Work at home on the Internet: internet marketing and affiliate program help.
Back issues here Issue 256 | Jan 12th 2003

Letter from Phil

why is it that some people make 1000's a week online and others only make a few 100 a month?

I think I know the answer.

And it's not the predictable one...that the people making the money are those with huge ezines or mailing lists.

All the time you read "the money is in the list" and while that's often the case it's not always that way.

One person I'm going to write about towards the bottom of todays letter is making a fortune online...and just about all of it comes from getting his many affiliate web sites ranked high in the search engines.

He doesn't have an ezine.

And then there's my friend, an astute offline businessman, who has been publishing a weekly internet marketing ezine for around a year now. He has several thousand readers.

With the depth of his business knowledge and sales skills, you'd think he'd be making some decent money from his ezine.

He spends several hours every day working on his ezine, but sadly he's only making around $200 a month on the net.

I can see where he's going wrong. To start with he doesn't even have a web site to capture new subscribers. Plus he's got a ton of
knowledge, but he doesn't get it across in his ezine. If he'd taped the great stories he was telling me on the phone, and ran those in his newsletter instead of using the articles and ads everyone else is using, he'd have a lot better chance of success.

We're going to get together this week to do a makeover on his newsletter. But it won't all be one way, with me showing him what to do....I'm hoping to learn some good stuff from him too. He's got more sales knowledge and business nous locked inside his head than I'll ever have.

But as usual I've strayed from the subject here, and that's the fact that you can make a very good online living WITHOUT having a mailing list.

It's not hard to make a few hundred dollars a week online. I believe that with time and effort almost anyone can do it.

Here's what else is inside:

So how do you do it without a list?

Sell to me...I'm easy

Do you properly read all the ebooks you buy?

But back to the Affiliate Marketer's Handbook

200 site low cost hosting

Get organized.

Hope you find something useful and interesting here....

1. So how do you do it without a list? ...

Well when you don't have an optin list (and even if you do) the answer lies with building a series of themed web sites.

They don't have to be big.

Mini sites of 1 or 2 pages will do, especially if you're prepared to invest in the pay per click search engines. (See Allan Gardyne's Pay Per Click Search Engine site for reviews of pay per clicks )

But mini sites of 5-10 pages are even better because if you work carefully at optimizing each page, and focus on a very narrow niche, you stand a good chance of ranking well in the free search engines,
which can mean a lot of interested visitors to your site.

You can learn exactly how to build this kind of site in my book Mini Site Profits and in James Martell's Affiliate Marketer's Handbook
- 2002

If you study his high ranking sites, James appears to be building 5 or 6 page mini sites but really his approach is quite different.

Both methods work.

But which ever way you go one fact remains.

You won't make a worthwhile income unless you stop following all the get r-i-c-h hype and start working your butt off.

Building totally focused niche sites really works.

Unless you buy high rankings in the pay per clicks you won't see immediate returns on your efforts, but it WILL come.

2.Sell to me...I'm easy.

I must be one of the easiest people around to sell to. I'll buy anything, and do it quickly.

When I bought my current house I took a drive up the mountain, walked inside, looked at the landscape through the big windows and said Yes.

The previous house took longer to decide on. Around 2 minutes.

Last weekend I flew to Brisbane for 4 days and bought 8 business books and 3 magazines in Borders in the first hour.

A coffee in Starbucks then into a clothes store where it took me under 10 minutes to buy 2 shirts and a pair of shoes. And most of that was time was spent waiting to pay for them.

Set me down in Malaysia or Hong Kong for a day or 2 on my way to London and I'll buy every electronic gadget in sight - I can't help
myself.

Someone phoned yesterday offering a discount on a case of wine I like. I said yes straightway.

And I'm just the same on the net.

If a marketing website I visit has good sales copy, and promises to reveal information or techniques I haven't read about before, or offers
a service I'd like to try, I type in my credit card details and buy straightaway.

Of course, I end up buying a lot of poor, rehashed books and reports where all the writer's skill and creativity obviously went into putting the sales material together, not the product.

Anyway yesterday, when a lady called Maureen wrote and asked me if I'd come across a certain ebook, (I hadn't) I visited the site and
bought it after one quick read of the sales letter.

I had no choice.

It's one of those sales letters that sucks you right in with screen captures of all the money author is making.

And boy, is this author making a lot...around $30,000 a month mainly from Clickbank.

Anyway, I'm a bit of a speed reader, so I printed the book on my laser and, seeing it was around 97 degrees F here yesterday, I sat under a tree in the garden and read it in one go.

It certainly kept my mind off the view, and was well worth the $48 I paid.

Worth it to me that is. You might not find it as valuable, but all I need is one or two ideas from an ebook to justify the expense.

It's not GREAT in the way I think James Martell's Affiliate Marketer's Handbook is a great blueprint for achieving success with affiliate programs, or the way Paul Myer's Amazing List Machine is the greatest thing around for helping you/inspiring you into developing your email and ezine lists. But it is good, and packed with solid information that's bound to help you do better.

In the 206 pages there's a fair bit of waffle, taking 2 pages to say something that could have been said in 1 page...though I guess there's no one more guilty of that than me ;-) ... but it's all a good read.

For me the most interesting part was the "Search Engine Smart Calibration System" which provides examples (and a template) for building a content page which ranks high in search engines and yet
is really just an auto refresh page.The example I looked at ranks in 7th position on Google, but you never even get to see the page
when you click the link, it just instant refreshes to the affiliate product being promoted.

That's powerful stuff. Imagine building all your affiliate links this way.

Read More here.

3. Do you properly read all the ebooks you buy?

I bet you don't.

You might think you do, but reading a whole book on screen is hard and I'm guessing that you skip big chunks of the books...reading a few chapters here and there and skimming through the rest.

I know we tend to think of ebooks as something we're supposed to read on a computer screen, but really they're just books that are electronically delivered.

So the secret to getting the most from an ebook is printing it out and reading it away from your computer desk.

A few days ago I put James Martell's Affiliate Marketer's Handbook onto a CD, drove down the mountain to an office supplies store and in half an hour had the whole 257 page manual printed out and wire bound with some nice hard plastic covers, and was reading it while drinking coffee in my favorite cafe.

I ended up staying for 2 coffees, and then for lunch. Borrowing a Hi-Liter pen from the cafe I sat scribbling notes and hi-liting important paragraphs.

In the hour I spent in the cafe I got more value out of the book than I would have in a day onscreen.

How about printing your favorite ezines out and reading them over breakfast? The info in them is much easier to absorb, and if there are links to follow you can always do that when you get back
to your computer.

4. But back to the Affiliate Marketer's Handbook.

I've written about it before in issue here in issue 242 but until this week when I printed it out and "properly" read it, I'd never realized just how valuable it is.

Seeing that we're a couple of weeks into 2003 don't let the 2002 bit put you off. This 257 page manual is smack up to date and, quite simply, the best book I've ever read on making money with affiliate programs.

Why?

Because James is making around $50,000 a month from affiliate programs....and he shows you EXACTLY how he's doing it.

By breaking every part of the process down into 8 easy to follow steps he leads you through the entire process of deciding what to sell, how to pick exactly the right affiliate programs to promote,
and how to build a site that ranks high in the search engines.

His methods work. And he leads you from start up to success.

My only gripe with the book is the low affiliate commission he pays to resellers ;-(

Though, come to think of it, that's not a fault with the book, is it?

You can read my previous review here or read more about the handbook by visiting the site here.

5.200 site low cost hosting....

If you really get into building lots of web sites, the way James and I do, you'll need somewhere to host them.

So this is just a quick note to let you know that the 200 web sites for $29 a month deal at New Web Site is closing.

I use them. So does Allan Gardyne. Well when it comes to 14.5 cents a site a month why wouldn't we?

6. Get organized....

Apart from absorbing the information better, you'll also read books a lot quicker if you print them out.

In other words you'll SAVE TIME. And when you're working on the net that's very important.

Why?

Because it's so easy to waste time online. It's all those darned links which shoot you off to web pages here, there, and everywhere.

As you know it's possible to waste a lot of time online. I find it VERY easy to sit at my computer all day and not achieve anything.

I THINK I'm doing something, but by the end of the day, I've got little to show for it and can't work out how I spent so long doing so little.

It's still the start of the year, we're only a couple of weeks into it, so make a pledge to yourself to get organized.

Read more about this in previous issues 254 and 255

__________Get Organized Resources_______________

Internet Information Manager (software)

Kickstart Your Life and Your Success (ebook)

The Lazy Man's Guide to Online Business: how
to work less and get paid more (ebook)