Webinars are becoming a very popular way for people to learn Internet Marketing. Webinar is another word for web conferencing which is where a host of the webinar can deliver a presentation via the internet. All attendees of the webinar are connected through their separate internet connection which can be anywhere in the world. The attendees join the webinars at a set time usually by clicking on a link which has been distributed by email by the host.

Usually emails are sent out in advance by the host, requesting registration of the webinar. It’s usually a simple process of registering by entering your name and contact email. You will then get a link sent to you with the time zone that the Webinar starts. A few minutes before the Webinar, you go to your email box and click on the link to join. After a few seconds you will be connected to the webinar and will probably see what ever the host has loaded onto their screen.

You may need a headset with combined headphones and a microphone, depending on whether the webinar is an interactive or listen only webinar. If you are going to speak with others on the webinar then the best results are obtained with a headset because of feedback problems.

Interaction and Being Part of Something is Important

Webinars are a great way to learn and this is why

• The provide a structured time, that you can set aside in your diary
• They give you something to look forward to – a new learning experience
• They are visual which is the most powerful way for the brain to learn
• There is no travelling and costs involved and they can be watched from the comfort of your home
• You can interact by speaking, asking questions in a question box which is on your screen
• You can interact and learn off the other attendees
• You can have recordings of the messages sent
• Overall they are fun to do and they become a major part of your development

The Webinars that I Attend are First Class

I attend a Webinar program as part of an Affiliate Marketing Learning Program and they are just brilliant. The amount of knowledge that I gain from them is amazing. They are such a motivation tool and they are delivered by hand picked experts and an exceptional Internet Affiliate Marketer. Take a look yourself at Webinars To Die For. Next time I’ll be updating the blog on the Page One Rank of my site.

Richard Hurford

Aspiring Internet Affiliate Marketing

You have recently become interested in Affiliate Marketing and you just know it’s your burning passion. But you are feeling overwhelmed by it all. Where do I start?

Well start on the right foot! Don’t try and make it all up yourself. It’s a bit like Golf. Many people take up the sport by buying the clubs and all the gear and go out and start playing. They begin swinging the club without any professional lessons. Then they take advice from all the amateurs who offer up their advice. They find that this just makes you play worse and before you know it the clubs are collecting dust in the garage!

Get the Basics Right

It is the same with Affiliate Marketing. You need to cement some basics before you can grow into a professional. You need to learn from a Professional. Someone who  knows the business, has spent many years testing strategies and measuring the results. That person understands what works and what doesn’t. Imagine all the time and money you can save by following a mentor who will guide you through the basics of Affiliate Marketing.

What are, the important elements of finding the right Affiliate Marketing Learning Program?

Consider some of these:

• Does the person heading up the program really have the credentials?
• Research your mentor before starting- check out their online profile
• Is there a real person behind the name? Maybe it is an alias
• Are they promising ridiculous results in an incredibly short time- Is that believable?
• What are you actually getting for your money
• How is the learning material going to be delivered? Eg Webinars, E books, Coaching
• Who is delivering that? Is it the learning mentor themselves? Or is it some person that really does not have the expertise
• What is the quality of the learning material?
• Will it continue to evolve and bring new and exciting material?

I am part of a Successful Affiliate Marketing Program and this is why I chose it

• The person heading up the program is an expert in his field.
• That person is successful, both in terms of their monetary status and personally
• That person is ethical and enjoys helping others
• The learning material is exceptional and is delivered by E-Book, Webinars and a Dynamic Forum
• The Material is delivered by that Mentor and other Hand Picked Experts in their field
• The Learning Material is Inspiring, Interesting and Involves Hands on Tasks
• There is a Great Sense of Community in the program and you are never alone
• If you get stuck there is always someone waiting to help you out
• The answers to our problems are concise and answered in a timely fashion
• I have never seen a disgruntled member in the forum. Everyone has Only Praise for the Program
• It shows you how to Page One Rank
  
• The program is Constantly Evolving and introducing New Material
• Its an Exciting Place To Be and it’s Growing All The Time

…… and how do I feel

Elated

Positive

Excited

Looking Forward

Creative

ALIVE!

Affiliate Marketing – Where Do I Start?, Well Right HERE!

Richard Hurford

Aspiring Internet Affiliate Marketer

Many people look to PPC Advertising ( pay per click) campaigns to promote their products online. The idea is to be able to buy traffic and send it to your website. If the product converts well and you pay less for the traffic than the revenue generated from sales of that product then you make a profit.

Why are we buying traffic?

This is because when you first start out, you don’t have organic traffic (people finding your website by typing in keywords into a search box) to rely on. PPC Advertising is a short term solution to generating traffic but not necessarily a profitable one.

Many people promote this form of traffic generation and it is made out to be a very simple process of setting it up and bang watch the money come in.

Not so Easy!

The reality of when you set out on a PPC Adverting campaign, is that in the first few months it’s going to cost you a lot of money, because what you are actually doing is buying information. Until that information filters through, you don’t know which keywords are going to get you the sales. Some of the keywords will cause people to browse and not actually buy. Yes you can be selective on your keywords by using only relevant keywords but it is still a trial and error process.

Once you have collected the data then you can keep the keywords that get a result and take out the bad. So even when you have narrowed it down to a few keywords you might find that there is not a lot of traffic searches on those keywords. Overall you may get it into a profitable situation, but how many sales is that going to get you over a year if the traffic volumes are small.

Let us Look at the Figures

It’s easier to see by looking at the figures. I recently had a go at PPC Advertising. I set up a Yahoo campaign to promote a product. During a 4 week campaign I spent $325 and had 1632 clicks on my Yahoo Search Marketing ads. Of the 1632 visitors to my website through paid traffic 316 people visited the product which a pretty good conversion of 19%. Of the 316 visitors there were 3 sales generating revenue of $129, roughly a 1% conversion which I believe is an industry standard.

So overall buying the information has cost roughly $200 dollars. So at this stage let us tidy up the campaign by using only the keywords that converted. That was 3 by the way. The cost of the converting keywords was $45, so if we managed to generate the same result over the next month then $129 would have cost $45 and a profit of $84 per month would be made. That’s hardly the tens of thousands of dollars being promised by many vendors selling their products.

Yes we could get more keywords but as you can see, to test it over a longer period is going to cost more. Maybe you can get five or six campaigns going in different search engines to get the overall volumes.

But as you can see it is not an easy task and not for the beginner. Can you imagine trying to run five or six campaigns? Just one can be a handful. Other problems faced on a daily basis are the fluctuation in prices that you have to bid, to get your ad shown and editorial issues where the search engines provider suddenly decides you are not allowed to use that word in advertising anymore.

As you can appreciate it is not a scenario of setting it up and letting it rip! It’s more likely to rip a hole in your wallet and leave you disillusioned. It goes back to the same old story you can’t easily jump the queue.

Why not spend the money and the time doing Research Before Starting and aim for a Page One Rank instead. Let me know about your PPC Advertising experiences in the comments section.

If you would like to subscribe to regular updates of my blog then go to the RSS Feeds at the bottom of the page. Until next time, take care

Richard Hurford

Aspiring Internet Affiliate Marketer

It is critical to perform Research Before Starting to market your products online. It is so easy to get carried away with our ideas and dreams that we are sometimes blinded by the reality of the situation. It is true that once we believe in something we don’t want to be wrong. Examples of this are the numerous shop fronts that advertise for a new lessee just months after a shop has been expensively fitted out, only to close its doors because of failure.

Obviously there are many reasons why businesses fail but some business owners fall victim to their own short sightedness. They do not Research Before Starting and as a consequence run in to trouble when they misunderstand their chosen market.

Perform a Feasibility Study

It is wise to get into the habit of performing Research Before Starting, once the excitement of the Brain Storming session wears off. I know that’s hard, we feel like a greyhound in its traps, busting to break out and streak off to the finishing line. We must control our emotions at this stage and start to see whether our ideas are feasible.

Bit of a Juggling Act

There are a number of things to consider before deciding on your product or affiliate and it’s a bit of a juggling act. Some times one performs some keyword research but then struggles to find a suitable affiliate product. Some important points are:

• There must be a commercial reality for your idea
• Perform some research by doing some Keyword Research with Keyword Tools
• The main criteria to investigate is the demand for the product and the level of competition

Commercial reality can be gauged by looking into major product providers such as E Bay and Amazon. If there is a product in there then this is a promising sign. Some Keyword Tools supply Commercial Intent data which measures the likelihood that a person searching on that keyword is likely to end up buying.

Keyword tools give you information on daily or monthly searches for a particular keyword. The higher the figure the better, but remember that usually that keyword will have a large amount of competition. So you need to analyse the competition data along with the search results.

Choose your domain name with the keyword you have researched and avoid trying to create a brand name domain. Unless you can promote this offline stick to the keyword domain name.

Good-luck with your project and remember to Research Before Starting. Look out for Part 2 of Page One Rank.

Richard Hurford

Aspiring Internet Affiliate Marketer