Bruce's Golden Goose Marketing Online

For many, email marketing has been a reliable and profitable internet marketing system. Instead of constantly chasing SEO results or paying for traffic using sources with ever-changing rules and competition, emailers have been quietly making a fortune on lists they built and merely maintained. Today, though, many email marketers are worried. Gmail just released a new “Priority Inbox” feature that gives preferential treatment to the mail from favored contacts. For most commercial emailers, that’s not going to include their messages.

aWeber has commented on the new development, and they’ve advised emailers to hold off on judgment, as it’s just too soon to tell how this new feature will play out. Will consumers resent Google’s attempts to decide what’s important to them? Will customers value their commercial correspondence enough to give it priority? Or will this be a complete doomsday scenario for all email marketers, with every other major email provider following suit?

The answer is that it probably depends on how you do your email marketing. To stay on the good side of things, I would recommend that you focus on two things. Number one, make sure that you’re using a high-quality double opt-in provider like aWeber. When you do things the honest way, you will generally find that you are rewarded.

Beyond that, you also need to make sure that your messages deliver when it comes to quality. Anyone can send out ads, but if you want a high click-through rate and high reader satisfaction, you absolutely must deliver something of value in most, if not all of your messages.

What do you think? If anything, I think it will make the email marketing landscape less competitive. Now is a better time than ever to get started.

Five years ago, article marketing was all the rage.  Every affiliate was doing it, and many of them were doing quite well with it.  Today, many have abandoned it in favor of “easier” or faster marketing methods that don’t require the tedious job of writing and rewriting endless articles.

Today, affiliates are still doing article marketing and having a lot of success, but they’re doing it a lot more quietly.  It’s no longer the “cool” thing to talk about, and a lot of people are convinced that it’s useless.  That’s great news for those of us who know better.

The key to success with article marketing in 2010 is automation.  You can’t reasonably expect to spend 40+ hours/week writing 500 word articles and submitting them nonstop.  You’d go crazy.  Instead, it’s vital that you write a handful of good articles on a topic (or have someone write them for you) and then spin them to get fresh new content.  Spinning simply takes the articles, runs them through a software, then spits them back out with a slightly different set of words and phrases.  This ensures that search engines don’t view all of your articles as duplicate content and de-index them.

Beyond that, you need to find a way to submit them quickly and automatically.  Although you can never fully automate account creation, you definitely don’t have to sit down and manually submit every article one-by-one.  That’s time better spent on finding new products and markets to promote.

Mass Article Control handles automation on both fronts.  For a very reasonable price, you can spin your articles and submit them with very little manual effort on your part.  For now, it’s $77 to get both pieces of software.  That’s less than 8 hours of time with a typical virtual assistant, and it will give you a lot more submissions in the long run.  Can you really afford not to give it a try?

For a lot of us, free traffic is basically the only way we can get started in affiliate marketing.  Although both time and money may be scarce, it’s usually a lot easier to rustle up a bit of extra time each evening.   It also dramatically decreases our potential downside.  Instead of seeing income lost, we see time invested in the learning process.

The problem with free traffic is that it can be difficult to get started if you don’t know quite what to do.  There are literally hundreds of popular sites with excellent free marketing opportunities – Craigslist, YouTube, Squidoo, EZineArticles, Hubpages, Yahoo! Answers, and so on…but what’s most effective?  What is going to give you the best return for the time you invest?

Part of this is just a matter of trial and error.  Some sites require different styles, and two perfectly competent people may have vastly different amounts of success.  To some extent, though, it’s a matter of SEO, traffic patterns, and careful keyword research.  Knowing which sites are hot at the moment and how to best structure your content for those sites…well, that can be gold to us free traffic source marketers.

If you want to learn more about how to leverage the power of completely free traffic, check out The Affiliate Code.  It’s a course that focuses entirely on teaching you how to build a massively profitable business on the backs of many other successful free traffic sources.  Why start from scratch when you can get a jumpstart like that?

A lot of affiliates like the idea of a newsletter…in principle.  If you ask, though, most have never actually acted on what they know to be a very good idea.  Building a list has potential for a great ROI if you do it right.  To help you out, I’ve included a number of tips that have been helpful to me.

• Get a trustworthy mailer. I like aWeber because they’re double opt-in (that means that users have to confirm their email address to get on the list) and they have extremely high deliverability rates.  They’re also very affordable.  Click here if you want to learn more about their plans.
• Mail frequently. If you don’t, people have  tendency to forget who you are.  When your mailing finally arrives, they’re likely to hit the “Spam” button because they don’t hear from you often enough to remember when they opted into your correspondence.
• Make it timely. While this may not apply to all fields and topics, people definitely appreciate current information.  If you can save them a trip to their favorite website for the same information, you’ve saved them time and helped to win their favor.
• Keep your tone consistent with your website (if you have one) and your audience’s sophistication level.  If you’re writing about web marketing but targeting people with brick and mortar businesses, your language will be much less technical than if you’re writing about the same topic for industry veterans.
• Don’t be afraid of templates. If you have no design skills, there’s absolutely no shame in using a template.  Heck, you can even joke about it if your audience is a casual one, but for goodness sake, have mercy on their eyes.  Don’t go the DIY route and create some fluorescent monstrosity that gives everyone eyestrain.
• Keep it simple. If you want to highlight a lot of content, offer links to your website where people can view it all.  Don’t clog up their inbox with a 10,000 word email.

Are there any good techniques I’m missing?  I’m sure there are tons, so feel free to chime in on the comments.

A lot of people are out there looking for the secret to being a successful affiliate.  They’ll spend thousands of dollars in hopes of finding it, and they read tons of courses and feel somehow unsatisfied every time.  Surely, there must be some piece of the puzzle that they’re missing…

They are missing a secret, but I’ll tell you what it is.  It’s persistence.  We all have obstacles and weaknesses and setbacks, but people who are persistent enough for long enough will find that eventually, they encounter something else – a stroke of luck.  For most of us, it takes a lot of hard work and failure to finally get to the “luck” we perceive others to have found in their marketing efforts.

Some of us have a hit with our first campaign.  Others take 20, 30, or even 50 before we “get lucky” and start to make some money.  The one thing I know for certain, though, is that nearly anyone can make money online if they are truly persistent.  Maybe it will be with article marketing, maybe it will be social media, and maybe it will be PPC – but you won’t know until you start somewhere and give it a serious, honest try before moving on to the next thing.  Too many people drift aimlessly between methods and then give up way too soon.

If you’re still struggling, this is my recommendation – pick ONE course (lots of good recommendations below) and stick with it.  Give it a minimum of 90 days of real effort.  You might even want to give it 6 months if you’re doing SEO, since it takes longer to build momentum there.  While you’re doing that, ignore the blogs, ignore the forums, and just use Google if you have a vital question.  If you don’t get results in that time, it’s probably safe to assume that the method isn’t going to be the best one for you.  Then – and only then – move on to something different.

Great Internet Marketing Courses to Get You Started:

• Super Cash System
• Make Real Money on the Internet
• Copy & Paste Underground
• The WordPress Classroom

A little over 5 years ago, article marketing was all the rage.  It seemed like everyone was writing and submitting articles to promote affiliate offers.  Then, other things gradually became trendier.  People wanted to pay for instant traffic instead of putting in the time and effort to write articles and figure out what works.  Article marketing became something that a lot of people talk down about.  It became a sure sign that you were a Digital Point newbie instead of a professional marketer.

To be quite honest, I never understood this.  Article marketing was, and still is, an excellent way to drive sales.  Yes, it does take a bit more effort up front, but it’s also much more stable than most paid advertising.  Articles that people wrote back in 2005 STILL make money for them.  Even if you have only written a handful of articles on one site and you make $50/month from them, think about the long-term possibilities of that.  That’s a $600 annual raise for work you did ONCE and then left behind.  You might have to log in once in a while and change the affiliate link, but other than that, it’s extremely low maintenance.

Now, imagine yourself doing basically the same thing, except with the benefit of a proven system and automated mass submissions.  Instead of $50/month for a few articles, you could be looking at hundreds – and if you’re ambitious, you could write a ton of them and earn thousands.  That’s what Mass Article Control does for you.  It simplifies, streamlines, and automates the article marketing process to take it from a decent side income to an amazing full-time income that lets you pay down debts or simply enjoy your life a little more.

At the moment, the Mass Article Control Blueprint is completely free if you opt into their email list.  I highly recommend that you at least take a look at it to decide if it’s right for you.

When it comes to building an income as an affiliate, most of us want to go for the big money first.  We don’t care if it’s a little volatile, we just want to see cash coming in.  Unfortunately (and even some of the gurus have this problem), that means that your income can literally dry up overnight.  Big money that comes fast is rarely stable.

If you want to make a real, long-term business out of affiliate marketing, it’s going to take more than just cashing in on a single lucky streak.  You need to treat it like any good investor would treat a long-term business or stock portfolio.  You need to diversify enough that your business isn’t vulnerable to small, sudden changes that could wipe out your wealth.

One very good way to do that is by creating WordPress blogs on niche topics.  Although the initial time that it takes to build your site and get indexed may be a bit longer than what is needed for other income-generating techniques, the end result is a stream of income that’s low maintenance and relatively stable.

The WordPress Classroom teaches you exactly how to build sites like this.  Although the sales letter itself may seem a little sensational, don’t let that fool you.  Using WordPress to build affiliate sites with real content is not just some get-rich-quick scheme.  It’s a solid method that leaves you with a real asset (quite unlike using PPC or PPV and sending traffic to landing pages).  Even if you never actually advertise your sites, you’ll continue to get a steady trickle of traffic from search engines and social media sites.

If you’re not already diversifying and planning your long-term affiliate marketing future, check out The WordPress Classroom.

Affiliate marketers with their eyes on the long-term picture are keeping a very close eye on mobile marketing.   It’s a huge growth area, and it’s one that very few people have figured out how to monetize.  There are signs, though, that it’s going to be huge.  A very small number of people are already profiting, and a couple of marketers are going so far as to reveal the basic methods they’re using.

Cell Phone Cash is probably the most respected mobile marketing course out there right now.  It’s run by Mack Michaels of the Maverick Coaching system, which is a highly regarded program for internet marketers.  The methods described in Cell Phone Cash are the kind of new methods you’re not going to find on every internet marketing blog out there.  In fact, it’s my respect for the course that keeps me from spilling all the juicy details here.

The next time you’re out, take a look at the sheer number of people with smart phones – the Blackberry users, the iPhone users, the Android users, and so on.  These are the people who form the market, and they’re everywhere.  With the constantly dropping prices on smart phones and data plans, those numbers will only grow.  People today use their phones as computers-on-the-go. In a lot of cases, you’ll even see teenagers running around with fancy smart phones and data plans.

That many people in one place clearly means there’s an opportunity for early marketers.  Have you figured out how you’re going to profit from the mobile trend?

Article marketing is not for the weak.  In fact, it’s one of the most grueling methods of affiliate promotion that you can choose – especially without the proper tools.   As soon as you start making even a little bit of money, it’s a process that’s best automated as much as possible.  One of the best ways to do that is with Mass Article Control.

What’s Important in Article Marketing?

• LOTS of content – Mass Article Control lets you spin a single article into 1000 articles almost instantly.
• Submitting to many places – Mass Article Control handles bulk submissions.
• Ease of use – Mass Article Control includes help videos to make it all as simple as possible.
• Avoiding duplicate content – Mass Article Control’s was specifically designed to help you avoid duplicate content penalties.

The software package is so effective because it’s actually two software programs combined for one package deal – an article creator and an article submitter.  If you’re doing article marketing and getting frustrated because your efforts (and profits) are limited by time, it’s time to give Mass Article Control a try.  It’s far cheaper than outsourcing and it’s highly effective.

As with most quality products, there’s a 60-day money back guarantee.  That means that you get 60 days to watch your income improve before you have to decide if you’re keeping it.  With that kind of deal, what’s stopping you?

A lot of new affiliates see the gurus who have done huge amounts of business over short periods, and they assume that affiliate marketing is a get-rich-quick, overnight success kind of thing.  While it’s true that there are a lot of very short sighted affiliates who build businesses that grow and die almost overnight, there are plenty of people in the industry who are focused on building lasting businesses.  One of those people is Rosalind Gardner.

Rosalind is the author of The Super Affiliate’s Handbook, and she’s been in the industry for over 10 years.  Through her focus on building a quality business and diversifying your successes, she’s been able to weather the storms that have brought down many lesser marketers.

Her guide is extremely useful for new affiliates, as it goes over everything from basic terminology to history to big picture strategy.  If you want more from this business than a quick profit, this is the book for you.  If you envision yourself doing this in 10 or 15 years, you should take a break from the one-note gurus and soak up everything Ms. Gardner has to say.

What You’ll Learn:

• How to pick products that work
• How to align yourself with reputable brands and companies
• How to know if you’re right for affiliate marketing
• How to build quality sites that earn money for years

You’ll also get a sneak peek at one of her actual affiliate sites.  That alone is worth the price of the book.  So what are you waiting for – check out The Super Affiliate Handbook today.