website (again, let’s not over complicate this either)
• Earn Revenue (the best part indeed)

As you look at the above list you may be thinking that they sound pretty broad and would like some more detail. Well, if that is the case, YOU ARE RIGHT! They are broad and do need more detail.
But, we break it down this way so that you get the general idea that if you do it any other way, you are going down the wrong path. I say this because there is a huge amount of crap on the internet trying to sell you the idea that it is “so easy a 10-year old can do it”, or “following my method is so easy, your grandmother can do it in 2 simple steps”.

You may have seen ads like this… Stay away, I will repeat, a foundational approach is the best approach. You see this common theme throughout this website for a reason.
So, let’s go ahead and give each of these steps some detail, shall we?

Choose An Interest

Choosing an interest is a little more than just picking a general interest and plowing forward.
You do need to do a little research.
Now, don’t let the ‘R’ word scare you, it really isn’t that difficult. You may be wondering why you would need to do research about something you are already interested in. Well, one reason is that you may be interested in something that does not earn revenue, which is the main reason to do affiliate marketing in the first place. Keep in mind, there are millions of ideas that you can tap into that will earn you revenue, and there are easy ways to find out which ones that meet three main criteria.

1. You have an interest in the topic
2. People are searching for information on the topic
3. There are affiliate products associated with the topic

So, how exactly do you conduct research on an interest to see if people are searching for information on that particular topic?

I use what is known as “the alphabet soup technique”. No it is not a bowl of alphabet soup for lunch. It is actually a method that takes advantage of Google instant. What is Google instant you ask? Well it is what you see underneath the search bar as you type in a keyword phrase.

The idea of this technique is to get an idea of what people are searching for online. What appears under your search term are phrases that people are actually searching for. This means that you will see what topics people are interested in, hence, what affiliate products these same people are most likely to purchase. Give people information on what they are searching for is the best way to earn their trust so that you can recommend good affiliate products to them and earn revenue from doing so.
Watch the video below to see this “alphabet soup” technique in action, it is really cool.

How To Sell Affiliate Products Online – Alphabet Soup Technique

When using this technique you should never be without ideas on what topics or interests you can use to sell affiliate products online, the ideas are simply endless.
Once you have an idea for the topic, you can simply put that idea into a Google search and add the words “affiliate program” and you will come up with a huge amount of affiliate programs that you can join for free and find good and relevant products to recommend to your potential customers. We will dive into more detail with that later.

Build A Website

I know this might seem like a daunting task, but I can assure you that you can build a website in less than one minute. Well, maybe even less than 30 seconds if you try real hard…lol

The platform I recommend for building a website is the WordPress platform. It allows you a huge amount of flexibility and it is super easy to work with, and if you want automation, well, there is most likely a plugin for whatever it is you want to do. If you don’t even know what a plugin is, that is OK, it does not matter at this point. We can show you everything you need to know about building a website through a free training program.
To get more information about this free training program, read my latest “A Wealthy Affiliate Review 2018” here.

I can describe each of the steps on how to build a website through WordPress, but it would be much more effective if you simply read my article on how to build a website from WordPress (in less than 30 seconds) HERE:

So, as you can see, it is not that difficult to build your own website. In fact, with technology the way it is today, it can be done in no time at all. What used to take weeks or even months, can now be done in less than a minute. Amazing isn’t it? As you can see, these guidelines are a birds eye view to show you how easy it really is to sell affiliate products online. To get more information on how to make a great income online check out the best online university there is. By the way it is free to join. Check out my latest review on this amazing free training platform here.

Attract Visitors to Your Website

There are a number of ways to attract visitors to your website. They can essentially be broken down into two different categories. Free methods and paid methods. If you have done any research at all on the internet about how to make money online you have certainly come across differing views on how to drive traffic to a website.
These differing views also depend on the type of website you are using and whether it is a “funnel first” type of website or a “content first type of website”. If this seems confusing, I detail the differences between the two in an article entitled Best Email Marketing Strategies. Feel free to head on over to that article when you have a chance. You will find it educational. You can never know too much when it comes to selling affiliate products online.
The best ways to attract visitors to your website using the “content first type of website” are:

• Organic traffic through the search engines
• Bing Ads

Organic Traffic

Obtaining traffic through the search engines is accomplished by writing good content about your interest using keywords that are searched within Google, Yahoo or Bing. The three top search engines. Google, of course being the top dog. This really isn’t as complicated as it may seem. You simply use the alphabet soup technique discussed above to find keyword phrases and construct your article base on that keyword phrase. You then use simple techniques to “rank” your article in the search engines to obtain what is know as “organic search results”.

The nice thing about this method is that it is completely free, however, it takes a little time to get ranked in the search engines and there is a slight learning curve (Which is taught, step by step within Wealthy Affiliate).
You know people are interested because they are searching for these terms. Then you simply recommend products and services that are relevant to that information.
Bing Ads

Bing ads is a unique platform. It is actually an ad network that incorporates three different search engines. Yahoo, MSN, and Bing itself. In other words, when you advertise on Bing ads, your ad shows up in all three of these search engines. These three search engines account for about 30% of the searches online, whereas Google gets the rest.
The advantage of using Bing ads as apposed to Google, is the cost associated with purchasing the ads. The other factor is that Google really doesn’t like affiliate programs, especially if you directly link to them. Bing is starting to not like this as well.
You have heard me talk about the “funnel first” method versus the “content first” method. The reason this is important is that Google and Bing really are cracking down on the utilization of capture pages used in the “funnel first” method of advertising affiliate products. They prefer to see valuable content which can then lead to an affiliate page. Keep in mind they are in the business of providing good quality search results for people looking for good information. A good marketer will provide value before suggesting a good affiliate product.
So, basically the Bing Ads technique is to purchase an ad using a good keyword (competition does not matter in this case) that provides good free information. You then direct your prospect to a good article on your website relevant to that keyword phrase which then leads to a product recommendation with an affiliate link associated with it. This is where you make money.
The advantage of using Bing ads is that you get immediate results, however there is a cost associated with that as well. Not as high as Google Adwords, but a cost nonetheless.
I like to use a combination of organic search with Bing Ads. I recommend the 80:20 rule. Which is 80 percent organic traffic with about 20 percent Bing ads. It is the most cost effective way to advertise in my opinion. This approach will give you a steady flow of traffic to your site. This leads us to the best step of the process, yes, you guessed it, earn revenue.

Earn Revenue

This is really not quite a step of the process as much as it is a result of the process. The fruit of all your labor so to speak. Well, you may be wondering exactly where to you start the process? Where do you get the knowledge, support and training to earn a consistent income online without breaking the bank and without all the hype you see on the internet these days?
You need mentorship, training and direction in order to successfully sell affiliate products online. I have found such a resource that has been doing this sort of thing for many years now and has established a great reputation in the online affiliate marketing place. There is an actual affiliate marketing university that has ongoing support and mentorship and you can get all the nitty gritty details by fully digesting and reading this article. You do not want to miss this if you want to know exactly how to sell affiliate products online.

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