"The key to realizing a dream is to focus not on success but significance - and then even the small steps and little victories along your path will take on greater meaning."

Oprah Winfrey

Be a specialist

At school you had been taught that you needed to know as much as you could about all kinds of topics that you were probably not even interested in (e.g. for me the horrors were math and physics…). It would not have made sense to have been focused on just one of these subjects because if you had done that, you would not have made it to the next grade.

In Internet marketing it all is a little different. Here, you should NOT try to be the 'Mr. or Mrs. Knowitall' but the specialist, the go to guy/gal, in ONE area of Internet marketing. This can be e.g. an SEO expert, the software developer, a Google Adwords specialist or a copywriter or more recently, the Web 2.0 guy/gal.

Personally, I would brand myself as the software developer since that is where my expertise is. But more recently, I have also become very experienced in creating VRE (virtual real estate) websites using Wordpress so I can also say that I am a blogging specialist.

Whatever it is that you do, make sure you learn as much as you can about your area of expertise. Strive to become the best you can be. Just like a doctor or a lawyer learns everything he can about his medicine or laws, you need to do the same in your area.

And it never stops. If you have a passion for something, you will like it to learn more and more about it in order to become the best.

Give me crap and I’ll let others know…

Personally, I love to educate myself about all the new ways of making money online (this is a treat of all the top Internet marketers – they never stop educating themselves!). I am the kind of guy people want to have on their lists because I am constantly buying their stuff – presupposed it’s not just rehashed material (and if it is, I'll get myself a refund).

As long as I am getting at least one good idea from a product which can make me more money when implementing it in my own business, I won’t be asking for a refund. But give me crap and not only will I be asking for my money back but I’ll let my list know about it as well so they can avoid it and not waste their hard earned money…!

Focus on one project at a time

When I was attending the Internet Millionaire’s Bootcamp in London in October of 2006, Mike Filsaime said something on stage that I’ll never forget: “You need to focus on one project at a time”. Even though it sounds so simple, most people do completely the opposite.

Focusing on one project at a time will bring you income much quicker than trying to get multiple projects finished at the same time – something which can almost never be achieved. So the key to success is just to focus on the one project that will be bringing you the greatest revenue within the shortest amount of time.

You know, even I, as a very experienced Internet marketer, sometimes made the mistake of wanting to achieve too much at the same time. Instead of working on one project until it was finished, I was trying to handle 3-4 projects at a time. And the result was that nothing got finished in time and my income was suffering from it. Because not being able to finish a project means less income.

In Internet marketing, you better come up with new products quickly because you will soon be forgotten if you don’t. You must be the innovator, the one who is coming up with new, helpful products that your subscribers and customers want to buy from you.

(For example, that's why I relaunched my Niche Content Websites - membership site because I saw that my business wasn't different enough from the businesses of others who were selling the same kind of products. I wanted to get a better USP - a unique selling proposition which was better than most of my competitors by selling UNIQUE websites to people who are interested in making a living from niche type of VRE websites. This has become the solution for people who can't design their own websites or don't know how to implement monetization modules - now everything's done for them…!)

If you don’t know what they want, ask them! Your products must become the solutions for their problems.

Outsource everything you don't want to do yourself

And you don’t even have to create these products yourself. That’s what outsourcing is for. No one is expecting from you, if you e.g. have a great idea for a software tool, that you need to create it yourself. Just hire someone on Elance.com or ScripLance.com, tell him or her what you want to have done, and they’ll do it for you – at a very reasonable price.

For example, I had my AffiliateTurbo software programmed by a programmer which I found on ScriptLance. I paid about $400 for it and I made more than $10,000 from this tiny investment. And the same was the case with my Blog Promoter software. (in the meantime, I’ve sold both businesses for several thousands of $$… they simply were too work intensive as they required a lot of updates on an almost daily basis).

By knowing what you want to achieve and what your goals are, you'll actually get there much quicker. You simply need to be the one who plans it all - it's not necessary that you are doing everything yourself. And all the steps which are needed to get there, will fall into place almost automatically.

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(This article is an excerpt from my Revenue Blueprint ebook. If you liked the article, then why not get yourself a copy of the complete works at http://www.revenueblueprint.com/ ?)

Tags: adsense, adwords, affiliate, ebook, google adwords, internet marketing, mike filsaime, seo, seo expert, vre websites, web 2.0, websites

If you are good at developing products, may it be E-books or software, selling Private Label Rights to these products can be suitable for you. Private Label Rights have a high perceived value because it allows your buyers to put their name on a product which they haven't created themselves. It can save them a lot of time.

In case you already have an existing digital product which you have created and sold in the past and you are looking for additional sources of income, you can consider selling the Private Label Rights to other Internet Marketers.

Why other Internet marketers? Because they are constantly on the lookout for new products to sell. There are only so many products they can create themselves in a month so buying the rights to products they can start selling as their own seems to be very attractive to most of them.

Making Money from Selling Private Label Rights products

The following are ways you can make money from selling Private Label Rights products:

• Upfront Sales. This is the most attractive part of selling Private Label Rights. Private Label Rights can range from a few dollars to even thousands of dollars, depending on the quality of the product, its demand and how proven it is (aka how many sales you've made for the personal use version…).

• Selling Basic/Master Resell Rights to the Private Label Rights product. You can sell the Basic/Master Resell Rights to the editable, raw format of the product separately. If your buyer wishes to resell the Private Label Rights, you can charge him 4-5 times the normal price of the product and up 10 times if the buyer wants to have the Master Resell Rights, allowing him and his customers to resell the Private Label Rights to the product, as you are doing.

Pros

• You can make a lot of money from selling Private Label Rights, as these are some of the most expensive rights you can buy in the Internet Marketing field.
• Your customers will mainly be Internet Marketers, and savvy Internet Marketers are usually busy people and they prefer to focus their efforts more on marketing than product creation and setting them up. Thus, they do not have any problems with making purchases on Private Label Rights products, as long as you give them good reasons to buy from you and presupposed you help them to save their time from having to create their own quality products from scratch.

Cons

• There is often no residual income in selling Private Label Rights products. This is because your customers, who are mainly Internet Marketers, will edit your product and use their own affiliate links in it. Unless you start a Private Label Rights membership site, you'll make your money solely from upfront sales.
• Selling Private Label Rights products means that you cannot take the credit of authorship. One of the main benefits that make Internet Marketers buy from you is because they want to have the privilege to put their name on the product as the author. You remain anonymous.
• Creating your own Private Label Rights product demands a high degree of expertise, talent, thorough research, programming (for software) and writing skills on your part. If you do not have any of these traits, creating your own Private Label Content can be a difficult challenge.
• Creating your own Private Label Rights product is effort and time consuming. Unless you are using the product yourself, it may not be worth your time and effort in the long run even though there is a lot of potential income to be made from selling Private Label Rights.

What You Need Before Getting Started

You will need the following before getting started on creating and selling a new Private Label Rights product (if you don't have an existing one):

1. Word Program

If you are going to create a Private Label Information Product (E-book), you will need a Word program to create your Information Product in .doc format. If you are using MS Office, the Microsoft Word program should already be installed on your PC.

Alternatively, you can use your free NotePad program to create your Information Product in its raw format, though Microsoft Word is preferable, since you'll be able to add different formattings to the text.

2. PDF Converter

You need a PDF Converter program which will convert your finished Word document to PDF format (the PDF format is the best format out there because it allows you to offer your product to MS Windows users AND Mac users - .exe files can only be opened by Windows users…). If you do not have any PDF Converter program installed on your PC, you can get a free PDF Converter software here.

3. Graphics Program

You'll need a program to design your product’s E-cover. I use Adobe Photoshop to design my E-covers (in combination with some nice plugins). Adobe offers a free trial version (30 day usage) here.

4. Good Salesletter

This is a very important element of your Private Label Rights sales success. If you cannot convince your prospects to buy from you, you cannot make any sale - no matter how good your product is. If you don't know how to write a good salesletter yourself, then outsource that part to places like Elance.com or Scriptlance.com. They have a feedback system there which is similar to Ebay's system so you can choose the freelancer with the best feedback/price ratio.

5. Web Hosting and Domain Name

You'll need to register a domain name for your product (at e.g. Namecheap.com) AND you'll need web hosting for it. These are not the same things. Registering a domain name simply means that you have a www.yoursite.com address registered in your name.

In order to let other people come to your new website, you'll still need to rent web space on the Internet so you can store the files for the salesletter, Thank You page and your digital Private Label Rights product (the PDF file). Basically, you rent this space from a web hosting company which specializes in making servers available with a direct connection to the Internet.

6. Auto Responder

You need an Auto Responder to:

• Follow up with your prospects who do not buy from you for the first time, and

• Build your mailing list. By having your own mailing list, you can make your money from your customers within a short period of time.

Personally, I'm recommending Aweber as it has the best delivery rates for emails on the Internet. It's the one I'm using to send out my own newsletters and it's a service which comes highly recommended by all the top Internet marketers.

7. Credit Card Payment Processor

You will need this to collect the payments from your customers. If you don't expect a too high sales volume, you could go with Paypal since most Internet marketers who are going to buy from you will expect this payment solution. You can use it in combination with some script so you can automate the payment and delivery process and protect your downloads.

Alternatives are Clickbank (one time fee to register as a merchant - it has Paypal integrated now), 2Checkout (one time fee to regsiter as a merchant, too - Paypal has been integrated, too) or 1Shoppingcart (monthly fee).

Conclusion:

Once you have all of these things in place, you can start driving traffic to your salesletter. If you already have a list, this can be as easy as sending an email to your list. If you don't have such a list of prospects and customers, you'll need to contact other list owners who have potential customers on their lists (also known as JV). But this also means that you'll make less per sale as you need to pay them a commission for each sale (usually between 50-100%).

Yes, some people even give away 100% commissions just to get customers on their own list. Later down the road, they can start selling their own stuff to them and they get to keep everything - which is the whole purpose of giving away the full commissions. The other reason is that they might have a One Time Offer behind it, on which they make 50% so they can still profit from a high number of sales when giving away 100% commissions…

Tags: adsense, affiliate, clickbank, internet marketing, traffic

I often do get asked how illegal "business opportunities" can be recognized. Well, I am now trying to answer this question and make it a bit clearer with the following article…

So called "Pyramid schemes" have been around since about the time the actual pyramids in Egypt were built. You'd think that in the last few thousand years people would have been able to easily recognize a pyramid scheme when they come across one. They don't…!

The people who dream these things up, however, are pretty slick characters. A pyramid scheme never, ever, comes labeled as a "pyramid scheme".

It is really easy to get sucked into one of these schemes. You need to understand how they work and be able to spot them for what they are. There are a few "buzz" words that can tip you off:

1. Recruit: "to engage in finding and attracting employees, new members, students, athletes, etc." That’s one of the definitions of the word according to the dictionary.

The use of the word, ‘recruit’ (or any variation) should be a major tip off that the program that is being promoted to you is most likely a pyramid scheme. Some of these schemes can be easily spotted while others are a little harder to identify. Just beware when you see the word, "recruit". There was a scheme that went around awhile back that was sent by unsolicited email that offered an "exclusive opportunity" to earn a boat load of money by recruiting people to sell a device that would provide access to the Internet by television. No, I’m not kidding. This happened and people fell for it.

2. Buy the secret and sell… This is a typical pyramid scheme that you will often see. This is another "offer" that arrives in your inbox that you have not solicited. You are offered an "exclusive" opportunity to buy a secret that will allow you to make a hundred thousand dollars a month (no work required) and then you can sell this secret to others for a substantial profit and they will make money for you. These gullible folks will just fill your bank account with beautiful green-backs. Wait! You are the gullible folk they are targeting.

You can believe me when I tell you that there really aren’t a lot of people out there in this world that are eagerly awaiting the opportunity to send you money.

You can also believe that there is no legitimate Internet business that is going to immediately make you hundreds of thousands of dollars a month. You might someday make that kind of money but if you do, it will be after you have put in an incredible amount of time and effort into it and not because you bought a "secret"… - there isn’t one.

Creating an online business still means hard work and if you're not willing to accept this and are still looking for shortcuts, then an internet business isn't for you! Better get back to your J.O.B.!

3. Let "others" do the work: This little phrase has pyramid scheme written all over it. The "pitch" is usually for a non-existent product or for a product that is being sold for much more than it is actually worth. You will often be sent information by bulk email that gives you instructions for getting others to promote this "product" (…which product?) and all you will have to do is count your millions.

Right… - Don’t fall for that one!

Disguised MLM

If you are really new to the world of internet business or work-at-home job opportunities, you may not know what MLM means. It means Multi-Level-Marketing. MLM is similar to a pyramid scheme but it isn’t exactly the same.

True pyramid schemes don't involve the selling of an actual product but real MLM is ALL about selling an actual product.

According to a glossary of Internet terms, "Multilevel Marketing is selling products by using independent distributors and allowing these distributors to build and manage their own sales force by recruiting, motivating, supplying, and training others to sell products. The distributors' compensation includes their own sales and a percentage of the sales of their sales group (downline)."

"So," you say, "that just sounds like a good idea for making money." Well, it IS a good way for making money. The problem is that it is illegal when there is no real product involved, where only the opportunity gets marketed as a way to riches and where they are talking about the money making potential only. This is what I mean by "disguised" MLM. In this case, there would be no product involved - only a business opportunity which promises people to make money without having to do anything apart from promoting the "opportunity".

Do you see that tip-off word again: "recruiting"? The other tip-off that this is a MLM scheme is the phrase, "percentage of sales".

There is nothing illegal about setting up an affiliate program and PAYING a percentage of sales to those who sell your products or services to others. There is nothing illegal about COLLECTING the percentages that are offered by the producers of the products or services. That is simply good business and more than just common practice in the Internet business world.

The problem arises when you start COLLECTING percentages of sales from people whom you have recruited to sell the product. Then another level is added and it becomes multi-level marketing.

Even with just one additional level, it could be identified as MLM even though completely legitimate affiliate programs often have 2 levels as well (that’s why you can’t use Paypal to pay for products which involve more than 1 affiliate level - they see almost everything as MLM even though in many cases it's not! They probably want to be on the safe side and not get associated with ANY MLMs.) but there are MLM schemes that will have many, MANY layers.

The main Internet banking and money exchange on the Internet is Paypal. Paypal employs full-time personnel to search for and identify MLM schemes. When these schemes are uncovered, the accounts (and all attached accounts and credit cards) are frozen.

Yes, it is true that sometimes Paypal does misidentify a perfectly legitimate business as a MLM scheme but it doesn’t happen very often and the problem can usually be resolved in just two or three business days. This very thing happened to a friend of mine not long ago. It was resolved but not without him being able to prove that his business was not a MLM scheme.

This does point out the fact, however, that there are those who are looking for illegal MLM schemes. You may think that you are very anonymous on the Internet but when you do business on the Internet, you are no longer anonymous.

Beware of Lions

There are a lot of big hungry lions in the Internet jungle. They are looking for easy marks… they love "newbies" best of all… You have been warned!

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Let me know what you think about these illegal opportunities and what your personal experiences are by making a comment on this post - I'd love to hear from you!

Tags: adsense, affiliate, affiliate program, affiliate programs

Since there are lots of people getting into affiliate marketing every day, it is no wonder that the competition is getting fierce. The challenge is to try and beat the tactics other affiliates are using and think of smart ways on how to achieve this. Affiliate Video Brander is a tool that allows affiliates to act smarter than others. More on that later in this article.

Let's first talk about why using online video presentations work so well with regards to selling products on the Internet…

What better way could there be to wow your prospects and customers than to record and publish top notch, full motion and streaming screen-capture videos? For you as a seller, it's a great feeling to be able to offer a product that gets subscribers and customers excited in great anticipation to buy your product right on the spot.

This is Camtasia in action. It is a proven fact that giving your customers something they can actually see can explode your online sales instantly.

You do not need to have training and a lot of education to be able to know how this system can improve your sales or sales for programs that you're an affiliate of. Anyone can create stunning videos as there are hundreds of multimedia tutorials and step-by-step presentations available online.

The process is like having your customers seated next to you while looking at your desktop, as you show them the things they need to see and hear. All this is done in a step by step manner.

For those of you who don't not know it, yet - what does Camtasia do…?

1. It can record your desktop activity - not only the actions which are taken but also the sound, the explanations which you are speaking into a microphone while recording.

2. In the next step, Camtasia can easily convert your videos into web pages (using flash). Once the videos have been converted from formats like AVI or MPG to Flash, you can have your customers visit the web page which you have produced.

Videos are easier to understand because of the visual aspects. This is unlike reading texts which is not always as comprehensible as seeing and hearing a complete process on your PC.

3. Upload your web pages to your server using FTP. Publish these videos on blogs, within RSS feeds or podcasts. You may want to use your Camtasia videos to reach potential customers. This can be done by uploading your master pieces to video directories like YouTube or Google Video. By doing this, you are actively making use of Web 2.0 techniques.

Video sites and Web 2.0 are all the rage these days and if you are uploading them to places where they can easily be found, you're setting yourself up for free advertising and you can finally get your message across without having to invest thousands of dollars in PPC costs.

There are other things you can do using Camtasia. You can…

- Create stunning multimedia presentations which e.g. show how a certain piece of software works or how certain promotion techniques are being used which are described in the latest ebook you want to promote as an affiliate. This also has the tendency to reduce skepticism among hard-to-please customers.

- Reduce refunds and other customer issues by visually demonstrating how to use your product and how to do it properly. Complaints will be minimized because all the facts can be seen in the visual presentations.

- Promote affiliate products and services using these visual presentations. This is an effective way of pre-selling and redirecting your viewers straight to your affiliate website after they have finished watching the video. Make the most of the presentation by adding your site to the end of the video and make them go there directly if they want more information.

This can easily be put into action using a tool called Affiliate Video Brander. In order to use this tool, you don't even have to create your own videos. All you need to do is use the videos which the merchant has available on his site and you download them to your PC (with the merchant's permission). Videos have proven to increase conversions by a very high percentage.

You simply use Affiliate Video Brander to create a new web page which has a link to the merchant's website included (usually above and below the video). This link is YOUR affiliate link. Moreover, when the video ends, the viewer will be automatically redirected to the merchant's site using your affiliate link. Here's how the interface looks like:

These are just some of the things you can do with Camtasia and Affiliate Video Brander which can be very helpful in promoting your chosen affiliate program. If you're an affiliate and you're not yet using Affiliate Video Brander, you'll be leaving a lot of money on the table since videos can increase your conversions from visitors to buyers by at least 400%!

Tags: adsense, affiliate, affiliate marketing, affiliate program, affiliates, ebook, web 2.0

Let's say we've just signed up as an affiliate for a popular product. Now what?

How you approach this is going to depend on where you are coming from.

1) You might have an existing website and you've just discovered affiliate marketing and would like to implement this on your website. You already have your market and traffic. Maybe… Unless you're just starting out. Then you need to find traffic…

2) You may have a site or several different websites and you want to start fresh and build a new website just for affiliate marketing…

3) You want to do affiliate marketing, but you don't want to build a site… YES, that can be done!

4) You're just starting out and you want to do affiliate marketing and build a website or landing pages to promote the programs… OR you want to build 10 or more websites.

Those are just 4 scenarios… One thing you have to be careful with online is that many people will try to sell you on ONE way of doing things. They will convince you to drop everything and go in their direction.

STOP, you don't need to do what the herd is doing!

Everyone is unique and has a different set up and background… you can build from where you are. It's not what you got or want that will make you a success, it's taking massive action! So take what you have and go from there… you don't have to start over; you don't necessarily change directions… just add another dimension.

Unless of course you realize that you are in a hopeless situation… then just follow your gut. If you think the time and money would be better spent in another direction, then end it…

Again, this is all dependent on YOUR situation. This is not a one size fits all internet. And therefore every "guru" can only give you a plan on what has worked for HIM. It's bad advice to do exactly the same if that's not a market you like or are knowledgeable in!

THE BEST PLACE to be in is where your passion is… working in markets that you are passionate about will give your campaigns and efforts more energy… and you will most likely find it easier and have better results!
OF COURSE learn and emulate what the successful people are doing, but don't get consumed with the "you gotta do this" hype… once you've decided what to do, focus.

The traffic that you get to your pages with affiliate programs need to be as targeted as possible to your content and your content should match your affiliate programs or vice versa.

So you should NOT have people looking for televisions coming to your computer store…

How successful you are really depends on the market you are in and how you are doing compared to your competition. If you have a competitive market like mortgages or school loans (OR Internet marketing for that matter!!), then you need to buckle down because it will be a battle and you are probably going to have to spend a lot of money to make money…

ON THE OTHER HAND… the best thing to do is to start from scratch and research markets to find niches that you can tap into. A niche is simply a market that is maybe unique or on the outer fringe… You can often break down a large market into smaller markets fairly easily.

These niche markets will probably get less traffic, but you will also have less competition.

This is where keyword research comes in. An excellent tool to research with and one I highly recommend is NicheBot…

When we're talking about niches, normally the best niches are those that have little competition in Search Engines or in Pay Per Click Advertising… People search using keywords and keyword phrases. Find the right keywords that people are searching for and you will find a lot of traffic hitting your website… For search engines, that is FREE traffic!

So you use the tool above to find those niches. You plug in a keyword and it will bring up all kinds of results for people that have searched for that word or words in the last month AND it will also give you results for related or similar words and phrases AND it will show you how much competition there is!… cool stuff; check it out…

One last thing before I go… YOU can do well without a website. Many people are still doing this… there were recent changes to a policy at Google that put a damper on things a bit, but it's still alive and well… it's called Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC) and allows you to drive people to a landing page or sometimes (in niches where you don't want to build a list) to a merchant straight away.

Well, I gotta go… I am currently working on several products for the German market. Yes, I finally got started doing things in german - most importantly building a list. It's something I've been preaching for a long time…

People everywhere around the world are looking for a way to generate an income from home - so if your first language is not english, why not create an info product in your native language?

Stay tuned for some more great info to come! And remember… "Action is key!"

If you want to know more about getting focused, taking the right actions and simply getting the key concepts of Internet marketing right, then get a copy of my Revenue Blueprint. It will help you to take the RIGHT actions so you'll not waste months of your time…!!

Tags: adsense, affiliate, affiliate marketing, affiliate program, affiliate programs, free traffic, internet marketing, search engines, traffic, websites