Here’s the story:

I am the guy who told you in February that it took my two years to get my head right and get it done after attending your IMI event in March of 2006. I wanted to give you an update followed.

I have slowly but surely been climbing the ladder of Internet marketing success. Since my last update I have continued to make small steps and more importantly, make money. I have only cleared $2,600 in profits in the last three months. I recently made $918 of that in one day. I still work a full time job 9 hours, teach tennis for extra money from 6-8pm after work, and then go home and work on my Internet business.

I am married and raising three children. Guess what? Now I get it. I love it and wouldn’t have it any other way. If I could make $918 in one day on a list of 523 people selling a $39.95 information product, only 120 people actually opened my email, and 30 of them made sales so I can converted 25%. I know that I can make ten times that in one day with joint venture partners.

I am planning a huge launch and networking, hopefully about 30 joint venture partners, to sell my product. I am tying that product in with my new membership site. This makes me excited. Monthly recurring income will be awesome, but you’re right. Just like you talked about in the Cash Flow 101, it easier to get in the cash flow business with a team.

My question is this: Will you please tell your listeners and readers the following: Mike Littman is great and said, You don’t have to get it right. You just have to get it going. Plus, Success comes from commitment to a single idea over time. And, You’ve gotta give to get.

I wrote 15 articles for ezines and I put 15 videos on You Tube on how to play tennis. And subscribers come each day from these videos being out there. It is viral. That’s it. I have a blue print and I’m going to lather, rinse, and repeat. I am going to continue making money doing what I love, tennis. Thanks for everything, I’ll keep you posted.

It’s these kinds of stories that remind me how much I love to help people, just like you, achieve their dreams in their Internet business.

Matt Bacak pansy report presents Pansy Report Matt Bacak on today’s topic: Membership Sites, It’s all about Matt Bacak’s last MEGA-successfullaunch and how he got flamed in the forums and betrayed by people he sincerely thought were his friends. Go to www.pansyreport.com

The concept of trust and authority for search engine optimization is still hard to understand for many people. This article describes how a website becomes considered authoritative and explains the steps a website owner can take to build the authority of their website to enjoy higher organic rankings.

How A Website Becomes Authoritative

The best way to understand how websites become authoritative through search engine optimization is to consider research papers. For example, if a particular research paper is cited by other research papers, it becomes credible. As more people cite the research paper, especially authorities in the same field as that of the paper, it becomes trusted and authoritative. Just like if Stephen Hawking cited a paper someone else wrote on black holes, others would consider the paper authoritative because Stephen Hawking is considered an expert in the field of black holes.

Authority through search engine optimization works in the same way. For example, when operating a website that publishes articles about golf, attracting links from Golf Digest or The Professional Golfers Association would increase the authority of your website within the field of golf. Basically, the more authority you have, the more likelihood you will place high in the organic listings of Google and Yahoo!

Building An Authoritative Website

Building an authoritative website through search engine optimization is difficult. This is why many website owners turn to an SEO company. First, you must carve out a successful keyword inventory that targets and forms the foundation of your search engine optimization efforts. This requires extensive research, competitive analysis, identifying existing authorities in your field, and knowing how well those authorities control the keywords you want to target.

Second, you must build a satisfactory number of critical incoming links to your website. Ideally, these search engine optimization links should come from websites that are authoritative within your field. It isn’t usually easy (picture trying to get Stephen Hawking to cite your research paper), but with time and effort, it can be accomplished. By slowly working to attract incoming links from trusted and relevant content websites, mildly relevant education websites (or .edu domains), and social media websites, you will grow the authority of your website. As your authority grows, as will your rankings in Google and Yahoo! for your targeted keywords.

Receiving Qualified Traffic

One of the main advantages to having an authoritative website is that the time, effort, and money invested in search engine optimization will begin to bring in qualified traffic over time. As your website ranks higher, it gains exposure and respect, which attract more incoming links. The more this happens, the more authority you gain, the more exposure to qualified traffic you receive.

Building the authority of your website is a good search engine optimization strategy. Considering partnering with an experienced Chicago SEO company, or a search engine optimization company anywhere, to deliver the best results.

Aaron Wittersheim writes informative articles for Whoast, a Chicago SEO company. They help their clients boost their ROI through cutting-edge, ethical search engine optimization. Chicago serves as their headquarters, but they help clients nationwide.

I see a lot of information marketers who develop a single product for a market niche. Then they immediately go to another market niche and develop a product for that niche and so on and so forth. While I am not against playing in multiple markets, I am against having only one product for each niche you are working in.

When you are always trying to get a new customer (since you have no repeat business), your cost of sale is higher. When you have a second and third and fourth product aimed at the same niche, your marketing costs for each additional product you are selling to that niche are effectively zero. It is simply a matter of emailing your customer list another offer they can take advantage of.

About a dozen years ago, I was involved in the development of a training CD for the plant engineering and maintenance market. The CD was on a highly technical topic. If memory serves me correctly, it was titled “The Rolling Bearings Troubleshooter’s Guide.” It was decided that the product would be marketed via the web.

I knew that one product would not make a company. So I negotiated deals with several technical publishers and other training developers for related books and training CDs that would be of interest to the same folks who had purchased the Rolling Bearings CD. A website was created and several millions of dollars worth of products have been sold via that site over the last 12 years.

The additional products you have to offer a market don’t even have to be your own product(s). You can offer related products from people that on the surface may appear to be competitors of yours. Find products on ClickBank that you can sell to your list.

People are thirsty for knowledge and many will purchase almost everything they find on a certain subject. If you have only one product to sell them you are leaving a lot of money on the table. Don’t close the door to repeat business.

Bret Ridgway is co-founder of Speaker Fulfillment Services, a company dedicated to helping information marketers. To pick up your own copy of his “New Information Product Development and Launch Checklist” visit http://www.50BiggestMistakes.com.

But if you are writing a book or developing a home study course, you’d better be sure that the market is even interested in your subject. So how do you determine the potential viability of a market?

The list below is not all-inclusive, but it will give you some excellent starting points.

1. Examine the trade journals that serve your industry. Go to your local library and ask for their guide to periodicals. This will identify those magazines that serve your industry. Get a hold of some of their back issues by requesting their media kit. Look through the ads to see if similar products are being offered to your market. You can also pick up issues on the magazine rack at your local bookstore. You should subscribe to those publications that are in your niche.

2. Google your topic and research the Internet to see what competitive products already exist in the marketplace. Remember, competition is not a bad thing. If nobody is offering an information product on your subject you may have uncovered a hidden niche. But, more than likely, you have uncovered a niche that hasn’t proven profitable so no one is playing in it.

3. Use online research tools such as “GoodKeywords” or “WordTracker” in order to identify what keywords and keyword phrases people are searching for online. This will help you gauge the potential size of the market you’re trying to reach. If very few people are looking for the subject you want to write about you’ve got a problem on your hands.

4. If you have an existing list, survey them using an online survey tool like “ASKDatabase” to see what level of interest they might have in your new subject.

It is foolish to jump into a market blindly if you are entering that market with the thought of making money in it. Make sure that you take the time to do your research in advance so that you don’t waste a bunch of your time and money chasing a market that doesn’t exist. What you do today can save you money tomorrow.

Bret Ridgway is co-founder of Speaker Fulfillment Services, a company dedicated to helping information marketers. To pick up your own copy of his new “Information Product Development and Launch Checklist” visit http://www.50BiggestMistakes.com.

What happens next? 100 cases of books weighing 40 pounds or more each arrive at their home. They get stacked in the corner of the bedroom or in the garage, and there they sit, month after month after month. Sure, a few cases are opened and some books ship, but you’re continually stepping around boxes and cursing yourself for ordering so many books.

You’ve tied up thousands of dollars in inventory that you hope you can sell. Hey, but you saved $1 or $2 per book.

If you’re producing a “big box” package, you might also save some on the unit cost by producing more initially. But, unless you have a proven track record and can pretty accurately predict how many units you can sell, you’re better off spending more per unit and having a lower quantity produced initially.

“Big box” packages can cost $30 to over $100 depending on what all is included in your package. So, you can conceivably tie up tens of thousands of dollars in production for units you hope you can sell – all because it saved you some money on the per-unit cost.

But what do you do if you sell more product than you expected?

Have a plan in place to deal with your customers in case your product launch is more successful then you anticipated. If you ask your fulfillment house to produce 100 sets of a product for a launch and then you sell 300, you’ve created a potential problem you’ll have to deal with to keep your customers happy. Turnaround times for additional production can be several days or more.

It is recommended you have some digital component to your package that people can begin to read or listen to right away while they are awaiting arrival of the physical package. Or, if the package price justifies it, pull out a disc or small manual that can be shipped immediately to keep them happy until the “big box” arrives. Produce more of these up front than the full packages so you can immediately fulfill a portion of the package to all your customers.

It’s primarily a matter of managing customer expectations. If you keep your customers informed about the status of things proactively, you can significantly reduce any possible negatives that can result from having customers in a back order scenario.

Bret Ridgway is co-founder of Speaker Fulfillment Services, a company dedicated to helping information marketers. To pick up your own copy of his new “Information Product Development and Launch Checklist” visit http://www.50BiggestMistakes.com.

Here is what typically happens to many information marketers when they are first starting out. They do some research and determine they have viable products they can develop in multiple markets. So they begin writing an ebook or developing a course on chinchilla farming, raising cacti, earthworms, and who knows what else all at the same time.

Their thought process is like this. “I’ll just work a little each day on each of my eight projects, and before long, I’ll have a great big library of information products that I’ll be making money on.”

So they work a little while each day on their chinchilla-farming book. Then they switch over to their book on raising cacti. After a while, they tire of that, so they begin some work on their great new ebook on earthworms. And so on and so on.

By utilizing this approach, you delay the completion of any individual project for some period of time. So nothing is making you any money because everything is still in a state of development. If each project takes a month to complete, you’re effectively delaying any possible revenue inflow until at least four months down the road if you’re working on four projects simultaneously.

And, invariably, something that you think will take a week ends up taking two or more. So maybe those four months becomes six or seven or eight. You are hemorrhaging cash, and nothing is coming in.

What is a better plan? Focus on one and get it done. Get it out in the market to begin generating you revenue. Then move on to the second project and repeat the process. That way you have one project generating revenue after month one, another generating revenue after month two, another generating revenue after month three, etc.. No waiting until month four to get anything coming in at all.

That is if you’re doing all the work yourself. Experienced information marketers know they don’t have to do all the product creation themselves. They use ghostwriters and other resources to help them generate more products more quickly. This is where you want to get to. Just be sure when you’re starting out you don’t get sucked into the multiple project trap.

Bret Ridgway is co-founder of Speaker Fulfillment Services, a company dedicated to helping information marketers. To pick up your own copy of his “New Information Product Development and Launch Checklist” visit http://www.50BiggestMistakes.com.

How social media works

Social media helps you attain greater exposure to your audience, especially those you have already targeted. Like search engines, social media can help you promote your content and gain better visibility in the internet. Furthermore, it’s not a dead end. Promoting your content to your audience using social media lets your audience pass it on to others, particularly to people who belong to their social network.

Using social media in internet marketing

When you’re using the internet for profit, it’s important that you look at tools like social media as a means, not an end. Meaning, these tools will only be as effective as your content is good. Before going ahead and using social media, there are things that should already be in place, including:

-your site (should be usable and easy to navigate)

-content (should be existing on your site and should offer quality)

-your site’s management system (should let you manage content effectively)

Once you have the basics ready, you can begin expanding your reach. Here are ways internet marketing newbies can use social media to their advantage:

Choose the right social media.

Determine the type of industry or topic you want to be involved in and design your internet marketing efforts around it. Once you know the type of topic you want to engage in, it will be a lot easier to use which social media to choose. Whether you use videos, images, audio, articles or collaborative write-ups, it will be a lot easier for you to find the right kind of platform from which to promote your work.

Create relevant content.

Quality is of course, a very important consideration but so is relevance. Your content could be well-researched and well-written but if your visitors don’t find it useful, it will only be ignored.
Create content that’s highly prized by your target audience to encourage them to return to your site, recommend it and link up to it. More importantly, create content that your visitors will find worth distributing to the members of their social network. Keep your content updated.

Content can only be relevant as long as people find it so. Otherwise, it will outlive its usefulness. Do research to find out about changes in your industry or topic. Offer fresh information to keep your visitors interested and encourage them to spread your content.

Use more than one social medium if necessary.

You don’t have to limit yourself to just one social medium; there are several you can use at one time blogging, podcasting, discussion forums, networking, bookmarking, wikis, etc. Determine which type works best for your internet business and which one you do best.

If you’re uncomfortable with a certain social medium but find that it will be beneficial for your brand of internet marketing, hire someone to do it for you. Don’t miss out on a great opportunity just because you haven’t the time or the talent for it.

Direct the traffic to your site.

Yes, you still need traffic. How else will you be able to let them know you exist? Use all the tricks of the trade search engine optimization, quality content, link baiting, etc.
Build your network.

The social media thrives on strong networks. The larger it is and the more quality members it has, the better chances you’ll get. A strong network is extremely beneficial as an internet marketing tool not only because it promotes your internet marketing business to more people, but also because it allows you to gain foothold and influence in a very dynamic market.

Build a quality network. Find out which members produce better contacts or mean more business for you. For an internet marketing newbie, this may sound a little overwhelming but once you’re used to it, you’ll realize how advantageous it can be. Besides, all internet marketers have to start somewhere. Meet people and build friendships through social media. You not only get important information and updates about your business, you also get valuable feedback, which you can use later to improve your site, product and services.

Internet Marketing Co-founder of The World Internet Summit
www.brett.com.au

A questions to ask, is when do I get paid? Some issue their checks once a month, every quarter, etc. Select the one that is suited to your payment time choice. Commissions are paid out by some companies after the affiliate has achieved a certain amount of funds, or exceed in order for their checks to be issued.

What is the hit per sale ratio? This is the median number of hits to a banner or text link it takes to generate a sale based on all affiliate statistics. This is a very good stat because it allows you to calculate how much traffic you will need before you can earn a commission from the sale.

Determining how sales are tracked from you site and how long you have to make the sale are important you want to be confident on the program enough to track those people you refer from your site. This is the only way that you can credit for a sale.

The time a visitor to your site stays in the system is vital. This is because some visitors do not buy initially but may want to return later to make the purchase. These are just some of the questions that needed answering first before you enter into an affiliate program. It’s a good idea to make sure you know all about an affiliate program before incorporating it into your site.

Getting highly targeted traffic to the affiliate program will be the biggest challenge you face. But the need for proper groundwork is a common thread running through all that’s been said here. If you need to prove as a credible seller, you need to have your personalized website.

An affiliate program you promote doesn’t need you to have your own website you may sell goods without even creating a site of your own, it helps building trust and is considered beneficial in the longer run. It is not necessary to have the best looking website just a simple one and a means of spreading the message across would be sufficient.

Uchenna Ani-Okoye is an internet marketing advisor and co founder of Business Profitability Goal

You may decide to stick with an affiliate program in a certain niche. You may also decide to form affiliate relationships with a variety of programs. You may want to choose affiliate programs that complement each other, while still being in a different niche from each other. That’s the beauty of the great variety of programs out there.

We’ll take a quick look here at three affiliate programs to give you an overview of what they provide. Two are article marketing affiliate programs and one is a bookselling and other merchandise affiliate program. While just a small sampling of what is out there, these will give you an idea of how affiliate programs operate.

The article distribution service called iSnare has a basic affiliate or referral program. In essence, their affiliate program earns you credits so you do not have to pay to get your own article writing efforts distributed by them. iSnare charges a fee to submit articles for affiliate marketers and others. However, if you become an affiliate and promote their service you can forgo these fees.

Here’s how it works. For each person you refer to iSnare who registers and purchases distribution credits, you earn credits. If someone purchases a five article distribution package, you will receive a free article distribution yourself. If someone, you refer, purchases a forty article distribution package you will receive six free article distributions. In this way, you can perform an article marketing campaign and pay little or nothing for it, as your referrals pay your way. iSnare does not pay in actual cash each month to an affiliate.

Amazon.com has a referral program. Affiliates in their program receive up to fifteen percent commission on sales they refer. They offer a performance-fee pay structure or a classic fee structure. With the performance based option the higher your referrals, the greater your earnings will be. Their classic fee structure is a fixed-referral-rate plan. You earn a four percent referral fee on items offered by Amazon or by third parties.

Amazon.com pays their affiliate partners on a monthly basis. They provide their affiliates a portal where they can view traffic and earnings reports. It’s a place where affiliates can read the latest news and opportunities available to them. They update this portal daily so the information is current. Amazon.com provides their affiliates formatted links, which they can put on their websites or blogs.

Article Marketer, an article distribution service, has their affiliate program. They offer multi-tier commissions to their affiliate members. As an affiliate with them, you will earn twenty-five percent commissions on any Article Marketer subscription sales you generate. You will also earn a five percent commission whenever someone you refer as an affiliate makes a sale.

Article Marketer gives credit for commissionable sales to an affiliate whenever they occur. If one of your customers comes back a year later to purchase, you still get credit for the sale. They offer real time tracking of your orders and commissions as well. In addition, Article Marketer pays their affiliate members on a monthly basis.

When it comes to promoting Article Marketer on your websites and blogs, the company offers many tools. They provide banners, linking codes, special offers, and promotions. They also provide their affiliates sales copy, articles, news items, and more to help build sales. On top of all that, Article Marketer has their Affiliate Marketers Blog where discussion of important marketing topics takes place.

With the myriad of affiliate programs available, you have to do your homework. You will expend time and effort in your affiliate marketing business. Make sure your time and effort is with an affiliate program that gives you the tools, commissions, and support you need to succeed.

Jim Slader manages the affiliate program at Article Marketer, the largest article distribution service on the Internet. Earn commissions on a product that virtually sells it; become an Article Marketer Affiliate today. Join the winning team: it’s quick and easy .

Where is the author resource box?
The author resource box is usually located at the bottom of your article, immediately following your content. It’s a concise, quick link to you, your background and your website. It is here, in this powerful little box, that you take credit for your article and establish yourself as a recognized expert in your field. And, within your resource box you will provide valuable links for your reader to access your website. Your resource box is a portal into your website, increasing your search engine results and growing your business.

How does the resource box connect the reader and your website?
Your reader has purposely searched out topics related to your article. Since you’ve already provided great content in your article, your reader will want to continue the quest for more articles, or maybe even buy your products. If you guide your reader into your resource box straight from your article, your reader is already in a mindset to immediately link to your website.

How can my author resource box entice readers to follow my website link?
The most important job of your resource box is to provide a call to action to your reader. Consider your author resource box equal to your closing paragraph on a sales or marketing letter. The resource box wraps up your article and leads your reader to the next step. It is here that you extend a creative, enticing invitation to your reader to link to your site for more information on your article content, as well as additional information, products or services the reader will find within your site.

What should my author resource box include to get the best reader response?
1. Your name, as author and a short description of your background. For example, “John Smith is owner and consultant of ABC Computers. He writes a monthly column for IT Magazine and consults with clients to troubleshoot computer issues.”

2. Your specific website URL address. This is the only place in your article where you can use actual HTML code. For the most effective use of your URL link, connect to a page within your site that gives the reader information similar to what was contained in the article they just read. If a viewer has searched for a particular article topic, it’s almost certain that they will be looking for more of the same type information within your site. Your website URL will be their link to that information and to your expertise.

3. Your sales pitch. Here’s where you get to be creative. You’ll need to provide your reader a reason to take action, entice them to go to your website and lead them to valuable resources within your site. You might offer a free report, a related article, a newsletter subscription or a link to your blog. To get more mileage out of your resource box, develop multiple versions of your sales pitch and use it on different articles. Test the effectiveness of each resource box by the number of responses you receive.

4. Anchor text word links. You can also insert second and third links to your website within your author resource box text. Convert important, related words within your resource box into hyperlinks. Connect the anchor text hyperlinks to different pages within your website. This gives your reader multiple avenues into your site, exposes them to different pages that might be of interest to them and gives you one more exposure to your reader. But be careful of multiple text hyperlinks if you have a specific click through goal. Too many links can cause your reader to be confused.

An effective resource box will increase your website traffic and provide your reader with additional references. Your website becomes a valuable resource for the reader. The reader becomes a regular visitor of your site. We all know good things come in small boxes. Don’t neglect that all important author resource box at the bottom of your article.

Join Bob Sommers at the Recognized Expert article marketing forum and participate in our lively article marketing discussion. Learn how to write articles that compel readers to act from Saint Louis marketing writers and professional writers from around the world.