Applied Online Promotion - This isn't rocket science.

An applied application of online promotion.

Since I'm moving into study of entertainment - how to promote this in order to earn money online is its own interesting research line.

The idea is to create a content-heavy line of works whicn then would lend itself to promotion. Not so odd, I planned a set of 256 short stories, each with it's own soundtrack, illustrations, and video's. This is quite different from a single release, which you'd have to separately (and expensively) build up a community awareness for, etc. Like a single film, book, or product release.

The flow of stories itself would take on the aspect of a community interest - as some of the jokes about Dickens' magazine installments for his books (...as the ship approached the harbor, someone called out from the waiting dockside throng, "What happened to Little Nell?")

Also, the extended publishing model fits this well - and it's tuned to the multi-result approach the search engines have recognized. This is where we've been heading with this 30-day study all along.

Again, the story itself is read into podcast, it's illustrated and these become a slideshow, then a video. The drawback of this is that you don't want to publish the short stories to your remote blogs, as that is just added and unnecesary content. And would defeat sales, so cut earning money.

The marketing side of this would be to create a second line of work, which would be some sort of story analysis. This could easily be distributed through a mini-net system and then bookmarked, etc. (Your promotion is typically secondary to the original work, regardless.)

Income would be utilizing the soundtrack/podcast, videos, and text as ebooks all as income/money sources.

Promotion would have that "analysis" published via main hub and remote-blog mini-net. Also, creating podcasts, graphic powerpoint, and promotional videos for each ebook - which could (and should) be widely distributed, even though the base materials are not. Even articles can be used to post spun versions of the analyses - good for backlinks.

And obviously, they'd be done in an entertaining form, with their own continuing theme to draw in people - building a community in fact.

This is obviously a great deal of content to be distributing. And a great test of what we've been developing and studying.

Needless to say, in undertaking this, I won't be doing anything else with my time - so trying to exploit my earlier work in Affiliate Marketing would take a back seat. (And is why I haven't built my own affiliate programs into any sort of regular income - too busy researching. But I told you about purpose and passion, haven't I?)

Patterns of Promotion

So the evolving pattern - as someone who has published several dozen books - is to have ebooks on handheld devices. Smashwords seems to be the best way to get these published and distributed into several versions, as well as their distributors. 

They have an affiliate program, discount coupons, and also track backlinks to your ebook. So the basics are there.

The general sequence of promotion is slightly different from the original content creation. The ebook is created, along with soundtrack, and video. And while the ebook is published for sale, the other 2 are stored away for later use. Snippets might be able to be used out of these.

Trick here is to keep the analysis up todate and publish these immediately following the ebooks. If this can be kept (or sped up to ) a weekly promotion, then the initial price point would be kept low, plus the affiliate payouts as high as possible. So these are simply loss leaders. Later stories would gradually raise their price as the series become more popular (after the first 64, hopefully.)

Main point is that by building this community, you create a demand for these books. The volume of them makes them collectibles. This is exactly what "famous authors" who have dogged out an existence by writing. Our use of this is to speed this up immensely. We will create a "body of work" in one year or less.

And we will have "left over" a set of material to extend the brand - earning additional income - after the initial product line is established. (And that is my little secret, as to what exactly - and extensively - is planned.)

The marketing is all (or mostly) online and use search engines to track and give results based on volume of fresh content. Links which run through this would all go to each of the Smashwords book pages. And the bookmarks take in all levels of this. Exhaustively. Pinging has to be done as conscientiously throughout - to alert the search engines of the new content, as well as any "fans". You have to plan your work and work your plan.

You now understand all of what I've been bringing you to (if you've studiously followed every step to this point.) As well, I have someone I can explain it all to, now - without having to explain hubs, remote-blogs, etc.). But the main point has been to scrub all this down to a finite set of rules which can be applied to the next step of online promotion I'll be doing, which brings us full circle back to the point of how to earn extra money online.

Now that it's all written up and in your able hands, I can simply devote my time to creating this monster set of works.

Good Hunting!

How to stay on a roll when you get there...

What's next - when you're on a roll?

For those who have faithfully followed this series, I thought to give you an unannounced follow-up.
Most of this series was written in pre-post method, meaning I simply sat down and drove myself to get it out of my head and into a written (digital) form. Wasn't hard, if you can listen to your own inspiration running amok.  (And that's a whole 'nother topic, although I did compile a book about how anyone can release their own genius...)

But as you can see from this blog, I have no short suit in  being able to create new content readily (over-prolific, I call it). Mostly, this is practice, and isn't something I really ever set out to do, but another talent that - when honed - turned out to be sharp.

There is a simple recipe using what we've covered for anyone who finds themselves having more content than outlets: create another outlet stream.

Essentially, a person can have many interests, even though they may only really focus on a few. This where diversity in life makes everything interesting. And the various Internet hosts love it when you dump all sorts of content on them.

That formula:

• On your main hub, set up another category with that other interest (or set up another hub)
• Populate this with some basic content
• Create a new Google+ page and publish these links to it.
• Set up your posterous and remote posting blogs (WP, blog.com, blogger, etc.)
• And set up another twitter account, which posterous can handle for you. You can also autopost to Facebook from here.
• Your onlywire or Synnd work would continue with these new posts.

Quite simple. But it gets all that out of your head...

- - - -

Some examples of content publishing

Hubs

Worstell Farms

Worstell Farms Cinch Diet Plan pages

Thrivelearning System (RobertWorstell.com)

Go Thunk Yourself.com

Google+ pages:

Worstell Farms

Shaklee Cinch Diet Plan

Comparing these 2 sets, you'll see where the cross-posts come in. And its obvious I need to create some more product pages, as I just found Google+ pages and their SEO connection a little over a month ago (just before I started this data dump).

Posterous

Natural Health News and Information

And Now What?

Thrivelearning News and Views

Go Thunk Yourself!

These posterous accounts all autopost to at least 4 other blogs, and usually a twitter account as well. So essentially, for every hub, I (should) have a Google+ page, and a Posterous blog with a mini-net below it. You'll see on WorstellFarms that I created a mini-site just about Cinch which only obliquely links back to the Grass Fed Beef site - but is on the same domain. It's an extension of eating healthy and naturally, so it fits.

Again, this is just the tip of the iceberg. There's bookmarking and so on. And working to find a review from Market Samurai gave me this link about their results in surveying professional SEO companies.

Just a reminder...

Content posting sequence is:

1. Landing/Sales pages are best hosted by your affiliate sponsor's site (unless they do a lousy job, or it's your own product).
2. Review pages go on your main site/hub (and link to the affiliate sponsor)
   
3. Infotainment pages go on the remote blogs (and link to your hub)
4. Bookmark the remote blogs and ping the bookmark profile RSS feeds.

For an example, if you trace out the Cinch Diet Plan pages (goes through "Natural Health News and Information" Posterous site), it will all lead back to Shaklee as an affiliate: http://order-online-today.myshaklee.com/

Go Thunk Yourself (and some of Thrivelearning) will trace back to my own bookstore: http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/robertworstell

Thrivelearning itself is a montage of affiliate programs and materials. Some are even Amazon astores. And if you search for the slideshare.net sites, you'll see how this material was published as PDF's with backlinks to the hub it came from.

So I just wanted to give you some live examples to check out.

Cheers!

Day 17 - The Google Gorilla in the Room...

(Secret Sauce - third installment)

We can't continue here without discussing the 900lb. Gorilla in the room - Google.

This particular scene only unfolded for me last month, but is so basic to our SEO efforts that I had to tell you (been "busting to" in fact).

Google has been working on entering the social arena for years. They tried Buzz and Wave and now Google+ - which seems to be a hit (finally). Of course, it's overshadowed by Facebook, for now.

The reason I can say that is that point I've mentioned about Facebook before: it's a walled garden. Unfortunately, that works against it. While I could tell you all the statistics which show it reaches a saturation point in any country and then starts slowly declining, they offset that with it's entry into new countries. And point to ad revenue (which doesn't get new clients for those businesses, so is a ponzi scheme waiting to implode.)

Google+ is simply built on how people share content. So it's a natural fit to Google and users.

But the real deal is that it's now integrated into all Google does - and shortly will even have their analytics built into their Google+ pages. And how you integrate with Google affects what searches you personally get and also who gets your links. So this will help your community to keep track of your content - nice, yes?

There are 2 parts to this:

1. Everything you connect into Google will help your site rank better.
2. Google will teach you how to make better content - so your pages rank better.

Now, the outset is that you need to set up a Google Account, which is fairly simple -  go to https://accounts.google.com and fill out their form. Now a point here is that you don't try to set up several accounts here. It's not like twitter. They cross-check stuff. So one should do you and keep it the same. From all the work I've done with them, that's my short version. Pick one and stick to it.

Google's purpose

Arguably, they have mostly been interested in how people store and retrieve information. Their business plan has been to sell advertising, which has worked. Especially with the tools they offer to "auction" their ads. So they very nearly always sell as the highest rate possible, but that's another story we don't have time to get into.

The great part of Google is that they have been so successful at search, that they have long controlled the greatest part of the market for searches. So if they say they want "such-and-so" every one asks - "how high?" (mixed metaphor).

For better or worse, they have started to become ubiquitous on other platforms as well. Their Chrome browser is now starting to unseat Microsoft's IE as top dog. And this is another way they are working to understand people's usage of the Internet, so they can give better results in their search.

Factually, their biggest problem now is their success, as they have been losing trust - essentially due to the huge amount of data they can access about people. Again, this is an issue that there are solutions for which we don't need to get into.

Our use of this is to leverage their ability to have their fingers in all pies in order to get them to notice our content more easily. The second point it that their feedback on what we do can improve our own rankings. So we use their expansiveness to our advantage.

Analytics

Google Analytics is simple to find. http://www.google.com/analytics/
You sign in with your gmail account (Google Account) and then enter all the various properties that you have. For each one (unless you group them together) you'll get a number which you can drop into other social properties where they ask for such.

A lot of these social sites are supporting Google analytics, which is a good thing. It makes it easier to implement (no cutting and pasting code into your page headers) and this also tells them that your site is available and connects to you.

While we'll go over this later, this is a key point - that you take control of ownership for your content. The better you make this content and the more sites you have out there, it's important that Google knows where it started. By plugging in analytics, you then will enable Google to directly track your site/blog/content and so tell you all sorts of things about how it's working and what you can to to improve it.

Now a caveat - Google Analytics simply isn't as good as your own server. But if you are using free hosting, it's the next best thing (and far better than nothing.) So if you have a Google account, then take the next step of generating a number for it and plugging it in.

Webmaster Tools

Their use of this is fascinating, since they can tell you what people are using to search your site. Again, your own server is better for this in terms of accuracy, but this is what Google thinks your site looks like and so can give you a leg up on what content you should produce next in order to back up what Google is sending your way.

A rule of warning here - it's not the Gospel truth of what are the best keywords you should be using. Remember our lessons on Market Samurai. Not all keywords are valuable. You want to chase those which have commerciality - people click through on ads which others pay good money for. But you can scrape these keywords and run them through Market Samurai (or for free - through Domain Samurai) to find out what is working best for you.

They also tell you here what broken links you have and how you can improve your site for the search engines. Mainly that when they search a site and find broken links, they come back less often. So fixing these ensure they will search your site quickly (like minutes).

Recently (this year sometime) they plugged Webmaster Tools into Analytics which improved both of them. So when you go into Analytics (you'll have to turn on this interconnection, but it's simple) then you can see what keywords are being searched for and what pages people are accessing.

Again, this is included with your Google Account. And some, like Wordpress.com, only take Webmaster Tools. Odd, but at least you'll be able to see the keywords they visit your free Wordpress blog from it's dashboard - which is also handy.

Google+profiles

While this has been a long, slow start and with several mis-steps, now it looks like they have their feet under them.

Google+ profiles are your personal page on Google. And ties all your work on their various platforms together. And it's the best of the profiles out there, since they have learned from Facebook's and other's mistakes. Just review that freebie I gave you yesterday about setting up your social profiles and you'll get the bulk of it. (Pictures, links back to your site, the whole thing.) But they do privacy better (as much as you can on the web...)

I'm not one who cares all that much for burning my time keeping track of other people's posts. (Even Google has this on automatic.) But Google has released this along with some of their other updates, and is probably the first to use a tag (rel=author) which says that the content on that page was created there first. By doing this, they can see where someone else simply copied the content and pasted it onto their site.

So they can then give the best value to the original content. People who copy your stuff (and leave the links intact) will then be sending you authority for being the author. So they boost your site up for those keywords.

The way Google helps you with this is by enabling you to put a badge on your site which lets people "plus-1" your page. But also marks your site as the original.

Google+ pages

I'm continually surprised that there isn't a land-rush for these.

The same thing you do for yourself, you can do for any product. Like affiliate products and such. If you support or recommend a product and have put up pages about that product or service, then create a Google+ page for this and then share the link here for your content (a lot like Facebook or Twitter). But in this case, the links don't disappear, since Google is hosting it on their servers.

Now, if you have a site for that product, then create a badge from that Google page and plop that code down in the sidebar. Voila - you are now the authority for that content as well.

So if you have several sites, you create Google+ pages, share the links, and plop the badge on those different sites. Don't forget to put your link on that page to your site - it goes right under the logo you use. (Nothing like a backlink from Google to make your day, eh?)

Both on their pages and your profile, you can link all your other sites in. Of course, this makes your blogger blog have more seniority, doesn't it? Not bad for free.

- - - -

There's really too much to discuss here. I've touched on the basics we are going to use later in our "secret sauce" sub-series.

The freebie today is called the Google Plus Marketing Landscape - a collection of data from someone who is an online geek from beyond. While you can get it from his site, I've left all his links in and encourage you to visit it just to get a feel of what he knows. (His style of content isn't what I cherish, so I opted out after awhile...)

Your daily assignment is to create a Google Account if you don't have one and play around with their profiles and pages. If you want, you can start linking in your content so others can find it on Google.

Now I don't go into these "circles" things. But I'll leave you to search for them, as there is quite a bit of discussion on them. Hint: pages can't "circle" people. But you can find "shared circles" of just brands and pages to use for your pages to increase their authority. (It's just branding after all...) Active brands will include you're brand in their circles, particularly if you've shared some good content on your G+ page.

Day 13 - Your Luck has it: Writing a Web Page

Here is one subject that has been made incredibly complex.

Yes, there are a lot of parts to it, but you can hardly do this wrong. However, if you take care to do each bit exactly right, then you'll wind up with some better-than-average results for your effort.

We bring this up here as now you are ready to put some things together. And like a song, there are notes, melody, lyrics, and timing to produce something better sounding than a tortured alley cat in heat. ;)

Writing to Your Heart's Content

For all the boobytraps people have laid down about writing (producing content) - it's not all that hard. However, you do have to listen to your heart and act on what you find.

Writing is simple: "Write like you talk."

Imagine someone in front of you who is just dying to hear what you think about something. All ears and expectant. And then you simply write to hold their interest.

Now there are some details like spelling, but that is what spell-checkers are for. Get something like the free OpenOffice (LibreOffice) or MS Word (if it came with your computer) and it will do a fair job of keeping your words spelled right. (And then note how they are spelled and learn - this will actually save you time in the long haul - not having to stop and correct.)

Once you learn that the inspired "voice in your head" (or however it appears to you) is an unending torrent of content, then it's simply the work of getting it all down on the page.

Of course you can study books like Strunk and White's "Elements of Style" to shortcut improving your writing quality by leaps and bounds. Most English books are tedious and filled with non-sensical rules that are dead-ended in government-supported Academia. People don't write that way and haven't for years. Read a lot and write like the people you like to read. Especially if you want to make your prose more entertaining and interesting.

Research

Of course, you have to do your research about a topic. And that is simply asking yourself, "Can I answer anyone's questions about what I'm going to tell them?" If you hold to this idea that you are working to keep your audience's interest, then it will be easy to simply stop and look it up. Once you have all the data, it will make sense to you and then you can resume telling your story.

Some people talk it out, and then ship it off to a service to transcribe their spoken words into text. That takes a fee, though. And you do get better with typing as you practice.

The main point is to be certain about what you are talking about.

One person's content is another person's spam.

There are 3 types of content on the Internet, with untold variations.

1. Pure information
2. Softsell
3. Hardsell

People put pure information out there to scratch an itch of telling someone what they just found out. And you also have this where people are simply using the Web to download their lives onto it. A personal outlet.

And that is all fine and useful. In these cases, like Wikipedia, it has it's own value and is the purest form of content. An example of open-handed giving.

In softsell, which is useful everywhere else,  people are writing "link bait" which is interesting and entertaining and gets a person to click on a link in that page in order to go to a sales page - or another page which is linking to somewhere they can buy the product.

Affiliate marketing will ship them off the the product or service's sales site to buy. (And as Michel Campbell points out, if they have a lousy sales page, you might need to write your own and then link right to their payment backend.)

Sales pages and landing pages are Hard Sell. We haven't talked much about these. Mainly because they are "disliked" by people who run social services and so on. This goes back to the point that 97% or more of everyone out there is only existing to be entertained. Hardsell pieces aren't entertainment. It's like eating a double-chocolate 5 layer cake and washing it all down with a super-sweet energy drink. You don't want to do this as a steady diet.

But they have their places. A handful want to buy and are looking for just these type of pages to help them make their decision. Your usual place for this is to follow up someone who clicks on a classified ad or auction entry. Or as above, linked into a softsell page.

3-2-1

Wordpress.com and others have made selling on the Internet an interesting place. It's now several layers deep. WP.com is protecting their own (domain-and add-on-selling) profits by telling spammers that they need to take their efforts somewhere else. Unfortunately, they have specious ideas of what spamming is. If your softsell content is linking to sales pages, that's "spamming" and your site and probably login as well will disappear with no notice. (And other free blog sites follow this as well.) Accidentally posting the same content several times to different blogs on their site will also get you banned.

So to get the lookie-loo's turned into possible buyers, you have these pages nested about 3 deep.

• A general information piece links to 
• A softsell page with links to 
• Hardsell pages. 

And that makes the whole subject more difficult, as each of these pages is a drop-off point where a person can go somewhere else or do one of these "look - a butterfly!" moments.

So some people simply concentrate on hardsell pages and writing good classified ads. Which is fine, as the conversions are better in this area.

And there is a mix when you are writing email newsletters. Because you can weed out people who are only their for freebies or to be entertained. Everyone else expects that you are going to give them something and expect something in return. Like visiting your blog in order to start the sales cycle again.

Writing a web page

You start with your purpose, of course, and exactly how you want to help that unseen viewer today.

You have a set of keywords in mind which you want to rank well on the search engines. The main keyword will wind up in the title and 1st paragraph, plus the titles and alt-tags of your images. Everything else are related words which Google uses to know what you are talking about. (Tiger Woods vs. Bengal Tiger).

Then you simply spill out your content about whatever product you want to tell a story about. And, depending on where this is going to end up, you either link to a sales page  or to another "review" page.

Once you have your story all written out and the links embedded, then you come back and write or tweak your headline. Keywords should be closer to the front in your headlines.

Now some say that Google doesn't value headlines like it used to. And this makes sense, as people use headlines to attract readers and "excite interest" (get the person to actually read the page).

And a page will be crafted to help a person get through it.

Most of us have developed the technique of scanning a page. And so a good page is crafted with images, sub-headings, bulleted text, indented text, italics, bold - all sorts of ways to mix it up and keep it from simply being a long set of boring text.

As you write, simply keep Google's guidelines in place.

If you get books by Jacob Neilsen or visit Copyblogger, then you'll see people who study people's usage and will tell you what works and what doesn't.

Again, the key point is entertainment.

Sequence is the key

You write your main site page first, which links to affiliate or other sales pages directly.

Then you post content around the web which links to your main pages.

Of course, your own site is built like this as well. You can have sales pages on your site, which are linked to by review pages, which are linked to by informational pages. And then put up social posts and so on which link to these various site pages directly.

We will go into this subject of a mini-net later (that "Special Sauce" I keep referring to) and as well how and where to post elsewhere on the web.

But generally, you work this backward as you build. And after creating a few dozen pages, a pattern will start showing up. Then you simply evaluate that pattern for it's success or "opportunities for improvement" and learn from your experience. The go and write a few dozen more. Rinse and repeat.

We'll go into analytics later which will help you with all this. Your own gut reaction to your own writing will tell you most, however.

It's not "build it and they will come", it's more - "Build it Right and They will Click Through" to your sales pages and buy.

The object of the web pages you write is not having popular pages with lots of traffic - it's having pages which get a lot of people who want to buy whatever you are talking about, and do so.

The web isn't a popularity contest. It's a shooting gallery. The most attractive targets get shot at - and the winner gets the prize. (Meanwhile, you are the one selling the tickets and making the profits from the shooters.)

Okay?

- - - -

Today's freebie is several. These are classics which people have been referring others to for years.

Hopkins - Scientific Advertising
Scott - The Psychology of Advertising
Prevette - The Power of Creative Selling

Don't be thrown off by the terms "advertising" and "selling" - it's all just words which describe getting people to act.

And you can also refer to "Get Your Self Scam Free" in order to study Maslow and Cialdini for understanding of how and why we are programmed to buy stuff.

Assignment:

Review what you've been writing recently and see how you could possibly improve it to make it more interesting.

Then pick up some popular novels (even classics like O. Henry, Louis LaMour, Jack London) and see how they keep a reader riveted.

Now write some more content with these in mind.

Day 12 - Review: the Pause that Refreshes

About this point, I want to do a quick review of what we've covered.

No, I haven't started running thin on material by a long shot.

But I wanted to put this material in order so it makes sense. Because I want to ensure that you have the basics down before we move into the "Special Sauce" section, which can be confusing.

Basics, however, are basics.

1. First we covered that you needed to know what is most interesting to you and you like to do the most. Somewhere around in all that is your basic purpose. (Or at the very least, a more fun way of doing life.)

2. The Internet runs on content - fresh, original, search-engine-optimized content. Almost no one creates this stuff, so someone who can routinely create content focused on a single (remunerative) theme can pretty much ensure that they can earn extra income.

3. The whole point of marketing is to find where there is a problem and offer a valuable solution. People who express interest in your solution are called "leads" and converting them to buyers is the trick.

4. In order to find this problem area, you can start by "scratching your own itch" - meaning that you consult what you are interested in, and search through related communities to find something they want or need that you can provide. This can be your own product or someone else's which you offer as an affiliate ("Hey, I know someone who has some of these for sale - just like what you're talking about...")

5. The search engines make it simpler to do market research, as there are well-used keyword phrases that people use to find what they are looking for. If you carefully look these over - and find those which have good "commerciality" (people pay good money to advertise products with them), then the chance is good that if you put your target in front of where people are aiming, you can get this traffic to your web pages. To do that, you simply create content which has those keyword phrases describing it, or in it.

6. Content doesn't have to be all written - but it does have descriptions about it, and that is where you artfully place the keyword phrases (and links to your other content - like your main website) so the search engines can send traffic your way.

7. Search engine optimization is quite simple. You simply find what Google has been saying for years about what a "good" website consists of. And then follow their instructions to the letter.

8. The ideal is to offer several products, preferably those which have to be renewed, or replaced after they are consumed. If you are offering someone else's products, then you can work at getting affiliate commissions for those continuing purchases. This can make your income more or less on "autopilot" if the clients are treated well. Another possible point is to get in with multiple-tier affiliate programs or even "network marketing".

9. I've given you a longish list of very good affiliate programs and why I consider them good - but that doesn't mean they are right for you. Consult your own purpose and see if they will make your life simpler and/or bring you greater peace.

10. The other advantage to offering someone else's products is that these commissions you receive can give you income while you continue learning and improving on your marketing skills. As well, if you are developing your own product, it can pay for your R&D while you do.

And that's the 10 basic points from what we've covered.  I didn't mention some points like auto-responders, but that's because it's a "how", not a basic "why".

At this point you are ready to read something with a critical view. Stone Evans wrote a substantial book called "DotComology" years ago - and it has been passed around for free ever since. A great example of true value. Now some of it is dated (and ignore the stuff about reciprocal linking, which I'll cover in the "Secret Sauce" lessons upcoming) but now you know enough to have a critical view of how things fit together and when someone is blowing smoke (or smoking something odd.)

See you tomorrow...

Day 11 - Email Lists and Autoresonders

Right off, let me apologize. The subject of auto-responders hasn't been segregated out properly in The Online Sunshine Plan.

Best introduction to this broad area is in  Section IV - Your Sales Funnel. It's part of "Collecting up your eggs into baskets." (pages 182, 183)

And the rest of the book just talks like that is all you need to know about it.

Well, it is pretty simple. But, as usual, those who market themselves as "experts" have made it pretty over-hyped and complex.

Now the term "auto-responder" is short for "sequential automatic email response mailer." It sends out emails in a sequence automatically in response to someone mailing it. The incoming mail to it is usually by a form-based script running on your own web page.

The reason people talk so much about having and growing your email lists is that people still prefer email over the Internet. More people use email than use the Internet. Yes, it's true.

So marketers hit on this way to get people to use search engines to find your site and then give away (or otherwise entice) you to exchange your email address for something valuable.

People find your site, opt-in to your email series, and then get some emails from you on a regular or irregular basis which continue to be valuable (or not) and thanks to our incredible "friends" in Washington with their CAN-SPAM act (which doesn't, of course), we now have to double-opt-in and have a little link where anyone can and must be opt-ed out on their choice.

Penalties for violating this can get you immediately kicked off your server with no recourse.

Needless to say, I suggest getting a service to do this - which has their own polished scripts to handle compliance. Too much at risk otherwise.

Now, while all auto-responder services have their own affiliate programs, I am only recommending one to you today: SimplyCast.

Reason being is that it is both a free service to start with and as you grow your business you can then expand into their paid service. Plus, it gives a healthy first payment for affiliate sales (70%) and also continuing payments (30%).

Yes, that's a nice one. 

Unfortunately, their marketing seems over-thought. Difficult to simply find text links. Here's a link to their free and nifty little handbook.

This link is supposed to help you sign up as an affiliate. However, it doesn't work for me. (I've got a request into their support, so I'll leave it here for now until I can come back and fix it.)

But the simple link so you can sign up does.

Freebies

Now, today is a day of downloads. Fortunately, there are a handful of "special reports" which cover auto-responders and building email lists. I have compiled these into a single PDF for you.

And they will simply tell you more than you need to know about autoresponders.

With that, I'll let you go for today.

Day 09 - Affiliate Programs: Good, Bad, and Remunerative

Hello again.

Today's topic is Affiliate programs. Figured it's about time we tackled this by the horns.

I went through the entire book and see that this is an omitted section. It's touched on, but not worked up directly. So - relief is yours - no chapter to study today as preps.

When and Why Affiliates?

The purpose of affliates is to get additional sales people to pitch your products/services. They can cover more ground than your own two hands and feed can. They use their resources to promote your product, in return for some percentage of your price.  So affiliates come with an overhead - but they are getting you sales you wouldn't normally have.

The other side of this coin is that you can build up some income by finding and pushing an affiliate product which is valuable. This is how you can get paid while you learn.

The logic of this is simple:

• You are producing content anyway to forward your own purpose of delivering value to people.
• You might as well get paid for telling people about a good product or service which aligns with your purpose.
• And you can meanwhile learn from any effective affiliate marketing program, as the good ones will regularly be sending you special offers which you can promote.
• So you learn while you get paid for producing content.
• As you get better producing content, then you get paid more.
• Ultimately, you've both had the time to perfect your own product or service and also learned how to enable others to do affiliate sales for you (or signed up with some company that does - like writing ebooks for Smashwords).

Now while you are just starting out, you'll probably want to get into product- or service-lines which give you the maximal leverage for your time and money. Best return on your investment.

To get this best return, you want 2 things:

1. Offer services or products which people must renew, restock, or re-supply.
2. Offer services or products which enable others to sell under you, where you also can get paid for their work.
   

In this, there are a few - "evergreen markets", they are called:

• Food (and food supplements, medicines fall into this)
  
• Clothing
• Housing

- - - -

• Children's items
• Pet items
• Insurance

- - - -

• Entertainment
• Education
• Enlightenment
  

The above lists are roughly in order of how people will pay for and buy stuff. They also are in the order of greatest return.  As you can get people to subscribe on a continuing basis (such as Insurance), then you can earn a "piece of the action" on a continuing basis.

One sale gives potentially a lifetime of income. Get several of these and you have what is called "autopilot" income. You'll also see this in simple things, such as where a person continually re-news his domain name and his ISP hosting. (As in Domain Samurai - which has a good affiliate program.)

If you can become an affiliate on that chain, you'll get a piece of that action as long as that person continues to renew these services. And is why people who sell Insurance (and who own Insurance companies) become very well off indeed.

While fashions and food needs change, children grow up, and pets get older - people will usually stay with their same Insurance companies for years - and will often expand their coverage to include other items they own. (No, I haven't researched Insurance companies to find out which has a good affiliate program - but thanks for asking. Now this starts to make sense, yes?)

By supporting companies which have affiliate programs, you can get people funneled through your site and link to buy these programs. And then you get a continuing income based on those sales.

Oh No -- Not "Network Marketing"....

And this is where "Network Marketing" comes in. Regardless of the bad press it gets, the principle is to have people selling under you which gives you a piece of their action as well as your own sales. You would prefer to get programs which are at least 2-tier affiliate programs - meaning you can sign up people and get commissions from their sales as well, and they in turn can sign up a person under them for their own commissions, and so on. (And yes, Insurance Companies utilize this same principle from top to bottom in their organizations, as well as any sales company or sales section. People get paid by their production, but also take a piece of the pie of those salespeople under them who are producing.)

My book, Online Sunshine Plan (OSP) deals with making an "online" living in general terms. The underlying basic is that the Internet is built on information and usable content. The search engines are evolved from helping people find out what they want by constantly studying what people want and how they want it presented to them.

What ranks on the search engine findings are simply the content which best answers the question being asked. Google published guidelines for these years ago and simply following their outline gets the best results.
You find problems people have, then find an affiliate program which solves those problems. Providing content in a way that the search engines can use - you get a large number of people to visit your site and click on those links to visit those affiliate programs. When they buy, you get credit for the sale and a commission payment (or in Amazon's parlance - advertising fees.)

All that work in OSP deals with the Internet as a content-driven scene. However, it's only one of several ways to get visitors to opt-in to your program or someone else's (which you are writing/blogging/videoing about.)

There are  5 main ways to earn income online:

1. Organic SEO - being at the top of the rankings and so getting search engine traffic to your page
2. Classified Ads - driving to a landing page for conversion to sales.
3. PPC - also driving to a landing page for conversion to sales.
4. Email - biggest app on the Internet, you develop a stable of readers and provide them good content and opportunities.
5. Social Networking - Facebook is a prime example right now. Engaging in chats can lead to off-line conversations where you can personally pitch your offer. (Takes considerable time-investment.)

All of these have minimal finances invested if you know what you are doing. Mostly you are investing time. And as you get better at writing and posting online, you'll get improved results (income).

The reason affiliate programs are easier to get started than developing your own product is that these companies are doing the research to create effective landing pages. (Nothing like spending years perfecting a product or service which wasn't ever an item people really need in their lives.)

Affiliate Products of Mention

The programs I recommend all have affiliate links and can give you some income, although it's been spotty for me as I'd rather do research than promote their products all the time. Pushing any of the 6 that I lay out below will give you some regular on-going income, plus the ability to put affiliates under you and increase your income from their sales. (Win-win-win.)

Here's the short list, though I'll tell you more of why these work below (and note all the affiliate links, as well as how they are set up):

Top of the list right now: Shaklee (http://order-online-today.myshaklee.com/us/en/whyshaklee.html) and a fairly complete set of pages for you to do your due diligence on this company - with lots of videos: http://order-online-today.myshaklee.com/us/en/about.html
SBI - http://affiliates.sitesell.com/limited_offer0.html - they have an incredible amount of training offered, which push their time-proved site-building services.

Synnd - Social Media Marketing - http://socialmediascience.com/affiliates/?p=worstell&w=afflink - these guys are a leader in this area for serious SEO users.

Silva Life Systems (plus other self-help/enlightenment programs) - http://mindvalley.hasoffers.com/signup/1081 - lots of programs an regular new releases for people.

Peak Potentials - Millionaire Mind Intensive / T. Harv Eker - http://peakstrategicalliancetools.com/cmd.php?af=mmi8806&p=1 - their Millionaire Mind Intensive or http://www.peakambassador.com/cmd.php?af=mmi8806&p=fbw-speedwealth -Their current Facebook webinar, which is a good informative deal on its own. Sign up as an affiliate at peakpotentials.com, but you'll want to get on their mailing list to see how they do things.

And here's an odd little one I just recently found, which is a good study of how network marketing works: Magnetic Sponsoring - http://robertworstell.magneticsponsoringonline.com - once you buy one of their products (about $30), then you are automatically in on their affiliate scene. And they give 7 free video lessons on how network marketing works in general. And the ongoing emails from them are a hoot - entertaining and educational as to what good copywriting (mostly) consists of (though my own style wouldn't be so brash - or so frequent.)

Another, found only a few days ago, is Domain Samurai, as I've told you about before. 2-tier affiliate, but no real work at promoting their product - so it's not rated well on the scale below.

In most of these cases above, I've given you the straight affiliate sign-up link if they have one. But do look around their sites and see what you can find out - sign up for newsletters and so on (you can always opt-out.)

- - - -

10 Ways to Accurately Pick Affilate Programs That Do Earn You Extra Income Online

Yes, this is opening a can of worms. People who have been burned by affiliate schemes in the past - not to mention Network- and what passes for "Internet" Marketing - will be heading toward the door or hitting their browser's back button right about now.

Because about 97% of all the programs out there are utter crap. Worthless. Shinola. Scams.

True. And you know it.


So what makes a good one? And which ones should you invest your hard-earned money and valuable spare time into?

Let's look at what you would want to buy as a product - if you were the customer (an acid test):

1. Does it actually have a valuable product which solves  some problem you have?

2. Does it actually give more in return than you expected?

3. Is it ethical - does it actually improve the culture you live in? (Could you easily tell your mother or partner what you just emptied your savings account for?)

4. Is this product or service you can keep buying for the rest of your life - because it keeps helping you? (Like food, vitamins, insurance...)

5. Has the company been in business for a long time and doing well even during recessions?

Now, given that this is a product which is high-quality and useful, and you'd tell your friends, family, and anyone else who asks you about it - let's now look at how you could earn extra income doing just that. Is it worth becoming an affiliate sales outlet?

6. Does this company have an affiliate program which pays a substantial return?

7. Does this company enable you to put 2nd tier, or even more sales people under you who can in turn sell (and make you even more commissions)?

8. Does this company put out regular helpful marketing material which helps you get these offers out to people who are looking for this solution?

9. Does this company offer substantial training to help you succeed in selling their program?

10. Does this company take care of product delivery and returns? Has effective online presence and converting landing pages?

Those 10 points will tell you everything about whether that company is a fly-by-night scene, or will give you effective return on your investment of both time and money. Obviously, we don't want to get into something which will tie up either time or money which we can't get a decent return out of.

(One scam I was suckered into had a fee of about 1/4 year's salary, and some 20 hours a week going through their training - and when it failed, they would say you didn't put enough time and effort into it. Not "their fault" you failed. Actual success rate was around 1 in 10,000...)

Just to keep a regular job you are already putting more than 40 hours in - not counting commutes, which is a sizable hidden drain on your take-home pay just in fuel prices alone.  Having a regular job is often the worst example of how something cannot be leveraged, isn't something you'd recruit other people to join, and isn't something you'd want to do for the rest of your life.

I've found maybe 6 product lines which are effective and rank highly on this scale above.

Company	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Shaklee - health supplements	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*
SiteBuildIt! - site building, online marketing	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*
Synnd - social media marketing	*	*	*		*	*	*		*	*
Silva Life Systems - meditation and clearing	*	*	*		*	*	*			*
Peak Potentials - Millionaire Mind Intensive	*	*	*			*		*	*	*
Magnetic Sponsoring - network marketing training	*	*	*				*	*	*	*

The results:

10 stars - Shaklee, SiteBuildIt!
8 stars - Synnd
7 stars - Silva Life Systems, Peak Potentials, Magnetic Sponsoring


This doesn't say these are the last word in affiliate products you can try. This does give you a sensible 10-point approach to figuring out which ones are the best. Practically, you can find affiliate programs in almost every product line. Just type in [product line phrase] and then the word "affiliate" after it. The checklist above helps you with finding programs which are more than just "making money online". 

They give you the chance to find real products which you can enjoy putting content online to promote - because you are helping people improve their lives with every purchase. In some of these, just reading the materials alone can give them a life-changing experience. And really good programs, in my experience, offer substantial free material which shows their value and excites interest in purchasing the full product.

Additional note is that the best affiliate programs have a substantial library of data you can use to educate yourself on how to promote, how to convert leads, how to keep yourself enthusiastic - lots of free training. Because their success is based on how well you succeed...
 

- - - -

Assignment:

1. Go over the evergreen product lines above - with a modern popular (or tabloid) magazine to hand (or study the ads on TV or in Internet sidebars for awhile). Which do you find represented?

2. Visit http://www.affiliateseeking.com/ and search around for various affiliate products. Note those which have multi-tier affiliate structures as well as those with continuing payments. Do some rough calculations to see how many sales of what you would need to make your own income goals.

Freebie:

This week it's Inside the Mind of Winners - a nice little inspirational essay collection which should be a nice reference to come back to now and again. (Or even offer as a giveaway on your own site...)

Day 06 - Sales, Funnels, and Human Nature

Today we are reviewing Section IV of An Online Sunshine Plan.

It's titled "Your Sales Funnel", but you might as well call it human nature.

And an additional ebook you should be familiar with is "Get Your Self Scam Free". 

Because what we are doing with sales is using the built-in foibles which pretty much all humankind has already programmed in. And "Scam Free" was written after I got very interested in how I was duped into a scam. Interestingly, that research allowed me to get out from under and help several others get their own money back as well. (Even though I told these scammers exactly what I was doing - they wouldn't believe it until it cost them far more...)

You simply take the data in that book and reverse it to find out how something like 99.99997% of this population works.

And of course, I was introduced to this by studying how to write "sales pages".

This data in OSP starts about page 187. And you'll see how Cialdini and Maslow were used in "Scam Free". Too simple, though.

Sales pages are just one style of writing, though. In a couple of days, I'll go over the others and how they differ - so stay tuned.

Sales Funnels

Whoever thought this term up should probably be shot. It's not all that accurate. (See page 184 as to why.)

But the general concept is that you have not just a single product to offer your new customers. Regular income is built on having a string of products which anyone can buy, so they continue to give you valuables in exchange for their trust in your on-going valuable offers.

And (though I'll go over this point in a few days in more detail) you should be investing in product lines which are consumables, or have regular service payments. All this other stuff about "income on autopilot" is a bunch of hooey. You want to deliver value and continue delivering value. You want leads to turn into clients and so your cost-per-lead drops considerably, since you don't have to spend a great deal in finding new customers in order to make your extra income goals.

The article on "Adding Value" (page 193-200) is quite interesting from this view.

You'll see from what you've covered before this, that I've changed some views on things. However, the base of this is still straight.

Mostly, this is pretty pat stuff when you review it from the data above.  So I'll leave you to this study.

I do recommend you check out the free or one-time payment for Market Samurai. Their ability search for affiliate programs is quite good. And you can tell what would be a good match and value you can deliver that supports your purpose - or simply more Internet Marketing Sleaze.

Another entertaining set of sales pages and an opt-in email series is found with "Magnetic Sponsoring". It's really worth the study. And for only about $30, you can get into their affiliate scene, where you get even more info on how their system works from an insider's view.

- - - -

Freebie today is another ebook by Michel Campbell - "Nothing but 'Net". I think you'll find his style refreshingly honest, plus you get some insider history of the early Internet. And some good ideas on how to build your own business these days.

Assignment is as above - check out some various products and services you might be interested in offering. And sign up for some newsletters so  you can study their sales funnel. (Just put your credit card well out of reach - like in another room or with someone you trust.)

Tomorrow, we'll be covering Search Engines - their supposed care and feeding...

Day 05 - Insider's Guide to Marketing Research

Good marketing research pays off well.

Now we are in the thick of it.

We are still on section III of An Online Sunshine Plan - Market Research (pg 115-154, sans Articles).

As a note: review the three main essays on this in that book -

• Where to look for your keyword research - Part I - Basics (pg 141)
• Where to look for your keyword research - Part 2 - The Real World (pg 144)
• Where's the money? I'm from Missouri - show  me. (pg 146)

These cover a very distilled research cycle and how to go about it. (Hint: Get a 3-hole punch and some binders to hold it all.)

Marketing Definition - Revisited

As covered on that first page of Section III - "Marketing" is simply finding and building markets. A "market" is anywhere people exchanges goods and services. Anywhere.

This, of course, plays right into our hands, as we are interested in earning extra income by leveraging our online investments (time, money - but mostly time.)

Market research is NOT: "Look for a niche, find a niche product, promote that product, get the sale/get the commission." That is just one step shy of a scam. Impersonal, and non-rewarding personally. It will simply tire you out.

The other reason (besides having endless content inspiration you can tap) is to work out your purpose/bliss first is so that you can stay involved and interested in what you are doing. Money has to go somewhere - your wealth has to be for a reason. (And that's not good enough  to be able to "buy stuff and show it off.")  There is no reason you can't enjoy every single moment of every single day and also be richly rewarded for your efforts. It's not work, it's a passion you are following.

Market research, you may recall from yesterday, is figuring out

• Who
• wants What
• Where and 
• for How Much.

Who - is market demographics.
What - is product selection.
Where - is product production and delivery.
How Much - is pricing.

In all of these, as covered in the book, you want to look for a viable scene which matches what you are most interested in doing to provide real value to those who find you.

Demographics can be simply found by looking at Quantcast.com or MSN adCenter Labs

Product selection can be studied by looking up Ebay, Amazon, Clickbank, About.com, etc. (see pg 148).

As we are dealing with affiliate products, you can see that they will take care of delivery and guarantees. Some sites, like Clickbank, will also show a quality score - which is the rate of returns for that product.

Note: Frankly, I don't recommend settling for Clickbank or Commission Junction or Amazon when you do adopt an affiliate product. Reasons - mostly in how they treat their affiliates. Clickbank has a nasty habit of taking back commissions if you don't meat their minimum every month, bit by bit. Commission Junction will simply dump your membership after 6 months with no sales. Amazon - unless you are pushing big-ticket items (not books) gives you only tiny payments.

But these three tell you what type of products people are buying and what to look for (and look out for).

In a later post, I'm going to give you a fuller breakdown later on what makes a good affiliate product, along with my own recommendations of a handful which have tested out over years. Right now we are looking through our Market Research to find a community which is viable and you can give value to.

An article you should review is on page 177 of An Online Sunshine Plan. Charles Heflin is quoted where he gives more steps to study the community in order to best serve it. His steps: Observe, Gather, Reward, Engage, Seek - and you are already doing these in life, so his article simply enables you to apply this to your online income production.

Paid Tool

Again, I go to Market Samurai to get a lot of this homework done faster.

Unfortunately, their "Samurai Dojo" doesn't go into much detail here about the tools in their product. 

There is one lesson, which tells you the "commerciality" of a keyword phrase.

But consider this screenshot:

(click to enlarge)

This is their "monetization" page. "Be Healthy" came up as a keyword, so searching in Amazon found a nifty little set of products you can promote. Note that if you sold the Cuisinart Griddler, you'd get a tidy sum (take about 4-8% of that price).

If your passion was cooking, then this would be a nice review page to do with an affiliate payment for every sale.  However, the much cheaper coffee filters are in much higher demand - and would require much more research to get that figured out.

They also allow you to search from  ClickBank, Commission Junction, and PayDotCom.

Again: you start out with your own best interests at heart - your purpose/bliss - and find what community already exists which you can serve, find out their keywords, find out what they are like, find the products they are buying.

Once you settle on that community, then you can go to the next phase - which is figuring out how to tell them what they want to hear - which is not politics (although they undoubtedly got it from marketing) - it's so you can help them improve their lives by offering and delivering true value.

- - - -

Here's an ebook which really builds on what we covered today: "Clickin' It Rich" by Michael Campbell. He used to sell it, then gave it away, and now it's hard to find as he's only dealing directly with a select group of clients.

He'll take you quite beyond what we deal with here and starts to give you an inkling of what is needed to make extra income online. Whole picture stuff.

Assignment today: catch up on your reading above.

And it would be smart to go ahead and get your binders, yellowpads, and 3-hole punch to start collecting and organizing all this data for your niche.

(Also - catch up on your comments below. It's key to be writing something every day as part of learning the discipline of creating content.)

Day 01 - Welcome! Some Ground Rules...

Day 01 - Ground Rules

photocredit: downrangereport.blogspot.com

Glad to have you all here. This should be interesting for all concerned.

There are just a few pointers to go over:

1. We are here to share information and get feedback. So let's keep it politely interesting. If you wouldn't like to be referred to in that manner, then...

2. I don't expect you to buy anything. And that includes buying what I say works. The only way something works is if you test it out for yourself. (Of course, if you want to get copies of my books or sign up through my links for some program or other, I'd be more than happy to accept the commission or royalty.) But this program isn't here to get you to do anything except help you get information on how to get started earning online income.

3. The material on this blog is licensed under Creative Commons - meaning that you can use it for what you want (except commercially without license) as long as you share it similarly - here's the blurb:

Online Secrets Review by Robert C. Worstell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Based on a work at onlinesecretsreview.blogspot.com.

 Now, all that said, the intent of this is to enable you to also develop habits to create your own content. I'll go over in more detail about these later - but know these 2 things: 

• Content is King on the Internet.
• Habits are made in 30 days (both good and bad) and can be re-made in 30 days.

Suggested here is that you subscribe to receive this in your email, so you don't miss any. As I can, I'll set each individual lesson up as a PDF, though that might lag, as getting the content up on the blog comes first - not polishing it until it shines as midnight.

And the polish is where you come in as well. Leave a comment as often as you can and help the discussion along. Contribute as you can and point out anything and everything you think is questionable or could be improved. We'll hash this stuff out as we go.

The reason I've asked you here is to point out where I go over the average newbie's head. I've been doing this for a decade, so may have lost track of how to set this up simply enough that anyone could follow it.

Now stuff that's common knowledge like how to set up a Wordpress blog, I won't get into. Mainly because there are just too many good tutorials on this. I'll hit the highlights learned from my use/misuse/abuse of that platform, but not what plug-ins I suggest you get - other than in broad terms.

However, there will be numerous freebie materials which will take you more than just 30 minutes a day to go through. It's all this stuff I've been hoarding all these years, after I went through and found what works (yes, my hard-drives are a mess, but they are chock full of goodies.)

2 books this is based on

You all probably know the 2 books I've written some years back:

• Online Sunshine Plan
• Get Your Self Scam Free

And you should have a copy to hand for use. Both were written (and revised from earlier versions) based on hard-lived experience with real-life scammers - who really, factually didn't give a damn about people they were screwing over.

But we won't rehash this here - other than to say it was a great learning experience and I not only got my money back, but helped some other people get theirs back as well. These two books were the result of this, and will tell you the basics of what you need to know to succeed with any online venture.

This 30-day program is a successor to these books (and my wind up being a book on it's own, I haven't decided yet.)

So if you don't already have a copy, you can pick one up from Lulu, (where you can also get the printed versions) or visit the below blogs/sites which cover this material:

• http://midwestjournalpress.storeblogs.com/online-sunshine-plan-book-2
• http://robertworstell.com/lessons/get-scam-free.php

Credits

I've been around the pike more than once, and have attended many courses online. Some good, some not so good. One which has evolved over the years (since 2005) is what is now known as The Challenge, created by an Australian Ed Dale. It's a free sign-up and once you are in, you are able to proceed at your own pace. They do a decent job of taking you through all the steps you need to in order to figure out how to find a product, promote it, and earn income with it.

Practically, this would be a good start for anyone. It's laced with affiliate links and has just a few places where you'd have to pay money to get going.

My exception to this is that I've worked out how to get almost everything figured out about how to start for nothing. Not that I haven't paid good money for certain products/services. But I intend to tell you right off how to get it done, how to save your time doing it, and then if there is a decent service or product that I've tried and recommend that will make your results much much better.

Additional to this is the benefit of working with this material for years. Not only do I know some professional short-cuts, but I also have a different take on what passes for how to get a site ranking and getting people to buy your product or services. It's simpler than most self-proclaimed "guru's" make it out to be.

- - - -

And that is more than enough for today. Of course, I reserve the right to change these things around if I find some material is better.

Assignment today is to get your copies of these books. And dust them off. 

Today's freebie: I put a short version of "Get Your Self Scam Free" up on Scribd a few years back - http://www.scribd.com/doc/24665551/Get-Yourself-Scam-Free-Handbook-for-Personal-Freedom

See you tomorrow, where we get into some meat about how to earn extra income online - based on how the Internet is set up and what makes or breaks online success - Natural Laws to be followed, that sort of thing...

UPDATE: I've been finding stuff here and there about these various subjects. It's been easiest for me to add these as comments. So do check for comments to get your latest updates. And also, I'm still alerted about comments here - so if you don't want to send me a personal email, then you can leave a comment.