Rob White's Online Business Blog

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~ Progress

November 11th, 2011 · General

Yes, thankfully there has been some….progress that is. Learning mainly; I think that is the biggest hurdle with starting an online business. It has been for me at least. I have found that a lot, most in fact, of the so called ” free ” ebooks are full of blah, blah, blah and anyone reading it cannot learn much at all. The main reason a lot of marketers write or have these ebooks written for them by a ghost writer, is to get you on their list.

Another thing to get your head around is the ” autoresponder “. But what I have found is that the easiest way to learn is to use it, That’s it, the more you use it the easier it gets. Sure…you will get things wrong and go round in circles for a while trying to work it all out but that is part of the learning process and if you don’t do it guess what ?… you either will not learn or you have to pay someone to do it for you.

So basically, get your hands dirty so to speak, and eventually you will learn. When you learn one aspect – and there are a lot, it is quite satisfying. One thing I did forget about was setting up responders in my autoresponder – Jeez, I had to think fast and act fast because I was getting people opting in to my list.

My mentor was or is actually, helping me by offering a free ebook to his list on my behalf and I was getting subscribers. I now have a list of “26″…. well you have to start somewhere, right? I just hope I get the mix of offers and good info etc. right to keep them. Anyway, there’s nothing like pressure (of getting subscribers) to force you to learn.

Another “biggy” that I have had to learn in a hurry is Blogging, but more specifically WordPress and the particular theme that I am using. Again, it has just been a matter of getting in a doing. I make mistakes but that just means that I have to go and do it all over again to get it right.

But I think that the learning will not stop, it will be never ending basically because the internet and Internet marketing will continue evolving and changing.

I think one piece of advise that I will go ahead and do is make a product of my own to help build my list faster. It sounds like very good advise as an ebook can be made to go viral as well as offer good products or services within it. I can imagine it will be a big undertaking but I have to do it if I am to eventually reach my goal of earning a full time income from my online business.

Once I get the first one made all the others will be a lot easier. In fact just writing about it has given me added inspiration and drive to get the first one done.

Ok, I have work to do. Please leave a comment and let me know where you live in the world.

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7 Basics To Drive Traffic

November 8th, 2011 · Traffic Generation

An affiliate marketer must have everything needed to succeed. He may have the necessary drive and perseverance and understand how the system works. He may have all the tools necessary in maintaining the business, including a really unique and interesting website. However, all these would prove useless without knowing how to drive traffic to the website. His business would sink together with all the sales and dreams that he might have if he only knew how to…drive traffic.

Getting visitors to a website is difficult considering the fact that there are so many rivals. The vast size of the internet and the affiliate marketing arena has given rise to fierce competition between marketers, each of whom has his own great product to offer. With all the websites piling on top of each other, how does any particular one stand out?

The seven best ways to drive laser-targeted traffic to a website will help those bent on sticking it out in the business.

The first step in driving traffic is to optimize the website for search engine traffic with Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. Search engine traffic is free tarffic and everyone likes free. Having the best search engine rankings possible is vital in getting traffic, and the use of the right keywords in the title, description and meta tags is important in attaining this goal. Once a website is on top of the list, it is easily accessible to anyone who wants to see it.

The second way in driving traffic to one’s website is by contacting other webmasters for a possible link exchange partnership. Locating websites that are related to one’s own website is the primary task. Once there, he should be able to establish communication by personalizing everything as much as possible. It is then possible to make reciprocal link exchanges between webmasters whichever way the affiliate marketer prefers.

The third way is through writing one’s own articles. This is an effective way ofp romoting a website, because good content that is appreciated by readers will lead them to visit the writer’s very own website out of sheer interest. When writing an article you are able to leave a link to any website in the resource section.

The fourth way is through joint venture marketing. This is one of the most effective ways of promoting a product or a service. Having a partner through ad swap or link exchange is beneficial to both parties as it allows them to reach a wide customer base in a short amount of time.

The fifth is submitting your own product to an affiliate network. Having an army of affiliates working and promoting your products means a lot more traffic to an optin page or website leading to more sales and/or subscribers. Both the affiliate and the product owner will benefit from the arrangement.

The sixth is by having a list of subscribers that you can market to regularly. The money is in the list as they say and a list of responsive buyers makes money making a whole lot easier.
The use of autoresponders is the best way of marketing to your suscribers offering them a mix of useful information combined with offers to make money with.
Do not annoy your subscribers by just selling to them all the time or they will unsubscribe very quickly. Once you have a subscriber on your list – look after them, as they are worth approximately one buck per month to you.

The seventh is forum and blog commenting. When you register to comment in a forum you are able to leave a link to your website as part of your signeture. Blog commenting is a bit easier as you do not have to register and you can still leave a link to your website for everyone to see and visit hopefully.

Traffic generating strategies are important in trying to make one’s affiliate marketing career move forward. It is always advantageous to plan one’s moves in any business undertaken. This is particularly so in affiliate marketing amd If you can drive traffic you will never have a problem making money.

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~ New Zealand’s Year

October 31st, 2011 · General

Oh what a year we have had as a country. So many up’s and down’s we have had beginning with the earthquake’s in Christchurch down in the south island. The city was all but ruined by 1 big quake and ever since there have been numerous other small quakes that have terrorized the people forcing a lot to leave and live somewhere else. Many have even emigrated to Australia, the largest country closest to NZ. I am positive you will find a lot of info regarding the quake all over the internet should you want to find out and see more.

Another quake not so far from NZ occurred in Japan, followed by an horrendous tsunami which wiped out whole towns and possibly a city here and there. Not to mention the loss of lives that were tragically lost. i will never forget seeing news footage of the waves and complete houses and other buildings floating along in the waves of water. We were lucky here in New Zealand not suffer any effect from the earthquake in Japan in the form of a tsunami which could have reaped havoc here as well.

Another disaster is a container ship which has run aground on a reef outside the Tauranga harbor here in the north island. Tauranga has some beautiful beaches and is a very touristy part of NZ in the summer. The ship was holed and much of the fuel oil which is the consistency of tar has been leaking into the sea and finding it’s way onto the beaches in the region. Needless to say the locals are very angry having the first part of the summer season almost ruined as authorities have had some beach areas closed to the public in order to clean up the oil.
Many species of bird life as well as penguins etc were either killed or had to be rescued and manually cleaned of the oil. Amazingly the company that charters the ship is only responsible for a small part of the cleanup costs.

The most exciting thing that happened was finally winning the Rugby World Cup which we hosted. Games were played in many parts of NZ including the south island but the matches the were supposed to be held in Christchurch were transferred to to the damage done to the park or pitch by the earthquake.
Some of the countries that participated were: Argentina, England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Tonga, Samoa, USA, Canada, Australia, Georgia and one or two others. We only just managed to beat France in the final by 9 points to 8.

The next word cup is to be held in the United Kingdom (England) in 2015, as the Rugby World Cup Competition is held every 4 years. The first world cup was held in 1987 I think and we managed to win it but until now we have never won it again. The winners in previous world cups have been the stronger rugby playing nations such as Australia, South Africa and France.

I would love to be at the next one if I manage to get my online business up and running successfully by then.

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~ Affiliate Business Model

October 22nd, 2011 · Affiliate Business Model, Uncategorized

So Many Affiliate Programs! Which One is for me….

Ask yourself questions before you join an affiliate program. Do a some research about the choices of program that you intend joining. Get some answers because they will be the deciding what you will achieve in the future.

Will it cost you anything to join? Most affiliate programs can be joined free of charge So there’s no reason to join any that charge you to sign with them.

When do they issue the commission checks? Every program is different. Some issue commission checks once a month or every quarter, etc. Select the one that suits you best. Many affiliate programs set a minimum earned commission amount that an affiliate must meet or exceed before a check is issued.

What is the hit per sale ratio? This is the average number of hits to a banner or text link it takes to generate a sale based on all affiliate statistics. This factor is extremely important as it tells you how much traffic you must generate before a possible sale is made.

How are referrals from an affiliate’s site tracked and for how long do they remain in the system? You need to be confident on the program enough to track those people you refer from your site. This is the only way that you get credited for a sale and the period of time that those people stay in the system is also important as some visitors do not buy the very first time but may buy after seeing an offer a number of times. Find out if you will still get credit for the sale if it is done months later.

What are the kinds of affiliate stats available? Your affiliate program should be capable of offering detailed stats and they must be available online anytime you decide to check. Constantly checking your individual stats is important to know how many impressions, hits and sales have been generated from your site. Impressions are the number of times the banner or text link was viewed by a visitor to your website and a hit is a person clicking on the banner or text links.

Does the affiliate program also pay for the hits and impressions besides the commissions on sales? It is important that impressions and hits are also paid, as this will add to the earnings you get from the sales commission. This is especially important if the program you are in offers low sales to be able to hit ratio.

Who is the online retailer? Find out whom you are doing business with to know if it is really a solid company. Know the products they are selling and the average amount they are achieving. The more you know about the retailer offering you the affiliate program, the easier it will be for you to know if that program is really for you and your site.

Is the affiliate a one tier or two tier program? A single tier program pays you only for the business you yourself have generated. A two tier program pays you for the business, plus it also pays you a commission on the on the sales generated by any affiliate you sponsor in your program. Some two-tier programs are even paying small fees on each new affiliate you sponsor. More like a recruitment fee.

Lastly, what is the amount of commission paid? 5% – 20% is the commission paid by most programs. .01% – .05% is the amount paid for each hit. If you find a program that also pays for impressions, the amount paid is not much at all. As you can see from the figures, you will now understand why the average sales amount and hit to sale ratio is important.

These are just some of the questions that needed answering first before you enter into an affiliate program. You should be familiar with the many important aspects that your chosen program should have before incorporating them into your website. Try to ask your affiliate program choices these questions. These can help you select the right program for you site from among the many available.

Below are a few good affiliate networks anyone can join…

1. Commission Junction (www.cj.com)

Now owned by ValueClick, Commission Junction was one of the first affiliate networks. It is also one of the most important with many of the Top Fortune 500 companies listed here.

CJ is an international network with excellent stats and tracking (some of the best you will find), along with regular monthly payments makes this the obvious first choice for anyone wishing to try affiliate marketing.
For those new or old at affiliate marketing, CJ also holds regular seminars and training sessions.

Most merchants offer pay-per-lead or pay-per-sale, one of the best features is the performance bonuses and incentives. As most experienced marketers will know, selling 50k to 100k each month for merchants will bring in the big incentives or bonuses.

Commissions run as high as 50% but most are in 3% to 15% range. You have the option of direct deposit for your payments. One major plus, CJ will tell you which merchants
and ads are earning the most revenue for affiliates so you can easily choose which merchants are worth promoting.

2. ClickBank (www.clickbank.com)

ClickBank is another professional affiliate network with
excellent stats and tracking. Easy to use and pays every two weeks.

ClickBank is slightly different from the other networks in that it deals mainly with digital download products. The commissions from ClickBank are usually much higher than the other networks, around 40% to 50% or more.

ClickBank has over 10,000 products but keep in mind, info-marketing products will have stiff competition from all the savvy and well established Internet marketers promoting these same products. Consider youself warned!

The most successful marketing tactic here is to first dominate your targeted niche with your blogs and sites, then find affiliate products to match your content or niche subject matter, whether it be gardening equipment, gaming laptops or Mediterranean cruises!.

3. LinkShare (www.linkshare.com)

LinkShare is another excellent affiliate network. It is one of the oldest affiliate networks on the web. LinkShare was recently acquired by the Japanese Portal Rakuten, with a price tag of $425 million.

Very good stats and reporting with their Synergy Analytics system. Many Top Fortune 500 companies are presented here so you will no trouble finding products and services to romote.
LinkShare pays commissions as they receive them from merchants – monthly checks.

4. Affiliate Window (www.affiliatewindow.com)

Affiliate Window is an UK based affiliate network which offers top brand companies and good commission rates. Pays once a month and has excellent stats.

Savvy affiliate marketers know promoting in other countries can be much easier than promoting in the American market place. Mainly because these other countries haven’t become saturated with online marketers, little competition means more sales.

5. Amazon (www.amazon.com)

Amazon is another excellent affiliate network to join if you want to sell products from your site or blog. Amazon has excellent stats and the links are very easy to create and place on your web pages.

You also have the option of creating your own store with Amazon aStores. Amazon also now has context link ads and Widgets!

Commission rates are somewhat lower than the other networks but making sales thru Amazon is much, much easier. You will make more sales mainly because Amazon is a well known and trusted online company. Amazon now pays monthly.

6. Shareasale (www.shareasale.com)

Shareasale is yet another easy system to work with good stats and simple to create links. With 1,700+ merchants to choose from, Shareasale is another good affiliate network to promote.

The control panel is easy to use and the reporting is very good. Usually pays the month following your sales.

7. Google (www.google.com/adsense/)

Many won’t think of Google as an Affiliate network but it does run affiliate products thru its Adsense program. Very few products but like everything from Google it is professionally run and top caliber all the way.

Please note, top marketers know affiliate links/products on their content pages will return 10 times what Google Adsense will give them. However, these marketers will also know using Google Adsense on less targeted pages throughout your sites or blogs will give you a healthy return.

Besides receiving that monthly check from a multi-billion dollar company like Google will put a smile on your face every time.

8. LinkConnector (www.linkconnector.com)

LinkConnector is a relatively new affiliate network which launched in 2004. It has Pay Per Click, Pay Per Sale and Pay Per Lead. Good stats and reporting. Worth checking out for their different types of new affiliate technology such as Direct Linking which passes pagerank along to the merchant’s site.

9. CPA Empire (www.cpaempire.com)

Great CPA (Cost Per Action) network especially if you do a lot of email marketing and promotions. Geared towards acquiring leads and sign-ups but does offer other merchants as well. Good stats and reporting.

10. Independents

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~ Blogging

October 13th, 2011 · Blogging

What is blogging?

The Internet plays a huge role in the lives of people on the entire planet; it is the fastest means to communicate with friends on the other side of the world and the richest source of information when you have to research for something. The latest trend and probably the most successful way of expressing oneself via the Internet is the blog. What does blogging actually mean? The whole concept revolves around the personal need to express feelings or thoughts, share opinions, spread news or simply have fun. A blog is actually a small individual web page more like a diary that you keep online; it receives regular updates and allows the use of links, photos, videos and extended documents.

Many people were attracted by the “blogging” phenomenon thanks to the great opportunity of making themselves heard by a specific targeted audience. Blogs are not complex web pages, it entirely depends on what the creator wants to share with the world. When you’ve got great pieces of news, funny links or a hobby to talk about, a blog may be just the right way to open up to an international “community”. Most often, blogs attract more attention than large and well-designed web pages? How is it possible for blogging to have reached such a status?

First of all, blogs generally tackle with one issue of interest for the user; there is fresh and rich informational content, and extended friendly links to other sites or blogs in the domain. It has become common knowledge by now that blogs often receive more traffic than other web pages. Why? The answer lies within the very essence of a search engine structure: what a search engine likes most is fresh and high quality content. This is the main preeminence blogs and the blogging phenomenon has managed to achieve ahead of normal web pages.

If blogging started as the perfect diary online, it has now come to acquire different dimensions, of which the commercial one is the most well-developed. I’ll give you an illustrative example here: let’s say you like gardening, and you’ve also started your own home business of growing plants. A blog on flowers, plants and their peculiarities would meet the requirements of other people who share your hobby, but it would also function as a great promotion tool for the development of your business. Therefore, web marketing and the need to communicate happily meet within the very concept of “blogging”.

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A Bright Future.

September 19th, 2011 · Uncategorized

I cannot wait for my business to start rolling!, my mentor is setting up a list building system for me – how’s that. I had to pay a bit of money towards it and buy a domain name but I am sure it will all be worth it in the future.

The money is in your list – you must build a list, it’s a must do without a doubt. You can market to your list and make money at approximately  $0.50 to $1.00 per month per member. So imagine having a list of 10,000. My mentor is helping me build a list as well as driving traffic to my blog where I will also place offers, and free material in time.

Starting my business is so exciting and I feel so glad be on track to building my very own list. The first dollar I make online is going to be so amazing. My goal is to earn $1000.00 per day (1k a day)  when it happens I will buy a license plate for my luxury car with 1k a day on it. I think I will buy a new 4 x 4 Mercedes or BMW. Well maybe not new, possibly 6 months old so the new car smells have disappeared. They say there are so many plastics and possibly dangerous chemical odors coming from them that I don’t think I will buy brand new.

When I am earning $200 – 300 each day I will give up working at my day job to concentrate 100% moving forward with my online business. It will be time to hire some outsource workers to hopefully increase my income exponentially and reach my target of  1k a day in about 1 years time.

That’s the plan and I hope you will continue to follow my progress week by week. So many times I have read that if you fail to plan – you plan to fail. My looong term goal is to be able to buy or have built a beautiful house with amazing views and buy at least 5 cars – oh, how I love cars …-Corvettes, Mustangs, Jaguars etc.

Travel, yes, and of course travel. I really want to go to Egypt to see the pyramids, Austria to see some incredible mountain scenery and wherever one has to go to see polar bears in the wild and husky sled dogs which must be northern Canada. Something else I would love to see one day is the launching of  a rocket at Cape Canaveral in Florida USA.

Well those are my plans and dreams, let’s see how long it takes me. Notice I did not say ” if I can do it”

 

 

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My mentor

September 13th, 2011 · General

Well here in New Zealand today it’s been raining cats and dogs off and on all day.

I chatted with my mentor early this morning and he is helping me start a list. We had to chat as opposed to talking on skype  as we had got the time zones mixed up somehow. He lives in England and NZ is 12 hours ahead, or so we thought. It appears we are 13 , maybe due to daylight saving in the UK.

Who is my mentor? well all will be revealed as soon as he has his affiliate program up and running.

I have been on holiday for almost 5 weeks and it has been so good! I have not achieved all that I had hoped in terms of my online business, nevertheless I am trucking along and cannot wait for some subscribers.  A list is very important as it allows you to market to them via email. I will post an offer as soon as I can.

Today I was submitting my website to heaps of directories and registered a new domain. Tomorrow the weather will be much the same so I think I will start posting to forums in order to get some back links and after that might write an article.

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~ Working At Home

September 11th, 2011 · General

Ok, Hi everyone or “Hey” as they say in North America.

When I first started looking into Making Money Online I found myself sitting for long hours in front of my computer and to tell you the truth it was painful. Trying to sit properly and the desk I was using didn’t seem to be the right height etc. etc. I had to stand up and walk around every 15 minutes otherwise I ended up with a sore aching back.

If you have ever had back ache it is one of the worst types of pain you can suffer from, along with tooth ache. BTW  Diclofenac is very good pain relief. Ask for a generic Diclofenac and it should be a lot cheaper than the commercial label alternatives, just make sure you ask your druggist or pharmacist if it’s suitable for you and follow his or her instructions to take it..

Anyway, I finally discovered that sitting in a lounge chair with my laptop on my knees was oh so comfortable. I just had to make sure not block the air intake holes on the bottom of my laptop so I used a large firm folder ( for A4 paper) and it was perfect, I could sit for hours on end in almost perfect comfort. I even had something to put my legs on which gave me 2 choices of how I sat.

Now that I am starting to learn more and more and actually starting a business I find it no problem to sit and work for half a day without interruption and absolutely no back ache.

Then another problem I had was taking notes etc. and I soon discovered that a copy book with  solid covers and a wire loop spine was excellent. I could fold the front cover under which gave a solid surface to write on – it was perfect.

Another thing I discoved when downloading and saving pdf’s etc. is to change the file name to say the topic first. As an example if I was saving a file called  ”best traffic tips” , I would put “traffic” first then a dash and then file name with underscore between each word.

ie. “Traffic-best_tips” or  ”Traffic-best_traffic_tips”  this way all your traffic info and files will be saved together and not alphabetically depending on the letter of the first word.  Another way would be to save the file straight to a folder labelled “Traffic” if you don’t want to alter the original file name.

Ok, thats all for now.

 

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~ Hello and Welcome

August 30th, 2011 · General

My first post Hooray ! This is a very new, slightly daunting… but very exciting journey for me… so I’m REALLY pleased that you’re here! I am so determined to succeed at making money online. Because it will give me FREEDOM…..

Freedom from a boss and long hours of drudgery

Freedom to make my own lifestyle choices

Freedom from money worries

My name is Rob White. I’m 54years old, and I live in Auckland, New Zealand right now, I work in the roading industry operating heavy machinery. It’s noisy, dirty, I work long hours ANYTHING but fulfilling and, to be honest, it’s just not well paid.

A couple of years ago, I fell into the internet marketing world, and decided that I’d really like to build myself an online business that would make me profits from home. Unfortunately, I started out in all of the wrong ways, and I made all of the mistakes that everyone else makes. I have been buying e-books, courses and software. Subscribing to sooo many lists and unsubscribing to many as well. The lists were a great way of downloading free info and software.

I was learning, don’t get me wrong, but mostly just spinning my wheels as they say. It was very easy to pretend that I was doing something , but really, I was wasting a lot of time because it was so easy to sit at the computer downloading stuff ,reading emails etc. but it got me nowhere fast.

I’ve lost count of the number of times that I’ve spent $37 on the next “too-good-to-be-true” solution, promising me overnight riches just for clicking a few buttons. But I’ve been let down every single time.

I got pretty close to giving up recently, until I stumbled across a guy called Marc Milburn, in the UK. He’s achieved some INCREDIBLE things online. He currently makes six-figures per year, and runs a coaching program, called The Online Wealth Blueprint.

I was invited to a free coaching webinar with him, a couple of weeks ago, and the information he taught literally changed my life. He really changed the way I understand internet marketing, and really helped me to see the truth about money being made on the web.

I enjoyed his coaching webinar so much that I decided to join his Online Wealth Blueprint coaching program, a 24-week training which I’m sure will help me to be successful. And anyway, it has a 30-day money back guarantee! Marc really seems to know his stuff, and understand the dynamics of a successful internet business.

So, I’ve decided to set up this internet marketing blog, which I can use to really document my journey to success on the internet. Right now… I’ve spend over $1,000 dollars on worthless info products, and I haven’t made a penny. So, my first objective is to make my first dollar online, and get my first subscriber on my e-mail list.

I’m going to be posting 2-3 times per week to show you what I’m doing to build my business online, and start earning my very first dollars on the internet. I’d love you to come on this journey with me and watch my progress. Heck, you might even learn something that will help you!

So… this is early days for me, and my blog will really be evolving and changing over the next few weeks and month, and I really look forward to sharing my success with you.

I’d love it if you could leave me a comment to let me know what you think, and tell me your opinions on how my blog looks. It’s pretty simple, but I quite like it :) I might even find a prize for the best comments on my blog! We’ll see…

Thanks for stopping by, and I’ll post back in a few days time.

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