Amazingly, it’s been almost a year since I wrote this post on the cancer in Internet Marketing. When I went back looking for it, I expected to find it listed 6 months ago. Has this year flown or what?!

I’m happy to report that somehow – remarkably – all of our efforts did something. The cancer we have in Internet Marketing has taken a beating. Really a lot has happened in the past 12 months in regard to this whole saga. Bigger changes than I’ve seen in the 6 years I’ve been doing this.

Some things have gotten better, some things have gotten worse. There are new challenges now, new scams too. Just more to look out for all around. I thought I’d take a good post to spell out a bunch of what I’ve seen, and what you need to keep an eye on if you’re still trying to learn this game & make a living for yourself online.

1. The Snake Oil Salesmenn Move On…

The old fables about the traveling huckster salesmen go that when people catch on to their scam in one town, they’re forced to move on to another where the people are fresh, unassuming, and fail to see their lies again. That’s kind of what’s happened in the town called Internet Marketing this past 12 months.

You guys really did start voting with your refunds – and it affected the entire industry.

Refund rates went up on all IM products across the board. Regardless of the seller too. Bad guys AND good guys noticed this. On our own last product – Unstoppable Affiliate -  despite getting rave reviews everywhere and being the best product we’ve ever released, our refund rate was more than double our historical average. That was saddening to me, but I totally get it. People trying to learn internet marketing are simply jaded, and rightly so. I’ve confirmed with other marketers I respect and they have reported the same rates.

This caused many “gurus” a lot of grief and they started to seek out greener pastures. The guys who were getting 50% refund rates on their product launches started to think that there had to be a better way to make easy money.

Further…

2. The Sheriffs Started Slingin’ Guns

The powers that be also started to get suspicious. By powers that be, I mean payment processors.

Midway through the year, a handful of big name IMers started to think that if Clickbank was going to start cracking down on them (which they’d threatened to do but not yet done) and if they were going to make it so easy to get a refund, they’d move to another processor. Their target was Plimus.

A few multi-million dollar launches happened on Plimus, but with predictable results: High refund rates, and a lot of complaints. Plimus processes a lot of $$ for non IM niches but the level of heat they got from credit card companies over it was through the roof. Plimus was forced to ban all online business/IM related merchants, which they did in an instant. They had far less to lose from the sale volume than Clickbank so it was an easy decision.

So IM scammers with their crappy products single-handedly ruined a potential payment processor for another bunch of well meaning sellers.

Things were heating up hard.

A couple of months later, and under great pressure, Clickbank was to follow suit.

They didn’t ban all IM merchants but they imposed the strictest rules on them since their inception as a processor. No fake actors in sales letters, no exaggerated claims, no this, no that. A LOT of IM offers were forced to remove themselves from the market because they couldn’t comply. The ones that remained had to change their copy up in BIG ways.

Then – icing on the cake – they imposed penalties on vendor accounts with refund rates over 15%. That is, almost ALL IM merchants, period. There might be 2% of IM/biz-op offers that have refund rates below that level. This again caused many of those sellers to decide Clickbank was no longer feasible and go in search of other options.

These are HUGE changes.

The end result of course, is a much nicer market for all of us to learn in. Well, a little nicer anyway…

3. Casualties

Unfortunately, the high refund rates across the board, the changing rules of processors, and the insanity in the market in general made IM a harder place to sell stuff. As a result, a few good, well meaning guys decided it wasn’t worth it any more. They went off to sell other stuff to easier markets.

We lost some good teachers and leaders in that process, so while we’ll let them remain nameless, let us here remember and salute them.

4. What Remains Of The Gurus?

Here’s what happened to the gurus we all love to hate. They either:

a) Moved to the business opportunity market.

Remember the first time you saw an ad like “Make $3000 a month working from home?” how excited you were? At that time, you were in the business opportunity market. Hopeful, unfazed, excited by sales hype… ready to buy NOW!

Those guys realized that group of people are just much easier to sell to and they moved on to that town. Some “good” guys even did that too. It’s a bigger market where easier sales can be made and you can provide the buyers with less information for their money. Sounds like an easy gig right? Too bad the likelihood is that before long, the same thing will happen as what happened when the IMers moved payment processors… they destroyed them. Perhaps that market is too big and too old for that, but that all remains to be seen.

b) They Became a “Good Guy”

You’ve seen this right? Now all of a sudden, EVERYONE emailing you is claiming to be “against the gurus”… EVERYONE is “sick of the scams in IM”, everyone is “fed up with product launches”, and blahdie blah blah.

It’s a joke. They’ve picked up on the sentiment of their market and they’re pandering to you. Many of them are the very same “bad guys” that customers are rallying against in forums and on blogs across the internet.

Be careful of this, reader. As I’ve always said: Choose who you listen to wisely.

c) They went bankrupt.

Not kidding. More than a couple of big name marketers went out of business in the past year for precisely the reasons we’re discussing. Many more who didn’t, resorted to some of the lowest acts they’ve ever committed. Desperation stuff in the name of survival. To say that it’s been crazy times is an understatement.

5. Where To From Here?

Here’s the situation:

You’ve got a big bunch of fed up people who still want to learn how to make good money online, but don’t know where to turn. And you’ve got less people wanting to provide them the right information because it’s difficult to do so.

Here’s what I think we’re going to see because of that…

I think in the next 12 months we’re going to see LESS product launches than the year previous. Less emails flooding your inbox, that’s a good thing, right?

But it’s still going to be messy.

Now that a lot of these guys are meshing lists with people in the biz op market, you’ll also probably get a few emails for products on paid surveys, or “data entry” work at home jobs. I hope if you’re reading this, you know what to do with those.

You’re going to see some “rising stars” in internet marketing. New teachers who haven’t been round for as long, who are happy to get paid less to teach good online marketing info while they make a name for themselves in the biz. Make your judgements on these guys as they come along. They probably haven’t been around as long as more established experts, and their methods may not be proven to ride out the inevitable storms that go along with online business. Proceed with caution.

And finally, you’re going to see a lot of “new” strategies. Many desperate ones, some decent ones.

The backdrop to this whole story is that actually making money online became harder this year. It became harder for affiliates, harder for SEOs, harder for media buyers, harder for content creators. The internet changed again! And a lot of people are running scared from many methods.

As a result you’ll see new ideas coming up for making an easy buck. You know what to do with those. But hopefully you’ll see people innovating on traditional methods (like content marketing) to make them more profitable and more stable too. That part I look forward to.

Final (More Positive) Word

So that you don’t walk away wanting to give up on life, let’s end this on an important positive note…

Make no mistake: Internet business is still the best legitimate income/lifestyle maximization opportunity that exists. This business is awesome; anyone can have it; it’s still there for the taking.

In fact, online business is still in it’s infancy.

If we want to learn it, and keep getting better at it, we need do nothing more than follow the information of people we can trust, and compare notes based on the experience of our own ACTIONS.

Consider the changes of the past year one more obstacle (partly) out of your way. A clearer path awaits you.

To your success!

Making money as an affiliate, or online by any method is tricky for many reasons.

1. We’ve got all the lies, scams, and “gurus” to wade through to try and work out what’s real.

2. We’ve got so many possible methods to choose from that even deciding which one we want to pursue is a challenge.

And many others.

But today I’m going to talk about a different one. One common to all the methods you’ll come across. One that affects many of us, often without us even knowing it.

I’m going to call this problem, “thinking like a scientist”. That’s weird because I think the majority of the time we could all do with a little more scientific thinking. But what I’m referring to here is “taking things too literally” or “worrying about being too precise”.

Let me give you an example.

Expert X tells you that when your site is new, you should start building your backlinks gradually to avoid being sandboxed by Google. He tells you should build no more than 5 backlinks a day for your first month.

Expert Y explains the same theory, and says that to avoid sandboxing, you should build no more than 10 links a day to your new site.

Who do you believe? How many links do you actually build?

Here’s why this is a problem.

Expert X and Expert Y, while hinting at an important and proven theory are providing vastly different action recommendations: One exactly 100% more than the other. No small difference.

But Expert X and Expert Y are telling you about THEIR EXPERIENCE ONLY. This is even the good experts. The well meaning ones. This includes me too.

Neither is referring to the literal reading of a particular line in the Google algorithm. No one has hard science to support their knowledge. The good ones have field tests, or “anecdotal evidence” as it may be called in another field, but that’s all it is.

So when deciding how many links you should build, you can take on board their THEORY without getting too worried about the precise number.

You can build 6 links or 9 links, or 12 links and chances are, you’ll be fine. The principle is important, the exact implementation (within reason) is not as much so.

Why Does This Happen?

A number of reasons really. But here’s something to think about.

I recently heard a pretty nasty business saying recently: “Complicate to profit.”

Essentially it means the more complicated you can make something seem, the more money you can make from it. In fewer fields is this more true than in education.

I think there are powers that be that LOVE the fact that you hear 5 different pieces of advice from 5 different experts. The more confused you are, the more products you need to buy, and the more money they make. Sad but true.

The truth however is that:

Nothing In Online Marketing Is Exact

There are very few “rules of success” on the technical side of things (to do with site content or link building, or on page SEO) I can think of that if not followed 100% literally will result in complete disaster.

Almost all of the time you can do just what we said above: Follow the principle and adapt the numbers to suit yourself.

In our own teaching, we often give numbers to provide a guideline, and something clear to follow (like, start by building links a day – which turns out to be much easier to follow than “build links gradually when your site is new) but at the same time, insist to people that the numbers are just that – set in sand, not in concrete.

So if you’re wondering:

- How many links should I build

- How many pieces of content should I have

- How big should my keyword list be

- How much competition should I look for in the search engines

Or any question similar to this, remember:

The only answers you can get, from any expert, no matter how good, are guidelines. If you can’t follow them exactly for some reason, don’t sweat. If you end up falling slightly above or slightly below, it’s not a problem. At best the expert guidelines vary only slightly (like with 5-10 links a day) but sometimes they’ll vary viciously, demonstrating that one of the experts was flat out wrong.

Trust your judgment. If you’re unsure, just do what you think is right. You’re usually smarter than you think.  And the worst you can do is fail then learn anyway.

What’s cool is that YOU can make up new guidelines based on YOUR experience. By doing the work, you’ll soon sort out the “pretty close” from the “miles away” and you’ll be a better business person because of it.

Then who knows? May one day, YOU’LL be an “Expert X” telling your students the same thing… I hope

Every product we’ve released for the past few years, I’ve said something at the end of the course material like this:

“The information you’re reading now… SOMEONE is going to take it, and turn it into a serious passive income and a huge online business. It happens every time, every product I’ve ever released. Of all the people who buy it, there will be a few for whom it changes their income and their life forever. Why not make YOU that person?”

I sometimes wonder if people take me seriously on that.

For the past couple of months I’ve been getting emails from one of our ENR customers about the results he’s getting putting the ENR techniques into practice. I’ve had a bunch of emails like this after ENR, but this guy is REALLY crushing it. Just looking back at our support ticket history I see his email subject lines:

“Andrew, Just Wanted To Celebrate”

“Just cracked Page 1″

“Less than 10 days later, 1st commission”

They’re probably the best emails I get all week

Every one contains a new success. I’ve lost track now, but I know for a fact he’s got multiple sites cranking along, and is earning somewhere in the 4 figure per month vicinity of passive affiliate income.

He’s going to go on to do big things as an affiliate, I can just see it now. You’ll probably know his name in a couple years. That’s if he’s not retired kicking back on a beach somewhere.

Point is, he got the same information as thousands of other people. Maybe the same information as you (if you bought ENR that is). Lots of people put it off, got distracted, got discouraged after it didn’t work (I KNOW this guy has had failed sites too, but he’s never stopped), changed their focus, lost interest, stopped investing in their business etc etc etc

He didn’t.

Now he’s got a thriving affiliate business and it’s been… what, 6 months? I’m sure he was building foundations long before that, but all these recent successes are less than 6 months worth of work.

Point 1: He focused and worked his ass off. I’m confident he’ll confirm that he didn’t generate “push button millions”.

But now, writing this, I realize there’s a Point 2:

Point 2: He only focused and worked hard for a relatively short period of time! It’s not even like you have to become a robot who never gets distracted, who is perfectly disciplined, who pushes through obstacles, and who works madly… forever! Can you bear to do it for just 6 months to have a life changing affiliate business?

Because once you’ve done it for 6 months, those patterns will be in your bones. It won’t be as hard from then on, AND you’ll have all your new successes to motivate you. 6 months of hard focus and hard work can be all it takes to launch a fortune.

This isn’t sales hype. This isn’t “look, he can do it, so can you… buy my product”.

This is reality.

Some people make it in this biz. Most don’t.

But YOU get to choose who makes it and who doesn’t. YOU get to choose whether it’s them, or whether it’s YOU.

Choose wisely.

As mentioned, I had a bunch of thoughts for you this week, none of which was enough for a blog post on it’s own, so I thought I’d throw you some newsletter style reading and in the process, a bunch of cool info that should have something for everyone… here goes:

Non Product Name Keywords

Every now and then, certain things I say come back to bite me in small ways. We release a product called Elite Niche Research which is entirely about techniques for finding brand searched affiliate offers, and discusses how they are the only ones worth targeting in your search campaigns. Then if somewhere else, I suggest targeting a non brand name keyword – people freak out… “I thought you said ONLY brand name keywords!”. Allow me to comment on this.

The first thing I usually say in response is: There is more than one way to skin a cat.

The reason I include this section this week is that we’ve just started to have success on a new site, hitting some very targeted but non brand name keywords. In fact there was a nice little $150 day just from this offer and these keywords a couple days ago. Only significant because of how much even we have cast aside non brand name keywords in the last couple years.

The 1.95% figure is the conversion rate, which of course is low compared to what we’re used to on brand name terms, but when the traffic is there, it sure doesn’t hurt!

The point is that you should love brand name keywords because they bring maximum revenue per visitor and super high conversions. But because other types of keywords bring lower revenue per visitor, doesn’t mean you should shun them completely. Sometimes you come across an opportunity where there happens to be a little non brand name gap that is highly targeted and with little competition – no reason not to try attack that! Those terms CAN still convert, and can still be profitable. Starting by hitting your most targeted (usually the brand name) keywords first is still the best thing you can do… but don’t overlook those non brand terms either!

Building Profitable Long Term Online Assets

As I’ve mentioned to you in other emails this month, we’re currently looking for ways to diversify our affiliate income outside of just search marketing, and I believe that to be an intelligent thing to do.

With all the doom and gloom about the search engines lately, it’s strange that venturing into affiliate opportunities outside of them actually highlighted to me one of the overlooked reasons why the “web real estate” or “mini site” affiliate marketing model we know and love is so valuable.

If you missed it, the method we’re using for diversification are along the lines of what Steve told us about in this webinar (replay here) – that is, buying traffic through banners, direct linking to affiliate offers, and so on. It gets me excited because of the cool aspects it has that (free) search doesn’t have. Instant traffic, no need to build websites, huge traffic volume etc. Grass is always greener right?

As cool as that stuff is, it’s clear that just like any model, it has it’s strengths and weaknesses. One weakness is, (relative to the mini site model at least), you aren’t building anything with lasting value. You have no asset. An affiliate offer discontinues (happened to us last week and we lost a $2400 a month revenue stream) and a revenue stream dies… a network changes a CPC and your ROI gets eaten. Sure, there are lots of variables and ways to safeguard against these things, and of course I don’t make the argument that one model is better than the other.

But what’s clear is that with the mini site model, you have something more tangible to your name. Even if your site gets slapped and you lose rankings… you have other search engines to hit, you have content that you can repurpose, a domain you can sell, and so on. And if it doesn’t get slapped, you have this asset that gets more valuable year after year. Your domain grows in authority just by getting older… even if you do nothing with it. The longer you have your site and the longer you’ve worked on it, the easier things become… the easier it is to get new content indexed & ranked, the easier visitors are to attain, and so on.

There’s value in that, and it’s part of the reason why as excited as we are to be trying interesting new things, affiliate minisites will always be the core of our affiliate business.

More Thoughts On Google Algo Update

The last algorithm change has continued to generate vast discussion… and vast fear. What’s been most baffling has been the inconsistencies of it all. A number of SEO’s have noted that it’s the most inconsistent restructuring they’ve seen. In other words, as for exactly what’s going on and what’s changed, there isn’t yet, and can’t really be a high level of clarity.

A good analysis I read this morning from Jerry West (can’t share the article link as it’s in a paid membership) talked about how he’s noticed and confirmed the seeming reintroduction at Google of the dreaded MANUAL REVIEWS. (capitalized for dramatic effect)

That means real humans are looking at websites in the G index and judging their quality… at least on occasion. While a robot can’t really tell much about your duplicate content (across domains) or the quality of your backlinks, a real human being can, and if your site that was usually ranking high and was old and of very high quality suddenly took a drop, it’s possible this is why.

What can we do about that? Not much but the same old: Make your sites high quality, use unique content, give it a nice structure, add more content, use internal links, clear navigation, don’t plaster it with affiliate banners, and so on. I think it’s just helpful to ask yourself the question every now and then, “If a reviewer was looking at this website, what would they think?”.

Time will tell more about if and how G is using manual reviewers but for now it’s just something to keep an ear out for, and a reminder to not be sloppy with your SEO efforts.

That’s all for today folks. Hope you enjoyed!

I’ve been using this phrase for a while now, saying that a “wave of resistance” is growing toward crappy offers, lying and deception in the online marketing space.

It occurred to me that you might not be fully aware of just how significant this wave is. So I want to make sure you’re seeing what I see.

Particularly in this last couple of weeks, things have really exploded. Those two products, the stripper launch, and the “get free FB ads” scam, have really sparked widespread rage, where people are coming out of the wood works all over the place… people I’ve never heard of before… and ranting their disgust at what’s going on.

I wanted to create a post to document some of these heroes. Really hold them to the light, both to glorify them for their brave work, and to give you a proper sense of just how intense this “protest” is becoming.

Let’s first take the “Stripper” launch…

First I read this blog post here, from a guy called Dan Thompson who made a full expose of the “fake” photos they used, the whole thing.

I found that through a guy called Omar Martin on Facebook, who’s launching a site called IMtrustworthy.com to try and build a community of respectable marketers.

Then the blog posts didn’t stop. Someone told me about this one from Jeremy Kelsall, and then this one by another guy called Mike Thompson, and this one from Julie Mcelroy.

Then there was the Get FB Ads one, that I first heard about through Brendan Wenzel – he was one of the people who’s tickets they kept changing from “refund” to “tech support” to try and avoid having to refund him. He made a video on that here, and then (straw broke the camels back) he also was inspired to create a community for respectable marketers at LaunchKarma.com

That’s the outcry over just two products!

After I wrote my big rant back in November, I noticed so many people following suit. I read Gary Simpson’s post on the same subject, Mark Dulisse (think he was before me actually) wrote one, and just this week, our friend Matt Carter did the same. There were many more that I can’t remember too.

Notice the enormous response all these posts get! People agree. People are feeling the same frustration.

And the best part is… the DIFFERENT part is… the part that’s not yet happened in the history of IM scams…

The tide is starting to turn.

Clickbank is getting more aggressive with shutting down vendors with high refund rates. (Both the products mentioned above have been shut down). Our blog posts are shaming people who make these products and those who promote them. They’re forced to change their names before they launch more crap, or they find it more difficult to get JV partners… SLOWLY… very slowly… but it’s happening.

The more intense the scams get, the more greedy these marketers become for another big launch and another big payout, the harder it becomes for them to achieve it. They’re gradually digging their own graves. And we’re helping them!

So keep up the good work my friends. A world where we can learn how to build businesses online in a more civilized way free from scam and deception is nearing…

Listen to this…

There’s actually a divide between two groups of people trying to “make money online”. This is from the perspective of marketers who sell “how to” products that you might have bought.

There’s a group called “internet marketing” – if you’re reading this post, you’re probably in that group.

And there’s another group… It’s called “Biz-op”. (short for “business opportunities” if you hadn’t heard the term before).

These are considered to be different markets. Different groups of people with different levels of knowledge, different mindsets, different attitudes. But only slightly.

The “Biz Op” market are people who just want to have a home business, and are more at the beginning phase of visualizing a life working at home, but not really knowing any techniques of how they might accomplish that. After you’ve seen a lot of the techniques, and perhaps tried to start a website or some kind of online business yourself, you’ve risen to the level of “internet marketer”.

Now why is this important? How does this help you?

Well, it’s possible that a lot of the times you bought a product that didn’t have value for you, it was because it was intended for the “biz op” market.

You see (as I only this past week learned), “biz op” sales letters look very different.

Where an “IM” sales letter might talk about techniques like affiliate marketing, or SEO or mini sites, or list building, things like that… a “biz op” sales letter will tell you (generally speaking) NOTHING about the method that will be used.

A “biz op” sales letter will do nothing but try and get you excited by the dream of making money online. It will talk to you about the lifestyle, it will make big income claims, show you screenshots, make a compelling offer with all kinds of bonuses… without telling you HOW you might be achieving these things.

You’ve seen those sales letters right? Where you’re reading it and you think… “I have no idea what this product is actually ABOUT?!” That’s a “biz op” sales letter. They intended it to be that way. They are targeting a certain kind of person.

Note: I don’t mean the lying, fake screenshots, etc are “biz op” characteristics necessarily, just the “no info about the method, all about the lifestyle” characteristics are.

And as a matter of interest, the “biz op” market is WAY bigger than the “IM” market. That’s why the lines blur between the two. That’s why so many “IM” teachers are making the transition, making sales letters in that style, and opening themselves up to more customers and bigger profits in that “other” market.

NOW…

This is not to say that all “biz op” products are scams, and all “IM” products are good. There is plenty of crap in the strictly “internet marketing” arena, AND, there are products with “biz op” sales letters that really teach high quality methods and provide enormous value.

But the distinction is an important one to make.

The tip is this:

If you’re reading a sales letter and it starts to seem like that… all about the dream, nothing about the method… you can assume, generally (unless you have a good reason to believe otherwise, like a recommendation from a trusted teacher or friend) that it’s going to be a more basic course, targeted to the “biz op” crowd, that you might not get as much value from.

Further, “biz op” sellers are dealing with people who come and go like the wind – like we all did when they were starting out. In general (not ALL the time) you can expect that they won’t exactly have the best customer support, (their customers are opportunity hoppers, they don’t hang around for long), and will be less likely to have the clients long term interest in mind (for the same reason) than someone who has to sell to the more experienced “internet marketers”.

Again I stress this is a general rule, and there are exceptions, but the distinction is very important to note.

So keep an eye out, and try to pick up these characteristics from the next product you consider buying. It might help you make more quality purchases, learn faster, and grow your business more easily than you otherwise would.

Epilogue: (Yeah, my blog posts have Epilogues now…)

One thing that sucks about this is that when we “out” these scammers, lyers, cheats etc It doesn’t matter. WE are not their market. They sell enormous numbers of copies even if we, the IMers don’t buy at all. They laugh at the way we mock their sales letters in blog posts like this.When we get “IM”ers not to buy these products, we’re only putting a small dent in their armor. Remember, that “biz op” group is BIGGER.

But that dent is a dent we CAN make. It’s an important dent. And we should make it. Let’s do that

Through our different products & memberships, through events & through meetings in person, I get a chance every year to interact with a lot of people who want to start, or want to rapidly grow their online businesses.

These are people with dreams, people who envision something better for their life, even if only in small ways, and they want a business online to be a vehicle for that.

The sad part is that most of these people don’t make it. Those dreams never become a reality. Some do, but most don’t.

It seems almost a cliche to write an article on the most common reasons for people not reaching their goals in online business. But at the same time, it’s endlessly relevant and important. If you’re reading this post I’m guessing it’s because you want to make more money online this year. And if that’s you, I know there are things you’re doing that are hindering your progress toward that goal. There are also things you aren’t doing but could be, that might accelerate your progress.

These are some of those things that if you change them in 2011, you just might look back on it as being YOUR year:

1. Narrow Your Focus

I started out in business so young that I didn’t have enough experience to demonstrate to me the power of consistent concentrated effort. I kind of thought – personal development background and all – that if I just took BIG ENOUGH action, it’d work. Now that I’m so old and experienced (note sarcasm) I’ve come to really appreciate that most things get achieved with consistent, small amounts of progress that come about through CONSISTENT, FOCUSED action.

Widely spread focus means slow results. Tightly focused action means faster results.

Practically this means that if in 2010 you worked on 5 projects or 5 websites… in 2011 you’ll cut it down to 2. If you follow 5 different gurus, unsubscribe from all but 2. If you monitor a handful of forums, cut it back to 1. If you have 5 social media accounts, cut it back to 1. If you’re focusing on 5 different online business models, cut it back to 1.

Keep your best 1 or 2 of everything and commit all your energy to them, at least until you can afford to outsource on a bigger scale. You’ll think you’re losing out on “opportunities” but you’re not. You’re gaining ground on the opportunities that currently aren’t getting enough attention.

I guarantee with an intense feeling of conviction that if you do this in 2011, you will make more money than you ever have before.

2. Believe In Yourself (Eww…)

That sounds tacky, I know. What I mean is this:

Instead of asking “Is this right? Should I do this? What about this?”…

Just do it. Do it and learn for yourself. Try. See if it works and if it doesn’t, move on and try something else. So many people who are trying to start or grow their online business have so much hesitation, so much concern that they might get something wrong. Newsflash: You’re going to get things wrong. Forever. Your mistakes will never end no matter how successful you become. In fact the more successful you become, the more mistakes you’ll make. Get used to them. Let them be a part of your life. Love your mistakes. Trust yourself and be persistent and mistakes will become irrelevant.

3. Take A BIG Step

I don’t know what your goal is, but if you’re trying to get to a point where your online business sustains your life, keeps you and your family safe and secure and fulfilled for the rest of your life, it’s not going to happen with only baby steps. A baby is a good analogy actually. When you start to crawl, you can get around fine. You could, theoretically have the benefit of movement if all you ever did was crawl. But at some point, you have to take a BIG leap forward in your progression. You have to stand up. It’s unknown, it’s scary, you’ll fall down at first if you do, but if you don’t, you’ll only be crawling in your life, and in your business until. You’ll keep crawling forever.

There’s often one action that represents this big leap. For some people it’s quitting their day job to pursue online biz full time. For some people it’s making one big uncomfortable investment in their business that they want to pay off after time. Maybe it’s finally hiring a second person for your business to scale things up. For some it’s just stopping learning and pulling the trigger to start that first website.

Whatever it is, there’s a big, bold piece of action that you could take this year that would make it a turning point in your business. Think about what that is and make this the year to freakin DO IT.

4. Remember What Worked

Alot of us working online have had at least one success. You made a sale with something. You got some adsense clicks with something. You got some opt ins with SOMETHING.

Often – particularly in online marketing where we are distracted so easily – we forget about the things that we’ve done that have created success. Maybe it wasn’t a success as big as we envisioned, so we cast it aside. I am a perfect example of this.

At the start of my business I did a lot of things wrong, yeah… but I also did a couple of things right. They worked and it was great, but for a number of reasons, other things took my attention, some things seemed to make me more money in the short term, so I forgot about what I’d done initially that created success. Recently I remembered how cool those old things were, started doing them again, and had a huge boost in our revenue.

In 2011, stop to have a look back at the things you did in the past that worked. And when I say worked, I don’t mean, made you a million dollars. I mean every time you generated a single website visitor, ask “how did I do that? Could I do that again but better with the extra information I know now? Could I do that in a different market that might be more profitable? Could I do that but monetize it in a better way?”

You know what I mean? We all have SOME success that we can point to, analyze, and try to replicate and improve. I believe most of us know more than we think. More than we give ourselves credit for.

5. Feel Your Goal Feelings Now

There’s one thing I know for sure. If you can’t feel happy, grateful, fulfilled, excited, secure, proud or whatever it is you think having a successful online business will make you feel NOW… then you won’t feel it when you have your “big success” either.

If you’re reading this post, you have things you can feel happy about now; things you could feel grateful for now; things you could be proud of now. And if you can’t acknowledge that fact, more money in the bank isn’t going to make a difference. Incidentally, neither is more free time.

Happiness breeds happiness.

Enjoy your journey. Get excited about it. It might be frustrating at times but it’s going to be the story you tell when you make it big! I remember many years ago, driving home from a stupid “all nighter” work session at about 6am, just totally wrecked, but thinking “When I’m a success, I’ll tell people about this”. And I do

That’s all my friends.

2011 is going to be a big year for me and I hope for you too. I can’t wait to see your progress, and I can’t wait to share with you mine.

To your success!

I didn’t expect anything like the outpouring of emotion that followed my recent post on the cancer in IM. My humble blog’s never had so much activity

One of the most amazing things has been the outpouring not from disgruntled customers of these dodgy marketers but from OTHER marketers, with horror stories and overheard conversations of their own, who are MAKING MONEY in that game, but can’t stand it any longer and are refusing to continue playing along.

Could it be that we’re already making a difference?

I thought it pertinent to write a short follow-up post, because getting the issue out in the open like that really did help in expanding the discussion of what the problem actually is, and how it might be fixed, and it caused me to think of a couple of things in a new way.

I also needed to write something else because it’s been a slightly conflicting time for me.

I’m sitting ranting about marketers and product launchers and simultaneously, I have to go about my day AS a marketer and at this point in time, preparing for a “launch” of my own.

The following is where I have settled on the matter and I hope you find it of interest.

Quite late in the discussion on our previous post, there was a lone dissenting voice. There was one comment which disagreed with all others. The sentiment of it was basically this:

If people get ripped off, it’s alot of their fault because no one forced them to buy… We all have to take personal responsibility…

How are you any different Andrew? How can we trust you? This post seems like you’re upset that these marketers are beating you at your own game.

It’s just the way things are, etc etc.

I wasn’t particularly offended and thought he had some good points. My reply was something I thought I’d bring attention to. What I said to him is this:

Hey Rick,

I think for the most part we’re in agreement.

How can you trust me? How do you know my motives are genuine? You don’t. You can’t.

All I can hope for is that when I sell my products, people will get the value out of them that I say they will. That I will deliver what I promise for a price that’s reasonable. That I will tell the truth in my marketing material. All I can do is try to sell my products with some level of respect for the people buying them, and maybe just a little care for their individual outcome. Of course as you note, I’m not (nor is any seller) “responsible” for my customers outcomes – there will be no success on any method without the user’s basic personal responsibility – but you don’t have to be “responsible” to be “aware”.

Because, as I think you imply, it’s not IM that is the problem. It’s not selling “how to make money” products that’s the problem. It’s not that one guy does a launch and sells 40 000 copies that’s the problem.

It’s HOW he sells them that’s what matters. What matters to me anyway. It’s the HOW that separates the good guys from the bad in my view.

There’s no rule that says you can’t do an enormous launch and sell a tonne of product WHILE treating your customers with respect, WHILE providing them real value, WITHOUT lying in your sales copy, WHILE showing people a method that IS actually proven to work. Is there?”

Those last 3 paragraphs are key.

Those points are what allow me to still feel good about being a marketer.

This new product I’ve got coming out this week – I feel like I want to use it to to stick it up some people (as we’d say in Aussie) who are in that “frauduct” selling business. I want to demonstrate that you can tell the truth, be honorable, care about your customers, create great products, and still make money. I want to fly the flag for decent marketers everywhere and I’m “wet my pants” excited to do so!

Final thought: I was talking to an IM friend this morning and we said that what’s happening now is the growing of a counter current. A resistance movement if that’s not too controversial. And while we’re still the minority, this bad boy is building steam.

If you read that blog post I wrote, YOU are part of it. Perhaps without even realizing it, YOU, simply by your rejection of and objection to their philosophies, are gradually impacting the way these psycho-marketers operate. With your unsubscribes, with your tweets, your blog posts, your comments, you’re sending the message that a change is needed.

We must persist. We will succeed.

Last night I was searching for a product I wanted to buy. Yes, I became one of the people that I’ve been teaching others how to market to for the past 5 years. I want a product, I know it’s name, and I’m off to buy it.

You see I want to learn Arabic, and I’ve used the Rosetta Stone language programs before, so I went over to Google and typed in “Rosetta Stone Arabic”.

I’m a hot prospect right now!

An affiliate could easily swoop in and catch me before I buy, add some value, and claim a big commission.

But how?

Honestly, when I searched, I wanted to find Rosetta Stone’s page.

How would someone, an affiliate, get me to NOT click on the official website, and click on their link in the SE’s instead…

You see the significance of this question right? If I know how to get the click of the hot prospect buyer in the search engines, have them come to ME before going to the official website… I’m laughing. Laughing while I take a dip in my hot tub of cash.

So, what’s the answer?

I thought about this from my prospect mind. What would have gotten me to click on something but the official website if I saw it in the search engines. I thought of 3 things. All things that I use in my affiliate marketing to get more traffic and higher conversions. They are listed here in their order of pulling power.

1. A Discount

If I already want to buy something and see a place where I can get the same product, the real version, the same service, but cheaper – why WOULDN’T I go there instead of the official site. A lot of times as an affiliate you don’t have the option to offer a discount on the merchant’s product BUT…

I’m going to say this technique here… I haven’t personally used it… but I know it works… only it’s right on the border of being sneaky… I’ve seen other affiliates using it with great success.

>>> Warning: Sneaky Yet Powerful Technique Alert

Sometimes a merchant offers a discount with their product. Not to a particular affiliate, just in a certain situation. Examples:

a) A product has one of those popup screens where if you go to click away, they offer you 10% off to stay and buy.

b) A company offers a discount if you buy more than one copy of a product.

c) A company offers a discount on shipping if you order today.

What you do is, you say on your landing page, possibly in your page title so it’s the title of your search engine listing:

Rosetta Stone Discount Here

Then on the landing page you give your presell and in it, tell them how they can get the discount, however that is. Whether it’s buy two copies at once or click away from the screen before you order, just let them know. Tell them to GO HERE NOW (affiliate link) and follow these instructions to get the discount today.

Make no mistake, THAT headline in the search results will get clicks, even if you’re down lower on page 1 of results, your CTR will skyrocket.

2. A Warning

This is one you can use for marketing almost any product as an affiliate, and it’s become pretty mainstream now.

Your headline and page title (and title of your search listing) is:

Rosetta Stone Arabic Warning

You want me to take notice before I buy a product? Strike a little fear into my heart and it’s mission accomplished.

It LOOKS like it’s going to be something bad, but it doesn’t have to be.

Every product has SOMETHING you can warn people about.

Rosetta Stone is a fantastic program but someone could have WARNED me for example, that Arabic is vastly different from one country to the next and that I shoud keep this in mind as I went through Rosetta Stone, perhaps supplementing my learning with another program. I still would have bought through that link AND (secret sauce tip here) I would have felt better and felt more confident about my purchase (read: higher conversion) because even if the WARNING was something I could deal with, the product and all it’s good stuff must be AMAZING.

If it’s an IM product your warning could be:

“Not every method of making money online works for everyone so don’t think you’re going to just buy this and start receiving cheques – there is WORK required”

A warning but not something that will put (serious) people off. Making sense?

If it’s a health product, your warning could be:

Warning: Purchasing this product at other online stores could result in higher prices and more expensive shipping.

A perfectly truthful statement that anyone looking to purchase the product would appreciate being told. Your visitor will like you for that. You don’t sound like a salesman, you sound like a neutral information source. Telling people the good and the bad.

ANY product can have a “Warning”. It’s a powerful technique to use.

3. A Bonus

If I saw a link where I could spend the same amount of money but get something ELSE too, I might well click. It’s hard because the bonus has to be something REALLY relevant and really valuable to get me to care about it if I didn’t already, but if you think hard, you can usually think of something for any niche.

I’ve written alot about this both here, and here if you want more info.

4. A Review

I put this one at the bottom of the list because it’s hit and miss in terms of whether it will get me to click on it if I started out searching

Rosetta Stone Arabic

I don’t need a review because I know the product pretty well. I could write my own review.

I could try to get a bit more attention by doing something like making my page title:

Rosetta Stone Arabic SHOCKING Review

Which a lot of affiliates do, but unless you actually have something shocking to say, most people will realize that they got scammed clicking your link, and bounce.

It’s a different story of course if I hadn’t used the product before and actually searched

Rosetta Stone Arabic Review

But that’s a page on your site that you’d want to be ranking for THAT keyword, not the non review one.

So there you have it. 3 (and maybe 4) ways you can easily increase the number of affiliate sales you’ll make, boosting both your traffic and your conversions with one fell swoop. (What is a “fell swoop” by the way??)

Use them in good conscience. I don’t want to be responsible for how your life might change with all the extra cash you’ll make (Sorry, it’s been a long day)

It’s a long known marketing principle that when people are trying to make a decision, one of the tools they use is to take guidance from authority. “Hmm, what should I do? Ohh… this expert guy says I should do X – he obviously knows better than me”, is something like how it goes.

As many have pointed out, what’s changing in our time is who we consider an authority. At the start of the century it was the newspaper. If they published it in the paper it HAD to be right. Then it was what was on the TV… but that’s certainly out the window now.

So what do we use to make our decisions today? What do YOU use?

I think there is a long tail of authority, so to speak.

How Do You Make Decisions?

If I want to make some purchase that I care about, the first thing I will do is see if anyone I know, like a friend, has bought that thing. Code: I look for the opinion of someone I trust.

In that search I usually drill down to a friend of mine who I’m sure knows a lot about that particular thing. I wanted to make a stock purchase this week so I contacted a friend of mine that I trust… but not just any friend, a friend who is an analyst at a trading house. Code: I look for the opinion of someone who I can verify knows what they’re talking about. Kind of like my personal local expert.

Or when a friend recently was looking for an e-book reader to purchase so he was very interested in what I thought of my Kindle. I love it and I told him so, and he ended up making the purchase immediately following our conversation. Code: He was interested in the opinion of “someone like him”. “Who cares what the commercial said, Andrew is just like me… if he likes it, I’ll probably like it.”

What “New Authorities” Are NOT

What stands out about the people who I (and in the last example, my friend) take advice from is what they DON’T have:

They don’t always have a degree on the subject.

They might not have formal qualifications of any kind.

They certainly don’t call or consider themselves experts.

But they are, in our minds, maybe only at that moment, authorities.

The point is that the barrier to being considered an “authority” is the lowest it’s ever been. Anyone can establish themselves as an authority on almost any subject because, in a lot of ways, it’s not even about being an “expert” at the subject matter.

It’s about being a real person, being a real user (or having first hand experience in the subject matter) and being trustworthy.

And why is all this important? Because…

Authority Can Make You Money!

I was having a conversation with a lady earlier in this year, talking about online marketing, when she told me “I know a lot about makeup. When any of my friends want tips on their makeup, they come and ask me”. She’s not a make up artist, doesn’t work in the field, but she knows her stuff. I consequently raved at her about how badly she needs to have a blog!

So if you’re interested in making money on the internet, here’s the takeaway:

Start NOW, establishing yourself as an authority on a particular subject. Even if this is just a side project to your other work online, build a blog or a site where you write about something on which you know a lot. Have fun with it, interract with people with similar interests and work to build a following.

If you do, come a few years time, YOU could be the person people turn to for advice, and YOUR affiliate link could be the one they purchase through when they make their decisions.

Because rest assured that there are more and more people every day turning not to the TV or the newspaper or even the internet as a whole for advice, but PEOPLE, friends, just like you.

And there’s money to be made there.