Your Commitment

I have been thinking a lot about what I told you yesterday: stick to a project, do not give up, and put in all your effort.

These are surely the keys to success online and offline. And I wondered why it is so much harder to really go the extra mile online instead of jumping onto the next train in a different direction.

I think that there are just too many offers out there that sound too good to be true. So why work hard on a project if somebody is promising you riches over night? We let ourselves be distracted very easily. And we lose our time and money on all those unfinished projects –sometimes without even actually noticing it. 

I hope that when signing up for Freebies and buying into new money making systems you do not use your main email address. If you did so far, I want you to go to Gmail and get yourself an account there now. We are going to get rid of all the dead weight that you have collected over the time and at the same time free your main email account from those offers that make your inbox overflow every day.

Once you have created your new Gmail address I want you to log into your main email account. This is going to be a lot of work but it is worth it to prepare you for your online success.

Now go through your emails one after the other. Do you know who the sender is? If it is a personal or business contact, fine. You do not have to do anything.

If you know that the email is an autoresponder mail from a fellow marketer, I want you to try to remember when you opened one of those messages for the last time. If it is a newsletter that you enjoy reading on a regular basis I want you to open the email, scroll to the bottom and click on the “Change subscriber options” link. Insert your new email address there, open your Gmail account, and click on the confirmation link that was sent out to you after you changed your information. Done!

If it is a newsletter that you usually do not open why stay subscribed? You get tons of emails you do not read and it does not help the list owner either to have you on his list if you do not even open the emails. So you will open those mails, scroll down and click on the “Unsubscribe” link. Sometimes you will have to confirm that, sometimes you won’t. 

Once you have finished going through all the emails of the last three days you’re almost done. Your main email account is almost freed already. There might be an autoresponder newsletter coming in from time to time that is sent out less regularly. Just open the email then and follow the process described above.

As your main email account is no longer overflowing with all those “get rich fast” offers, you will be able to concentrate on the tasks at hand, i.e. building your online business. Even if it gets a bit harder from time to time, you are not distracted by “done-for-you, automated systems”. You took your decision how you want to make money online and you are going to work on your success with determination.

Set aside one hour or two per week to read all those emails that arrive at your Gmail account – after all, those are the newsletters that you decided to keep because they provide valuable information for you. But even if you will see all those tempting promises once or twice a week, you will see that it is so much easier for you to stick to your project if you concentrate on making it a success most of the time.

Yet another "How to" Guide

There must be millions out there: guides how to make money online. 

And each and every one of them will claim to be the one source for your success.

Do you know what? 

They are probably right. Each and every one of them can help you make a fortune. To a certain extent, you can even make money with those “get-rich-fast schemes”.

The key to your online success is not in the money-making-program or method you choose, it’s in your way to do business. If you are one of those internet marketers who buy a new report or system every week, I suppose, your success is quite limited, unless you get a new business running week after week. If this is not the case, you have probably already lost a considerable amount of money purchasing all those business opportunities.

You can actually be successful with anything. The choice is completely up to you. Take your time to check out your different options and then choose the internet business that suits you best.

To help you to get started, here is a list of the most common money making methods out there:

1. Affiliate Marketing
2. CPA Marketing
3. Creating your own Information Business
4. Traffic Brokerage
5. Sell on EBay or Amazon
6. Build a Coaching Business
7. Provide Paid Reviews
8. Sell services on Fiverr

What will really make the difference for you is the effort you put into your new business. Choose one, start it and then meet all the challenges, find solutions … just don’t give up

Step 5: There is Traffic, and There is Traffic

With traffic, it is not only the pure numbers that count, it is above all the quality of the traffic.

You could drive tens of thousands of visitors to your squeeze page and not get a single opt-in – or you can have just 100 visitors and get 3 new subscribers.

It is important to keep this in mind when you decide which traffic sources you want to use for your business.

As a rule of thumb: Bulk traffic sources are cheap but usually they are not keyword targeted. Furthermore the traffic is very often generated by pop-ups or pop-unders which users will close without even looking at your offer. If you buy or swap solo ads (to preferably a buyers’ list) or run a Google Adwords campaign, you will probably see a much higher conversion rate – but it also is somewhat more expensive than buying bulk traffic. Eventually the price per subscriber (not visitor) might add up to the same in both cases, though.

The traffic sources that send keyword targeted traffic to your squeeze page usually require a higher investment by you. You do not always have to invest money, though. Some high quality traffic sources are free but have to be prepared to invest your time, e.g. for article or blog marketing.

Good sources for high quality (targeted) traffic are:

Search engine campaigns

Solo Ads (not safelist mails)

Article Marketing

Forum Marketing

Blog Marketing

Youtube Marketing

If you feel that you need more detailed information on generating traffic, have a look here: http://goo.gl/gvh9Qj

Update: TrafficWave Coop Results

It is 1 July and I received the final co-op results from TrafficWave for my share in the last co-op campaign.

"During the co-op, you received 9 visitors to your Affiliate URL.
Of those, 1 registered for an account with TrafficWave.net."

At a price of $39.95 this means that I have paid $4.44 per view - or $39.95 for one trial member.

After this experience I cannot do anything but repeat: 

Do not buy shares in TrafficWave's advertising co-op. It is just not true what they state on the sales page or I should have had much more traffic and sign ups.

This co-op is nothing but a waste of money.

I want to stress, though, that I still believe in their autoresponder service. This is really great value and no matter how many subscribers I have, the monthly rate stays the same!

If you want to see, what the TrafficWave autoresponder has to offer, just follow this link.

Is it a SCAM?

It is true - you can make a lot of money online. Unfortunately it is also true that you can lose even more money trying to make money online.

This is what unfortunately happens to a lot of people at the beginning of their online ventures. Once you start searching the internet for opportunities to make money and subscribe to some email lists (very often in exchange for a free ebook), your inbox will overflow with unique offers daily.

And most people will be tempted to try out some of those offers. After all: they always sound to good to be true. I am afraid, though - most of them will not earn you a dime.

Therefore I have one VERY IMPORTANT advice for you: before you spend money again on any business opportunity online - check whether it is a scam.

To do that, all you have to do is a Google search. Type in the name of the program and "scam" or "experience". This is the easy part. What is more difficult is to decide whether the search results are sales pages or real reviews. 

A sure indicator that a site is nothing but a sales page is, when the name of the program can be found in the URL. The most reliable results come from people who review many different programs.

Just give it a try and you will see for yourself. With a little bit of effort you will surely start to recognize the scam reviews on first sight after some practice.

You will see: If you make it a routine to check all the programs first before you buy into them, it will spare you a lot of money. :)

This is ridiculous ...

I bought a share in TrafficWave's Advertising Co-op for June. Of course, TrafficWave cannot guarantee any sales, but I thought, my chances would be good with only 150 shares sold to get a few signups. TrafficWave claims: "We have no way of telling you how many sales you will actually realize. Our own tests have shown that our Google Keyword ads convert at a very high rate. Our Co-ops bring in thousands of new signups and we just keep getting better at it!"

Doesn't that sound as if that was quite chance - and for only $ 39,95. 

When the first few days of the month were over, I contacted TrafficWave. I knew that nobody could guarantee signups, but at least I had counted on a lot of traffic. After all they said that they would run a professional campaign. 

I contacted them because after 4 days my page in the rotator had 3 (!!!) exposures. I contacted them, because I could not believe this. I thought that there must be some technical issue, because even I am able to drive more traffic to a site than that. But TrafficWave said that everything was fine and they could not guarantee any sales ... 

Well, I was not talking about sales there, but about views - and 3 views in 4 days is just ridiculous. I calculated that by the end of the month I would have had about 23 exposures - at a price of $ 1,74 per visitor.

But then, things changed. I got a signup which is not the same as a sale, by the way, as people sign up for a free 30 days trial of TrafficWave in this campaign. And you know what happened? Since then, my rotator page is "paused".

I know the month is not over yet, but the numbers are so far below all expectations that the rest of the month just cannot make up for it. As of today, I have one free signup (no money earned yet) and a total of 4 exposures for $ 39,95.

Weren't they talking about "thousands of new signups"? Who get's all those signups?

In the sales letter for the co-op TrafficWave states: "Shares are filled on a "round-robin" system. As any given share receives a sale, it is "paused" and moved to the back of the rotation. This helps ensure a balanced distribution of all new sales." 

So if I got 1 signup and my share is still paused, that means that instead of thousands, they did not even get in 150 signups during this co-op so far.

Buying this co-op share was nothing but a waste of money!

I love TrafficWave as my autoresponder - because it is real good value. You get all that you need to work professionally online at a very reasonable price that does not go up as the number of your subscribers increases. I also love their compensation plan, because if you bring in only three referrals, your monthly autoresponder fee is covered.

Their advertising co-op, though, is not what they promise! Do not buy shares!

Step 4: A Product to Promote - Your Own Product

You can earn much more money online if you do not promote affiliate products but sell your own products. Of course, it is a lot of work to create an info product and set it all up, but it is surely worth the effort.

If you only just start your internet business, creating your own info product may seem like a daunting task. But it actually is easier than you might think, if you try.

But if you have no idea how to do it, you can join my eCouse about the
"5 Profitable Steps to Info Product Creation". It's completely free!

Once you have a product you will have to decide, where to sell it. Of course you could set it all up on your own website, but in my opinion there are a lot of reasons that speak for affiliate platforms.

If you join one of the affiliate networks it is much easier to find other people to promote your product and everything from the product presentation on the marketplace to paying commissions to your affiliates is organized by the platform.

Here are some affiliate networks you could have a look at:

Clickbank
JVzoo
Payspree

Once your sales page is set-up, it is vital to drive a massive amount of targeted traffic to your offer.

Step 4: A Product to Promote - Affiliate Marketing

To be able to make money online, you must have something to promote or sell. Chances are that you do not have your own product yet, if you have only just started your online business. 

This should not keep you from starting to earn money, though. Every day that you wait and do not take action you lose money, because you could make a sale every single day, even if you do not have a product of your own.

There are thousands of affiliate programs out there. I am almost sure that you will find a high-quality product in your niche that you would enjoy to read or watch (if it is a video series) yourself. That’s exactly what you are looking for. A product that is really valuable to people in your niche because it addresses their questions and concerns.

Another factor of importance is the affiliate commission that you can earn. You can even find sellers who will give you as much as 75 % or even 100% of the front-end product sales. This is not because they do not want to earn money themselves, but because they know that it is with the upsells that they can make the big money. So the 100% affiliate commission is your payment for promoting the seller.  It is a win-win situation for both of you. The seller gets more customers who have proven to be willing to spend money online; you can make money without having a product of your own.

Once you have identified a product, that fulfills your criteria, join the affiliate program and start your first campaign.

With most affiliate programs you get a made-for-you squeeze page, so you do not have to bother setting up a sales page.

A very good method to increase sales is to set one of those affiliate squeeze pages as confirmation page of your autoresponder subscription. By default in many autoresponders your subscribers would only see a simple "Thank you" page. But they also give you the possibility to insert your own "Thank you" URL. 

Why miss out on this extra chance to make some money?

To make it easier for you to find your first affiliate products, here are some affiliate marketplaces where you can find high-quality products:

Clickbank

JVzoo

Payspree

PayDOTcom

Step Three: Your Own Squeeze Page

The next important step to your online success is a squeeze page/ capture page that converts well. There are different ways to create such a squeeze page.

1. If you chose TrafficWave as your autoresponder you are lucky, because there is an integrated free capture page creator and TrafficWave also hosts your squeeze page for you for free.
   The tool is quite simple to use. There are a lot of templates to choose from and the opt-in form for the respective autoresponder campaign is integrated automatically. So even if you do not have any programing or HTML experience you can set up your squeeze page within minutes.
   In case that your autoresponder is Getresponse, you also have an integrated squeeze page tool there. I have never tried it, though, and therefore cannot tell you whether it is as easy to use, as it is not free. Getresponse charges an additional monthly rate for the use of the squeeze page creator. Probably other professional autoresponder sites also make the necessary tools available to you, to set up a squeeze page. Just check back with your provider.
2. You can find a lot of free squeeze page creators by a simple Google search. Basically those tools will do the same for you as the capture page creators integrated in your autoresponder account. The main difference is, that you will have to insert the HTML or Javascript code for your opt-in form there manually.
3. If you are promoting a product or service as an affiliate, very often you will get made-for-you squeeze-pages from the affiliate site of the company. This of course is the easiest way to get a capture page; it is less flexible, though, than the other possibilities as the use is limited to their product/service.
4. The last possibility to create a squeeze page is only an option for you, if you do know how to set-up a website yourself and how to integrate the HTML or Javascript code for your opt-in form. I will not explain this here in further detail, because if you are this advanced, you will surely not need my explanation. ;)

Now that you know, where you can get a squeeze page from, we still need to have a closer look at the content.

A problem with many squeeze pages is that there is way too much text. The best converting capture pages are limited to the essentials: A title, a subtitle, a SHORT text, an image (optional) and, most important, the opt-in form. As far as the opt-in form is concerned you should also limit yourself to what is absolutely necessary. The more information you ask from the visitors of your site, the less subscriptions you will get. The best converting squeeze pages are those, where you just have to insert your email address. So unless there is a really good reason why you need more information from your subscribers, you should not ask for more than just the name and the email address.

Here are some examples:

Self created
http://mindpower4.wix.com/pre-launch
 

Provided by the company

http://offer.myaax.com/4602/

Created with TrafficWave tool

http://lcp.trwv.net/lcp/mindpowerteam/teamatlantis/47004