Most of the time what people really want to know is:  How can I make the kind of money all those gurus talk about?

Well, the first thing that you need to know is that many of those internet marketing gurus aren’t being completely honest about their income, the size of their lists, or their products.  I’m sure you already knew that — after all, it’s hard to take anyone at their word anymore, especially online.

But here’s the other thing you need to know about a lot of internet marketers… for some, the major source of their income doesn’t actually come from selling their internet marketing products (or any products for that matter) online .  Let me explain…

A LOT of Internet Marketing Gurus Are MLM’ers Too!

Would it surprise you to know that a lot of those internet marketing gurus who try to sell you all kinds of marketing products actually make the majority of their income through network marketing? Some of them actually started in network marketing and then developed their internet marketing products later to sell to their downlines and then to the public.

I know that’s hard for some people to believe — network marketing — really?

After all, network marketing has gotten a really bad reputation over the last several years.  But I actually have proof that internet marketing gurus make a substantial part of their income from network marketing… Click here for proof.

See any marketing names that you recognize? How about Jim Daniels, Yanik Silver, Rosalind Gardner, Frank Kern, Terry Dean, Bryan Kumar, and Mike Chen?  Several years ago I was even approached by Corey Rudl about a MLM opportunity – even though he flatly denied it to his internet marketing followers.

So why do so many internet marketers dabble in network marketing as well?

Because there’s HUGE money in network marketing!

In fact, network marketing is exactly like affiliate marketing in a lot of ways… the only REAL difference is that network marketers get paid down several levels for their efforts, resulting in more income, while affiliate marketers only get paid on one or two levels.

Network marketing is a GOLD MINE if you know how to do it!

Should You Follow In The Guru’s Footsteps?

Like any other home based business, some will succeed and some will fail… But one of the real benefits of network marketing over just about any other home business is the possibility of absolutely HUGE paydays.  You just can’t make as much money as quickly in any other business model.

But that’s not the only reason that I like network marketing as part of my own business.

For me, the best thing about network marketing is that I can mentor, coach, and train people in their home businesses for FREE.

Let me explain… In a traditional coaching, mentoring, or training career, the coach earns their living from charging clients an hourly fee.   Frankly, I never liked the idea of charging by the hour. I always found it restrictive and uncomfortable because some clients need a lot more attention than others. …And you can’t always reach the people who need you most because they can’t afford to spend $300 per hour on this kind of service.

But now I can provide unlimited personalized coaching, mentoring, and training, centered around an EXTREMELY lucrative home business model, to people who really need the help and support, and EVERYBODY WINS!

• I get to help people to develop a successful home business that can absolutely change their lives… This is an AWESOME way to earn a living!
• The people I coach get REAL help and training from an expert so that they have a REAL chance to make it in home business and turn their lives around.

For me it’s a win/win situation.

But how do you know if it’s right for you?  Here are the basic reasons why you might want to consider getting into network marketing:

1. You’d like to supplement your current home business income.
2. You’d like to bump your income to the next level.
3. You’re struggling trying to make it with affiliate marketing.
4. You really need a coach/trainer to help you make it.
5. You’ve never had a home business before and you don’t know what to do.
6. You don’t know anything about marketing or internet marketing.
7. You’re already an expert and want the chance to help others reach your level of income.

Still don’t know if network marketing might be your thing?  That’s okay… I was skeptical at first too.

But the network marketing business model is built in such a way that you can actually test-run it for a month or two to see if you like it.  If you don’t like it — move on to something else.  There are tons of network marketing companies out there, so you’re bound to find one that will work for you and your lifestyle.

After all, network marketing seems to be the “best kept secret” of many successful internet marketing gurus — maybe it’s worth looking into.

Learn more about my FREE coaching program… Click here!

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Of course she was absolutely certain that the affiliate program was ripping her off — She’d actually made sales but they weren’t credited to her affiliate account.

Maybe that was true in her case, I don’t know, but there are also other factors that could explain here lack of affiliate sales.

1.  Does the affiliate sales page convert?

This is probably the biggest thing that all affiliates should consider before joining because it will have the biggest impact on your bottom line.   Does the sales page for the affiliate product that you want to promote have a good conversion rate?  In other words, how many people who click over to the sales page actually buy the product?

Believe it or not, conversion rates average around 2%… but I’ve see affiliate sales pages converting at much, much less.  It’s not unusual to find affiliate conversion rates in the tank at 0.01%.

2.  Does the sales page offer “untracked” sales?

Sometimes an affiliate sales page offers prospects other forms of payment that can’t be tracked to the affiliate who referred them.

For example, if a prospect can order by 800 number, then the affiliate may not get credit for sales they’ve referred who purchased through that toll free number.

I’ve seen a lot of Clickbank merchants do this kind of bait and switch thing to affiliates… let me explain.

The merchant joins Clickbank and sells one of their products through them.  Once they’re in the Clickbank marketplace and affiliates start promoting them, the merchant switches over to take payments through PayPal, phone, or another payment system and cuts the affiliate out of the sales.

3.  Is your advertising targeting the right market?

This is what I think happened to my coaching client… she was getting plenty of clicks, but they weren’t people who were interested in actually buying the product she was advertising.

It’s easy, especially with pay-per-click, to get a lot of people clicking through your ad.  All you have to do is word the ad so that it provokes a lot of clicks.

But clicks aren’t what really matters in a pay-per-click campaign… quality clicks are what matter.

That’s why most PPC experts use negative qualifiers and precise information to weed out all the tire-kickers.  Once you do that and specifically target who will see your ad, you’ll find that the quality of your clicks and your return on investment (ROI) improves tremendously.  (If you want to learn more about PPC, then I highly recommend The Definitive Guide To Google Adwords!)

In the end, there are probably lots of reasons why some affiliate products don’t sell, but these are the most common problems that affiliates face.

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It doesn’t matter how great the features are, how awesome your marketing message, or even if your product has all the bells and whistles.  It doesn’t even matter what your industry is… At the end of the day, your customers all buy some variation of one of these things:

1. Make more money
2. Save more time
3. Make them feel better about themselves
4. Avoid the frustration of doing things they don’t want or like to do
5. Saving or avoid losing money in the future

So now that you know that your customers fit into one of these categories, how can you use that to your advantage?

Easy… Focus all your energy on selling one of these key points in all your copywriting and keep these five categories in mind as you create new products.

Of course, there are a lot of other factors involved in the entire sales process, but keeping an eye on these five categories and integrating this basic knowledge into your business plan will ultimately help you to make more sales and create products and services that address a need in your industry.

And there’s your quick tip for today… there are really only 5 things that people buy.

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There’s really no secret.

I’ve been practicing attraction marketing for years in my own business.  If you’re successful, I bet you have too.

So here’s the big secret… Attraction marketing is any marketing strategy designed to “attract” people who are interested in your products, services, or business to you or your website like a magnet.

Frankly, I think attraction marketing and pre-selling are pretty much the same thing.

The idea is that you don’t want to SELL people your wares.  People hate to be “sold,” but they love to buy stuff when it hits their hot buttons and the buying experience is pleasurable.

In my mind, attraction marketing really comes in two parts… attracting interested people and enticing them to buy.  Let’s talk about each one separately.

1.  Attracting Interested People

The key to making a good living with your business, no matter what business you’re in, is to get your business in front of people who are interested in buying what you have to offer.  The more interested people who see what you’ve got, the more money you’re going to make — simple as that.

In the online world, there are lots and lots of easy ways to do that:

• Write great keyword rich content that attracts interested people through search engines.
• Write articles that will interest your target audience.
• Create videos that will attract interested people.
• Offer a free ebook, ecourse, or report to your target audience (lead capture).
• Advertise your free offer, rather than your products, services, or business.

You want to help interested people find you, but you don’t want to sell them.

You can practice attraction marketing in the offline world as well:

• Advertise a free offer on your website in newpapers, signs, flyers, billboards, etc.
• Create and advertise a recorded message about your business or products.
• Put a sign on your car.
• Use your own products publicly.

The essence of attraction marketing is that you want to give people who are interested in your products, services, or business a reason to be attracted to you and do it in a completely non-threatening way.

2.  Enticing People To Buy

First of all, you’ve got to get the dollar signs out of your eyes.  Too many people operate their business like a used car salesman.

Let me draw you a picture and you’ll see what I mean.

As you’re driving up on a car lot, you notice a group of salesmen sitting together near the entrance.  As your car turns in, all the salesmen turn towards you and you see the cold glint of dollar signs in their eyes.

You flinch just a little, but still find a parking spot and stop the car.

As you get out of the car, you notice that the salesmen are urgently talking amongst themselves until one of them puts on one of those fake smiles and starts walking towards you while the others quickly disperse.

“Hey what kind of car are we looking to buy today?”

YUK!  I hate that so much that I actually refuse to talk to sales people and make my husband deal with them.

No one likes to be treated that way in any situation.

But if you’re hard selling everyone who visits your website, then you’re acting like that money-hungry used car salesman and driving potential customers away.

You’ve heard it before, people buy from other people that they like and trust.

Your job is to give people the things that will attract them to your business, build a relationship with them, and then gently recommend your products, services, or business when they show an interest.

That’s the essence of attraction marketing.

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The Google Slap

Let me lay out my story for you.

I’ve been running Google Adwords campaigns for years from the same account, for several different niche websites.  I’ve never had a problem with them — I’ve always diligently followed the rules:

1. No squeeze pages.
2. Content-based landing pages.
3. Keywords matching the landing pages.

In fact, the majority of my landing pages have always been plain old article pages directly from my website — nothing fancy.

I had a pretty good thing going here… then I made a silly mistake.

For some reason, I got in a hurry and didn’t set up a proper article-type page for a new campaign that I started.  Instead, it was a php redirect to an affiliate sales page.  It ran for about six weeks and I made a killing with it — then Google caught it.

My sales plumetted and it didn’t take very long to figure out that I had been the victim of the dreaded Google Slap!

Every one of my landing pages in every campaign I was running (not just the offending campaign) carried a 1/10 rating.  That means that NONE of my campaigns were showing for any domain or product I was promoting through Google Adwords.

Further investigation revealed that Google also dropped my pagerank for iMarketingWatch.com site from a PR3 or PR4 to a PR1.

I immediately deleted the offending ads and hoped that Google would return my “good” campaigns to their normal 7/10-5/10 ratings.  Days went by and there was no change in my account status.

Then I deleted ALL my campaigns and started over fresh with brand new campaigns that went to articles that I have running on my blogs on other domains.  They were only designed to generate traffic, not sales, but Google ranked them at a 1/10 too, making it impossible to run the campaigns.

I repeatedly emailed Google to see if they would review my account, see that I was following the rules, and maybe stop punishing me for my one error in all these years.  They never answered my questions.

They did manage to send me an automated survey to see if I was satisfied with customer service however.

Google Slap experts claim that once you’ve been slapped you should get rid of the offending domain and start over with a new domain.  They claim that once you’ve been slapped, your site can never recover and make it back into Google’s good graces.  I haven’t decided if I want to dump iMarketingWatch.com and start over or not.  I sure hate to start over!

Apparently, you can never use the Google Adwords account that’s been slapped again either.

I deleted my account over the weekend and moved all my advertising dollars over to Yahoo.

I don’t know if starting a new account at Google would allow me to continue working with Adwords, but I’ve heard horror stories about Google tracking your IP or credit card and giving you the old Google Slap again on your new account.

Frankly, I’m not too inclined to give Google a second chance, despite it’s enormous search engine market share.  At Yahoo I’m paying less money per click and getting keywords that I would never be able to afford at Google — even before the Google Slap.

Although Yahoo generates a lot fewer impressions than Google, Yahoo seems to remember that advertisers are customers and they treat them like customers.

Obviously, Google doesn’t really care about it’s customers.  Rather than being punitive, they could easily just disable the offending campaigns for any advertiser – but they choose to brutally punish advertisers instead.

I guess you can do whatever you want when you’re the 800 lb. Gorilla.

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Most websites offer the typical ebook, report, or audio, but I think it’s high time to go beyond the typical and do something a little different.

Here are 3 seldom used, but highly effective ideas for freebies that you can use on your website to increase traffic.

1. Offer A Complete Plan

With a little research, you’ll find that many of your targeted visitors are actually looking for a specific plan to accomplish something within your industry or niche.  You can capitalize on that by offering a plan of your own.

All you have to do is find a targeted keyword for your industry that involves some kind of plan like a wood project plan, weight loss plan, craft plans, business plans, etc.  On one of my websites I even offer a plan for planning children’s birthday parties!

Once you find out what kind of plan that people want – create it and offer it on your website.

People love a good plan.

2.  Form Up On New Visitors

Speaking of things that people love – everybody loves free printable forms.

Take a look at your niche or industry, browse your keywords, and come up with a free form that your target audience is looking for.  I’ve seen forms for shopping, homeschool, legal forms, organizational forms, you name it.

Find out what your target audience is looking for, create a form for it, and offer it in a PDF.  Free printable forms always attract visitors.

3.  Cash In On Checklists

Checklists are probably the easiest of the seldom used freebies on this list to create.  All you have to do is to look at a process within your niche or industry and create a step-by-step checklist for that process.

For example, you could offer a checklist for how to create a website, baby-proofing your house, moving, planning a wedding, buying a house, etc. There are checklists for just about any niche you can think of, all you need is a little creativity and thinking outside of the box.

People love using checklists because it helps them keep organized and on track.  So all you need to do is create your checklist in a printable form, market it, and offer it to visitors as a PDF.

NOTE: Be sure to put your URL on every PDF and freebie that you offer.  It will keep your visitors coming back and may help you get new visitors when people use your freebies.

In the end, it pays big dividends to find new types of freebies to drive more targeted visitors to your website.  Be inventive and original with your visitor enticements to stand out from the crowd in your industry.

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So let’s see if we can shed a little light on the subject!

CPA in A Nutshell

CPA is an online advertising model where the advertiser only pays for a specified action linked to the advertisement.  For example, if you run a banner on a website and only pay the website owner whenever someone clicks on the banner and subscribes to your newsletter, that would be a CPA campaign.

I’m sure you can immediately see the benefit of running such a campaign – you only pay for actual subscribers, rather than paying for clicks or impressions.  This is by far the most lucrative form of advertising currently available to online businesses.

CPA is really an advertisers dream.

You can run a CPA campaign for nearly any outcome you choose, but most online businesses use it for purchases, free trials, subscribers, zero friction, etc.  If you’ve seen the advertisements where you’re required to put your name and email to get a coupon or be submitted for a chance to win something, then you’re already familiar with the concept behind this form of advertising.

How Can You Benefit From CPA?

Although CPA has been around for a long time, there have been some interesting developments in the industry recently.  The most beneficial development for most of us is that there are now a large variety of advertising networks available to advertise your offer.  Many of the full-service firms will even help you form your campaign, design your creatives, and even help you with your landing pages.

Not only are there a large number of advertising networks that offer CPA, but there is also a variety of methods of showing your advertisements now available through these networks.  You ad now has the opportunity to be shown in a full page pop under, pop over, email, contextual ad, banner, survey, form, etc.

There are tons of choices and lots of opportunity to profit, especially in zero friction campaigns.

CPA And Affiliates

And that brings me to the other evolution of  CPA.  As an affiliate, you have a lot of opportunities to offer CPA advertisements on your website – beyond the normal pay per commission affiliate program.

As an affiliate, you have the opportunity to earn a lot more affiliate commission through CPA because it’s generally easier to pre-sell your website visitors on those kinds of offers.  After all, it’s generally easier to get visitors to fill out a form or request more information about something than it is to get them to pull out their wallets.

Of course, there is also a downside.  It’s often more difficult to get approved to join CPA affiliate programs than it is to be approved for your normal, run of the mill affiliate program.  In fact, I recently came across a statistic that only about 10% of  applicants are approved for CPA programs.

If you can get approved, you can earn some serious affiliate revenue.

If you’d like to learn more about CPA, then I highly suggest you take the time to learn more about different strategies.  I personally like the zero friction method because it just makes sense!

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Starting this week, my plan is to produce a weekly online business and marketing podcast. The idea is to provide you with quick marketing tips, news that affects online business, and a little food for thought to get you thinking about how to turn your website into a money-making machine.  I’ve posted my notes from the podcast below in case you’d like some to follow along.

Now let’s get started!

Really Bad Domain Names

I came across a list of really bad website domains and thought I’d share a few of the least raunching ones.

• chooses pain.com

A tourism site for Spain: choose spain.com

• children slaughter.com

Children’s charity: childrens laughter.com

• dollar sex change.com

Currency trading site: dollars exchange.com

• expert sex change.com

Computer advice site: experts exchange.com

• got a hoe.com

Lake Tahoe tourism: go tahoe.com

• the rapist finder.com

California therapists directory: therapist finder.com

• molestation nursery.com

Plant nursery: mole station nursery.com

I guess that just proves that you really need to think about those domains before you buy them!

Amazon Standing Up Against Taxes

Apparently North Carolina is trying to pump up their tax revenue and they’ve decided to require out-of-state digital retailers who sell within North Carolina’s borders to be subject to state sales tax. As a result of this new sales tax, Amazon.com severed their relationship with all their associates in North Carolina.

A friend of mine sent me an email he received from Amazon that went out to their North Carolina affiliates. Here’s what it says:

“We are writing from the Amazon Associates Program to notify you that your Associates account has been closed as of June 26, 2009. This is a direct result of the unconstitutional tax collection scheme expected to be passed any day now by the North Carolina state legislature (the General Assembly) and signed by the governor. As a result, we will no longer pay any referral fees for customers referred to Amazon.com or Endless.com after June 26. We were forced to take this unfortunate action in anticipation of actual enactment because of uncertainties surrounding the legislation’s effective date…

In the event that North Carolina repeals this tax collection scheme, we would certainly be happy to re-open our Associates program to North Carolina residents.”

I say good for Amazon. Taxing people for online purchases is going to hurt us all as both consumers and online businesses. I hope all the “big boys” of online retail do the same thing and force state goverments to leave online purchases alone.

Arvada’s Answers

Here’s a question that I recently received from a blog subscriber:

“Arvada, can you explain the difference between upselling, cross-selling, and backend selling? Are they all really just the same thing or are they completely completely different? I’m confused.”

Based on a lot of the email and questions that I get, I think a lot of people are confused and don’t understand the difference between upsell, cross-sell, and a backend sale, so here’s a quick and dirty explanation of each term.

The upsell works like this:

After a visitor makes a purchase, but before they’ve actually paid for it, you attempt to upgrade them to a more expensive or more profitable product.

McDonald’s is a perfect example of the upsell when they ask you if you’d like to “super-size” your order. Most people go for the upsell, that’s why a lot of businesses use it.

A cross-sell works like this:

After a visitor makes their purchase, but before they’ve actually paid, you attempt to sell them a complimentary product. Think of the whole, “Would you like fries with that?” thing and you’ll understand the cross sell. Fast food strikes again!

Lastly, there’s the back-end sale.

Back-end sales are when you follow up with your customers at a later time and offer them additional products. In this case, it could be a complementary or related product to something they’ve already purchased from you. For example, if you sold a software program you might want to sell special DVD’s that provide unusual or additional ways to use the software.

When it comes to backend sales, you can also offer products that you believe customers would be interested in, even if they aren’t directly related to the original purchase.

Using any and all of these marketing tactics will improve your income if you learn how to set up your campaigns effectively. You can even use affiliate products to supplement your own offerings.

Comic Relief

I thought I’d end this edition of Arvada’s Answers on Podcast Wednesday with an audio clip that I thought was really funny — although it’s got a little bit of basic schoolboy humor in it.

My nine year old son absolutely loved it!

It’s a spoof advertisement for National Bean Month. I bet you can figure out where we’re going here.

Just imagine how many customers you could gain if you could figure out a way to get their attention. This ad would certainly do it!

[You'll have to listen to the podcast above to hear the clip]

And that’s it for Arvada’s Answers on Podcast Wednesday. I hope you enjoyed it and that you’ll take the time to post a comment and let me know what you think of this new podcast format.

I’ll see you next week!

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Pre-selling is one of the best things you can learn how to do to sell more of your products and services… and who doesn’t want to do that?!?

It’s also a really excellent way to promote affiliate products to increase your income.

But most people really don’t understand what pre-selling is and how to do it.  That’s why I’ve created a simple, no-nonsense report to explain what pre-selling is and how you can use the art of pre-selling to make more money with your website.

And all it will cost you is a re-tweet!

Here’s what the report covers:

• Pre-Selling Fundamentals to get you off to a good start
• Mistakes people make that prevent them from reaping the benefits of pre-selling
• Creating pre-selling promotions that will skyrocket your profits
• Ultimate pre-selling tools to amplify your efforts and rally your bottom line

My straight-to-the-point report shows you how you can increase sales and make more money by learning how to pre-sell for profits!

Simply re-tweet through the form below and get your copy now!

Get How To Pre-Sell Your Way To High Profits Now!

Tweet Me Now To Get The Report

Twitter Username:
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RT @arvadayates Make More Money Now –> Discover How To Pre-Sell Your Way To High Profits! Get Your Copy Now at http://imarketingwatch.com
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