eMarketWorks on the Internet

New to internet marketing? On a tight budget? All the gurus telling you to buy their stuff?

Wait!

There is a goldmine of free products and information on the world wide web. So before you buy anything expensive, look for the free stuff. The simplest approach is to use a search engine like Google or Yahoo. Just search for: free fill-in-the-blank; for example: free website builder.

The only problem with this approach is your time. You have to do the searches, then you have to try out whatever comes up to find out if it is what you are looking for. On the other hand, you can’t beat the price.

Begin Planning with free business plan software

I’ve made a point about using planning as a step-by-step how-to guide for developing your business so here is where you can get a free business plan template and a free pdf guide book bundled with it from planware.org. 

"… Free-Plan registration is completely free and there are no strings attached ! You will not be added to any email list as a result of registering. Check our privacy policy at <www.planware.org/privacy.htm>.

To register, simply e-mail <freeplan@planware.org> quoting within its body the serial number displayed in the table/box located in the middle of the first page of the Free-Plan Template file (FREE-PLAN_TEMPLATE.DOC).

You will be e-mailed back a password with simple instructions to unprotect the Template. Once unprotected, you are licensed to use it as an outline structure & guide for your business plan. It can be freely modified and there are no restrictions on how and where you distribute your completed plan based on the Template. (A little mention would be nice <g> but that is at your complete discretion)."

Freeplan is comprehensive so don’t feel like you have to do everything that is suggested. Start with a Short Plan. The idea is to familiarize yourself with the elements of a business plan and use those parts that are most relevant to you personally. Let me know what you think of it.

I try to keep in mind that a plan is nothing, but planning is everything - in other words, plans are meant to be revised as you get new ideas and information, and as your knowledge and skills grow.

More Free Stuff Later

From time to time, I’ll point out places where you can find other items that are both free and useful. Please add any suggestions of your own.

PS You don’t have to be a beginner/newbie to make good use of free stuff!

If you are like me (and are easily distracted), you have tons of ebooks, mp3s, videos, blogs, urls and other internet detritus cataloged on your computer. And you never actually use that stuff because there is always something new coming down the pike that you just have to explore.

It would take months and possibly years to read, listen, and view all the stuff you have accumulated in your hunt for internet marketing magic.

There’s only one cure for the packrat syndrome - choose a mentor (guru if you prefer) and ignore everyone and everything else not specifically recommended by your mentor until you are making so much money that you have time on your hands to explore other things.

Give your mentor 6 - 12 months to get you into money making mode, and by that I mean you are making about the REASONABLE PROFIT you were aiming for. If you were going for $ millions, you shouldn’t be here reading this.

If you haven’t gotten in the profit zone in that time, and you are the persistent type, you need to get another and hopefully better mentor.

There is also the possibility that you are not cut out for this kind of work, and you should definitely consider other options. There’s no shame in a steady job.

I’m not going to recommend a mentor to you (unless you ask). Use your best judgment and stop being an internet marketing packrat. By focusing your training and actions around the advice of a  single mentor or consulting service like Stompernet, you will have a better chance at doing something that actually makes money.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Cashing In Fast With "Mini" Sites

      - by Jim Edwards

© Jim Edwards - All Rights reserved
    http://www.thenetreporter.com
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

I’ve gotten a plenty of questions lately about why I think "mini" sites, simple 1-2 page websites, are better than "traditional" websites you might learn to build in school or from a website design course.

In fact, I believe "traditional" websites represent a complete waste of time and end up making small and home- based business owners give up on the Internet before they even have a chance to get started.

If you want to cash in fast on the web, stop thinking about making "web" sites and start thinking about "mini" sites.

Basically, traditional sites try to be all things to all people.

If you go to somebody’s website and you see:

"Sign up for my newsletter";
"Buy my product";
"Check out these links";
"Check out our article archive";
"Click Here for the article of the day";
"Subscribe to this RSS feed";
"Visit our blog!"

…. it just creates confusion.

In other words, visitors arrive at the site and either go nuts figuring out what to do next or, more likely, they simply click their back button - never to return. (more…)

I really hate to admit that I wasted over $2,000 on SEO (search engine optimization). Take a lesson from me if you’re smart ,and DON’T DO WHAT I DID.

I had a start-up ecommerce website selling bird houses(that’s a story for another time). One day, I got a call from a person who said they represented Web Marketing Source.com (a division of Captures.com), and they just happened to notice that my website wasn’t working as well as it should. They proposed to greatly improve my results and of course they just happened to have a special deal for me that included all these items:

• Meta analysis and recreation of clients tags and keywords
• Automated search engine submissions for quick indexing
• Manual search engine submissions for non-automated engines
• Auto and manual site maps submissions for faster site map indexing
• Submissions tracking reports "upon request"
• Simple maintenance and updating of tags "upon request"
• HTML site map which helps your pages to be indexed quickly

Well, honestly I wasn’t selling that many bird houses so I let myself get sweet talked into signing a contract for their "services".

I was too new at internet business to understand that all the "services" they were going to provide are pretty easy to do yourself for almost nothing. So I took the bait, and the contract set the hook.

Basically I got nothing, OK well I did get poor customer service. As near as I can tell, all they did for $2K was generate a Google site map. After they got my money, the sound of silence from them was deafening, and I was too stupid to know what to do. They offered no help whatsoever.

What I did notice is that their services provided absolutely no detectable improvement in my website. What did change was my bottom line - it got worse. Thanks to that contract I signed, I had to keep paying them for 3 more months after I tried to cancel the deal. So I lived up to my part of the bargain - I gave them a lot of money for a few minutes of work.

If you have a website, keep in mind that there are people trolling the internet looking for website owners to call on the phone to sell them SEO. It’s a good bet you don’t need to spend thousands of dollars for a Google site map!

Here’s my advice

DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES buy anything from anybody who calls you out of the blue to tell you that they noticed your website wasn’t optimized and they’re going to help you get those rankings that you deserve. And for sure don’t sign a contract with someone you don’t know.

– End of Story –

One place that you can find products to promote is the ClickBank Marketplace. If you are not familiar with ClickBank, all the products there are electronic, meaning that they can be downloaded directly to your computer once the purchase is completed.

Typical products are ebooks and software. At last count, there were about 27,000 products available.

The majority of sales at ClickBank are made by affiliates. Once you have set up an account, you can pick one or more of the huge number of products that you would like to promote (i.e., advertise).

You earn a commission on sales that come through you affiliate link. Affiliate links are generated automatically for you so you only have to copy and paste them. An affiliate text link looks like this:

http://AFFILIATE.product_ID.hop.clickbank.net

You also get a copy and paste link that you can use on your website that looks like this:

<a href="http://AFFILIATE.product_ID.hop.clickbank.net" target="_blank">Click Here!</a>

Replace AFFILIATE with your ClickBank affiliate name, and you can also replace the Click Here! text with any text that you like. The text will appear as a clickable link.

Both these link formats take your prospect to the sales page of the product you are promoting, and the AFFILIATE part of the link tells ClickBank that you get a commission if the prospect purchases the product.

from wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit

Welcome to wikiHow

wikiHow is a collaborative writing project to build the world’s largest, highest quality how-to manual. With your edits, we can create a free resource that helps millions of people by offering solutions to the problems of everyday life. wikiHow currently contains 30,688 articles — written, edited, and maintained primarily by volunteers. Please join us by writing on a topic not yet covered, or editing a page that someone else has started.

wikiHow in other languages: عربي, Español, Deutsch, Français, Nederlands, Português. You can also help start a new wikiHow in your language.

Spotlight Article How to Assemble a Clarinet The clarinet is a woodwind instrument that is often taught in school bands. Playing this instrument is not difficult, but it takes a great deal of practice to get the sweet melodic tone that comes out of a well toned, well played instrument. Taking care of it is important, and so is properly assembling it. Read on…

Getting Started

• Take the wikiHow Tour to learn more.
• Read our Writer’s Guide and try editing the practice page.
• Make any existing article better.
• Suggest a new article, answer a suggested topic or write on any how to topic we don’t yet cover.
• Read a list of other ways you can help.

Categories

• Arts & Entertainment
• Food & Entertaining
• Philosophy & Religion
• Careers & Education
• Health
• Relationships
• Cars & Other Vehicles
• Hobbies and Crafts
• Sports & Fitness
• Communications
• Holidays & Traditions
• Travel
• Computers & Electronics
• Home & Garden
• Youth
• Family Life
• Personal Care & Style
• wikiHow
• Finance & Business
• Pets & Animals
• Other

Article provided by wikiHow, a collaborative writing project to build the world’s largest, highest quality how-to manual. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

 Did "they" tell you that you can make a fortune with internet marketing even if you don’t have a product? If so, they lied.

Here’s the mathematics: No Product = No Sales = No Income

Consider for a moment what a "product" is. It’s anything that someone else wants. I can’t make it simpler than that. They don’t even have to pay for it, they just have to want it.

We can describe products in a number of ways, but for our purposes here, we’ll just call them items that you get paid for. Those items can be real physical products (for example, a CD or a car), virtual products (for example, software), information products (for example, ebooks), and others.

The main point today is that either you are selling your own products or you are selling someone else’s products. This is one of those rare times in life when the choices are simple.

In internet marketing you generally have two ways of earning money. You can be paid directly for a product and get 100% of the sale price, or you can be paid a commission and receive some fraction of the sale price. Again life is simple. So here are the ways you can be paid.

1. Sell your own product - you get full price.
2. Get  someone to sell your product for you - you get less than full price, they get a commission.
3. Sell someone else’s product - you get a commission.
4. Get someone to sell someone else’s product for you - you get a smaller commission.

Nevertheless, complexity lurks around every corner and that’s why you need to start with a business plan, or go back over what you have already done and frame it into a business plan.

If you don’t have a product or don’t plan to create your own product, then where do you get a product? Many gurus recommend that you start with affiliate marketing and look for products at ClickBank. You can include that strategy in your business plan. We’ll talk about that and other strategies in another episode.

I think it was Dwight Eisenhower who said, "In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." 

Do your planning!

Your labor is one of your most basic and intrinsic products. When you sell it, we most often call that a "job". When you work for nothing, it’s called either charity or sweat equity. When you are new to internet marketing or don’t have a lot of experience (that means you aren’t making much or any money), your product is sweat equity - the time and energy you put into developing your business without being paid for it.

You probably noticed that people who want to sell you internet marketing products don’t like the term "sweat equity" because it sounds like work, and they are selling you the easy way to riches. Forget that - if you don’t work at it, it ain’t happenin’.