Have you heard of the “build it and they will come” syndrome?  I have, way too much actually, it’s of the most common mistakes I see online…

It’s thinking that you can just just create a product to sell online and buyers will beat a path to your door, buy thousands and make you a millionaire before you know it…

It sounds pretty darn easy doesn’t it?…

Here’s what really works…

You must create a product that people want to buy, in a niche that’s in demand today.

Here are the steps for determining what people are really looking for that you:

1)  Go to Google and Yahoo and type in ‘top keyword searches’ and search for the keywords that are most searched…

2)  Type ‘article directories’ into Google or Yahoo and find a list of article directories…

Go to the topical section of the keywords you found in (1) and find out which subtopics are receiving the most article views…

3)  Search for those subtopics on Google and Yahoo and notice how many ’sites are available for each subtopic…

How much sponsored advertising is being done?

Go to inventory.overture.com and find out how many searches are done monthly for each of the subtopics…

4)  Go to Google and Yahoo and look up forums + your subtopic…

Go into the forums and ask people what they think is the most needed product for their niche…

When you follow these steps you’ll soon notice a pattern developing in people’s interest for the subject you’ve chosen.  Fill the gap that needs to be filled by creating a product that people WANT to buy and they will buy!  Don’t worry too much about competition, that’s if someone else has the same type of product as you.  The internet is huge my friend, and if you can market your product/website you dont have to worry about competition.  Just do the market research, create a product, fill the needs of others, rinse and repeat!!

I can’t tell you how many people I’ve talked with who have told me that the main allure of an internet business was the freedom and flexibility of their schedule so they could enjoy their lives more.

But, somehow they became slaves to the Internet business. And, in the process, they had LESS time to spend with their families, their hobbies, and their purposes in life. Don’t kid yourself, it can happen to you. Ask yourself one question right now, be honest with yourself even if you don’t like the answer …

How much time do you spend online? If you add up all the hours you spend reading, researching,surfing, at forums, creating offers, joining lists, publishing articles … all of the activities you do related to an Internet
business … what would the total be?

It might shock you at the total if you had to clock in each time you came online.  Listen to me carefully:  more important than traffic, lists,products and anything else associated with your business is your time.  It’s irreplaceable.  As such, it’s priceless.

That’s why I am a BIG believer in outsourcing.  That is, you pay someone else (or barter with them) to do things for you. Think for just a moment about the information business.

Which of these would you prefer…

[A] You spend the next 7 days writing an ebook.

[B] You hire someone to write the ebook while you play golf.

Which of these would you prefer…

[A] You research a hot topic so you can write an ebook about a topic you are unfamiliar with, and then you write it.

[B] You hire someone to write the ebook while you go fishing.

Which of these would you prefer…

[A] You spend the next few MONTHS writing 10 ebooks to build an information product empire.

[B] You hire someone to write all 10 ebooks over that same period of time, or you hire several ghostwriters and have all 10 ebooks finished in 2 weeks while you shop at the mall.

Which of these would you prefer…
[A] You expand your business into dozens of different profitable markets by writing ebooks on a variety of topics.

[B] You hire someone to write ebooks for you on any imaginable topic while you are at the beach, on the mission field or hanging out with your family.

Listen, I love writing.  And I’m good at it.  It’s one of my passions and I’m quite content to be here pecking away at my computer.

BUT….There are many topics out there - which I know are profitable - that I just don’t have the time or expertise to write about. So, I hire a ghostwriter to build my niche information business for me.

While I write all of my own internet marketing courses (let’s be clear about that!), there are other products out there that are MINE which I didn’t write a word of related to topics ranging from weight loss to time management to curing insomnia.

Maybe you want to take a shortcut?
Maybe you want to speed up the process by which you build your business?
Maybe you want to expand into a variety of hot topics?
Maybe you want to free up your time for more important pursuits?

You can do all of these by using a ghostwriter.

You can find them at http://www.Elance.com.  Simply post a description of the project you’d like completed and let qualified vendors from around the world bid to become your ghostwriter.  Look over the writers that respond and pick the one best suited for  your needs.

In a matter of days you can have a completed ebook that is YOURS without writing a single word yourself.

It’ll change your life.

Many novice bloggers are unaware that you can make some major money from blogging. There are some people that make up to $1,000 a month by simply blogging. It is actually possible to make money from blogging in your spare time. There are even professional bloggers that make an entire living from blogging everyday. Nothing beats blogging from the comfort of your home and getting paid to do it. It is one of the most sought after at-home jobs that many people overlook. Majority of bloggers blog everyday just for fun and do not get paid for it. There is a good amount of money to be made by blogging. You too can make money by blogging. There are five popular sites that are known to pay bloggers to blog. These sites can help make a blogger a nice extra income if they diligently pursue their blogging on a regular basis and according to each of the individual sites’s guidelines and policies. The most popular of the five sites is PayPerPost.com. They give bloggers many open opportunities to blog about various products and advertisements on their personal blog. The other four popular money making blog sites for bloggers is Blogsvertise.com, BlogToProfit.com, Creamaid.com, and Blogitive.com. Joining any of these widely known sites will help you to make money from blogging.

There are many different ways to make money from blogging and benefit from a successful blog. The first important tip to follow if you really want to make money from your blog is to make sure you have the proper title. Having the wrong title or improper title that conflicts with your blogs content can damage your ability to make money from your blog. Be sure to use a title that is catchy but properly coins the point of the blog. If your blog is about dogs it should mention that in the title or directly refer to it in some way. Your title should always be clear and concise. This is vital if you wish to make money with your blog. The second tip to make money with your blog is to double check your information. You can not have any errors in your blog if you wish to make money. Your blog should have accurate information for your readers. It also makes your blog more difficult to find and search through if there is too many incorrect spellings. The third tip to make money with your blog is blog often. You must be persistant with your blogging if you want to make some serious money doing it. You should blog at least once a day or more. You need to build up a fan base of people that enjoy reading your daily posts. It is the secret to a money making blog. The fourth tip to make money from blogging is to keep what your are writing about rich in content but to the point. You do not want to babble on and on losing your readers interest. Quality content is the key to making money from blogging. You have to draw readers to your blog daily to generate money.

Happy New years Everyone!!

It is always great to be able to reflect back on what we did over the past year so we can learn and grow from it before making goals for the new year.

Whilst writing or making money online period might seem like a daunting task it doesn’t need to be if you follow these simple steps this year.  Lets start fresh, and more importantly start every day like you’re starting fresh.  Bright eyed and bushy tailed every day eager to face todays challenges.  Theres no doubt you’re going to learn something, as you always will.  But if you’ve finally decided to take thing whole online making money thing seriously, then its time to wake up and dont make the same mistakes as you did tomorrow.  Prioritize what is most important right now, and go with the flow but focus while doing it.

For most aspiring entreprenuers, we don’t know where to start and have no idea on how to start the writing process. And why I keep saying writing is because to make money online you have to write.  At least the way I know how to, that works best for me.  And Im just starting! So let me make this endeavor a lot easier for you. Follow these Goals for 2009 and you are guaranteed to help improve your writing, and therefore make more money online than you did in 2008:

I Establish my objectives…

What do I want to achieve? Do I want to earn money from them or am I using this as my stepping stone so I can advance further in my niche?

The clearer my objectives, the better your income will be.

I Pick my topics….

I will dabble in something I know very well and it must be something that truly interesting to my potential customers.

I like what Im writing about and make work enjoyable as much as possible.

My products will sell like hotcakes online because I write quality information that is helpful to other people, who are reading what they expected to, and will benefit from it.

I Create compelling titles for my products….

I will capture my customers attention through my titles.

I create headlines that are enticing and follow the WIIFM rule (whats in it for me). They are short, direct to the point, well written, and keyword rich.

I Write for my readers….

I know who my readers are  so you can easily make your content targeted to their needs and demands. Aside from their profiles and  target to their needs. I identify pressing issues, aspirations, the things that they would like to achieve and their most frequent questions.

I make my writing readable.

My ideas flow smoothly and my content promotes continuity.

I will make an outline that will guide me throughout the writing process. My content is easy on the eyes.

This year will be the best year to date! Keep positive and stay focused.  Best words of advice!

I hope everyone had a great Christmas!  I know I did.  I have to admit, even though big screen TVS weren’t under the Christmas Tree (next year huney I promise, tehe), spending quality time with family is what Christmas season is and should really be about.   But 2009 is coming quick, and I want you to follow me while I make 2009 the most abundant and prosperious year ever.  Every article I write will contribute to my success, and I hope that while I’m writing about it, you’re taking action on it! 

Chistmas Eve I talked about choosing keywords that will make article writing worth while, and I’m going to continue to expand on this, because it’s a huge and very important traffic generating tactic.  One that I use and will continue to use in 2009 to make this my six figure year.

When choosing keywords period you need to keep 3 things in mind.

1. Relevancy - has to be relevant to what you’re promoting! 
2. Competition - to ensure success,  the keyword/keyphrase should have no more than 5,000 ”quoted” results when searched in Google.
3. Traffic - decent search volume

Again, most importantly you should base your keyword selection on relevancy and competition. Yeah traffic is important, but they always say it’s much better to get 100 relevant clicks from 100 different keywords, than 100 irrelevant clicks from one keyword!

The Google Keyword tool along with a Keyword generator will give you the information that you need to make informed decisions regarding keywords that will get your articles listed on the first page of search results.

So let’s get back to how and where you’re going to find profitable keyword ideas. 

Dmoz

A great place to do research is the DMOZ open directory located at http://www.dmoz.org

This is truly a gold mine for article marketers as you can generate a ton of article ideas in just minutes. I’ve followed the real deal marketing gurus for a long time now, and Dmoz seems to be the one thing they all have in common.  So look here!  You might just find a gem.

I wanted to show you screenshots for examples to understand the process better, even though its really straight forward, but for some reason I am unable to upload any images whatsoever, which I will work on getting fixed for future articles.  Reason being I think people are visual learners, I know I am! So I will get this fixed up so that in the next article I can add screenshots to go with my ”instructions” so that you can understand better and ultimately learn better from the experience! Right now, try I will just try and explain using my words

1. Go to the home page and you will see categories, such as Arts, Business, Computers, etc.  Lets use the category “Shopping” for this case study.  Click on “Shopping”, and you will then be presented with various sub-categories.

2. Go down to the sub-category called “Health”. You will then be presented with yet MORE sub-categories, so keep digging!  Lets click on “Weight Loss” now and then click on “Supplements”.

At this level now, you have dug down into the “health” industry and fine tuned your search to come up with more specific sub-niches within that industry. 

At this point you can go over to the Google Keyword tool and do a few searches to find some keywords:  Type in the category that you were searching within:  “weight loss supplements”.

Now with the keyphrases you may have seen with the Google Keyword Tool, search for a few of those keywords in Google to see what kinds of search results you come up with.  Remember to search for the exact keywords by placing quotes around them. Remember, traffic is important but low competition is what you really want to focus on right now.  So when choosing what keywords to choose, sure choose the ones that show are getting traffic first, and then check out the competion in Google.  Obiovusly the more traffic the better, but in most cases, those high traffic keywords have a lot of competition, so don’t worry if your keyword doesnt have a LOT of traffic, thats ok. 

REMEMBER: Its better to get ranked on the first page of Google with a keyword that gets 100 searches, rather than get ranked on page 100 on Google with a keyword that gets 10,000 searches.  Think about that.  Which one do you think will get the most clicks? 

Now for example, using the main keyword “Weight Loss Supplements” in Google Keyword Tool, it came up with a few good alternative keywords. Here are just a few results in Google Keyword Tool I got using the main keyphrase “Weight Loss Supplements”:

• Results 1 - 10 of about 5,320 for “top weight loss supplement“. 

      - a little over 5K results, but still doable.

• Results 1 - 10 of about 1,200 for “weight lose supplements“. 

      - 1,200 results, awesome! Notice the Spelling error? It still gets lots of searches!

• Results 1 - 10 of about 4,070 for “best supplements for weight loss“.

      - 4,070 results, great!

In just a few minutes we started out with the very broad topic called “Shopping” at DMOZ and dug down to find a sub category “weight loss programs”.  One search using the Google keyword tool and we have come up with some keywords that you could use to advertise virtually ANY diet supplement affiliate program, dieting program, or maybe even an e-book!  Rinse and Repeat this process and you’ll be able to come up with a lot of hot keywords that will be listed under with ease.  Use your hard earned keywords to write kick butt articles, submit to article directories and start getting long term traffic you deserve!

Resources:

www.dmoz.org

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Now although there are opposing statments and opinions in this area of keyword research, you will notice that either way, opposing arguements or not, its not too far off from the truth.  The truth is, you want to research keywords that have lower than 10,000 quoted results in the search engines.  Keep in mind the lower the better, so below 5,000 is what I would recommend, but getting organic listings under 10,000 is definitely possible.  To test the waters for a keyword, what you need to do is open Google, and type in a keyword phrase into the search box with “Quotes” around it and then click Search.  Google will return the number of websites that are listed for that keyword phrase.

This is an example results you may get:

Results 1 - 10 of about 4,120 for “make money online with article marketing“.

4,120 results is definitely a prime candidate for an article and will be very easy to get listed under.

Make a list of relevant keywords that you feel your audience will search for when looking for a product or service similar to what you are promoting.

USE the Google Keyword Tool:

You can get some great keyword data from the free Google Keyword tool.  You can use this tool to dig around for relevant keywords that people have searched for in the past and gives an average monthly search volume. Go through the list looking for keywords that you could write an article on and help someone looking for Information on how to make money with article marketing.

Remember, any keyword below 5,000 results is a good candidate for an article to write about.

The Google keyword tool will also give you some great ideas for keywords to write on by using their website content generator.  Choose “website Content” from the option list and enter the website that you wish to search.

Remember, any keyword below 5,000 results is a really good opportunity for an article to write about.

The Google keyword tool will also give you some cool ideas for keywords to write on if you decide to use their website content generator.  Choose “website Content” from the option list and enter the website that you wish to search. From this list alone you have some great ideas on keywords to research further.

One of the most asked questions I get is ” how do I know what keywords are profitable?”.  Well my friends, the key is to choose your keywords based on relevancy, not by traffic believe it or not, and this is how most people start off on the wrong foot. If your keywords are relevant to what you are promoting, the profits will follow! Trust me.  Although a keyword may get searched for a million times a month, your traffic is useless if it is not relevant and it has massive competition.

Well its Christmas Eve everyone, and I hope unlike me right now, you’re snug in bed considering the kids will be waking you up at 7:00 a.m. if you have any, or enjoying or should I say be celebrating the last of the Chistmas season rush!  I know I will be! 

I will be away tomorrow, enjoying the company of close family and friends, but within the next couple of days I will be discussing the rest of this module on article marketing, and what you need to consider when choosing your keywords based on relevancy and competition. 

Merry Chistmas to you all!!  Its been a delight sharing my knowledge and experiences with you!

Today Im going to continue to focus on the Article Marketing process. We’re going to start with the first step which is Research! This is hands down the most important aspect of getting your articles to rank well in all search engines, so pay close attention to what I’m about to teach you.

With every single article you write, you need to do your research.  This includes knowing what you will write about, what products or services you want to sell (you do want to profit from your articles don’t you?), and how to align that product or service with what your readers are looking for.  As you become more experienced with article marketing, the research part becomes easier, faster, and you become more productive, so take your time when you first get started so that you benefit from understanding the core fundamentals.

Your job is to focus on two important aspects when writing your article, the product your selling and the audience you’re selling too!  Yeah there are real people reading these articles behind closed doors, don’t forget that!  So what you say and do will really affect your outcome. Your job, not only as an article writer but as an internet marketer will be to align your audience with a product that will benefit them.  Whether you’re offering a weight loss program or how to save money on gas, finding the right audience is the first step in your research.  Some will argue with that part, and claim that you need to find a product first and foremost, but think about this please. There are thousands of products that have affiliate programs, so you really aren’t going to have any trouble finding multiple products to offer to pretty much any audience you want to target. 

Find Your Audience:

Finding an audience of people to promote to won’t take you long if you know how to do it.  You can do really good, productive research in less than an hour once you get the hang of things.

Keep these questions in the back of your mind when writing your articles so that you can stay on topic and stay focused.

1. Who is my audience?
2. What are they looking for?
3. Where can they find this?
4. Why do they need this?
5. How can I benefit them?

You really must have answers to these questions before even thinking about typing the first word of your article!  Staying on topic and keeping your articles relevant will be the determining factor on how successful you will be with article marketing.

Now that you have an idea of who you would like to sell a product to, you need to be able to reach these people.  Now to do this, you’re going to need to research keywords that you can write your articles on.  Keywords are simply phrases or queries that people type into the search engines when they are looking for something. When applying keywords to article marketing, the ones with low competition in the search engines are the ones that are prime candidates to write on.  So how low is low enough and where do you find these keywords in the first place?  Well its not rocket science, but there is indeed a science to it sort to speak!

Tomorrow Im going to get in to the fun stuff and show you exactly how to do proper keyword research and where to do it.  The internet is filled with ideas and a lot of fluff too remember, so let me guide you in the right direction. If you’re wondering why on earth you should listen to me, well I don’t have the answer to that because there’s many people who want to tell you what to do and how to do it.  But most of those people also want to charge you for it!! 

Article Marketing has been a passion of mine for awhile now, and I can tell you that I’ve read just about every article marketing how to ebook out there, including accreditation courses I’ve paid a lot of money for taken on this subject as well.  So I’m here to pass on the knowledge and it’s one less dollar you have to spend to learn about this niche because I’ve already spent the money for you!

Well, Im going to get some last minute Xmas shopping done tomorrow, but I’m happy to spend my Christmas eve with you all and giving you the best gift of all……knowledge and wisdom, and theres no greater wealth than that!  You just wait…it will pay off my friends! 

So until tomorrow, stay safe and keep warm!

Article Marketing is a powerful way to drive free traffic to your websites and affiliate links.  The great part about article marketing is that you don’t need to have your own website, or any experience in advertising online for that matter!  Simply follow a few simple guidelines, write some content and it will get picked up in the search engines for free!  Sounds simple, and trust me it is but you have to be willing to learn the ins and outs to be successful at article marketing.  Article Marketing is a huge way to drive short, but more certainly long term traffic! I have articles written months ago that are still earning me money today!

When someone does a search in any search engine such as Google or Yahoo and types in a “keyword” it will return relevant results for what that person was looking for.  Article Marketing allows you to have your article content delivered as a relevant web page for keywords that you choose!  Yes, you have control over what keywords your articles are listed under in the search engines, and I’m going to teach you exactly how to do this.

There are many different sites available on the net that are specifically created for articles and article marketers.  These websites allow you to add your articles to their sites, therefore you do not need your own website to benefit from article marketing.  Once you have your article written, it only takes a few moments to add your article to an article submission site and have it published online.

Here are the steps you must take to master the article marketing process:

1. Research an Audience and Product
2. Write an Article (or outsource it!)
3. Submit your article to an article submission site
4. Rinse and Repeat

Now that you know how article marketing works in a nutshell and what your job is as the article marketer, let me elaborate on the steps to build your article marketing campaign….tomorrow!

Article marketing, in my opinion, is the absolute best way to build a solid foundation of traffic and business all wrapped up in a nice profitable package!

Tomorrow I will be discussing the most important piece of the puzzle, research.  So many people dismiss research as simple keyword research, it’s much more than that.  Although I will be emphasizing several techniques covering keyword research, I will be discussing other factors that need to be taken in to consideration when creating your most profitable article yet.

Writing is a big part of every Internet Marketers life. Wouldn’t it be just peachy if you didn’t have to write anything ever again from this day forward but still be pumping out content like it was on steriods??  The average person talks at 160 words per minute, however the average person only types 30 words per minute. Now think about this, how much more could you get done if you could write as fast as you spoke?

When it comes to  producing unique content for my websites, I can pump out full length articles about niches in which I have no prior knowledge on in about 15 minutes.

Wouldn’t you like to know how to do the same? It’s easier “said than written”. Wink wink.  I was going to make this apart of an ebook I am producing, but I decided to give it to my readers for free.  So here it is, the  content creation on crack conspiracy the gurus don’t want you to know!!

#1. Use voice recognition software called Dragon Naturally Speaking so you don’t have to type anything. It costs $199, but its well worth it. You can learn more about that here: http://www.nuance.com/naturallyspeaking/

#2. Train only 10 minutes per day with a speed reading software called, EyeQ.  It helps you read and process information faster, right now I can read at about 600 words per minute, and my speed increases every week. You can learn more about that here: http://www.eyeq.tv

#3. Select your niche topic from the NicheADay mailing list, which you can get on here: http://www.nicheaday.com

#4.  Go on to http://www.wikipedia.com and speed read as many articles as you can for about an hour. Take notes if necessary.

#5.  Open up Microsoft word and speak 3000-5000+ words summarizing what you’ve just read about while it is still fresh in your mind and read from your notes if needed.

Make this part fun! Pretend you’re giving a presentation! Jot down what you want to talk about, but don’t read your notes like it’s a script or write them down like it’s a script for that matter. Remember, this is voice recognition, you want to let the words flow as naturally as possible.  Don’t worry you will get better each time as you become more and more comfortable with it!

#6.  Tidy up any typo’s that you or the software has made, because sometimes you’ll stumble words. Then format your articles into 10 seperate files. This takes only a few minutes.

#7.  Breathe! You’ve just created unique content for an entire website in under 2 hours.

Imagine the possiblities. When you combine Speed Reading with Voice Recognition software you can create endless amounts of content very , I mean VERY quickly. We only have 24 hours per day guys, you need to increase your productivity as much as possible!

Out of all the web site statistics tools I have looked at and checked out for some reason I keep coming back to Google Analytics. There is plenty to come back for, as it is the most in-depth free web site stats package you are going to find.

I find after talking to webmasters for any extended amount of time though that some people are intimidated by the process of setting it up. They think it is too complicated or just something they don’t want to bother diving into. Im completely guilty of this!  Ive been niche and internet marketing years and I just recently dived in to Google Analytics.  So I hope this information helps as I wish I had these instructions when I started out!!

Sure some of the features give you more information that you probably need but better to have more than not enough. To help those who still have butterflies in their bellies - here is a step by step guide to get you going.

Getting Started with Google Analytics…

Go to the Google Analytics web site and sign up for an account or login with your Google login details. You already have a Google account, right? Post login, click on the “setup” button to get going with the setup process.

Give Google Your Web Site’s Details…

Next you load up a screen that wants you to put in some information about your web site. Type in your domain name, account name and set your time preferences. The account name will be the group name for the series of web sites you use Google Analytics on.

Fill in Your Contact Information…

The next page wants you to put in your contact information. If you don’t want to do this - just select your country and you should be good to go to the next step.

Check Out the Terms of Service and Agree…

One of the last pages you will see is Google’s terms of service and legal agreement. Skim through it, read it if you want to. I know your probably not going to though. Click the “I agree” check mark box and move on.

Cut and Paste the Code!

The last step gives you a ‘bit of javascript to cut and paste onto all of your web pages that you want to track. Just copy it from there and paste it into your web site. Get past that step and your done! You have successfully setup Google Analytics.

Adding Google Analytics on Blogs

In a Wordpress install, this will allow you to see how people are finding your posts, and how many are viewing your posts, and when. When used correctly, you can optimize which keywords are used and where to drive more traffic to your site.

How is it done? Very simple. Using your favorite editor, open upo \wp-content\themes\yourthemenamehere\footer.php and do a search for the </body> tag. (Hint, in most editors you can do a <ctrl-f> key command to find it)

Directly above the </body> tag paste in the code given to you by Google. It should like something like this:

<script src=”http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js” type=”text/javascript”>
</script>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
_uacct = “UA-0000000-0?;
urchinTracker();
</script>

The 0000000-0 would be replaced by the user account number provided by Google.

Save and upload your modified footer.php and you will be good to go. This will allow every post and the main page to be tracked. In general it will take a few hours for Google to begin tracking data so be patient.

Google Analytics Wordpress Plugin

Want a handy Google Analytics Tracking PLUGIN for your blog?!??!  Click here to see one of the coolest wordpress plugins for installing Google Analytics!

That’s it. Google Analytics updates every day, you can access the reports from your Google account or here: www.google.com/analytics