Work at home on the Internet: internet marketing and affiliate program help.
Back issues here Issue 248 | Dec 1st 2002

Contents.

Where's YOUR niche?

Quick recipe for success

So what got me onto this topic?

But first a talented person I want to mention

The Photo Newbie Diary Of A Complete Klutz, Part 1

Traffic from mispelings

Risk of internet collapse rising

Recommended Resource: Niche Magic

Letter from Phil

1. Where's YOUR niche?...

many times you hear established web marketers or "guru's" say that you should look outside the Internet Marketing area if you want to make big online profits.

They say this niche is overcrowded, that people are swamped with products, that it's hard to establish yourself, and you're better off finding a different area to make your name in.

These guru's aren't just saying it because they want to keep all the business for themselves.

It just simply happens to be true.

I'm not saying it's impossible to establish yourself in this field, because it is. People are doing it all the time, but there's no doubt that it's harder to be successful in this arena than in many others,
and only people with exceptional talents, drive, ideas, and ambition seem to be breaking through into the big time.

Why?

1. overcrowded niche

2. hundreds, or thousands, of competing products.

3. it's a very small niche. Not many people search for information on marketing/affiliate programs/ making an online income.

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By the way, to be a guru you used to have to be a Hindu spiritual teacher, or head of a religious sect.

Now anyone who has been in Internet marketing longer than a week is entitled to call themselves a guru. Or so it sometimes seems.

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But to get back on topic...it doesn't matter whether you're promoting affiliate programs or developing your own products, the big money is outside this niche.

Most big time affiliates are making their money in electronics, finance, health care, gambling, the "adult" industry.

Michael Campbell of Clickin' It Rich fame makes a lot of his income from cell phones and similar electronic products.

James Martell who wrote the book Affiliate Marketer's Handbook - 2002 has built mini theme sites in many niches including satellite tv, and credit cards.

Rosalind Gardner, who is making a staggering amount from Internet dating affiliate programs.

The list could go on and on.

But they all have one thing in common. They're following the money....finding out what people are buying online and building web sites to sell those products.

Here are some figures I pulled up with Word Tracker

Internet marketing was searched for 1334 times, with 4,290,000 web pages competing for the traffic.

dish network (satellite tv) 9861, with 660,000 web pages competing for the traffic.

cell phones 14865, with 5,280,000 web pagescompeting for the traffic.

online casino 12654 with 2,050,000 web pages competing for the traffic.

binoculars 2972 with 2,020,000 web pagescompeting for the traffic.

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Binoculars?

Now why did I include that search word here? It's because I've just been spent an hour in Corey Rudl's "Secrets To Their Success" member site, and was fascinated to learn that Jim Tarabocchia has made over $104,000 this year with his first ever web site, which sells binoculars on a drop-ship basis. (see Just-Binoculars.com)

What's more he's doing it all after studying The Drop Ship Source which I've mentioned several times in my newsletters as being a good affiliate program to promote.

Ok, well you can see from the above list that not many people look up Internet marketing. And there's lots of competition.

Now I'm not saying you should leap in and build sites promoting cas*ino affiliate programs, or dish networks (a far more popular search term than satellite tv)

But you should consider either expanding into other niches, or if you're not yet making an online income, pick something easier to sell than "internet marketing" information products.

To simplify things, let's stick with info products.

Many well known information marketers, and not so well known, are earning considerable sums selling "how to" info in other niches.
Cory Rudl has his book Car Secrets. Ken Evoy used to sell info on buying and selling penny stocks. Adam Katz has a dog problems site. Willie Crawford has his Soul Food Recipe book.

I've just updated my recommended affiliate program list.

2.Quick recipe for success...

Spend some time searching and you'll find people selling info products on weight loss, weight gain, stopping hair loss, stopping smoking, avoid divorce, getting divorced....a myriad of subjects.

You can join them...so here's a quick recipe for success, on just about any topic you can think of:

1. Have a think about what interests you, or something you know a lot about, and build a small info site about it. Start getting search
engine traffic and capturing visitors emails by getting them to sign up to an autoresponder which offers a freebie or more info.

2. Write a short special report (learn how to do this with the excellent book "Special Report Bible" by Damon G. Zahariades or write a longer ebook. Sell it on the site.

3. Expand by starting your own affiliate program for the report/ebook.

4. Do it all over again.

It doesn't matter what subject you pick. If you narrow the focus enough, and do everything right and put time and effort into
it you will make money.

Your product should be a "how to" book or report. "How to build a kite, How to start a worm farm, How to grow carrots, How to
make..." Any subject.

Lots of people want to know HOW to do something. But lots of people also want to know how to make money with it. So you could combine the two and attract more people: "How to build a kite for fun and profit" or "How to make money from a worm farm" etc.

It's almost a certainty that a report called "How to start a worm farm" will sell far fewer copies than one named "How to make
money from a worm farm" So think about that when you're creating it.

3. So what got me onto this topic?

Well as I've mentioned before I'm expanding into the "How to" photography niche.

Thanks to my newsletter, and my book Mini Site Profits I'm quite well known in well known in this affiliate program/internet marketing niche. Which means I sometimes get hit with "all you can do is sell how to make money info. I bet you couldn't do it in the real world."

Well people don't quite say that, but they imply that I, and other long time web marketers only make a good income because of our reputations.

(earned reputations, for not ripping people off, not misleading people, not being after making a fast buck, I might add)

But in the world of online photography I'm a complete unknown. I'm nothing but a newbie, with no more advantages, or disadvantages,
than you or anyone else.

I know about photography, but not the online side of it, so I'm using Site Build It to develop pages and a whole site which will rank at or near the top of the search engines by telling me what to change in the content I create. All I/you have to do is create content and SBI does the rest.

So...to get to the point...I'm going to start a sort of occasional diary (inside this newsletter) about how it's going, and let you follow my success or failure in this venture.

To be honest it's got two purposes. One is to prove to you it can be done.

The other is because I'm hopeless without deadlines. If I know I've got to tell you about how I'm progressing it's going to make me get a move on.

Either that or eat humble pie. And I don't like doing that :)

So part one....though it's short...is lower down this issue.

What shall we call it?

The Photo Newbie Diary Of A Complete Klutz will do for today until I think of something better....

Give me your suggestions...then I can see if you've read this far :) I'll also reward your site with a mention here if I pick your suggestion.

4. But first a talented person I want to mention...

plenty of people have been asking who designed this new look web site.

A few have complained about the "serious" expression in my mug shot, asking for the old smiley wiley one back, but I'll stick the smiling one in there somewhere.

Okay, the site was designed, for a VERY low fee by the very talented Brian Terry in the UK.

There's a lot more you haven't seen yet - pop ups, ebook covers, etc - but you don't need to see them to know that Brian will do a great job for you.

Treat yourself to an early Christmas present
with this massive software package

5.The Photo Newbie Diary Of A Complete Klutz, Part 1...

Creating a website about photography, or more specifically digital photography, is a bit overwhelming.

There's just so much good stuff out there?

How do you compete with sites like these?

www.dpreview.com

www.shortcourses.com

www.megapixel.net

www.pcphotoreview.com

www.dcviews.com

www.photography.com

Well the answer is you don't.

What you do is narrow the focus. Tighten the niche.

In my case I want to show people how to make money with digital cameras. How to use them to grow their photography business.

But in the time I've allocated for this project I need to take some big shortcuts.

So I've turned to using Site Build It instead of building a web site in the normal way.

It's only this week that I've really started to use it properly. And I'm stunned at how good it is.

The brainstorming and research tool is absolutely awesome. You simply enter the keyword phraze you're targeting and sit back and wait while it does all the hard work for you. Very nice.

A negative is that, on my slow connection, it takes quite a while to do it's job.

A positive is that you can set it running and go off for dinner and come back to find it's researched your keywords and told you
exactly which ones will be most profitable to build your site, or pages, around.

The truth is I'm also using it to research the EXACT topic for my first digital photography product.

Automated research. You've got to love it.

So right now I've not got much else to say. I'm only got as far as the research phase. In the next few weeks I'm going to start building a
small theme based content site, with pages targeting the key phrazes Site Build It tells me will be most profitable.

Then I'm going to submit it to the search engines, and while waiting for it to be listed set up an autoresponder course to capture the email addresses of visitors.

By the time the site is getting traffic I hope to have the first "special report" or ebook ready for sale.

I'll also be starting a newsletter (to help kickstart my reputation in the digital photography niche), and I've just heard from Ken Evoy that SBI has just got better, because starting this week the
newsletter mailout feature - which is built into SBI - has had "Spamcheck" built into it to help keep your newsletters out of the trash can.

It means that you can now PRE-SCREEN your outgoing e-mail newsletters to make sure they get delivered and not zapped by your
ISP's built-in SpamAssassin software.

This is a much needed tool.

Ken also tells me that Full SBI-HTML editor compatibility (yes, FrontPage, DreamWeaver, etc)...will soon be built into SBI.

Ok, I've done the research. I know exactly which topics are going to be the most profitable (I'll let you in on it next episode)...so now onto creating the in-depth plan of attack....

6. Traffic from mispelings...

Type two variations of a keyword into the form. This can either be two different spellings, (like "e-books" and "ebooks" ), or a correct spelling and a common misspelling (e.g. 'hemorrhoids' and 'hemorroids'), or two different words with similar meanings
(e.g. 'angry' and 'enraged'). Click the button and you will be told the number of times each word is used.

http://www.spellweb.com/spellwebber.htma

7. Risk of internet collapse rising

Simulated attacks on key internet hubs have shown how vulnerable the worldwide network is to disruption by disaster or terrorist action.
If an attack or disaster destroyed the major nodes of the internet, the network itself could begin to unravel

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2514651.stm